Monthly Archives: October 2025

Top Ten Lists

Top Ten Wicked Witches in Movies

One of the most popular icons of this Halloween season is the Witch.  Of course, we all have our ideas of what a witch looks like; pointy hat, flying around on a broom, usually accompanied by a pet cat and brewing spells around a cauldron.  But, as pop culture has shown, witches aren’t all typical of that familiar image.  Witchcraft can be by just about anyone who knows the spells to cast.  We’ve seen witches in movies and television that look like they’ve stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting and give the appearance of an ordinary life.  There are also many examples of good witches that have been portrayed in media.  The Wizarding World of Harry Potter for example is a story all about young witches and wizards learning to hone their craft for noble purposes.  And while it never explicitly states it in the book or the movie, it can be argued that Mary Poppins is a witch; of course using her command of magic for the goodwill of others.  But, when we think of witches in the movies, the ones who stand out are the wicked kind.  They are the kind of witches that live up to the scary image that we commonly refer to around Halloween time.  And they aren’t all the ugly, wart faced crones that we commonly see as the archetypes.  Sometimes bad witches are stunningly beautiful, using their beauty as a weapon in catching their prey.  For this Top Ten List, I’m taking a look at some of the most noteworthy movie witches that stand as the most wicked ever put on the silver screen.  Of course, each one of these entries has to be undeniably evil within their own stories; so no misunderstood outcast witches or good witches.  These represent the worst of the worst, and in turn, they are among the most iconic.  So, let’s take a look at the Top Ten Wickedest Witches of them all.

10.

THE SANDERSON SISTERS from HOCUS POCUS (1993)

Played by Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy

The trio from this Halloween movie favorite certainly fit the bill of everything we expect out of a portrayal of witches.  But what makes these characters stand out is the campiness of their characterizations.  This Disney made comedy definitely makes the Sandersons very cartoonish caricatures of the classic witch aesthetic.  But it’s the actors performing the parts that really helps to make them memorable.  Bette Midler, a noteworthy performer known for her musical talents on the stage and screen, hams it up the most as Winifred, the de facto leader of the group.  It’s a testament to Midler’s acting chops that she manages to make the caricature work, especially with those chipmunk like buck teeth, and still find a way to make Winifred menacing within the story.  She’s also balanced well by Sarah Jessica Parker’s sultry portrayal of Sarah Sanderson and Kathy Najimy’s bumbling Mary Sanderson.  The Three Stooges come to mind as inspirations for the character dynamic between the sisters.  And while the movie itself is a mixed bag, never really being as funny nor as scary as it wants to be, the Sandersons are easily the highlight of the movie, and the element that indeed has helped to turn Hocus Pocus into a perennial favorite every Halloween.  And of course, given that Bette Midler is in the starring role, there has to be a musical number to show off her musical theater skills.  In this case, it’s a cover of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You,” which the movie puts a disco night club spin on.  When it comes to the Sisters, this movie definitely puts a fun spin on being Wicked.

9.

MOTHER HELENA MARKOS from SUSPIRIA (1977)

Played by Lela Svasta

One of the most surreal depictions of witchcraft on the big screen is found in Dario Argento’s horror classic Suspiria.  The story revolves around an American dancer named Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) coming to Germany to study at a prestigious ballet academy, only to find that the academy is a front for a coven of witches who feed off of the beauty and youth of their students.  At the center of the coven is a mysterious benefactor named Mother Markos, someone who the ladies at the school never see in person, and yet her dark presence is felt everywhere.  Markos is a great example of portraying the specter of witchcraft without letting us see her fully in person.  The spells she casts present to us the evil presence she holds over the academy, and that in it’s own way makes her scarier than just seeing the old crone that she would have normally been presented as.  The 2018 Luca Guadagnino directed remake does show us Mother Markos in it’s final act, and she’s portrayed as a grotesque, monstrous figure (played by Tilda Swinton under a ton of make-up).  The portrayal of the character is much more effective in Argento’s original film, with her being more of a specter than an actual physical presence.  The movie gets away with so much with just the littlest hints of evil lurking around.  An image of two disembodied eyes in the darkest is an especially unnerving moment in the movie.  We do eventually get the briefest of looks of her when Suzy manages to stab her in the neck while she has been sneaking around while invisible.  Lela Svasta, who was not a professional actress, does fit the imagined appearance of what Mother Markos would look like, and while she only gets a second of screen time, it’s enough to embody this mysterious figure that we’ve come to fear throughout the movie.  The whole coven of witches in the movie are terrifying enough, but by being the most enigmatic of them all, Mother Markos stands out as the scariest of the whole movie.

8.

MINNIE CASTEVET from ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968)

Played by Ruth Gordon

One of the prime examples of going against the stereotypical image of a wicked witch.  From the moment she first appears in Roman Polanski’s eerie thriller, Minnie Castevet comes across as disarming and a somewhat sweet old lady from across the hall.  Neighborly and attentive, she offers help to make Mia Farrow’s Rosemary time during pregnancy as comfortable as possible, which makes her seem like a kind matronly figure.  But, it’s only during the course of the film that we learn that Minnie’s true aim is to help Rosemary give birth to what will ultimately be the Anti-Christ.  All those kind gestures were in their own way subtle works of witchcraft in the service of her true master, Satan.  A glass of milk here, a piece of cake there.  It’s only after Rosemary pieces together all the peculiar things that have been happening around her that we ultimately see that Minnie this whole time was a diabolical witch.  And not just her, but everyone else in the apartment building; all part of a cabal of Satanists intent on bringing forth the Anti-Christ.  What is great about Ruth Gordon’s performance is that her character never changes, even after the truth of her intentions is revealed.  She plays Minnie as this charming, batty old lady who has this charmingly silly way about her.  Once she is revealed to be the witch that she is, she still acts like the disarming, sweet old lady that she was before, only now it comes off as more menacing that we know the truth of who she is.  Gordon was a Hollywood veteran who surprisingly got her start as a writer before going into acting.  She uses her witty bravado well in creating the character, and her performance ended up earning her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress that year.  There are a lot of movie witches that certainly stand out as scary from the get go, but what makes Minnie Castavet so memorable is that deception in her character.  Like Rosemary, we are lulled into feeling safe around such a colorful and seemingly sweet person like Minnie, but it ultimately makes the reveal all the more terrifying when we realize all that was in the service of something truly demonic.

7.

MISS ERNST, THE GRAND HIGH WITCH from THE WITCHES (1990)

Played by Angelica Huston

An actress like Angelica Huston definitely seems at home playing gothic characters.  She of course famously played Morticia Addams in The Addams Family (1991) only a year after playing a terrifying witch in this adaptation of a Roald Dahl novel of the same name.  She’s also an actress not afraid to disappear under a ton of make-up.  That’s what makes her performance in this movie so special.  We get to see her excel in both sides of the performance, in her human disguise of course, which certainly seems like a dress rehearsal for her role as Morticia, as well as her full blown appearance as the Grand High Witch.  The movie involves a boy stumbling upon a Witch convention at a hotel which leads to him being turned into a mouse which the witches then intend to eat him as.  The movie is exceptional in it’s use of practical effects, all done by the talented artists at the Jim Henson Company, and that is especially true about the transformation that Angelica Huston goes through to become the Grand High Witch in her truest form.  Her witch makeup is the most extreme of all in the entire movie, with a gigantic hooked nose and wrinkly skin all over.  The fact that Ms. Huston was still able to give a wildly expressive performance under all that make-up is especially impressive.  But when she’s in her more beautiful disguise, she also manages to deliver a menacing presence.  It wouldn’t surprise me if this role helped to make her the easy front-runner for that Morticia part in The Addams Family, as the characters have a very similar look to them; though of course, Morticia is the far less evil of the two.  And as a portrayal of this character in particular, she is far better than that nightmare inducing, CGI enhanced version that Anne Hathaway played in the Robert Zemekis directed remake from 2020.  This movie in particular is a clear example of why practical effects are better in bringing a fanciful story like this to life, as well as having an actress willing to fully disappear under some really imaginative make-up.

