15 Bitching Witch Movies

            Most of us remember the first movie witch that freaked us out. From the green-skinned Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz, to the evil Maleficent of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. Honestly, for me the thought that you could ride a broom and turn people into toads was a turn on. There have been great movies about satanic cults and vengeful witches, and I’m not talking about Charmed or Practical Magic, The Craft, The Witches of Eastwick or Hocus Pocus. Here are some that definitely cast a spell on me: 

            Suspiria (1977) Italian master of the macabre Dario Argento‘s masterpiece. The lovely Jessica Harper plays a ballet student who arrives at a dance academy in Bavaria and finds it overrun with witches. Shot in three-strip Technicolor, it’s a terrifying, expressionistic, shocker with a great hard rock score by Goblin. Scene after scene immerses you in a cinematic Grimm’s Fairy tale come to life. Except with even more gore. Synapse released his in a 4k UHD Blu-ray that will blow your mind.

            Burn Witch Burn (Night of the Eagle) (1962). This fantastic thriller based on Fritz Leiber‘s Conjure Wife and smartly directed by Sidney Hayers is about a British professor (Peter Wyngarde) whose life and career are going along splendidly until he sets fire to his wife’s (Janet Blair) protection charms and frightening supernatural attacks begin to happen to him. A scene with a stone eagle coming to life is especially creepy. This was released in a stunning looking Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. The incantation to protect the audience from evil in the beginning of the film is a riot.

            The Witches (1990). A wildly entertaining film directed by Nicolas Roag (Don’t Look Now) and based on a book by Roald Dahl. A young boy and his grandmother stop at a hotel and discover to their horror it is overrun with a convention of witches. Anjelica Huston is fiendishly fun as the Grand High Witch who plans to rid England of all children and transforms the little boy into a mouse. Warner Archive released this on Blu-ray and it looks amazing.

            Rosemary’s Baby (1968). Roman Polanski‘s adaptation of the Ira Levin novel is just a perfect movie, beginning with the unsettling open shots hovering over NYC’s Dakota apartments where newlyweds Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and her ambitious actor husband (John Cassavetes) move into. But when Rosemary gets pregnant she suspects something sinister is afoot. Ruth Gordon rightfully won an Oscar as the weird overly friendly elderly neighbor. A great paranoid nightmare right to the end, this gets better every time you see it. Criterion once came out with a loving restoration on Blu-ray, now it’s out on Paramount.

            Bell, Book & Candle (1958) Kim Novak is at her most beautiful and bewitching as Gillian, a witch who owns an African art store in Greenwich Village. She falls for a neighbor (James Stewart) and, using her “familiar” Siamese cat Pyewacket, puts a love spell on him. But her witchy friends Queenie (Elsa Lanchester) and bongo-playing warlock Nicky (Jack Lemmon) fear that if she falls in love she will lose all her powers. They all hang at a Greenwich Village bar called the Zodiac Club with other likeminded practitioners of the black arts. As a kid, I dreamed of frequenting this supernatural speakeasy. I did eventually movie to Greenwich Village, but the only bars I found were filled with bitches instead. Sony released a handsome Blu-ray edition where the colors really pop.

            Witchfinder General (The Conqueror Worm) (1968). Young British director Michael Reeves (who tragically died of an overdose not soon after this film was shot) coaxed a ferocious performance out of Vincent Price as Matthew Hopkins, who, in reality, did torture suspected witches in England during the Cromwell era. Price at first bristled at the upstart director but, later, admitted he turned in one his best performances. It’s a chilling brutal film and, at the time, was lambasted for its violence. But cinematically it’s breathtaking. (Shout! Factory put this out in the Vincent Price Collection Volume 1).

            Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922). A surreal documentary by Benjamin Christensen about the origins of witchcraft- mixing documentary footage with animation and fiction. Charting the historical with bizarre sequences of black masses, the inquisition, witches flying in the moonlight, it’s really strange. The disturbing imagery is right out of Hieronymus Bosch, Criterion recently upgraded their edition of this on Blu-ray. Pure nightmare fuel.

            I Married a Witch (1942) When lightening splits a tree under which is a witch (Veronica Lake) and her father (Cecil Kellaway) that were burned at the stake in Colonial Salem, they rise up plotting revenge on the ancestor of the Puritan prig responsible. That man- Wallace, is running for Governor and is played by Fredric March. Jennifer (Lake) sets out to make him fall for her without magic, much to her father’s displeasure. Directed by Rene Clair this romantic comedy/fantasy is a bewitching delight from beginning to end. Veronica Lake has such a wonderful presence on screen (see Sullivan’s Travels and the film noir she made with Alan Ladd), and here she is sublime. Criterion put this out in a beautiful Blu-ray edition.

