Abi:There had to be more… [05/30]

When I was young I fell bewitched to many a stories of magick. It didn’t matter how the story was told, because I felt there was more. Even in the Wizard of OZ there was good to counteract the bad, and I never believed in green wicked ladies to begin with (and was more frightened by the munchkins than anything else).
I remember one of my all time favourite movies was the Worse Witch, the one with Fairuza Balk and Tim Curry (I love them both so much). It was the story of a young girl going through witch academy. My love for this movie, and the beautiful, but clumsy, Mildred Hobble is probably why I fell in love with Harry Potter stories later in life. I really did gain (and still have) an interest in entertainment featuring witches, and was very amused to see Fairuza Balk return to magick in the movie The Craft.

When I was younger, the series of books that cemented my thoughts, and then subsequent study of Wiccan and Pagan beliefs, was called The Secret Circle by LJ Smith. Surprisingly, and much to my inner fan-girl, this series of books will be brought to television now that LJ Smith’s Vampire Diaries became popular. Even if part of me rebels against something that was so dear to me going into mainstream, I still can smile to know these wonderful stories might be brought into a new generation. This is pretty awesome because when I was trying to purchase the first book of The Secret Circle series, after having checked them out from the library too many times, I found that the series was no longer in print back then and had the hardest time getting a copy.
A part of me really wants to see what they do with these books, because they really were a huge part of my life when I was a preteen.
I hope it is done justice.

Thinking alone the lines of The Secret Circle and The Worse Witch I was trying to recall this other movie that I watched far too many times for a little girl. I actually found a trailer for it on Youtube and would like to share it.
It's called The Witches.








Just seeing this trailer brings back so many memories of this movie, and I really am going to have to find a copy to watch. From what I remember it was an incredible movie, like I said I watched it far too many times, but when you’re nine years old or a little older your perception is a little different.

What I am surprised about in retrospect, is that for being so young I wasn’t scared easily… and I hardly ever developed negative feelings towards things that were considered dark or ‘evil’ (actually I was usually drawn to these characters more).

In fact, by the early 1990s, when I was 8-10 or so, my favourite shows/movies comprised of (that I remember): Tales from The Crypt, Tales From the Darkside, Dark Shadows (the Revival, not the old reading-from-the-cue-cards version), Pit and The Pendulum (and I remember nudity in this, so why the hell was I watching it?!), Total Recall, among a list of other similar shows and movies that I can’t recall at the moment. I actually watched them with my mother. I loved it, the house would be dark and we’d watch these things, the two of us. It was a special time shared with my mum… and best of all, (for a little girl who had a shadow) was Amanda wasn’t allowed to watch (because she’d have nightmares).

(We even used to watch Bevis & Butthead, and The Tracy Ullman Show (with the snippets of the Simpsons before it was it’s own show) together… fun times… but now thinking back, I was sure that Bevis & Butthead had a late night slot, so no wonder I have always been a night creature! I might write more about the night time life for a child in another post, so many memories now to direct).

Speaking of horror related media I watched with my mum, does anyone remember the movie where the kids tossed the lady into the stove at the very end? I believe it was three separate stories with a storyteller (the lady). I think one of the stories was a writer who was attacked by gargoyles, and another about a black cat. It’s so close to coming to the surface, but so far. I’m going have to look into that.
[Edit, found it! It was actually Tale From The Darkside: The Movie. ]

Ah, I miss my mum right now… I might have to harass her later.