Witches in film - in pictures

Disney's 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs featured the classic warts-and-all incarnation of the witch, a disguised form of the Evil Queen.
The depiction was heavily influenced by Arthur Rackham's illustrations for the Hansel and Gretel fairytale Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

Margaret Hamilton played the Wicked Witch of the West in 1939's The Wizard Of Oz.
Here's an early sighting of the preferred mode of transport Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features

The beautiful Veronica Lake made a different kind of witch in 1942's comedy I Married A Witch.
Lake played a 17th-century sorceress who returns from the grave to plague a descendant of her persecutor Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features

A very French take on witchcraft appears in the sultry guise of Mylène Demongeot in 1957's Les Sorcières de Salem.
The screenplay was adapted by Jean-Paul Sartre from the 1953 play The Crucible, by Arthur Miller Photograph: Allstar

Italian horror mastro Mario Bava's directorial debut was 1960's Black Sunday. Once again, a witch, played by Barbara Steele, returns 200 years after her death to wreak her vengeance.
The movie was banned in the UK until 1968 because of its gruesome content Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

Nice little old lady next door? I don't think so. Ruth Gordon's Minnie Castevet made Mia Farrow's life hell in Roman Polanski's 1968 psychological horror classic Rosemary's Baby Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features

Cult 1968 movie Witchfinder General, starring Vincent Price, tells the story of the murderous witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins during the English civil war.
The film was thought by critics at the time to be excessively sadistic despite heavy censorship Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

Italian giallo auteur Dario Argento's 1977 masterpiece Suspiria is set in a dance academy in Freiberg controlled by a coven of witches. It is the first of the trilogy Argento refers to as 'The Three Mothers', followed by 1980's Inferno and 2007's The Mother of Tears Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

An altogether different kind of sorceress was played by Helen Mirren in John Boorman's 1981 film Excalibur.
Here her Morgana Le Fay is getting up to no good with King Arthur Photograph: Warner Bros/Allstar

Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer make up a big-haired coven in 1987's The Witches Of Eastwick, who conjure up the satanic seducer Daryl Van Horne played by Jack Nicholson Photograph: Warner Bros/Allstar

Slightly less appealing is the real face of the Grand High Witch played by Angelica Huston in the 1990 film adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Witches Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

1999's The Blair Witch Project was an incredibly successful film. It tells of the search for the Blair Witch by three film-making students. It ends badly for them. A year later, their footage is found by police.
This film kickstarted the found-footage genre which had begun with 1980's infamous Cannibal Holocaust Photograph: AP

In 2005's The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Tilda Swinton brought a chilling menace to the role of the White Witch Photograph: Rex Features

More maniacally evil is Helena Bonham Carter's Bellatrix Lestrange, who first appeared in 2007's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Photograph: Warner Bros/Allstar

We come full circle in witch representation in the brilliant Sam Raimi's 2009 Drag Me to Hell. Lorna Raver's Mrs Ganush bears all the hallmarks of the wizened crone first encountered on film in Snow White Photograph: Lionsgate/Allstar