            Black Sunday (1960). A condemned witch rises from her grave, along with her henchman servant, to take vengeance on the descendants who put her to death. The opening scene where they pound a spiked metal mask into her face, is still shocking. The great director Mario Bava does so much with light and shadow to create a masterfully chilling gothic horror film. This film also launched the fright career of saucer-eyed beauty Barbara Steele (8 1½). Kino Lorber released this on Blu-ray in both the European and American version and it looks spectacular.

            Horror City (The City of the Dead) (1960). A college student travels to the Massachusetts town of Whitehood to study about the Salem witch trials. Unfortunately, the entire town is a practicing coven of witches presided over by an ominous Christopher Lee who delights in necromancy and human sacrifice. Excellently directed by John Llewellyn Moxey this is a really intelligent, wonderfully moody chiller. VCI puts this out on Blu-ray in a sumptuous version with extra footage.

            The Devil’s Own (The Witches) (1966). Still haunted by voodoo rites she witnessed in Africa, Joan Fontaine plays a headmistress of a private school run by a creepy brother and sister. She soon suspects that one of her students in earmarked for sacrifice by a group that worship the devil. The finale when the demon-loving coven gathers, wildly dancing, and rolling in mud, with the head witch wearing antlers on her head is hilariously fabulous. Shout! Factory’s Blu-ray is just sensational.

            The Initiation of Sarah (1978). I know, this is a TV movie, but it makes me insane. The sublime Kay Lenz plays Sarah a shy, ostracized, student at a college who is shocked when she is asked to become part of a strange sorority of other misfits. The possible reason she is selected is because she has psychic powers. Morgan Fairchild plays the nasty member of a rival sorority. Sure, this is a Carrie rip-off but come on, it’s Shelley Winters as the headmistress mother and supreme witch. Winters, God bless her, is about as subtle as a bubbling cauldron. Shout Factory put this out under a double bill of “Scream Factory TV Terrors.”

            The Witch (2015) A demonically good film expertly directed by Robert Eggers, set in New England in the 1630s and centers on a family (husband, wife & five children) who become exiled from a gated community and eventually decide to settle in a remote spot near a vast forest. They build their home, tend their crops, and raise their goats and chickens until the baby in the family vanishes and the family fears there are dark forces at work in the wood or perhaps closer to home. Filled with such religious mania the fervor mounts and a series of disturbing images begin to fill you with dread. The attractive older daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) finds a bloody fetus in a chicken’s egg, the little twins dance and chant with their black ram, the son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) encounters a malevolent, seductive witch in the woods. The ominous sense of diabolical powers at work eventually overwhelms and the finale is jaw-dropping and fabulous. There’s a frightening, fable-like, feel to this bewitching tale. Lionsgate just released a 4K UHD Blu-ray of this.

            Viy (1967) This weird, wonderful 1967 Russian horror fantasy is about a goofy, tipsy seminary student (in a bowl-cut hairdo) named Khoma (Leonid Kuravlyor) who gets separated from his friends on a walking sabbatical and spends the night in the barn of a witch. She climbs on Khoma’s back and, grabbing a broom, they fly over the land. But Knoma is so distraught about the satanic implications that, when they land on the ground, he beats the witch to death with her broom and she transforms into a beautiful woman (Natalya Varley). Later down the road Khoma comes to a village and is summoned to the home of a wealthy man and is asked to recite verses over the body of his daughter for three night while she lies in state in a small church. To his horror, he discovers the girl’s body is none other than the transformed witch, whose corpse rises at night to fly around the room in her coffin. Watching the end scenes is to be struck by the imaginative special effects. They create this otherworldly nightmare universe filled with sinister creatures. Severin released a staggeringly beautiful Blu-ray of this supernatural masterpiece.

            Witching & Bitching (2013). Alex de la Iglesia‘s deranged, fantastical, film about a bunch of jewelry thieves on the run from the law along with their kidnapped cab driver and poor passenger locked in the trunk. Even one of the crook’s young son is along for the ride (this is his weekend with divorced dad). Unfortunately they drive through a town loaded with witches and get abducted. The divine Carmen Maura (Woman on The Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) is the lead witch who delights in chatting on the phone while upside down on the ceiling. The finale with hundreds of evil acolytes drinking down toads and waiting for their demonic spiritual mother to show up is just outrageous. This will fry your brain. IFC finally released the Blu-ray edition of this and it’s a must-own.