Bringing The World Home To You

© 2024 WUNC North Carolina Public Radio
120 Friday Center Dr
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
919.445.9150 | 800.962.9862
91.5 Chapel Hill 88.9 Manteo 90.9 Rocky Mount 91.1 Welcome 91.9 Fayetteville 90.5 Buxton 94.1 Lumberton 99.9 Southern Pines 89.9 Chadbourn
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Movies On The Radio: Witches, Wizards, And Warlocks

Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz
Insomnia Cured Here
/
Flickr - Creative Commons -https://flic.kr/p/5GMFkD
The Wicked Witch of the West watches her crystal ball and plots to get the Ruby Slippers. Wizard of Oz, 1939

Magical beings on the silver screen take audiences on a journey into worlds that only exist in their imagination. They fly, cast spells, play tricks, and blur the line between the real and the fantastic. For many years Hollywood treated witchcraft and magic as mostly bad things, but over time some supernatural powers have earned a better reputation. 

On this edition of Movies on the Radio, host Frank Stasio talks with film experts Marsha Gordon and Laura Boyes about the lasting legacy of witches, wizards and warlocks in the movies. They discuss how portrayals of religion, gender, and beauty have evolved in these films over time. They also break down listeners’ top picks just in time for Halloween. Boyes is the film curator at the North Carolina Museum of Art and Gordon is a film professor at North Carolina State University.

Here are a few of our favorite movies featuring Witches, Wizards and Warlocks:

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

The Worst Witch (1986)

The Craft (1996)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2001)

Stay Connected
Laura Pellicer is a digital reporter with WUNC’s small but intrepid digital news team.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.