Cultural Depictions of The Salem Witch Trials - The Salem Witch Trials in Popular Culture and Media - Film

Film

• Maid of Salem (1937): a film starring Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray, with Bonita Granville, Gale Sondergaard, Louise Dresser, Beulah Bondi, Virginia Weidler, and Madame Sul-Te-Wan as Tituba, directed by Frank Lloyd
• I Married a Witch (1942): a film starring Veronica Lake and Fredric March, with Robert Benchley, Susan Hayward, Cecil Kellaway and Elizabeth Patterson, directed by Réne Clair; a witch burned in Salem centuries ago (Lake) comes back to haunt descendants of Puritan (March) who sent her to her death. Comedy-fantasy with special effects.
• The Crucible (1957): a Franco-East German film, originally titled Les Sorcières de Salem, starring Simone Signoret and Yves Montand and directed by Raymond Rouleau. Its screenplay was adapted by Jean-Paul Sartre from Arthur Miller's The Crucible.
• Bell Book and Candle (1958): a film starring James Stewart and Kim Novak; Novak plays a witch from old Salem who is still living in 1950s Greenwich Village.
• Three Sovereigns for Sarah (1985): a film starring Vanessa Redgrave and directed by Philip Leacock, based on the story of Sarah Cloyce, the sister of Rebecca Nurse and Mary Esty who were executed for witchcraft, but who managed to survive.
• Hocus Pocus (1993), a Disney film comedy, starring Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy as three sisters who were hanged as witches in colonial Salem, and who return to life in twentieth century Salem to wreak comic havoc. (Parker would later discover, as documented in the NBC program Who Do You Think You Are?, her 10th great-grandmother, Esther Elwell, was arrested during November 1692 for withcraft, but fortunately the trials ended and she was never tried.)
• The Crucible (1996) is a film adaptation of Arthur Miller's 1952 play The Crucible, from a screenplay written by Miller himself; starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder
• Keeper of Souls (2004), a horror film set in a fictional Southern town called Grove Hill, connects the demon to the Salem Witch Trials.
• The Covenant (2006), a horror film that takes place in Ipswich, Massachusetts, which ties the supernatural powers of the present-day characters to their colonial ancestors, who had been charged with witchcraft during the Salem witch trials.
• Salem: Examine the Evidence (2011) is a documentary film about the trials shown daily the Visitor Center in Salem, MA. It was filmed entirely on-location with re-enactors and scholars for the National Park Service and the Essex National Heritage Area (http://www.essexheritage.org/salemwitchhunt/)
• Salem: The True 1692 (2011) is a 3D film about the trials. (http://cinemasalem.com/movies/the-true-1692-3d)
• A Haunting in Salem (2011) is a 3D horror film directed by Shane Van Dyke and starring Bill Oberst Jr., Courtney Abbiati and Jenna Stone.
• The Lords of Salem (2012), a horror film written and directed by Rob Zombie about a coven of 300-year old witches who were secretly imprisoned and tortured during the Salem witch trials.
• ParaNorman (2012) animated film takes place in a Massachusetts town that in 1712 held witch trials and convicted and executed an innocent girl.