6.

URSULA from THE LITTLE MERMAID (1989)

Voiced by Pat Carroll

Disney has had it’s fair share of memorable witches, given that so many of their movies have been adapted from classic fairy tales.  Their first film had one of the most iconic witches ever put on screen when the Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) transforms into her hag disguise.  But one of the greatest Disney witches made her debut in the movie that helped to save Disney animation and launch the company’s Renaissance era.  In Hans Christian Andersen’s original story, The Little Mermaid’s Sea Witch is a fairly minor character, there simply to enable Ariel to make the transformation from Mermaid to Human, at the cost of her voice of course.  That’s all there is to the transaction, but for Disney’s version, they sought to make the Sea Witch a far more meaningful presence in the story.  Thus came the creation of Ursula, by far one of the most popular Disney Villains to ever come out of the canon.  Ursula has her goals of usurping the throne of King Triton by manipulating his daughter, and she has no qualms about using her magic for her own evil ambitions.  She even keeps the damned souls of the people she tricked as trophies in her “garden.” Everything about Ursula is iconic, especially her look which was heavily inspired by famed drag queen Divine.  And Pat Carroll gives a tour de force vocal performance as the character, making her equal measures of terrifying while also being surprisingly funny at just the right moments.  The huskiness of her voice especially makes her stand out amongst all other Disney Villainesses, especially with that cackle of a laugh she has.  It’s not surprising that to this day Ursula remains one of Disney’s most popular characters, let alone one of the most popular Villains.  It’s a good thing that Disney was at a point where they allowed their animation team to take some license and create a wholly different take on an evil witch in one of their movies.  With her drag queen like bravado and a killer vocal performance from Ms. Pat Carroll, Ursula was a new kind of movie witch that would indeed set a new high standard for years to come.

5.

AUNT GLADYS from WEAPONS (2025)

Played by Amy Madigan

One of the more recent depictions of a witch to leave a big impact on cinema, Aunt Gladys is the black hearted center of Zach Cregger’s hit mystery box horror flick.  A lot of Weapon’s success lies in the fact that the movie withholds the truth about what really is going on until late into the movie, which makes it a fascinating mystery to unravel.  When we finally find out that every disturbing event in the movie is the product of witchcraft, it helps to reframe the movie in a very satisfying way.  And this largely due to how well they pull off the reveal of the mysterious character that is Aunt Gladys.  Portrayed in an absolutely transformative performance by Amy Madigan, Gladys is a very different kind of movie witch compared to everything else we’ve seen.  She wears bright colored clothes, and almost has the look of a circus clown given her heavy use of make-up.  But, underneath all that color and a bubbly persona that she puts on, she is as black hearted as they come.  She uses her magic to essentially puppeteer people and make them do her bidding, which includes family members as well as an entire classroom of children.  It’s vague about why exactly she does this, and they movie never fully reveals how she became a witch in the first place, other than she uses it to keep herself alive; sort of in a succubus kind of way.  But, the damage she inflicts is pretty terrifying.  It’s a great way to reimagine witchcraft as an element in modern horror.  Zach Cregger wisely avoids using the classic symbols of witches from popular culture; there’s no brooms, no black cats, no cauldron.  Aunt Gladys merely uses twigs from an inky black shrub that she keeps in her room to conduct her black magic.  And Amy Madigan’s performance is remarkably effective, making Gladys an unsettling presence both in her silly moments as well as in her darkest moments.  And the comeuppance she faces at the end of the movie is one of the most cathartic and satisfying finales we’ve had at the movies in a long time.  Gladys will probably become one of cinema’s most iconic witches in the years to come, and it shows that there is a lot of spooky elements to the concept of witchcraft that can still be explored in modern horror movies today.

4.

BELLATRIX LESTRANGE from the HARRY POTTER series

Played by Helena Bonham Carter

It’s hard to have a witch character that stands out in a movie franchise about a school for witches and wizards.  But, one in particular really does leave a mark as one of the most terrifying witches ever put on the silver screen.  Bellatrix Lestrange is a witch that really defines the dark side of magic in J.K. Rowling’s long running series.  Though not the main threat to Harry Potter and his allies, as she is second banana to the Dark Wizard Voldemort, Bellatrix nevertheless stands out as a great and menacing villainess in her own right.  Wonderfully brought to life in an unhinged performance by Helena Bonham Carter, Bellatrix is chaos incarnate.  You really don’t know what she’ll do next, which makes her such a memorable threat in the series.  Carter definitely makes a meal out of her portrayal of the dark witch.  Her maniacal cackles is especially a key part to the portrayal, showing how she clearly gets a kick out of being as evil as she is.  Of course, she is impactful to the story as she ends up murdering Harry’s godfather and mentor Sirius Black (Gary Oldman).  She also commits all of her actions without remorse, including the torture of other wizards and witches.  One of her most sinister moments comes when she teases Harry’s friend Neville about torturing his parents, an act that left them in a vegetable like state.  It’s an effective characterization of a character that you just know is rotten to her very core.  While Voldemort is subdued in his presence, she is everything but, making herself big and loud wherever she reigns her destruction.  While she does fill the bill of a wicked witch, with her gothic attire and unhinged cackle, she manages to stay effectively terrifying throughout and avoids being too much of a caricature.  This is a real testament to Carter’s performance, where she was able to bring a lot more to the character than just her bad girl persona.  She managed to create an evil witch that exists out of something even more terrifying, which is desire to destroy purely out of her own twisted sense of fun.  And among other witches and wizards, that becomes something truly worth fearing.

3.

THE BLAIR WITCH from THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999)

Played by ???

It’s kind of remarkable that one of the most terrifying witches in movie history is one that we never get to see; an maybe doesn’t exist at all.  It’s a testament to the movie’s power of suggestion that the presence of the Blair Witch is still felt throughout the movie, and it makes her (or it) all the more scary.  The Blair Witch Project was a groundbreaking horror film that helped to launch the found footage style of storytelling in cinema.  Everything in the film is shot on video tape by the characters, making it a movie within a movie, and it adds to the true life feel of the narrative.  Over the course of the film, the characters document their hunt for the elusive Blair Witch and the deeper into the woods they go, the more weird stuff ends up happening.  We don’t know if this is entirely their own minds playing tricks on them, or if there really is a Blair Witch out there.  The movie does a great job of building that tension over time, and bringing us into the paranoid state of mind of the characters.  We hear strange noises out in the darkness of night.  Shadows begin to play tricks on us.  Eventually, we do see the most direct evidence of the Blair Witches own handiwork, as the explorers capture strange wooden figures displayed near their campsite.  Is it a prank being pulled on the characters?  We never know, and that’s what makes The Blair Witch Project such an effective experience.  It uses the limited information that we see from the found footage to suggest that a Blair Witch may end up being real, and it’s much more effective than actually showing us a real witch.  Something is out there in the darkness, and it is hunting them.  It’s great that the movie commits to the very end in keeping the truth about the Blair Witch literally in the dark, especially with the haunting final scene which is open to interpretation.  It’s a great way of showing how the idea of a witch being present alone is enough to drive out our worst fears.  That’s why the Blair Witch has become one of the most terrifying witches in movie history.  The less we know about it, the creepier and more powerful it becomes, letting our own imagination conjure up what the true evil specter may look like.

2.

