A dream collaboration if ever there was, the first and only teaming of Nicolas Roeg and Jim Henson. The latter’s previous major collaboration was with George Lucas on LABYRINTH (1986), which didn’t work out too well (although the film went on to become a cult mainstay). Here Hensen acted as executive producer and handed the directorial duties to Roeg, who in turn tasked his longtime collaborator Allan Scott (the screenwriter of DON’T LOOK NOW, CASTAWAY and other Roeg productions) with adapting Roald Dahl’s 1983 children’s book.
Dahl famously threatened to remove his name from THE WITCHES, decrying the “vulgarity, the bad taste and the actual terror displayed,” as well as the softening of some of his book’s darker elements (the ending most of all, which I’ll get to). Dahl backed down from the threatened name removal after a contrite letter from Hensen, but never again allowed a film to be adapted from his work during his lifetime. Not that either Dahl or Hensen had much longer to live, with the latter dying on May 16, 1990, three months before the film opened (it having been completed in 1989 but withheld from release for over a year after its production company folded), while Dahl passed on November 23 of that year, three months after THE WITCHES’s release—which, in any event, was unsuccessful.
Featured is Luke, a young American boy who’s told about the witches by his British grandmother, a former witch-hunter. The witches apparently resemble normal women, but can’t wear pointed shoes because of their toeless feet and suffer terrible itching due to the wigs they’re forced to wear. Following this revelation Luke’s parents are killed in a car accident, leaving him in the care of his grandmother.
These two end up at a grand hotel in Britain (actually Norway), which is hosting a convention held by an organization called the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, who are actually witches. Their leader is the Grand High Witch, a creature who takes the form of a German accented uber snob named Eva Ernst.
Luke happens to be ensconced under the podium of the hotel’s meeting room as the witches remove their wigs and shoes, and plot to kill all the children of England. The meeting concludes with Luke and another boy named Bruno turned into mice via a serum created by the Grand High Witch. The two kids, however, prove quite resourceful in rodent form, stealing the serum and pouring it into a vat of soup being served to the hotel’s guests—which of course include the witches.
The fractured chronology and freeform editing for which Roeg was known are nowhere to be found here, but he distinguishes himself in other ways. Note the ingenious use of handheld camerawork and floor level (i.e. mouse) POV shots to go with the Jim Henson designed Muppet mice and monster witches, which are impressive (and show how much in-camera magic has been lost in the CGI era).
The film has been called the “scariest kids’ movie ever made,” and it is indeed quite intense. The major set-piece, of the witches in the meeting room removing their wigs and shoes to reveal warty scalps and gnarled feet (all presented in lurid close-ups), is genuinely unsettling. Accenting the horror is the tone, which (in keeping with most of Roeg’s late period films) is prickly and off-putting, although the bouncy kid-friendly score by Stanley Myers blunts the edges of Roeg’s crankiness.
Anjelica Huston, the only aspect of the film with which Roald Dahl wholeheartedly approved, delivers an exuberantly evil performance as the Grand High Witch. Mai Zetterling nearly matches her as Luke’s grandmother, providing a potent counterweight to Huston’s malice, and Jasen Fisher, who was nominated for a Saturn Award for his work here (as “Best Performance by A Younger Actor”), is also quite strong as Luke, a performance that until the final scenes is largely vocal.
Regarding those final scenes, I say they’re a severe miscalculation. The result, apparently, of low test scores, they go against the ending of the book (in which Luke learns to enjoy life as a rodent) with a tacked-on appearance by a bit player who for some unexplained reason uses witchcraft to effect a none-too-convincing happy ending. It is, quite simply, a desecration of an otherwise admirable film.
Vital Statistics
THE WITCHES
Lorimar/Warner Bros.
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Producer: Mark Shivas
Screenplay: Allan Scott
(Based on the book by Roald Dahl)
Cinematography: Harvey Harrison
Editing: Tony Lawson
Cast: Angelica Huston, Mai Zetterling, Jasen Fisher, Rowan Atkinson, Bill Paterson, Brenda Blethyn, Charlie Potter, Anne Lambton, Jane Horrocks, Sukie Smith, Rose English, Junny Runacre, Annabel Brooks, Emma Relph, Nora Connolly, Rosamund Greenwood, Anjelique Rockas