As a little girl I was fascinated by Walt Disney’s animated film Sleeping Beauty, and in fact it started my lifelong love of classical music — the score and songs were based on Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Ballet, of course.  I would have been about four and a half when it came out, and as a proper little girl, I probably was swept up in the whole fairy tale mystique of the princess and the prince and all the romance.  Well, it didn’t take long before my tastes began to lean more towards the scary stuff, and of course today Princess Aurora is just your average pretty and spoiled royal daughter, but the evil fairy Maleficent — well…she’s a keeper! 

Maleficent had been banned from the royal christening of the baby Aurora, a disinvitation that ticked her off but good.  By the time we meet her we’ve already had a bellyfull of the three good fairies, those flitting, fluttering maiden aunts who, as if being a princess wasn’t enough, gave the royal infant some other nifty traits like the gift of song and beauty.  (The rich get richer, then as now!).  Maleficent, however, goes for the slow burn.  When the Princess turns 16, she’s going to prick her finger and die.  Nothing quick for Maleficent — she’s in it for the long haul. 

In addition to a refined sense of torture, Maleficent has a tremendous sense of style.  She’s all swirling capes, in deep purples and black, and a diabolical headpiece that I’m assuming just because it has horns doesn’t mean that she does.  She’s fairly gorgeous, really, model-tall and stylish, and she knows how to enter a room, and especially how to leave one, mostly in billowing flames and plenty of flash.  Yes, sure she’s mean, but as one of the good fairies tries to rationalize, “Maleficent can’t understand happiness.”  That doesn’t mean she’s not incapable of affection; she’s got a raven companion she’s really fond of, as a matter of fact, and is visibly dismayed when one of those darn good fairies turns him into stone. 

Maleficent’s got a wicked sense of humor, too.  She gets a genuine laugh -- for a few seconds, at least — when she learns that her goon squad has been searching, all during the sixteen years when Aurora had been hidden away in the forest with the fairy trio, for a baby, still, instead of a growing girl.  Maleficent is tickled by the absurdity of their ridiculous mistake, though she does unleash some powerful evil magic on their ass after she’s done laughing.  But she does get a guffaw in, at least. 

Now, there’s more than a little sexual frustration probably bubbling in there, too.  I mean, Aurora is destined to marry well, to a handsome prince, and everybody will love her, and all her babies, forever after.  What’s to like, really?  But Maleficent doesn’t seem to be totally motivated by jealousy, though, like the Evil Queen in Snow White.  I think she just picks on Aurora because she’s the best way to get back at the King and Queen for not inviting her.  And if she can mess up a royal romance some years hence, so much the better. 

After Maleficent hypnotizes Aurora into pricking her finger, the good fairies step in to change the death to a long sleep, to be broken by the Prince at some later date.  Maleficent takes some glee in watching her henchmen trussing up the Prince – a little dominatrix fantasy there? — and she loves taunting the stalwart young man as he languishes in her dungeon.  She saves her full fury for the Prince after he’s helped to escape by those three meddling do-gooders in fairy form, throwing up huge pricky hedges around Sleeping Beauty’s castle, and ultimately turning herself into a fairly magnificent dragon.   

This being a standard fairy tale, Disney-style, Maleficent is vanquished, and we don’t even get a look at her again, as she dies in dragon form, though you do see kind of an outline that reminds you of the old Maleficent.  I miss her — could she have been rehabilitated?  Would we want to see her happy?  Probably not.  She was bad to the bone, but oh, the lady had style.

(P.S.:  I was going to go into more detail here, but I am now in the throes of the one torture that I think would beat anything Maleficent could have dreamed up for Aurora — a kidney stone!  My advice:  don’t get one!  lol  )