MALEFICENT from SLEEPING BEAUTY (1959)

Voiced by Elanor Audley

While Ursula from The Little Mermaid and the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves are iconic in their own right, there’s no denying that Disney’s greatest cinematic witch is the mistress of all evil herself, Maleficent.  Maleficent has become the gold standard by which all other Disney villains are judged by, and it’s for good reason.  She really epitomizes everything great about an iconic Disney Villain, both in her design and in her presence.  The combination of her dark flowing robes with the bat wing like collar around her neck and that crown of pointy horns just makes her stand out immediately.  Couple that with the absolutely chilling vocal performance from actress Elanor Audley, and you’ve got the makings of one of cinema’s greatest villainesses.  But, Maleficent is not just any witch.  She almost feels like a force of nature, able to command magic without a spell book or magic wand, though she does wield a staff that seems to channel her magic.  One of the best things about her character is her often calm demeanor.  She can loose her temper, but most of the time she is quiet and methodical in her evil deeds, clearly showing how much she knows she’s in command.  She doesn’t seek power; she knows she already has all of it.  Her evil is manifested in toying with those who don’t have magic.  And it’s that petty nature about her that makes her evil all the more loathsome.  Of course, her transformation into a spectacular dragon is one of the all time masterpieces of animation, but throughout the movie she is iconic.  To this day, she remains one  of Disney’s most popular characters, far eclipsing the movie she first appeared in and becoming something of a brand of her own within the Disney company.  There’s a reason why Disney made her the climatic showpiece of their nighttime spectacular at Disneyland called Fantasmic.  A true original all her own among cinematic witches and Disney villains alike, Maleficent is likely going to remain at the top tier for many more years to come.

1.

THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST from THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)

Played by Margaret Hamilton

If there was ever a witch that set the standard for all cinematic witches to follow, it’s this iconic portrayal from the classic The Wizard of Oz.  The Frank L. Baum story was brought to magnificent life by MGM in a marvelous technicolor production.  But what really stood out to audiences over the many decades since it first premiered was this iconic portrayal of the villainous Wicked Witch of the West.  She has remained such a fixture in pop culture that even a musical adaptation centered around her called Wicked has become a massive hit on it’s own, both on stage and screen.  But there’s no doubt that the Wicked Witch’s memorable presence is all due to the remarkable performance given by Margaret Hamilton.  She brings the character to vivid life thanks to a delightfully eccentric performance.  From her high pitched cackle to her sinister grin, she delivers the quintessential portrayal of a witch on the big screen.  It’s perhaps the reason why so many depictions of witches today often include a pointy hat and green colored skin.  Hamilton’s portrayal of the Wicked Witch is true high fantasy, finding the actress really relishing the role and making the performance feel huge in every way.  It wasn’t all easy for her though.  She famously suffered severe burns when a trap door didn’t drop her in time to miss the pyro effects that followed her exit from the Munchkin land set.  And the performance remained so iconic that it unfortunately left her typecast for the remainder of her career, though she found ways of capitalizing on her fame as the character later in life, and she never regretted playing the role in the first place.  One can’t imagine anyone else playing this role, even though there were others who tried out for the part before she inevitably got it.  Margaret just feels like she was born to play this character, and even after 85 years, her performance still captures the imagination of audiences of all ages.  While there are plenty of iconic movie witches out there, it’s the Wicked Witch that more than any of them seems to define the ideal of what a cinematic witch should be.

So, there you have my picks for the most iconic wicked witches ever put on the silver screen.  A couple of them, particularly the Wicked Witch of the West and Maleficent have gone on to set the standard for what we think a witch should be.  And then you have some other ones like Minnie Castevet in Rosemary’s Baby that stand out by being contradictory to what we perceive a witch to be.  And then there’s the Blair Witch who remains unseen throughout the whole movie, and yet you can still feel it’s presence.  There’s so many ways to imagine a witch in cinematic storytelling, and so many different ways to make them terrifying to an audience.  There is something innately unsettling about witchcraft itself, even when it’s used for good purposes by good witches.  That’s why it’s still a potent element used in horror movies today, though to varying degrees of success.  The recent horror hit Weapons offers up an especially effective new take on witchcraft and how it would be used in a contemporary setting.  Likewise, Aunt Gladys has emerged as a very new kind of movie witch, and one that really turns into a terrifying presence in her movie.  During Halloween time, witches remain one of the most popular of icons, and it’s largely thanks to some of the witches on this list that many of them have made such an impact in pop culture.  Just look at the phenomenal success of Wicked to see just how much the Wicked Witch, and by extension Margaret Hamilton’s performance, still have a foothold in our culture.  It’s also why Disney continues to mine through so many fairy tales for their animated projects, because they know a good fairy tale is made all the better by the presence of an especially wicked witch.  And with Harry Potter, you get the best of both with good witches (Hermoine Granger) and the bad (Bellatrix Lestrange).  We’ll see a good many iconic witches in the years to come in cinema, but leading up to now, these have been the ones that have undeniably left a huge mark on our understanding of witches overall in pop culture.

Focus on a Franchise

Focus on a Franchise – Evil Dead

When we sit down to watch a spooky movie for the holidays, there are a variety of different types to choose from.  There are haunted house stories, demonic possession stories, zombie epidemic stories, etc.  Most horror films tend to stick with one subgenre amongst them, but there’s a series of horror flicks that definitely flies in the face of convention.  In the early eighties, an ambitious young filmmaker named Sam Raimi got a group of his closest friends together to make a new kind of horror flick.  Instead of focusing on one subgenre of horror films, Raimi’s flick would incorporate a little bit of everything all into something new for the world of horror.  Demonic possession mixed with a little bit of zombie terror and plenty of supernatural spookiness all came together to define what we know as The Evil Dead (1981).  But, even though Sam Raimi was able to make his vision successfully come to life in his first film, he didn’t just rest on his laurels after that.  Like most horror franchises, there were inevitably sequels made, but instead of repeating himself Raimi would continue to experiment with each new film.  The sequels Evil Dead 2 (1987) and Army of Darkness (1992) have a continuing thread through them, but each film is dramatically different in not just tone, but also in many ways style.  And of course, the Evil Dead franchise is noteworthy for one other thing, which is that it made a star out of Bruce Campbell, a childhood friend of Raimi’s who would go on to become a horror movie icon thanks to his appearance in these films as the character Ashley “Ash” Williams.  One of the horror genre’s most defining images of the last several decades is of Ash with either a chainsaw in hand or in place of his hand.  There’s a lot to discuss about why the Evil Dead series stands out as one of the most important horror franchises that’s ever existed, especially in how it set the standard for how to craft a memorable horror flick.  And the evolution that the series went through movie by movie is also just as fascinating to observe as well.  So, let’s crack open the Necronomicon and take a look at Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead movies.

THE EVIL DEAD (1981)

One thing to note, The Evil Dead wasn’t the first “cabin in the woods” horror flick to be made, and certainly not the last.  But, over the years it has become viewed as the seminal horror flick in that subgenre.  Raimi, Campbell and their friends (which included the Coen Brothers by the way) managed to scrape together around $350,000 in funds to make their dream project together.  At the time they started to roll cameras, Raimi was barely over the age of 20, having dropped out of college to make this film.  He had never directed a feature film before; his only work up to that point being little seen shorts he made with Campbell.  And yet, when you watch the movie, you see that miniscule budget utilized to remarkable effect.  There’s a ton of creativity on display, showing that Raimi knew what he was doing even if this was his debut.  The Evil Dead features a lot of new tricks that were novel for a horror flick.  He would have his cameramen run through the forest with the camera on a stick, giving that stalking effect a lot more character as the camera swooped close to the ground.  One shot in particular, with the camera floating across the pond, was filmed by Raimi himself as he laid on a dingy and was pushed forward by Campbell.  The shooting went on through the dead of winter in a real abandoned cabin in Tennessee, and the cold damp night shoots really helped to give the movie the right amount of atmosphere.  But, they were limited in time with the actors they had cast in the film.  Once the movie starts to pick away at the cast as they become one with the “evil dead,” the performers (Ellen Sadweiss, Richard DeManincor, Betsy Baker and Theresa Tilly) would be replaced with what Raimi called the “Fake Shemps” which were actors buried under make-up to make them look like decaying, possessed corpses.  Some of those Fake Shemps even included Sam Raimi’s own brothers, Ted and Ivan.

