Today is Friday the 13th, and being Halloween season, this seams like an excellent time to indulge in dark, superstitious subjects! While the number “13” has been considered unlucky for centuries by many cultures, misfortune connected to Friday the 13th only goes back to the start of the 20th century in the U.S. Yet American superstition started much earlier, before the country was fully formed itself. Rumors and accusations of witchcraft turned deadly in the early colonies based on superstition, religious fervor, contentious local politics, and mass hysteria. In 1693 Salem, Massachusetts, 20 people were executed after being prosecuted for witchcraft, while 5 more people died in jail for similar accusations.
This horrific historical episode invokes everything from misogyny (since all but one of the victims were women) to racism (one of the first to be accused was an enslaved woman from the West Indies), and the term “witch hunt” has become standard in American politics thanks to Salem. Yet the multilayered meanings of this complicated event are boiled down to just a couple things onscreen: the Salem witch trials as a background for some kind of modern horror or possibly comedy witch, or The Crucible, the fictional play written by Arthur Miller in 1953 as a parable about the McCarthy-era persecution of progressives. There have been very few attempts to explore the actual history of the Salem witch trials in film or TV other than documentaries of varied quality.
So while these frock flicks may not explain how a community turned against itself and they don’t pay tribute to the lives lost, these stories do keep the Salem witch trials in the public consciousness. Maybe someday, we’ll see a deeper exploration onscreen of this history. Until then, let’s sate our superstitions with some silly spookiness…
Maid of Salem (1937)
I Married a Witch (1942)
The Crucible (1957)
The Crucible (1967)
Bewitched, “Samantha’s Old Salem Trip” (1970)
The Crucible (1981)
Three Sovereigns for Sarah (1985)
Hocus Pocus (1993)
The Crucible (1996)
Salem Witch Trials (2002)
American Horror Story: Coven (2013-14)
Salem (2014-17)
Timeless, “The Salem Witch Hunt” (2018)
DC Legends of Tomorrow, “Witch Hunt” (2018)
Drunk History, Halloween” (2018)
WandaVision, “Previously On” (2021)
What impressions of the Salem witch trials have you gotten from frock flicks? What would you like to see?
The pic from the 1967″ Crucible” isn’t Colleen Dewhurst. Per IMDB, it’s Tuesday Weld.
Thank you, Marty; that picture was about to confuse my whole morning. The casting in these productions is all over the place. I had no idea Signoret ever starred in “The Crucible.” (And the idea of Claudette C. as a Salem gal with ’30s eyebrows is pretty hilarious.)
It’s not explicitly Salem, but the Netflix series Wednesday included flashbacks to an Addams family ancestor, Goody Addams, who was persecuted as a witch in ye olden times.
Bewitched is one of my favorite sitcoms.
That straw hat in the 1957 German/French ‘Crucible’ is utterly weird. With that high narrow crown it looks Japanese or Central Chinese!
It’s a very French peasant thing. There’s research for it that I’ve seen somewhere… when I was wondering about the same hats in Jean Cocteau’s “La Belle et la Bête”.
Rich Fulcher played Giles Coren? Somehow that makes a lot of sense.
I actually loved the 2002 “Salem Witch Trials” and found it one of the most comprehensive, compelling and horrifying, screen portrayals and I thought the acting was generally great, specifically (surprisingly) Kirstie Alley and (of course) the great Shirley MacLaine as the tragic Rebecca Nurse. The trial/examination scenes were terrifying, yet mesmeric! I found the costumes were mostly fully appropriate – especially with the comparison of the upper class Boston characters and that of Salem village (and town) folk – and there were some lovely details throughout, like hand-crafted trim on garments. Things actually seemed to be well worn but mended and cared for, without being thread-bear and coated in mud, or way too new and costumey as is often done.
Honestly, you should have included the opening bit from Practical Magic – not Salem, but witch-trial adjacent. :D
The plot of Agatha Harkness in 1693 involves witches, but not the witch trials themselves. A coven of witches led by Agatha’s mother, Evanora, attempt to execute Agatha for practicing dark magic, something they’re not supposed to practise. Needless to say, things don’t go well for Evanora or the rest of the coven.
I’ve seen The Crucible (1957). I sought it out because of its stark, chiaroscuro, Dreyer-esque cinematography. I got exactly that but it wasn’t as dramatically compelling as the 1996 version.
You mentioned Marxist overtones which I didn’t notice too much while watching. I didn’t feel compelled to overthrow the local bourgeoisie so maybe it didn’t lean into the Marxism hard enough.
I work in Salem, and at the beginning of my career I worked a lot in the visitor center. At that time our bookstore sold Three Sovereigns for Sarah on video, and played it on a loop on a monitor. So. Much. Screaming.
It should be pointed out that the accusers as well as the victims were mostly female. George Burroughs was the only man hung, on the witness of women and girls, but several others were accused and jailed.
I can’t speak to the specific episode but I do know that dc legends Olof tomorrow is about a group of time traveling b list hero’s trying to save the world(s?) from time traveling super villains if that helps.
So excited to see this, and I now want to watch the 2002 miniseries. I have Three Sovereigns for Sarah, which is very accurate and well done, and is the only one I know of to portray any part of the compensations claims that took place about 20 years later.
A couple corrections to the facts laid out at the start of this post. There were 19 executions, not 20, 14 women and 5 men. There was a 20th death directly at the hands of the state, Giles Corey, but it wasn’t an execution; he was pressed to death trying to extract a plea (no plea–>no trial–>no conviction; whether he was saving his name or his property, I don’t know if we have evidence of).
Roxana is right to point out that this was a largely feminine phenomenon. Most accusers and accused were women. The unjust situation of women at the time no doubt played into it in multiple ways. The first tried and executed were women at the margins. The accusers gained a lot of power and prestige through their accusations that as women and girls they wouldn’t have enjoyed otherwise. This allowed them to then target more prominent people, including critics of the trial. Tituba is a fascinating and deeply tragic figure in all this; I doubt her refusing to testify would have saved anyone, but her testifying almost certainly saved her own life (for which I’m glad). That said, it wasn’t women swearing out warrants, arresting and detaining people, or serving as judges and juries and executioners.
Having long hated the ridiculous “witch city” stuff in Salem,* it took me a while to want anything to do with the stories at all, but having delved into them it’s extremely compelling, albeit in a desperately sad way. We can’t know for sure what caused the affliction, why so many got caught up in it, or what the aims of some participants were (although there are some reasonable theories). But if anyone would like to learn about the different theories of different aspects (was it witchcraft? ergot poisoning? etc.), I recommend finding a copy of Witches & Historians, a short collection of essays in conversation with each other on different themes.
*Not to begrudge anyone else’s seasonal fun. But it obscures the real history, which was a deadly travesty of justice, and claims a mantle which arguably isn’t its own (Salem covered what is now a number of towns, and Salem Village is now Danvers, although the executions took place in what is still Salem).
For a serous “deep dive” on the subject, I cannot recommend season 1 of the podcast Unobscured highly enough. It covers the Salem Witch Trials in detail, including extensive background of the period in American colonial and religious history, and is refreshingly free of pop-culture cliches.
There was also that episode of Voyagers! ….https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0742352/
which my sister and I watch AVIDLY every week ;)