The Witches (1990)

Directed by Nicolas Roeg. Starring Mai Zetterling, Anjelica Huston, Jasen Fisher, Rowan Atkinson, Charlie Potter, Bill Paterson, Brenda Blethyn, Sukie Smith, Jane Horrocks, Jenny Runacre. [PG]

A wickedly whimsical and blackly twisted movie for kids and adults to enjoy, based on the wonderful Roald Dahl book about a little boy who has a fateful run-in with the Grand High Witch, leader of all the world’s child-hating witches. It occurs while he’s staying with his kindly and shrewd grandmother (Zetterling) at an English hotel, which is (unknowingly) hosting a convention of witches under the false name of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Director Nicolas Roeg taps into his inner-George Miller for this creepy yet manic and frolicsome lark—the frenetic kitchen/dining room sequence near the end feels like a transition from Miller’s Witches of Eastwick to his later Babe: Pig in the Big City—delivering eighty minutes of ghoulish humor, exaggerated visuals, and unapologetic cruelty (in a good way). Jim Henson’s Creature Shop’s magnificently ghastly prosthetics enhance an already unrestrained Anjelica Huston, playing the Grand High Witch with such mannered yet voracious hatred, her flamboyance threatens to dash all memories of Margaret Hamilton’s Oz monster (combined with her stunning performance in The Grifters a few months later, Huston had quite the sadistic year at the movies). Playing against the macabre vibe of the main story, Rowan Atkinson scores solid sardonic comic relief as the suspicious, Basil Fawlty-esque hotel manager. Note: after those aforementioned eighty minutes, the last few minutes at the very end nearly spoil the soup by changing the way Dahl wrapped up his story, giving us a forced, borderline-deus ex machina “back to normal” happy ending, a sour chaser to this delectable dark fantasy. Nevertheless, it’s the finest feature film adaptation to date of a Dahl story, and far better than the second film version of the book released thirty years later (with Anne Hathaway as the Grand High Witch). It was also the last adaptation of his work completed prior to Dahl’s death, as well as the final film finished with the oversight of executive producer Henson (they both passed away in 1990, the year of this movie’s release).

83/100