But, one thing that’s interesting about the movie is how Bruce Campbell’s Ash emerges as the primary character.  The Ash that we come to know throughout the series isn’t fully formed yet.  Bruce keeps things fairly restrained with his character in this film.  Given that he was the one actor who was also deeply involved with the entire off and on multi-year shoot from beginning to end, he was pretty much destined to be the last man standing.  Still, Bruce does stick out immediately.  His square jaw appearance definitely gives off a leading man aura right away, but Campbell as we all know is no conventional leading man.  He’s not afraid to go a little oddball, which is why he and Raimi were so like-minded.  There are a little bit of hammy acting that Bruce throws into his performance, but it fits with the moments of insanity that the movie increasingly throws at the audience.  The Evil Dead is also a gloriously gory film that really lays into the bloodletting.  Perhaps as a nod to the classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1975), the chainsaw is the weapon of choice for Ash Williams, and it leads to some pretty extreme blood splattering.  The movie would end up receiving an NC-17 rating as a result, but that wouldn’t the film in the end.  Thanks to it’s small budget, the movie managed to become profitable pretty quickly.  It also would not just prove to be influential on the horror genre as a whole, but also on both Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell’s career.  A lot of the trick shots that Raimi utilized in this movie, like the spinning camera move and Dutch angles, would become his trademark over the years.  The movie also introduces the 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88, a car that not only shows up in all of the Evil Dead movies, but would also cameo in every movie that Raimi has ever made his entire career; even the stuff he’s made for Marvel.  But, for horror movie fans, they saw The Evil Dead as a great example of doing a lot with very little, and it would have a profound influence on horror filmmaking in independent cinema.

EVIL DEAD 2 (1987)

Sam Raimi would follow up his horror classic with a twisted thriller called Crimewave (1985), which he co-wrote with the Coen Brothers.  The movie had a more substantial $3 million budget, but the movie would end up being a box office flop.  In order to bounce back, Raimi decided to return to his Evil Dead roots and deliver a sequel.  Naturally, Bruce Campbell would step back into the roll of Ash, and it would take place in a cabin in the woods once again, but that’s where the similarities end.  Evil Dead 2 is very much a different kind of horror flick from it’s predecessor.  Sam Raimi has long said that major influences on him as a child were comic books and slapstick comedies, and this is very evident when watching Evil Dead 2.  While there were some goofy moments sprinkled throughout the original Evil Dead, the sequel fully embraces the madness.  Everything in Evil Dead 2 is surreal in it’s execution.  The grounded, DIY feel of the original movie is replaced with a stylized, bizarro world version of the same story.  The cabin itself even feels far more artificial and stylized, like something out of a silent German Expressionist thriller like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).  And Bruce Campbell’s performance is also more heightened to match the new tone of this movie.  What we think of Bruce Campbell as an actor and Ash as a character was born out of this movie, much more than the original.  The highly improvised scene when Ash battles his own possessed hand may be one of the greatest moments of physical comedy ever put on film.  And that’s just one of the movie’s many iconic jumbles of horrific imagery and slapstick comedy.  It was certainly a gamble on Raimi’s part to shift tone so dramatically, but given the full commitment of Bruce Campbell’s performance and the endless creativity of all the weirdness in the movie, audiences not only embraced the movie but considered it even better than the original.

Of course this would also be the movie that solidified Ash as a horror movie icon with one particular change to his appearance; the chainsaw arm.  After he’s forced to cut his hand off because of it being possessed and out of his control, he later retrofits a chainsaw to latch onto the stub.  Pair that with a shotgun in his other hand and you’ve got the makings of a true movie badass.  But, one thing that the movie needed to demonstrate with all of it’s bizarre characteristics is that it could still terrify it’s audience even as the gore was toned down.  The movie managed to come together thanks to the influence of a high profile fan of the original; author Stephen King.  King wanted to help Sam Raimi make a sequel, so he convinced producer Dino DeLaurentis to finance the film, but it was under one condition; that they keep the movie rated R.  Part of the reason that the movie is as hyper stylized as it is comes as a result of this rating restriction place on them.  That’s why the blood is often different colors throughout, so that the deaths in the movie are much less realistic.  By playing around with all the different loopholes in the movie rating system, Raimi was able to keep the movie sufficiently gory while staying true to DeLaurentis’ demands.  And a large reason why Sam Raimi chose to change so much between the movies is because he wanted Evil Dead 2 to be something of a soft reboot for the series.  This movie was going to be the template for where the series would go thereafter, especially in tone.  And Raimi certainly had bigger plans for a franchise, given that he ended the movie on a cliffhanger, with Ash transported back in time in the movie’s final scene.  And when he would finally get his next chance to make another film in this series, he would change style and tone once again.

ARMY OF DARKNESS (1992)

With his third film in the trilogy, Raimi wanted to expand much more into the lore behind the terrifying creatures of the “Evil Dead,”  Here we see the medieval origins of the Necronomicon, and how it’s a product of a more magic centered world.  While Sam Raimi still carries over some of the terrifying creatures he imagined for Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness is much less of a straight forward horror movie and more of an action adventure with horror elements.  But, Ash is still Ash in this movie, and the story picks up right where the last film left off.  Both Raimi and Campbell have a lot of fun with Ash’s fish-out-of-water presence in this medieval setting.  One of the movie’s most memorable scenes involves Ash demonstrating his use of a shotgun to the people of the kingdom, calling it his “boomstick.”  Raimi also ratchets up the cartoonish elements in this film, with one battle against the Deadites involving slapstick routines straight out of a Three Stooges short.  Once again, Bruce Campbell is the right man for the job when it comes to these tonal shifts, and he even is not afraid to portray Ash as a tiny bit dumb in this film.  One of the funniest running gags in the movie is that he can’t remember the words to a spell, those being “Klaatu barada nikto” which of course is a reference to the sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).  It’s a way to add another dimension to Ash’s character, where some of that bravado we saw established in Evil Dead 2 is undercut by his own foolish mistakes, which helps to make his character a lot funnier as a result.  But even with all his blunders, Bruce still gets some hilarious badass moments throughout the movie, with some perfectly delivered one liners along the way.

For it’s time, this was also the most elaborate movie that Sam Raimi had made up to that point.  It didn’t have the same Avant Garde style of Evil Dead 2, but it was impressive in it’s scale.  It’s hard to believe that this movie with it’s epic scale period detail and lavish visual effects grew out of a series that started from a production made for less than half a million.  And yet, it still feels like an organic extension.  Perhaps it’s the way that each film chose to be so different from what came before, but only in it’s style.  The character of Ash is what makes the series feel whole.  Had The Evil Dead been just a one and done horror flick, we might not have seen the growth in this character happen.  It’s a testament to Bruce Campbell as an actor that he keeps finding new ways to play this character, and the reason most people have returned to the series is primarily because of him.  After Army of Darkness, the series went into dormancy, but Ash as a character would live on, at least in Comic Books.  The Evil Dead series would emerge in the early 2000’s as a comic book continuation of the adventures of Ash Williams, with both Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell contributing story ideas to the series on the page.  One of the graphic novels that came from this even included an adaptation for a sadly never realized crossover movie called Ash vs. Freddy vs. Jason, which would’ve pitted Ash against two of the horror movie genre’s other most iconic characters.  There was an Evil Dead (2013) remake that Sam Raimi had a hand in producing, but it lacked Ash as a character, instead focusing on new protagonists.  Unsurprisingly, the movie didn’t do too well.  But, Bruce Campbell would return to the character for a three season long run in the series Ash vs. Evil Dead on the Starz Channel.  But despite all the different attempts to reboot the series, a lot of fans agree that Army of Darkness is where the series hit it’s peak.

