The Witches (1990 film)

Not to be confused with The Witches (1966 film).
The Witches

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Nicolas Roeg
Produced by Jim Henson
Mark Shivas
Dusty Symonds
Screenplay by Allan Scott
Based on The Witches 
by Roald Dahl
Starring Jasen Fisher
Anjelica Huston
Mai Zetterling
Rowan Atkinson
Music by Stanley Myers
Cinematography Harvey Harrison
Edited by Tony Lawson
Production
company
Jim Henson Productions
Lorimar Film Entertainment
Distributed by Warner Bros.
Release dates
 United Kingdom
25 May 1990
United States
24 August 1990
Australia
30 September 1990
Running time
 92 minutes
Country United Kingdom
United States
Language English
Box office $10,360,553[1]

The Witches is a 1990 comedy-fantasy film based on the book of the same name by Roald Dahl. It was directed by Nicolas Roeg and produced by Jim Henson Productions for Lorimar Film Entertainment and Warner Bros., starring Anjelica Huston as Miss Evangeline Ernst/Grand High Witch, Mai Zetterling as Helga Eveshim, Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Stringer, and introducing Jasen Fisher as Luke Eveshim.

Plot

During a holiday staying with his grandmother Helga in Bergen, Norway, the mind of a young Luke Eveshim is filled with stories about witches: demonic females who detest and destroy children. They have wigs that they wear over their heads, they wear gloves to hide their claws, and they have purple eyes. Helga gives Luke an insight into the world of the unexplained by describing the details that concern the memories she has about something that happened when she was a young girl that surrounds another girl who was her close friend. That girl was targeted by a witch leading to the girl getting trapped inside a painting forever before she disappeared, then as she continues the story she mentions further when she had come close to a witch herself, she had the experience of losing one of her fingers because of the witch.

After Luke's parents are killed in a car crash, Helga takes him under her wing and they move to England in a nice English village in the countryside. While playing in his treehouse and gathering his toys, Luke has his first experience of having seen a witch when a strange lady walks past the house, and passes through the gate into the back garden, getting really close to Luke. To begin with she seems friendly towards him but as he takes a closer look it appears she has a big massive snake wrapped around her neck and she's holding a bar of chocolate in her hand. She persuades Luke to hold the snake and take the chocolate from her. Luke soon comes to realise things are not as they seem to be when it gets to the point that she begins to show her true colours as Luke sees her purple eyes. The situation makes Luke feel scared so he decides not to accept the offer and he gets a bit on edge by the fact that the lady appears to recognise who he is and the reason for this is clouded in mystery. The witch is given no choice but to give up her attempts to snatch Luke away after Helga comes outside, she starts looking for him, eventually managing to find him and encourages him to come back inside with her.

On Luke's birthday, Helga becomes unwell because she has diabetes so when the doctor comes to see her the doctor suggests to her it would make her feel better by going to the seaside. Helga and Luke stay at the Excelsior Hotel by the beach in Cornwall. When he and his granny are sitting down to afternoon tea with the other guests, Luke gets to know a wealthy boy named Bruno Jenkins and they become good friends with each other, but straight away it gets him into a spot of trouble with the hotel manager Mr. Stringer the moment a housekeeping maid, (who also happens to be Stringer's secret girlfriend) discovers Luke having games with his pet mice. Stringer gives Luke his permission to keep the mice as long as he keeps them in their cage although he doesn't completely agree with Luke. Soon afterwards Luke quietly goes inside the ballroom that has been hired as an assembly hall where he decides to make a little quiet corner giving him some space for teaching his mice without Mr Stringer knowing what he is doing.

The members of the "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children" have arranged to use the services of the hotel ballroom where they are going to hold a yearly meeting and Luke watches them arrive. His sighting of a witch comes back to haunt him as there is something about the people that doesn't add up. However, Luke suspects something is amiss when he sees one woman with purple eyes and another reach under her hair to scratch at her scalp. It turns out that the "RSPCC" is really the yearly convention of all of England's witches. The chairwoman, a German woman named Evangeline Ernst, goes on stage and prompts the witches to remove their shoes, gloves and wigs. She then pulls off her own wig and mask—revealing herself to be the hideous and hunchbacked global ruler of all witches, the Grand High Witch. After scolding the witches for their lack of progress in destroying England's children, incinerating one of them for questioning her, the Grand High Witch tells them that are to buy sweet shops while presenting them with her latest creation--"Formula 86," a magic potion which can turn the drinker into a mouse within two hours if given in a small dose. To demonstrate, having given him a chocolate bar laced with her formula earlier, the Grand High Witch lured Bruno into the assembly hall with an earlier promise of chocolate. To Luke's terror, and the audience's delight, Bruno turns into a mouse and flees, leaving behind his clothes. As the Grand High Witch declares the meeting over and the witches prepare to leave, one of the witches—a maid at the hotel—sniffs Luke out. Luke escapes just as the witches are about to corner him.

After a long chase, the Grand High Witch herself catches Luke and forces him to ingest an entire bottle of the formula, the overdose instantly turning him into a mouse. Luke barely manages to escape as the witches stomp on his clothes to kill him, but he evades them and reunites with Bruno. The two make their way to Helga's room and tell her the story. Knowing of the Grand High Witch's plan, Luke devises a plan to get a bottle of the formula and douse the witches' food with it. He manages to retrieve one, barely avoiding the Grand High Witch's pet cat, Liebschen. They then attempt to return Bruno to his parents and get them to flee the hotel in case things go wrong. However, Bruno's parents refuse to believe Helga's story about Bruno being turned into a mouse and declare her to be insane.

