Review: The Witches

Jasen Fisher is Luke, whose grandmother Helga (Mai Zetterling) tells him bedtime tales of witches, who she claims are very real. While staying at a hotel in England, Luke unwittingly discovers a coven of witches having an annual meeting, led by The Grand High Witch (Anjelica Huston). Luke overhears them discussing a plan to turn the world’s children into mice by poisoning chocolates and lollies! Rowan Atkinson is the unpleasant hotel owner, while Jane Horrocks plays Miss Irvine, a witch and secretary to The Grand High Witch. Charlie Potter plays the gluttonous Bruno, with Bill Paterson and Brenda Blethyn as his ghastly parents.

 

Director Nicolas Roeg (the haunting horror-mystery “Don’t Look Now”) and screenwriter Allan Scott (ditto) do a pretty damn good job of adapting the sometimes gleefully nasty Roald Dahl novel in this 1990 film version. I tend to think Dahl’s blend of child fantasy and darkly amusing grotesquery fares better in book form, but I liked this as a 10 year-old and I still enjoyed it 30+ years later. It’s interesting, creepy, fantastical, grotesquely skewed all in one. I find it funny that I was scared shitless by “Return to Oz” just five years earlier than this (and still hate it in my 40s), yet I happily watched this one which features kids stuck in paintings slowly disappearing, kids turned into mice, witches trying to kill children etc. It should be scary and off-putting, but somehow Dahl got away with it, and perhaps having read the book I was prepared for Roeg’s visualisation of it all.

 

Watching this film again as an adult I found it very entertaining for the most part, and from what I remember of the book, this is a damn good translation. Very funny at times in a grotesque way (probably another reason why I found it palatable as a kid), with an odious, rat-like Rowan Atkinson in particular amusing. He just looks like something right out of a Dahl novel. American child actor Jasen Fisher (now a golf caddy apparently) is likeable in the lead, but the best child performance comes from an absolutely perfect Charlie Potter as the Augustus Gloop-esque Bruno. Swedish-born Mai Zetterling is terrific as Fisher’s grandmother, and there’s a wonderfully sinister turn by Lady Anne Lambton as the creepy Woman in Black. The show is stolen by a possibly career-best performance by Anjelica Huston as the very cinematic embodiment of The Grand High Witch. It’s the role she was born to play and she plays it to the hilt in a real go-for-broke camp turn. I was less impressed with Jane Horrocks, or more precisely her character which seems to make zero sense throughout. The fact that her character isn’t in the book, and aids in an all-too neat ending that also doesn’t feature in the book says a lot (Dahl, who was still alive at the time hated this ending and I must say I’m not keen on it myself). I also have to say that at least as an adult I found the first half better than the second. The second half kinda gives us something resembling a dry-run for “Stuart Little”, which will likely appeal more to the younger section of the audience. Roeg and Scott do get things back on a more Dahl-ish track for the rather beastly finale though. Speaking of the mice, a word or two about the FX and makeup. A Jim Henson production, the mice might be a bit more indicative of Muppet-Henson, but the more interesting stuff is the makeup which is far more in “The Dark Crystal” territory. Matched with Roeg’s askew angles, the grotesque makeup for the witches’ true selves still looks impressive in 2022, at least to my eyes. By the way, keep your eye on those witches, the majority of them are actually played by men in disguise, including an uncredited Michael Palin. I only noticed it myself this year.

 

A little underrated in some quarters, this adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic features terrific casting, good makeup/FX, and an entertaining, if grotesque story which both young and old can find appeal in.  

 

Rating: B