“The Worst Witch” (Robert Young, 1986)
As a TV movie for children, “The Worst Witch” may be shorter, less known, and frankly, crappier than other movies on this list, but it must be mentioned because it’s simply the witchiest movie imaginable. The film takes every witch stereotype and turning it up to 11, with names like Gloria Hobgoblin, Natalie Sinister, and Constance Hardbroom (played by none other than Diana Rigg). Also, this 1986 effort was a blueprint of cinematic witches to come, serving as a proto-Harry Potter and casting Fairuza Balk as a witch years before “The Craft.” Taking place at the Cackle Academy, Balk stars as the titular worst witch, Mildred Hubble, who’s teased by the mean witches just for being terrible at everything she does. Luckily, the film’s villain (who announces herself as such with a song about being wicked and loving it), the pink-haired twin of the headmistress, isn’t very competent either, and Mildred foils her to redeem herself. But not before Tim Curry shows up as the school’s musical heartthrob and delivers a long, synth-heavy, and deeply weird ode to Halloween in front of a mesmerizingly bad greenscreen, crooning like a demented David Bowie. Skip the “scary” witches and watch this camp masterpiece instead! – Joe Blessing
“Suspiria” (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)
Considering the art-porn orgy of madness inside Luca Guadagnino‘s loose remake of “Suspiria”—a sensual, erogenous, horrific nightmare of a film— one could arguably call the new 2018 “Suspiria” movie, the greatest witches coven film of all time, or at least up there with the very best. Discarding everything from Dario Argento’s classic save for the basic skeleton of the plot—even trading in the glorious kaleidoscopic colors, for a more muted and textured palette more appropriate to its late-’70s-in-Berlin setting, Guadagnino’s spellbinding movie is an unnerving, anxiety-inducing overwhelming madhouse of the senses and the physicality of the movie is sinewy, muscular and graceful all at once. Guadagnino’s reimagining seems to consider the nuts and bolts of the original heavily and recontextualize it for his story. The protagonist is a ballet dancer—so the physicality and stamina of dance manifest in the idea of corporeal punishment. Sound, breathe and music is essential—a creepy score by Radiohead‘s Thom Yorke influenced by the 1970s German motoric and experimental music of the time—and visually its astonishing something that seems to blend Jodorowsky, Antonioni and Polanski filtered through the idea of erotic horror. And then there are the witches typified by Tilda Swinton in one of the most haunting, but delicate and understated witch performances ever. The coven inside— prestigious dance academy is essentially a front for the occult—and its members are also its own form of hair-raising eeriness. “Suspiria” 2018 is nothing short of a masterwork and if you’re creeped out by the idea of a nefariously conspiring group of unsettling women and all the unspeakably terrifying things they plan on doing to you this movie is either completely your shit or a movie you run screaming in the opposite direction and stay away from so you’re not in need of therapy for months. – Rodrigo Perez
Honorable Mention
Other witch films worth mentioning: “Eve’s Bayou” (1997); “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968), which one might argue is more of an occult cult film to be specific about it; George A. Romero‘s “Season Of The Witch” (1973); Hammer Films‘ British horror “The Witches” (1966); “Night of the Eagle” (1962); Rob Zombie’s “The Lords Of Salem” (2013); “Burn, Witch, Burn” (1962); Dario Argento’s “Inferno” (1980); “The Wicker Man” (1973) and “Borgman” (2013) and “Hereditary” (2018) also all fall under occultist groups that have hexed people with something that may resemble witchcraft, and finally (lol), “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” (2013) and “The Last Witch Hunter” (2015) starring the great Vin Diesel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSTROnJzjXk