The Witches

The Witches

1990

Director- Nicolas Roeg

Cast- Anjelica Huston, Jasen Lee Fisher, Mai Zetterling, Rowan Atkinson, Jane Horrocks, Charlie Potter, Anne Lambton, Angelique Rockas, Bill Paterson

            

   This is less of a horror story and more of a fairy tale in the classic sense of the word, with all the sinister undertones. If you have any doubt, the movie begins with the abduction ,and death by witchcraft, of a young girl.

            Luke is a young boy living with his grandmother (because his parents die at the start of the film). His grandmother, having had a close call with a witch as a child, has tried to educate him on the various warning signs to spot a witch. As luck would have it, the information comes in real handy when Luke and granny end up staying in a hotel where all the witches of England have gathered for a convention.

            The Grand High Witch (Angelica Huston) has created a potion that turns people into mice and she has hatched a scheme to turn all of the children of England into mice. We never find out specifically why, but witches really hate children. They scream with almost carnal delight at one point when they turn a kid into a mouse. Luke stumbles upon their scheme and is also transformed. He works with his grandmother to foil the witches’ plot.

            The movie is dark but not particularly scary, though probably a child would find it scary. It was produced by Jim Henson, and he personally worked on it, and follows in the same vein of his earlier works, The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.  It was one of the last hurrahs for practical special effects before films like Jurassic Park would convert these genres to mostly CGI. The witches look really hideous and the mouse effects will leave you wondering which scenes used a real mouse and which didn’t.

            The film also served as a swan song I guess. This was Jim Henson’s last film and he died the same year it came out. The movie was based on the book of the same name by Roald Dahl, who also died that same year. You may not know Dahl’s name but you definitely know his works. He wrote James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory among others.