While Sam Raimi has gone on to do many big things in Hollywood ever since, it’s still pretty clear that his Evil Dead series remains his favorite child.  The DNA of those movies runs throughout every other movie he has made since then.  You can definitely see the influence of Evil Dead in some of the most memorable moments of his Spider-Man movies, especially the Doc Ock operating room scene from Spider-Man 2 (2004).  The fact that he continues to put the Oldsmobile into every one of his movies (yes even in a Western like 1995’s The Quick and the Dead) is a testament to how much he wants to create a through line of everything he makes back to where it all began.  That’s also the reason why he always has a part for Bruce Campbell to play in every one of his movies, even in the briefest of cameos.  It’s a blessing to have a director like Sam Raimi continue to have that strong connection to his roots, because it allows him to keep making movies with the same amount of creativity, even if the scale and the budgets are a lot bigger.  Even in something massive in scale like Oz, The Great and Powerful (2013) or Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) you still see those unique camera moves and artistic transitions that have been a staple of his filmography over the years.  He’s even managed to still mix horror and comedy successfully in a spiritual successor to the Evil Dead movies like Drag Me to Hell (2009).  But, his greatest legacy will certainly be in the way he’s inspired a whole new generation of horror filmmakers.  It’s his DIY approach to horror filmmaking that’s left the most impressive impact, and it’s made the most recent crop of horror auteurs so effective recently, as their goal is to bring horror back to it’s practical effects roots.  Originality and creativity is what audiences are seeking right now, and that means even taking horror into some weird and borderline absurd places.  While Sam Raimi himself has moved onto more mainstream projects, it’s his influence on horror that will be his most profound legacy.  Whether it’s the bizarre tone he set for the genre, or the fact that he made a star out of a true original like Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead will always be a cornerstone on which the genre of horror will be forever defined.  Groovy.

Movie Reviews

Tron: Ares – Review

There are movie franchises that often take their time in releasing new entries, but when it comes to the movie Tron (1982), it’s had perhaps the longest periods of fallow that any movie franchise has seen.  The original Tron was not exactly a mega hit when it first released in 1982.  Like so other movies that summer, it got overshadowed by the box office behemoth that was Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982).  It wasn’t until many years later that it received a re-evaluation by both critics and audiences.  Tron was a movie that in terms of the technology that went into it’s production was well ahead of it’s time.  It was the first studio production ever to utilize computer animation, which of course now has become omnipresent as a part of the film-making industry, to the point of replacing many once necessary jobs in the business.  The film’s story about rogue AI programs taking too much control also now seems prophetic, despite coming from very early on in the history of computing.  When computer animation started to take hold in Hollywood in the mid-90’s, a lot of the digital artists and animators often cited Tron as an inspiration.  Without Tron, we probably wouldn’t have had the digital revolution in film-making that we know of today.  And this digital revolution brought more attention to Tron itself.  Disney, the studio that made the film, put the movie out on DVD in 2002 for it’s 20th anniversary, and it became a strong seller for them, helping them to realize that the movie was indeed growing in esteem.  It was time to think about the possibility of a sequel, though this would be a gamble as well.  A lot of time had passed since the last Tron, and the world had advanced so much in those 20 plus years in terms of computer technology.  Was it possible to make a sequel to this film that would feel just as cutting edge as the original.  Despite some of those challenges, we did indeed see the Tron franchise finally come to fruition in 2010.

Tron: Legacy (2010) released into theaters during the holiday season that year.  While it did perform a lot better at the box office than the original film, it also didn’t exceed expectations either.  Audiences were mixed, as well as critics.  Much like the original film, Legacy was viewed as visually stunning but emotionally hollow.  The biggest praise for the movie went instead to the musical score written by the techno punk DJ group Daft Punk, who saw their soundtrack become an award winning best-seller.  Legacy was a valiant attempt to capture some of the unique charm of the original movie while at the same time trying to modernize it and make it relevant again.  But, Tron is still a franchise with a very niche fan base.  The people who are impressed with the Tron movies are usually people with a fair amount of knowledge about computer tech.  They recognize the technical achievements that these movies represent.  To think that the original Tron was rendered with megabyte levels of computing power is astounding.  Legacy also became one of the first movies ever to use digital de-aging on it’s actors, a tool that we are seeing being used more and more in big budget blockbusters.  But, casual audiences are not aware of those things, and the Tron films often feel too cold and detached from emotions to ever feel as thrilling as most other blockbusters from their respective eras.  But, just like with the original, Tron: Legacy has also received a bit of a re-assessment over the years.  While it’s not considered by many to be an all time great action flick, people have come to admire it’s ambition and unique style.  One thing that also has helped to give this movie some extra attention is that it was the first film directed by Joseph Kosinski, who has since gone on to become a very successful movie director in the 15 years since Legacy, including being a part of a little film called Top Gun: Maverick (2022).  With both movies now having some noteworthy attention paid to them, Disney seems to be convinced that it’s time to try again with this franchise, adding a new film into this trilogy.  The only question is, does Tron: Ares manage to justify making the return to the world of Tron after such a long absence, or is it game over for this franchise for good?

The story of Tron: Ares brings the story up to where we are in the present day.  Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), the eccentric founder of the ENCOM corporation has been missing since 1989, becoming now more myth than man.  His son Sam has also abdicated his role as CEO of the company and is living off the grid, so ENCOM now lies in the guiding hands of Eve Kim (Greta Lee) who hopes to run the company in the same spirit as Flynn did.  But, she faces stiff competition from the Dillinger Corporation, run by Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), the grandson of it’s founder and former corrupt CEO of ENCOM Ed Dillinger.  Both companies are trying to create the next breakthrough in AI technology, which involves creating living matter out of 3D printing with AI to give them sentience.  The only problem is, the creations can only keep their structure together for a maximum of 29 minutes before they disintegrate.  Eve believes that Kevin Flynn managed to crack the code for this problem back when he was still the head of the company, creating what’s been dubbed the Permanence Code, and she’s been digging through decades old computer systems trying to find it.  She manages to find her answer in a secret lab in the frozen Arctic Circle and she hopes to bring it back home with the intent of using the Permanence Code to fix things like food and medicine shortage.  Dillinger, however, wants to use the code to mass produce soldiers and war technology.  In a desperate attempt to steal the Code, he sends out two of his most elite warrior programs, Ares (Jared Leto) and Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith).  The two manage to track down and corner Eve, but Ares starts to question the motives behind his programming, believing that Dillinger is crossing the line by seeking to literally destroy his competition.  So, Ares goes rogue and elects to help Eve instead.  But, Dillinger doesn’t take the betrayal lightly, and he re-programs Athena to now hunt down both Ares and Eve together.  What follows is a battle of wills that chaotically shows what happens when AI programs with elite warrior skills take their battle out of the Grid and bring it into the real world.

