We all know the drill — we’re watching a nice magical adventure unfold before our eyes on the big or small screen, and the characters get to a point where they no longer have the option to be friendly. It’s time to throw down.

Maybe the spells are flying fast and furious, or maybe it’s a more subtle use of magic to assist a mostly physical blow, but one thing is for certain: even more so than standard fight scenes, battles that involve magic raise the dramatic stakes in any story, because when you’re hurling thunderbolts, you’re playing for keeps. Even when the stories they feature in are not exactly memorable (cough The Covenant cough), a good magical fight can be a visual feast. Here we count down some of our favorites.

10. Caleb vs. Chase (The Covenant)

Though at times this fight seems more like a mystical game of dodgeball using amorphous jellyfish-like energy, one can’t deny that it at least looks pretty cool when these dudes are blasting away at each other in a rain-soaked barn. It’s fun to see the mayhem that male witches can wreak on each other, when witchcraft is so often allocated to female characters.

Unfortunately, the movie itself sucked.

9. Raziel vs. Bavmorda (Willow)

Willow will always hold a special place in the hearts of many fantasy enthusiasts who emerged from that nebulous decade known as the ’80s. Part Star Wars, part Lord of the Rings, it featured a very hobbitish hero, a very Gandalf-ian sorceress named Raziel, and a mean, mean old witch name Bavmorda.

Bavmorda and Raziel are mortal enemies, and in the climax of the movie, as a huge battle takes place outside, a very private war is fought between these two magicians. Utilizing the latest visual technology of the time (Willow was one of the first movies to showcase morphing), the filmmakers introduced a wide-eyed generation to the wonders of a magical smackdown.

Watch the fight

8. Gandalf vs. Saruman (The Fellowship of the Ring)

When you see two wizards fighting, you expect to see some crazy fireballs being thrown around, but when Gandalf and Saruman threw down in The Fellowship of the Ring, it was just the telekinetic version of an old-fashioned bar room brawl, with the two tossing each other around with the force of their minds. Bruising, bloody, and awesome.

Watch the fight

7. Harry vs. Draco (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

At this point in the Harry Potter series, we knew there was no love lost between the boy wizards Harry and Draco Malfoy, but they were just kids, and the last thing we expected to see was a full-on, wire-spinning melee, but that’s exactly what we got when they took each other on in Professor Lockhart’s dueling seminar.

6. Giles vs. Dark Willow (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Sweet Willow Rosenburg was the heart and soul of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, always a cheerful presence in a dark, demon-ridden world. But following the death of her true love Tara, she tapped into the vengeful part of her psyche and became a very bad witch. Who better to take her on than the mentor of the group, Giles, with a little borrowed magic from a coven of good witches?

5. Nancy vs. Sarah (The Craft)

An underrated gem from the angsty ’90s, The Craft showed what happened when the freaky girls in school have access to some seriously dark mojo. When good girl Sarah faces off with mean alpha-chick Nancy, all hell breaks loose in a spectacle of CGI mystical violence.

4. Pretty much every fight with Zedd (Legend of the Seeker)

Before Legend of the Seeker, the heir apparent to Xena: Warrior Princess, made its way to the airwaves, most people had never used the term “wizard’s fire” before (that is,  if they weren’t Terry Goodkind fans). But every time a fight breaks out on Seeker, you can bet that Zeddicus will be blasting away to his heart’s content, and it just looks awesome every time.

3. Buffy vs. Adam (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Though the show was as magical as they come, Buffy’s fighting style always stemmed from the very real world of martial arts. So when in the fourth season she learned that she’d need a little extra boost to face a Frankenstein-like foe, her friends Willow, Giles, and Xander all got together and gave her their energy in a little power-enhancing spell, causing Buffy to bust out some kick-ass matrix moves, as well as turn a bullet headed for her face into a pair of white doves, which are of course the symbol of peace. And who doesn’t love a little irony with their smackdowns?

2. Dumbledore vs. Voldemort (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

Though the main event is reserved for the very end of the very last movie, we got a nice little treat when uber-baddie Boldemort took on the bastion of goodness, Dumbledore, in the fifth installment of the Harry Potter series. They fought with all four elements — fire, water, earth, and air — before Voldemort finally took his leave. But what an exit!

Watch the fight.

1. Gandalf vs. The Balrog (Fellowship of the Ring)

There are fights, and there are fights. When the Fellowship was fleeing the mines of Moria, they were accosted by a demon of the ancient world, a Balrog of Morgoth, a creature of shadow and flame, and a nasty attitude to boot. When Gandalf took him on to protect his friends, it was a true clash of the titans, instantly resetting the bar for what we expect to see on screen from anyone audacious enough to film a magic fight. For the gift you gave the world, Peter Jackson and company, we thank you.

Watch the fight.