At dinnertime, Helga sneaks Luke into the kitchen and he overhears that all the witches have ordered watercress soup. Despite some great difficulty, Luke manages to drop the bottle with the formula into the soup, but he is discovered by the staff and his tail is almost chopped off. By hiding inside the head chef's trouser leg, Luke escapes when the rest of the staff forcibly pull the head chef's trousers off and search frantically for him. Unfortunately, Mr. Jenkins, unsatisfied with his cock-a-leekie soup, orders a bowl of cress soup, which is only for the RSPCC group and is not on the standard menu. Helga is only barely able to stop him from consuming it. She finally manages to convince him of what has happened to Bruno when he sees Bruno greet him and the rest of the witches turn into mice. Mr. Stringer and the kitchen staff enter the chaos-ridden dining room and begin killing the mice, unknowingly destroying England's witches with Mr. Stringer himself slaying the Grand High Witch after being tipped off by Helga when she trapped the rodent under a water jug. During the scuffle, Helga and Luke return Bruno to his parents, go to bed and pack their bags and leave the next day.

Some time later, back in their house in the countryside, Luke and Helga receive a trunk full of the Grand High Witch's money and her diary, something Luke had orchestrated earlier on to finance their possible mission to eradicate the evil witches around the world once and for all. Later that night, the Grand High Witch's assistant Miss Irvine, who quits due to her mistreatment after being forced to stay upstairs during the dinner and thus escaped being turned into a mouse, arrives to the cottage. Now a good witch, Miss Irvine uses her powers to turn Luke back into a human while returning his pet mice and glasses to him. Luke and Helga see Miss Irvine out of the window and bid her farewell and showing them that being a good witch means she has real hair and normal hands. She leaves to repeat the process with Bruno.

Cast

Puppeteers

The following people have done special puppeteer work in this film:

Production

The Witches based on the book of the same name by British author Roald Dahl.[2] It was the final film that Jim Henson personally worked on before his death, the final theatrical film produced by Lorimar Productions, and the last film made based on Dahl's material before his death (both Henson and Dahl passed away that year).

The whole section in the start of the film (until they move to the United Kingdom) was shot in Bergen in Norway. Much of the film was shot on location in the Headland Hotel[3] (which was named "Hotel Excelsior" in the film) situated on the coast in Newquay, Cornwall. Roald Dahl originally wanted Cher to play the role of the Grand High Witch, but she was unavailable at the time because the actress was filming Mermaids. Eartha Kitt, Fiona Fullerton, Geneviève Bujold, Starr Andreeff, Olivia Hussey, Sigourney Weaver, Frances Conroy, and Liza Minnelli were all at some point considered for the part of The Grand High Witch prior to Anjelica Huston’s casting. Huston’s casting later satisfied Dahl.

Release

The film was premiered on 25 May 1990, in London. The film took in $10,360,553 in the United States and 266,782 in Germany.

Home media

Warner Home Video first released the film on VHS in 1991. The second release (and first re-release) was on VHS and for the first time on DVD in 1999. However, both versions (and any TV screenings) use the original open matte negative of the film, instead of matting it down to 1.85:1 (or 1.66:1). More recently, the film was released in the Netherlands in 2009. This DVD is shown in its theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1.

Soundtrack

The film contains an orchestral score composed by Stanley Myers. To date, a soundtrack CD has not been released, and the entire score remains obscure. Throughout the score, the Dies Irae appears, highly reminiscent of Berlioz's Symphony Fantastique Mvt. V, "The Witches Sabbath."

Reception

The Witches was generally well received by critics and audiences alike, but performed poorly at the box office.[4] The film holds a rare 100% in the film critics site Rotten Tomatoes, out of 32 reviews, citing universal critical acclaim. The general consensus is: "With a deliciously wicked performance from Anjelica Huston and imaginative puppetry by Jim Henson's creature shop, Nicolas Roeg's dark and witty movie captures the spirit of Roald Dahl's writing like few other adaptations."[5] Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, calling the film "an intriguing movie, ambitious and inventive, and almost worth seeing just for Anjelica Huston's obvious delight in playing a completely uncompromised villainess."[6] Roald Dahl regarded the film as "utterly appalling" because of the ending that contrasted with the book.[7]

Awards

Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films (1991)
BAFTA Awards (1991)
Boston Society of Film Critics Awards (1991)
Fantasporto (1991)
Hugo Awards (1991)
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards (1990)
National Society of Film Critics Awards (1990)

See also

References

  1. ↑ "The Witches (1990)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 30 June 2010.
  2. ↑ "Bewitched, Bothered, Buried Under Latex". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 18 October 2010.
  3. ↑ "The Headland Hotel". The Headland Hotel. Retrieved 24 October 2012.
  4. ↑ "WEEKEND BOX OFFICE : 'Darkman' Shines Among New Releases". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2 January 2011.
  5. ↑ "The Witches in Rotten Tomatoes". Rottentomatoes.com.
  6. ↑ Doan, Brian. "Roger Ebert The Witches review". Rogerebert.com.
  7. ↑ Bishop, Tom (11 July 2005). "Entertainment | Willy Wonka's everlasting film plot". BBC News.

External links