Film

I Married a Witch

I Married a Witch is a featherweight screwball fantasy from 1942 — Veronica Lake as a centuries-old witch who curses her tormentor's descendant for sport, then falls for him against her will. Directed by René Clair with real visual wit, it's fast, arch and gorgeously played by Lake and Fredric March. Perfect for anyone wanting old Hollywood charm without heaviness: pure, sparkling mischief in 77 minutes.

TMDb rating6.9

If you liked this

Bell, Book and Candle1958

Kim Novak's modern-day witch falls for James Stewart in this glossy, jazz-scored comedy built on the same trick: magic that's meant to control love ends up genuinely finding it.

But Cooler and more knowing than March and Lake's warmth; some find its detachment less charming than screwball snap.

Bell, Book and Candle poster

Bewitched1964

The sitcom that inherited this film's entire premise — witch marries mortal, chaos and disapproving relatives ensue — stretched across eight seasons of gentle, endlessly rewatchable domestic mischief.

But Sitcom pacing and canned rhythms feel dated, and it's a huge time commitment next to a breezy 77-minute film.

Bewitched poster

The Bishop's Wife1947

Cary Grant's angel drops into a marriage to fix it and can't help falling for the wife instead — same era, same light supernatural-meddling-in-love engine, warmer and more wintry.

But Its Christmas sentimentality and earnestness sit a long way from the original's wicked comic mischief.

The Bishop's Wife poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Witch2016

Both films start from the same historical nerve, a Puritan witch panic — March and Lake turn it into a century-later joke, Eggers stays inside the terror itself.

Same 17th-century Puritan dread that gets played for laughs here becomes genuine, slow-building horror — a family isolated at the edge of the woods, convinced the devil is among them.

But Glacially paced, archaic dialogue, no romance or comic relief — pure creeping dread from start to finish.

The Witch poster
More like this (8)

Topper1937

The screwball template this film borrows from directly: mischievous ghosts turn a stuffy man's life upside down for his own good, with the same era's rapid-fire charm.

But Creakier effects and slower pacing than the 1942 film's snap; requires a taste for earlier '30s comedy rhythms.

Topper poster

Blithe Spirit1945

Noël Coward's script turns a séance gone wrong into a love triangle with the dead, sharper-tongued and more cynical about marriage than March and Lake's romp.

But British drawing-room wit plays drier and more barbed here — less warmth, more bite.

Blithe Spirit poster

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir1947

A haunted house and an impossible romance across the barrier of the dead, told with the same lightness of touch and total sincerity about love winning out regardless.

But A deeper melancholy runs through it; less farce, more ache — a quieter mood than you might expect.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir poster

Practical Magic1998

Sisters descended from witches wrestle with a family curse on love itself, updating the cursed-romance idea into '90s magical-realist melodrama with real heart.

But Tonal whiplash between comedy, romance and horror-adjacent stakes; less disciplined than the tight 1942 original.

Practical Magic poster

Hocus Pocus1993

Three resurrected witches wreak comic havoc on a modern town in a film that shares the same gleeful, cartoonish mischief-magic spirit, just aimed squarely at kids.

But Broad slapstick and Halloween-costume camp, with zero interest in the grown-up romance at this film's centre.

Hocus Pocus poster

Death Becomes Her1992

Magic as a vain, dangerous bargain rather than a cute complication — Streep and Hawn's rivalry curdles glamour into body-horror comedy, a nastier cousin to March and Lake's mischief.

But Gleefully grotesque where the original is gentle; the tonal gap between them is enormous.

Death Becomes Her poster

Häxan1922

I Married a Witch spins its whole plot from a Puritan witch-burning; Häxan is the film that shows you what that history of persecution actually looked like, without a single joke.

A genuinely startling 1922 Swedish-Danish hybrid of lecture and dramatized reenactment, staging medieval witch trials and demonic hysteria with imagery that still unsettles nearly a century on.

But Silent, fragmented, and deliberately disturbing — nothing like the frothy romance you might be hoping for.

Häxan poster

The Love Witch2016

Both hinge on witchcraft deliberately used to engineer love rather than find it — one plays that as sweet farce, the other as gaudy, unsettling satire about desire and control.

A gorgeous, deliberately artificial pastiche of 1960s occult melodrama, following a witch who casts love spells on men with increasingly unstable results, filtered through saturated colour and knowing camp.

But Its arch, theatrical style and slow satirical tone are a world away from 1940s screwball snap — patience required.

The Love Witch poster

People

Cast

Directing

Writing

Production

Recommended by

Hocus Pocus, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Hocus Pocus 2, Bell, Book and Candle