Forget “Hocus Pocus.” That’s too easy. I want to talk about Faye Dunaway in “Supergirl,“ the 1984 flop that failed to capture that decade’s box office fascination with Superman. (Sound familiar?)

Faye Dunaway plays Selena, a Kryptonian high priestess with cascading auburn locks, bejeweled gowns, and crazy eyes. She’s inhabiting earth for some reason. (IMDB reports plot holes.) Selena’s funhouse lair, which resembles an abandoned bank outfitted with satin pillows draped in velvet, has its own mini commuter train. It lacks just one thing—a boy toy. Thankfully, Selena can bewitch Supergirl’s boyfriend Ethan and chain him to an unused fireplace, taunting a helpless Supergirl trapped in hexagonal glass.

While she’s at it, Selena nabs Supergirl’s high school friends (I’m pretty sure they’re the yearbook editors) and secures them in ceiling cages, threatening to lower them onto red-hot spikes.

If you didn’t know any of these finer details about the film, you might know this. It’s remembered for actress Helen Slater’s striking hotness as Supergirl.

Fine, but Dunaway is dangerously hot, chewing lines like, “You want the orb? You shall HAVE IT!” She’s an older, wiser version of Supergirl. She’s learned that trust can bring betrayal and that unapologetic female wiles are punished with banishment, torture, theft — anything to make her less powerful.

Witches are scary because other people think they’re scary. They come in every possible guise, stunning to grotesque, catnip for a costume designer. Witches don’t follow the rules, or rather, they do their own thing and that somehow violates someone else’s “rules.”

The Wicked Witch of the West had flying monkeys. They freaked me out, yes. But why? Monkeys are cute, but these ones aren’t because they’re loyal to a witch who obviously doesn’t give a shit about me. I think I just described my own nightmare logic.

Circe, the island witch of Aeaea, turned men into pigs. Her reasons are selfish or defensive, depending on the point of view. Bernadette Peters (more sprawling ginger curls) portrays her as a sex-craven obsessive in the 1997 mini-series of “The Odyssey.” Samantha Morton offers a grittier portrayal of a lone woman fending off potential violators by (literally) molding them into hogs in the recent Christopher Nolan epic.

My favorite witch sketch comes from Madeline Miller’s novel “Circe.” In this depiction, Circe is a lesser god, cursed with a plain appearance (in godlike terms) and talents so minimal that she must resort to earth elements like herbs and roots to mutate herself or other beings. She learns to wield what little power she has through hundreds of years of experimentation. Her wonderworks are hard earned, more satisfying than Zeus grabbing whatever female catches his eye on a whim.

Faye Dunaway was nominated for a Razzie award for worst performance of the decade for her portrayal of Selena. If “worst” means wholly inhabiting a wacko world where your character hypnotizes a front loader to capture her man, she should’ve won.

Witches are everywhere. Take 80s’ bombshell Heather Locklear’s turn on the 90s’ prime-time soap series “Melrose Place.” Already famous as a beach-bod blonde, Locklear reportedly agreed to join the “Melrose Place” cast on the condition that her character was older and more experienced than the ingénue Allison Parker, played by Courtney Thorne-Smith. On the show, Locklear’s character routinely lays traps for the innocent Parker, who blithely walks into them and then more or less shouts, “No fair.”

No fair, my foot. Any witch will tell you that’s not how the world works. Does that make them evil or just honest? If you squint, what you’re really seeing in a witch is ownership of self and all the wonderful, weird ways that can show up.

Drawings by Daniel Knox

This piece is in Recommend If You Like The Spooky Issue Fall 2026. You can find physical copies in bars, cafes and stores in Chicago and Washington, D.C. The newspaper is available for purchase here. 

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