6/30/05 Ooh-ooh, witchy woman see how you’ve evolved

Ooh-ooh, witchy woman see how you’ve evolved
Jim Keogh Film Clips

If you’re of my generation (I’m 44), your first real introduction to a witch occurred when you were 5 or 6 years old and your parents let you stay up to watch the annual broadcast of “The Wizard of Oz.”

That’s when Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West put the dread in your head by commanding an army of flying monkeys, threatening Dorothy and her “little dog, too,” and finally melting into a steaming heap of protoplasm when doused with water.

Forget Glinda the Good Witch of the North, that tiara-wearing force for benevolence who floated from place to place in a giant bubble. If a smack-down match between the sisters were staged, the hawk-nosed monster in the pointed black hat would pop that bubble with the bristles of her broomstick and send GGWN plummeting earthward.

When Hamilton made a series of popular coffee commercials decades later, she was still an unsettling presence. The veteran actress was now playing a kindly old woman pitching the virtues of caffeine to young couples who stopped by her country store. Even so, observing the angular contours in her wrinkled face, hearing that familiar voice, weathered as it was, meant only one thing: The witch was back.

My kids were never as affected by the WWW. They could watch “The Wizard of Oz” on tape any time they wanted, and became inured to her malevolence (my daughter was more troubled by the witch’s alter ego, the bike-riding Miss Gulch).

My son, now 9, held a special place in his early-childhood nightmares for the apple-bearing witch in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” He wasn’t bothered so much by the cartoon, but when we visited Disney World, an employee wearing the evil hag’s costume tried to approach our table in a restaurant and my son’s scream was loud enough to wake poor old Walt Disney himself.

Elizabeth Montgomery arrived in TV land in 1964 as the suburban spell-caster in “Bewitched” and flipped the prevailing notions about witches. Her Samantha was beautiful, harmless and remarkably wart-free. A year later “I Dream of Jeannie” materialized, not only giving viewers another gorgeous sorceress, but sparking the enduring philosophical question: Who’s hotter, Elizabeth Montgomery or Barbara Eden? (Those wishing to explore this topic further can also research the reams of material detailing the great Ginger versus Mary Ann debate.)

“Bewitched” was an obvious goof on the witch mythology, and its influence persisted well beyond the run of the series. If Paul Lynde hadn’t been such a cut-up as Samantha’s Uncle Arthur, who would have played the center square on “Hollywood Squares” for all those years? I can’t watch Agnes Moorehead (a Clinton native, coincidentally) in “The Magnificent Ambersons” and not think — Endora! And when I first saw “Titanic,” I realized to my shock and delight that one of the doomed passengers was being played by none other than Bernard Fox, best known to American audiences as the warlock Dr. Bombay.

Flaky, pretty witches became the norm after “Bewitched,” epitomized by movies such as “The Witches of Eastwick,” which teamed Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer and Cher as small-town sorceresses seduced by the devil himself, Jack Nicholson. In 1998’s “Practical Magic,” Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, descendents of a witch who’d been hanged, employ witchcraft of their own to break the curse.

Kidman, of course, has returned to stir the cauldron in “Bewitched,” playing Isabel Bigelow, a real-life witch cast as Samantha in a remake of the TV series. As prep work of sorts before seeing the film, my daughter watched a couple of episodes of a recent “Bewitched” marathon, and I had the misfortune of informing her that all the major players are long dead — Montgomery, Moorehead, Paul Lynde, the two Darrens — Dick York and Dick Sargent.

But witches and warlocks enjoy eternal life in reruns. And the successful Harry Potter books and movies prove there’s still plenty of mileage left in those broomsticks.

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My observations are anecdotal only, but I can vouch for the reports of a decline in movie attendance nationwide. Other than a prime-time screening of an event movie such as “Revenge of the Sith,” I rarely find myself in a packed movie theater anymore. Parking is never a problem, the wait for concessions seems shorter.

Plenty of reasons have been given for the drop-off. People are more inclined to wait for the DVD or watch a film on pay-per-view; big-screen televisions and elaborate sound systems have brought home-viewing closer to the theater experience; the comfort and convenience of watching a film at home outweigh the allure of seeing a new release on a large movie screen.

I wonder if the future lies in niche theaters that will cater specifically to like-minded audiences, much as art-house cinemas do today. As new technologies continue to enhance home-viewing options, exhibitors must battle back with attractive ways to pull in ticket buyers.

Either that, or filmmakers have to start making more movies worth leaving home for.