As the third film in a long running series such as this, Tron: Ares will undoubtedly face immediate comparisons with it’s predecessors.  It’s also difficult to really stack up each film together, considering that each one came from such different eras of filmmaking, to the point where each one almost feel more of a product in it’s own time than cohesive whole.  Tron: Legacy almost felt more like a reboot of the series rather than a straight forward sequel, only loosely tying itself to the original film through the general premise and return of Jeff Bridges.  Tron: Ares pretty much feels the same way as well.  It’s almost like Disney is once again starting from scratch, with this movie choosing not to continue the story of Legacy and instead doing something new with a whole new set of characters.  In some ways that is both a blessing and a curse.  Tron: Ares does have a lot of things going for it that it does do a lot better than the previous films in this series, but it’s also lacking some of the things that made the other films stand out as well.  Truth be told, the Tron movies have never been known for having great stories.  It’s always been a film franchise built on style over substance.  Tron: Ares keeps up that tradition by being as cookie-cutter as possible with barely dimensional characters.  It’s an unfortunate problem that definitely weighs the movie down, but at the same time, it’s kind of par for the course for this series.  The only character of note from this entire series has been Kevin Flynn, and he only stands out because of Jeff Bridges natural magnetic charm.  But unfortunately, starting over again also undercuts most if not all of the previous world-building work that had been put into the series.  There are fleeting references to the previous films (plus one admittedly pretty cool nostalgia filled scene referencing the original Tron), but otherwise Tron: Ares is carving out it’s own path.  That can be good if you want the movie to stand on it’s own, but it also means that Ares also has to go through the whole world-building gauntlet again, and that unfortunately burdens the film more with a lot of unnecessary extra exposition.  It shows Disney being undecisive in their approach to this franchise.  They want to continue to bank on the nostalgia value of the Tron brand, but they also feel like audiences can’t be trusted to already be familiar with the lore of the previous films, so unfortunately we have to have it all spelled out for us again.

But, there is one area where Ares does outdo both of the previous Tron films and that is in the action scenes.  The original Tron certainly was limited by what was possible with computer animation at the time, and still managed to make the most of it.  The light cycle race in particular is still an iconic moment in cinema and remarkably harrowing given the primitive animation used to make it.  Legacy’s biggest problem was that while it was visually a big step up in visual effects, it was also a bit lackluster in the action scenes.  It lacked a visceral feeling, with more emphasis being put on the style of the action rather than any tangible impact; ironic given that the same director went on to make the immersive Top Gun: Maverick.  Tron: Ares actually manages to be the best of both worlds.  It manages to be as thrillingly impactful as the action scenes in the original Tron, while also having the advanced visual style of Tron: Legacy.  The movie hits a high point midway through the film when we have Ares and Athena drive their light cycles in the real world for the first time.  We’ve seen light cycle races in both of the previous Tron movies, but this film makes their scene much more thrilling.  Here we finally see how these things perform under real world physics, and it creates a stark contrast.  One of the great things about this scene is that it looks like they really built physical light cycles as a workable prop in the movie.  It reminded me a lot of the bat cycle scene from The Dark Knight (2008), with this out of this world vehicle cruising through a real city street.  Director Joachim Ronning also makes the wise artistic choice of mounting the camera on the cycle itself, placing us the audience in the drivers seat.  The Tron series has been lacking in action scenes that feel immersive and that’s what helps Ares to stand out.  And while the cycle scene is a definite highlight, the rest of the movie also manages to keep the tempo moving, with a lot of bombast and style working in tandem.  It’s only when the action set pieces stop that the movie starts to lag.  Thankfully, the movie is action heavy, much more so than Legacy, and that helps to make the film a mostly fun time.

One of the things that makes Ares feel different from the other Tron movies is it’s aesthetic.  The original Tron was unlike any other movie ever made, with the use of back-lighting giving both the environments and the characters themselves a neon like glow.  That has carried on throughout the franchise.  While Tron: Legacy added in more naturalistic color, especially on the facial tones of the characters, it also maintained the back-lighting aesthetic with lights built into the costumes.  Tron: Ares does that as well, but here they really upped the contrast between light and dark.  The warrior programs created by the Dillinger Corp. all have the color definition of red in their suits (a carry-over from the original Tron where all the bad guys were in red and the good guys were in blue).  Most of the movie takes place during the dead of night, so when Ares and Athena are out on their cycles or are brandishing their weapons, that red really stands out against the darkness.  This is definitely the darkest film in the series when it comes it’s visuals.  A big reason why the movie looks as good as it does is because it was shot by celebrated cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, who has famously done many films for David Fincher including Fight Club (1999) and The Social Network (2010).  He’s a master when it comes to creating dark scenes with stark lighting contrasts, which is probably why Disney sought him out.  Another element of the movie that really adds to the experience is it’s music.  Perhaps as an answer to the success of the Tron: Legacy soundtrack, Disney wanted to get another famous rock band involved without having to go back to Daft Punk, who are not the kind of band intent on repeating themselves.  To give the movie a whole different sound, they went to Oscar winning composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.  The famed Nine Inch Nails members have been working in film composition for years now, including being employed by Disney before with their Oscar winning score for Pixar’s Soul (2020).  Given the synth style of music, they seemed like a perfect fit for Tron, but the duo went a bit further, deciding to get the entire band involved on this project.  It would have been unimaginable a decade ago that we’d see a Disney film scored by the likes of Nine Inch Nails, but that’s what make Tron so unique as a series.  And the NIN socre is perfectly suited for this movie, especially if the theater is equipped with a robust sound system.  This film score will definitely be rattling your bones with it’s aggressive sound.  Unfortunately, most of it all feels the same throughout the film, which does make it less memorable than Daft Punk’s Legacy score.  This is the one are where I feel Tron: Legacy was better, because Daft Punk put so much variety into the different themes, whereas Nine Inch Nails just stick with the same beat throughout.

One of the more controversial choices during the making of this movie was casting Jared Leto in the titular role of Ares.  Leto has, to put it lightly, been a controversial figure as of late.  Scandals aside, he’s also had a recent loosing streak at the box office, being a part of multiple box office bombs like House of Gucci (2001), Morbius (2022) and Disney’s Haunted Mansion (2023).  Not just casting him in this multi-million dollar tentpole but also placing him at the center is a major risk on Disney’s part, but Leto is far from being the movie’s main problem.  If anything, he’s appropriately cast as Ares.  Ares is by design to be devoid of character; an AI in search of an identity.  It’s in this that Leto’s understated style of acting actually fits, and I’ll take understated Leto over whatever the hell he gave us in House of Gucci or his performance as the Joker in Suicide Squad (2016).  A lot of the other actors do what they can with characters that are unfortunately just as ill-defined as Ares.  Evan Peters has a presence on screen as Julian Dillinger, but his villain role is overly eccentric and cliché and beneath the talent that someone like Peters has shown in other roles.  You definitely miss the aura of grandeur that the late David Warner brought to his villainous role as Dillinger in the original Tron.  Greta Lee also tries her best to make the most of her character, who is also very thinly defined.  The actor who stands out the most is Jodie Turner-Smith as Athena.  She brings a real menacing presence to the film and helps to make her character a lot more memorable than probably was on the page.  What does become clear while watching the movie is that a lot of the performances feel like they were more fleshed out in longer cuts of the movie.  Disney seemed pretty adamant about keeping this movie under 2 hours, and the editing done on this film seems to have mostly centered on fleshing out the action scenes.  So, a lot of character development is missing in the final edit.  Truth be told, Tron has never had the most memorable characters, other than Bridges’ Flynn (who thankfully gets a nice extended cameo here), but you definitely get the feeling that the movie would be a lot more exciting if we actually cared more about what happens to these characters.