Looking to buy something mentioned in this column (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.

Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

It’s no secret that most horror films follow pretty specific formulas (varying somewhat depending on their sub-genres — slasher, supernatural horror, thriller, etc.)

In fact, the idea of the formulaic horror film was even parodied in the classic self-aware horror movie Scream, a movie so chock-full of meta-consciousness that it even started its own horror sub-genre: scary movies that feature characters who have seen all the scary movies.

But perhaps no horror movie cliche is more observed and understood than that of the Final Girl — the lone female who survives to the end of the movie, long after most of the other characters have been killed, and inevitably confronts whatever Big Bad may be threatening her. It is with this character that we have come to discover the term “Scream Queen.”

The phenomenon is particularly noteworthy given that most other movie genres still either mostly ignore female characters, or portray them in superficial or stereotypical ways.

Perhaps the Final Girl that sparked the current trend in horror is Laurie Strode, a young babysitter played by Jamie Lee Curtis who was stalked by a masked serial killer in John Carpenter’s terrifying masterpiece Halloween.

In many ways, Laurie is the prototypical Final Girl: she begins the story as a normal, unassuming young woman, a student in high school, in fact. She often questions her own abilities just in everyday life.

But when the going gets tough (and her friends get hacked and slashed), she discovers an inner strength she didn’t know she had and becomes capable of fighting back against the bad guy, and often succeeds in vanquishing him.

In fact, it almost sounds like your standard Hero Myth.

So does this make the horror genre, well … feminist?

It’s true that these movies sometimes include scenes of women being victimized, enduring things that male characters are rarely subjected to — and sometimes seemingly for the “entertainment” of the audience.

And let’s face it: these movies are almost always written and directed by men.

But unlike almost every other film genre, women are usually the “movers” in horror films — the protagonists, the central characters who drive the action.

What a concept!

Some even see a kind of feminist symbolism at work: the killers, who are almost always male, symbolize the misogynistic hatred that some men have for women, and are often armed with a knife or stabbing instrument — a representation of the phallus in its most violent form — which they then use to murder the Other (women) along with their own rivals (men).

The Final Girl, in order to defeat the Killer, must then assume a phallus of her own — grabbing a butcher knife from the kitchen, finding a shovel in the garage — that she then turns upon the owner of the true phallus, the Killer/Man.

Once the Killer is slain, the Final Girl will often look with revulsion on her murder weapon — a symbol of her momentary descent into masculinity — before she casts it aside, hoping to never be forced to wield it again.

In many ways, this is unabashedly pro-female. And yet usually these movies are targeted to young, adolescent males, with the promise of not only gratuitous gore, but the high probability of seeing a young woman topless.

But that’s specifically slasher films. What of horror films that deal with the supernatural?

Recently, there was a spate of horror films based on Japanese movies, such as The Ring, The Grudge, Dark Water, etc. All of these films featured a woman as the protagonist who goes up against not a flesh and blood male killer, but evil spirits and ghosts.

Intriguingly, these films place the female’s intellect above all their other attributes — as the stories mostly involve them having to solve some sort of mystery in order to discover why they are being plagued by the restless evil dead.

But what about when women are also the antagonists? In 1968, Roman Polanski terrified the world with Rosemary’s Baby, a chilling demonic thriller about a young urban couple who move into a creepy old apartment building that hosts some eccentric neighbors.

Rosemary, played by Mia Farrow, soon becomes pregnant, and is attended by her elderly neighbor Minnie, who, it later turns out, is conspiring with just about everyone else in Rosemary’s life to help bring the devil’s child — Rosemary’s child — into the world.

Never was a kindly old woman creepier.

And in 1996, goth high school girls had their day in the sun (or, more likely, their day hiding from the sun) when The Craft opened in theaters. The film featured four girls, all outcasts, who spend their day learning spells and magic, which they use to their own selfish ends.

When one of the girls, Sarah, realizes the harm they might be doing, the alpha girl of the group, Nancy, turns the other two against her, and the suspenseful plot leads up to an all-out magical battle as the two girls take each other on.

Despite the stereotype of horror films being a guy’s-movie type of film, anyone who’s gone to see a horror film in the theaters in the past decade knows that girls and women are extremely well-represented in the audience, often outnumbering the men.

Why would this be? Well, women no doubt enjoy seeing other women on the screen in powerful roles, not as militant post-gender warriors, but as realistic women who become heroic when the situation calls for it. Duh.

Filmmakers, of course, know full well the price they must pay to be able to tell these “feminist” stories: in order to draw the adolescent boys into the theaters too, they have to offer more than a little gore and a female nipple or two.

But when you consider that in 2009, these female-driven stories still aren’t really being told anywhere else, well, that’s a price worth paying, don’t you think?

Looking to buy any of these movies on DVD (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.