It occurred to me the other day, after seeing a trailer for the latest Vin Diesel movie, that I can only think of two movies where the organized hunting (and killing) of witches was depicted as a good thing—usually, the witchhunt subjects are either completely innocent (at most, they followed a different religious practice); or they have real magical powers, but are harmless or actively benevolent.
The only exceptions I can think of being the Solomon Kane movie of a couple of years back, and (I presume) Diesel’s The Last Witch Hunter.
Anything else that comes to mind—well, doesn’t seem to come down on witches for being witches, per se, just for being antagonists. Dororthy Gale had no personal quarrel with the Wicked Witch, and even less with Glinda.
But if I figure there have to be at least a few examples of “grr, all witchcraft bad!” cinema out there that I’m not thinking of. Possibly even really sketchy, uncomfortable implications. Y’know, the BEST kind.
I presume you presume wrong; from the trailer, it seems the Witch Hunter reluctantly teams up with a witch who’s looking to combat a threat to the greater good, because, y’know, that’s an easier movie pitch than GRRR KILL ALL WITCHES GRRR.
There’s a bad witch in THE WIZARD OF OZ, and it’s a good thing to hunt her, but the original question explicitly ruled that one out while mentioning Glinda.
Not specifically a movie, but Warhammer 40,000 would otherwise qualify. Tolerance of unsanctioned psykers (witches) destroyed a galaxy-spanning human civilisation, mainly because psykers draw their power from what is basically hell, which makes them vulnerable to daemonic possession and being turned into gateways through which daemons can enter the material world. As a result, the Imperium of Man tracks down all the psykers they can find and either keeps them on a short leash or kills them outright.
So you’re not looking for movies where witch-hunting is depicted as misguided paranoia that results in the deaths of innocent people (which is what witch-hunting actually is in the real world), and you’re not looking for fairy tale style killing of witches who are the villains in the story. Instead you want what, movies where it’s presented as a good thing to kill witches because of who they are regardless of whether they’re actually dangerous or have done anything wrong?
I don’t think you’re going to find many examples of that, and for good reason. Even setting aside the pro-genocide implications of such a movie (!), in purely narrative terms it’s not going to be very interesting or satisfying to have the protagonists go around killing people who aren’t their antagonists.
I don’t think that’s what he’s saying in the OP. He’s looking for movies in which all witches are bad by nature, not some good and some bad. In nearly all zombie movies, zombies are uniformly evil (or at least a threat) and can be killed on sight, regardless of whether they are actively menacing someone. In many movies, all vampires, demons, or other supernatural beings are bad and must be killed. (Of course, there are also movies in which some vampires are good and some bad.)
I think it’s probably correct that, unlike many other supernatural threats, most movies with witches include both good ones and bad ones. But given the very real history of persecution of supposed witches, it would be difficult to make a movie in which witch-hunting per se would be regarded as a good thing. On the other hand, since there has never been much of a history of persecution of supposed zombies, they can be hunted and killed at will.
Warlock is about a medieval witch who travels to the future (aka the late eighties) for diabolical purposes, followed by a witch hunter. In that movie, witches by definition are people who have sold their soul to the devil, and are all utterly evil.