You would think that after 15 years of development that Disney would have cracked the code over how to make a Tron movie that actually lives up to it’s potential.  Instead Tron: Ares is just another generic, albeit we-crafted, action movie capitalizing on the nostalgia of it’s predecessors.  If you’re looking for Tron to finally break out and become an elite franchise in the same class as something like Star Wars, you’ll have to wait a bit more because Tron: Ares is not that movie.  It’s hard to tell if there is any future for Tron at all, given the amount of time that we’ve waited for each installment.  If this movie underperforms, Disney may just end up giving up on it entirely.  The one thing that Tron had going for it initially was it’s ground-breaking visual effects and unique aesthetic, and that perhaps was not enough to build a long lasting franchise on, even though 40 plus years later Disney was still trying.  The positive thing about Tron: Ares is that it didn’t solely capitalize on past nostalgia.  It attempted to do things a bit different, and the result did yield some pretty impressive action sequences.  The smart thing that the filmmakers did with Tron: Ares was to keep it from being too self-important, which was Tron: Legacy’s biggest flaw.  It knows that the big selling point is the visuals and the action, and that’s where the focus was put, and the result makes this a better than average action flick that is best appreciated on a big screen with a robust sound system.  I saw this movie in 3D IMAX, and it honestly had some of the best 3D I’ve seen in a long while.  I just wish that maybe Disney would’ve given the script just a little more polish, allowing for better character development so that we could appreciate the story more.  Overall, the original Tron still stands as the best in the series, thanks to it’s pioneering visuals and overall nostalgic charm, but Ares definitely has the best action scenes in the series while Legacy has the best soundtrack.  A lot of people may end up just skipping the movie and end up buying the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack by itself, which is fair.  The sad reality is that there may have been a time and place where Tron could have turned into one of the biggest franchises in movie history, but it’s timing was at the wrong time.  It was either too ahead of it’s time, or just missed out on the right moment to reach it’s audience.  It’s hard to say if Tron: Ares will get the same reassessment from audiences and critics that it’s predecessors did in the years ahead.  Given that Disney is less inclined to give their franchises time to gestate over multiple generations of audiences, it may indeed end up being the end of line for Tron. 

Rating: 7/10

Editorials

Let’s Do the Time Warp – The Twisted 50 Year Legacy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show

It’s astounding, time is fleeting.  Madness takes its toll.  50 years ago, a little movie based on a small experimental play performed on the stage in London made it’s way to the big screen for the first time.  It’s initial release was met with plenty of indifference from audiences and critics at the time, but what came next took everyone by surprise, including the people who made the movie.  The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) became a cult hit with audiences who were made up of what society would consider outsiders.  People of the LGBTQ community, punk rockers, and just people who defy societal conformity of any kind were drawn to the unashamed and in your face campiness of the film, and it’s enduring message about living open and free.  But, Rocky Horror is more than just any cult film; it is “The Cult Film.”  The very idea of “cult movies” exists because of Rocky Horror, mainly because of how the movie set the standard for creating a subculture all on it’s own.  The audiences who go to see the movie are not just there to be viewers; they are active participants.  Screenings of Rocky Horror have turned into ritualistic events, where people dress up as their favorite characters, bring their own props to imitate what they see on the screen, as well as make call backs to the movie itself with what has evolved into a whole secondary script just for the audience.  Since it’s re-release in 1977, The Rocky Horror Picture Show has remained in continuous exhibition all over the world.  No matter what day it is, there is likely some theater out there playing The Rocky Horror Picture Show; most likely around the midnight hour.  Now, even after 50 years, Rocky Horror not only has maintained it’s subversive edge but it seems even more essential for our world today than ever before.  But why this movie?  What was it that made this movie the film that would launch a subculture of it’s own that makes this more than just a movie?  The strange journey that The Rocky Horror Picture Show has taken over this half century is certainly a peculiar story on it’s own.  So, let’s do the time warp again and see how this movie became the cult hit that it is today.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show began as an idea from a struggling actor in London named Richard O’Brien.  As a fan of science fiction and B-Movie horror, he drafted a concept where he combined all the elements he loved into a rock and roll musical.  While O’Brien was briefly appearing in a London staging of Jesus Christ Superstar, he shared his concept script with the show’s director Jim Sharman.  Sharman liked O’Brien’s play so much that he decided he would make it his next project.  They managed to secure space at an experimental theater stage above the Royal Court Theater.  The mish-mash of B-movie camp and rock and roll music proved to be a hit with the London counter culture scene and it quickly outgrew the tiny 60 seat venue.  It later expanded to larger venues and eventually it crossed over the pond to be staged in America.  While the show drew in audiences everywhere it went, it still remained a bit of an underground production.  But, it did reach the attention of one very key fan of the show.  The theatrical run of the show in Los Angeles played at the Roxy Theater in West Hollywood, which was owned by a very successful music producer named Lou Adler.  Adler was the man who produced the hit albums of the Mamas & the Papas and Carole King, and now he was looking towards producing for the big screen as well.  It was fortunate timing that Rocky Horror would fall into his lap at the Roxy.  Thanks to Adler’s connections, he was able to get financial backing for a big screen adaptation of the show from a major film studio; 20th Century Fox.  Though the production was going to be financed by a major American film studio, Adler still believed that it was important to still keep the English roots of the show intact, so Jim Sharman was hired to direct the film while Richard O’Brien would adapt the play into a film script.  The production would also operate out of England, with most of the production happening at the Elstree and Bray Studios.  For the stately manor house that serves as the main location for most of the movie, the gothic style Oakley Court was chosen, mainly due to it being a favorite shooting location for the fame B-movie horror studio Hammer Films.

Most of the actors from the original stage version were carried over, except for a couple of noteworthy replacements.  Perhaps to please the American studio backers, the parts of Brad and Janet were re-cast with American actors, and rock singer Meat Loaf was also added to the cast in a small role.  In the end, the casting change worked to the movie’s advantage, because Brad and Janet were meant to be send-ups of bland, clean cut American archetypes seen in the B-Movies of the 1950’s that the show was parodying.  The production managed to find the right duo for the parts, casting stage actor Barry Bostwick as Brad and Susan Sarandon (in her first film role) as Janet.  Their sweet natured innocent performances perfectly fit the tone that the movie need to set with the two, especially in how they clash with all the other characters we meet.  Though initially reluctant to appear in the film himself, Richard O’Brien eventually gave in and brought to life the hunchbacked caretaker of the spooky manor, Riff-Raff.  Two other key roles, Magenta and Columbia, were also filled with veterans of the original stage musical.  Veteran character actor, Charles Gray, was also cast to play the omniscient narrator role of the Criminologist, lending the movie it’s only air of stateliness.  But, when we think of Rock Horror, there is one person above all who comes to mind.  The role of the diabolical Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the mad, transvestite alien scientist, will be forever linked with the one and only Tim Curry.  Curry originated the role on the stage, and despite some rumors of rock singers like Mick Jagger being eyed for the role, there was no doubt that Curry would also play the role on film as well.  From the moment that Curry first makes his descent down that iron elevator and onward, he takes command of the film.  He is nothing but swagger and indomitable confidence.  And given that he presents himself as this pansexual dynamo dressed in the most flamboyant of outfits, he was really unlike anything we had ever seen in a movie before, or really ever since.  Curry’s unique voice also helps to make the character stand out, with his smooth drool combined with a refined way of speaking which Curry purposely took inspiration from Queen Elizabeth herself in creating.

What set The Rocky Horror Picture Show apart at the time was not because of the shocking, sexualized nature of the movie.  John Waters had been making a name for himself for years that continually pushed the envelope with regards to “bad taste” in his movies (which Rocky still feels pretty tame compared to).  No, what made Rocky Horror stand out was that this was a mainstream production made by a Hollywood studio.  20th Century Fox was really taking a chance by putting their logo on this film, and initially they may have regretted doing so.  Rocky Horror was a big financial flop when it first released.  Critics didn’t know what to make of it, and audiences stayed away, forcing many theaters to pull it quickly from release due to poor attendance.  After a couple years, Fox began tossing the movie aside, allowing it to be licensed for screenings at a steep bargain.  This led to it being put on the roster for midnight screenings across the country, as various art house theaters were looking for movies that fit the kind of cheap, B-movie thrills that midnight audiences desired to watch.  Over time, audiences at these midnight showings began to realize how much a hidden gem Rocky Horror was.  The showings began to fill up more and more and pretty soon, Rocky Horror became a small cult hit.  But it would evolve to be something even more than that.  It’s hard to say when the audience interaction part of the Rocky Horror experience began, as it seems to organically grow out of so many individual showings across the world with their own contributions.  Where it seemed to be first observed was at the Waverly Theater in New York around a year into the movie’s midnight screenings run, when people at one of the screenings overheard someone else in the theater react to Susan Sarandon placing a newspaper over her head in a rainstorm by yelling, “Buy an Umbrella, you cheap Bitch.”  Overtime, more and more “call outs” as they call them were being heard at the screenings, and over time, it became part of the reason to go see the movie.

Halloween midnight screenings offered their own contribution as people started coming to the theater dressed as their favorite characters from the movie.  Dr. Frank-N-Furter was an especially favorite costume for a lot of people, particularly those who really wanted to get in on the gender-bending thrill that the character represented.  All the while, the original Rocky Horror Show continued to be performed on the stage.  While the movie was still playing in theaters, the same cast could be seen on the Broadway stage, though sadly it too had a short life span and lasted only 45 performances.  But, somehow, the movie itself would give the live show an unexpected new life of it’s own.  As the midnight screenings began to attract more an more people who dressed up, a few of those audience members went even further and began to imitate what they were seeing on the screen itself, putting on their own performance.  This evolved from just a spontaneous interaction between people in the audience and the movie itself into a stage presentation in it’s own right.  This spawned what we know now as the “Shadow Cast” phenomenon, where a group of actors will literally reenact the entire movie in front of the screen while the movie is playing.  Many people who don’t know what they are getting into when they first see one of these Shadow Cast shows may find the gimmick distracting, but for long time fans of the movie, it’s become another fun addition to the overall experience.  It’s without a doubt one of the most unique things you’ll see in any movie theater, as you’ll feel like you’re getting both a play and a movie for the price of one ticket.  There are several theater troupes across the country whose main focus is just to perform as Shadow Casts at midnight showings of Rock Horror, which apparently is a high demand gig as there are so many of those happening all over the place.  This would eventually reflect back well on the original stage musical as well.  The Rocky Horror Show would have a much longer revival on Broadway in the year 2000, which itself would embrace the raucous interactive nature of the film with audience call backs being encouraged throughout the show.

Over the years, Rocky Horror  has gone on to have a major influence on both the movies and cinema culture at large since then.  In terms of style, it helped to mainstream the glam rock aesthetic, which artists like David Bowie would continue to lean into more over the coming decade.  And of course it popularized the very idea of cult movies in the pop culture lexicon.  Many films have tried to stir up the same kind of cult status that Rocky Horror enjoys, but few have ever come close.  The only movie that seems to have come any where near what Rocky Horror has become as an audience involved experience is Tommy Wiseau’s so bad it’s good cult hit The Room (2003).  Just like with Rocky Horror, The Room has become a classic due to it’s embrace of audience call backs shouted during screenings.  But, the call back participation itself has spawned it’s own long lasting legacy in the form of a little gimmick called riffing.  In the late 80’s, the show Mystery Science Theater 3000 launched, and it’s appeal was due to the hilarious comedy that would arise from it’s characters watching very bad movies and cracking jokes the whole time while commenting on what they are seeing.  Joel Hodgson, the co-creator of Mystery Science Theater has cited Rocky Horror and it’s audience “call backs” as one of the inspirations for the comedy on the show.  Beyond just Mystery Science Theater, riffing on media has become something of a comedy staple over time, and it stands to reason that we have the rowdy audience members of The Rocky Horror Picture Show to thank for taking out all of the politeness of media consumption.  Rocky Horror’s influence even extends into the Halloween season that it very much feels at home in.  Most Halloween parties are bound to have “Time Warp” on their playlists.  It’s also got a very strong influence on several horror films over the years, including Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses (2003), which the death metal performer turn filmmaker directly cited as a major influence.

But, perhaps the most profound influence that this film has had is the effect that it had on the LGBTQ community.  The Rocky Horror Picture Show is an unapologetic queer movie and that’s probably what has helped it to retain it’s relevance over so many years.  It’s a movie all about sexual liberation and more importantly about finding yourself in a community that embraces you for who you are.  Frank-N-Furter even has a song in the film called “Don’t Dream It, Be It,” which itself has become something of an anthem in the queer community.  The movie became a lifeline for many queer people particularly during the ultra-conservative Reagan/Thatcher administrations in America and Britain.  As society began to ostracize people for their differences in sexual orientation, especially during the scourge that was the AIDS epidemic, the midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show became something of a safe haven for outcasts.  There, being queer was not just normal but also celebrated, and it was a great place to meet other people in the queer community who also weren’t afraid to let their flame burn brightly.  The Rocky Horror Picture Show may not have been the thing that helped to make camp entertainment such a key part of queer culture, but it definitely helped to give it some mainstream credibility.  And given the state of the world we are in now, where the transgender community in particular has been under attack, Rocky Horror’s message of inclusiveness and liberation feels like it’s need now more than ever.  Richard O’Brien, who himself identifies as non-binary, always intended for Rocky Horror to have this deeper meaning about letting go and being yourself regardless of what everyone else thinks.  The transgender community especially holds Rocky Horror and Dr. Frank-N-Furter in particular in high regard.  It’s almost a certainty to see any drag performance include a performance of the song “Sweet Transvestite” at some point; even from cisgender straight performers who just want to indulge a little bit in some gender-bending.  The fact that Rocky Horror has been safe harbor for a queer community that has gone through some very hard times over the years has been probably the most fulfilling legacy this movie has enjoyed in it’s 50 years.

It’s strange to think about where Rocky Horror stands now.  In 2019, 20th Century Fox was merged into the Walt Disney Company, meaning that the family audience centered “House of Mouse” is now the current steward of this film.  Though there were some worries about how this movie was going to be treated by it’s new owners, Disney has thankfully treated Rocky Horror respectfully enough.  It refrained from putting the film into the Disney Vault like it has with so many other Fox properties and has kept the record-breaking streak of the movie’s 50 year limited theatrical run still going.  For it’s 50th anniversary, Disney has even given the movie a 4K restoration, helping to preserve the movie for the next 50 years and beyond.  And now that it’s reached that milestone, people are reflecting on just how meaningful and important the film has been.  It’s been singled out for preservation by the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress for “cultural and historical significance.”  It’s impact on the LGBTQ community alone is something that certainly is worth celebrating.  In that regard, it was way ahead of it’s time, and we are only now starting to recognize how influential it has been.  For the cast and crew of the movie the film is something that everyone involved looks back on fondly.  Tim Curry went on to have a prosperous career both on screen and as a voice actor, and even continued to be a beloved presence on stage, including in musicals like Spamalot.  Unfortunately he suffered a major stroke in 2012 that left him partially paralyzed, which hindered his abilities as a performer, though he still maintains work as a voice actor.  Richard O’Brien attempted to make a sequel to Rocky Horror in 1981 with the movie Shock Treatment, and while it too has a small cult following, it still pales compared to the legacy of the former.  Still, Rocky Horror has helped to keep him in the spotlight over the last 50 years and given him consistent work as an actor in both film and on the stage.  As an experience, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is really a one of a kind.  From personal experience, I actually came to this pretty late, only getting my first true Rocky Horror midnight experience this very year at the TCM Film Festival of all places.  And it was the first time where I truly got what all the hype was about.  It’s more than any movie; it’s an experience.  For anyone interested, find yourself a midnight showing with a shadow cast performance because you really haven’t seen the movie until you’ve watched it in that way.  The Rocky Horror Picture Show is everything a movie can be rolled into a one-of-a-kind experience, so take the plunge and let the movie fill you with ANTICI…PATION.