Retro Review: The Witches (1990)

Halloween 2019 continues with my review of the 1990 film "The Witches." Honestly, I had not ever heard of this film before this month, but I'm reviewing it based on a request from a friend. Said friend was the only one to request a review when I posed the question on Facebook this year, so I thought I'd reward that by reviewing said movie. Even though I knew nothing about this movie, I became rather fascinated with it. The movie has a very interesting production story that I'll weave into this review and has an upcoming remake scheduled for next October, which I had no knowledge of until after I was watching the movie. So it's nice to get this done this Halloween so I can be well prepared for the remake. Also more on that later. First thing of note, as is evident by the date in the title of this review, this is the 1990 film adapted from Roald Dahl's 1983 novel. That has to be noted because "Witch" is a fairly popular thing to have in a title. There's a 1966 British horror film titled "The Witches" as well as a 1967 Italian anthological comedy film titled "The Witches." Then of course we have the 2016 horror film "The Witch." And although it would be fun to go back and re-review "The Witch," that's also not what I'm doing here. Right now is the time to review the 1990 film.

If you're like me and you've also not heard of this, this review is going to be mostly spoiler free, so feel free to proceed. It is an absolute necessity to talk about this film's ending, but I'll warn you before I do that. I went into this movie knowing that it's PG, so I expected a family friendly witch adventure similar to that of "Hocus Pocus," which I reviewed last Halloween season. And it is. To a certain expect. But this is also a very dark film in ways that are quite subtle and unexpected. The movie begins "Princess Bride" style with a grandmother telling a story to her grandson about her childhood friend who disappeared. Initially they had no idea what happened to her, but then they found her trapped in painting. As it turns out, she had been kidnapped by a witch. As the grandmother relates, witches are rather cunning and evil. They disguise themselves as normal women and will be nearly undetectable unless you know exactly what to look for. The other thing about them is that they hate children and are out to kill and destroy children. Yeah, that's a bit unsettling. And it actually comes with quite a bit of controversy that's directed at Dahl's original novel with accusations of it being sexist and misogynistic, teaching young boys how to grow up to hate women.

That's not exactly the take I got when watching this movie, but reading up on that I can see where critics of the book are coming from. Perhaps it would be better to have both men and women portrayed as witches and warlocks/wizards (whatever it is you call a male witch)? Regardless of that, I think the idea here is to present a story where evil beings are disguised as normal-looking human beings. It just so happens that all the evil beings in this story are women who are magic, child-hunting witches. When it comes to an eerie setting, I think this is perfect for Halloween. You immediately feel a sense of dread, especially since the introduction of the movie tells the story of a little girl who was kidnapped and spent the entirety of her life in a painting on the wall, so you know that this movie isn't going to necessarily be all rainbows and butterflies. Thus I don't know if this is really appropriate for young kids. There's no scenes that are explicit or graphic. It is PG and it sticks to that rating. But it's the unsettling nature of the film that has the potential to traumatize young children. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. Some of the most classic Halloween family films are ones that are potentially traumatizing, but end up as our favorite films when we get older. 

I don't know exactly what this movie's legacy is, but I can definitely see it as a movie that some see as a classic because it was the type of movie that was appropriate enough for them to watch when they were younger, yet dark enough to stick with them. As a grown adult who hadn't grown up with this, I found this sufficiently creepy and thus rather rewarding. It wasn't just a silly kids movie about goofy witches. These were witches who were actually dangerous and the movie had stakes to it. Thus it ends up being fairly similar to other Roald Dahl stories. I'm certainly not an expert on his work, so I won't do a super deep analysis on this, but I'm aware of this little known story called "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Depending on which version of that you watch, it's also very dark and unsettling, especially when you watch the version wherein you are uncertain what the actual fate of the children that got turned into things in the movie. Off the top of my head, I'm not aware of which one that is. But I know that both of them are dark in their own ways, yet are fun enough to be enjoyed by a younger crowd, so they do a good job of riding that line of being appropriate for kids. That's a hard line to get right, but if you nail it, you get a story that's great for kids and adults alike, while being a film that gets better with age.

In terms of the continued premise, this won't be the spoiler-heavy section of my review, but I will tread on light spoilers in regards to what happens, so feel free to step aside if you want to go into this movie blind, knowing only that it's a movie where witches disguise themselves as normal females to hunt children. If you're fine with progressing forward, then I can say this gets sad because the kid's parents die in a car accident. Or at least that's what's implied. So the kid is now under the care of his grandma. Shortly after learning this, they decide to move to England. In the novel it states that this was written in the will of the parents. I'm not so sure if the movie specified that, but regardless, we are off to England, which is home to the most dangerous witches. And it's also the home of the secret witch council that the son and the grandma accidentally stumble into. This is where we meet the Grand High Witch, played in a deliciously evil way by Anjelica Huston, who I'm just now noticing is the lead star in both of the Halloween movies I've reviewed this season, the other being 1991's "The Addams Family," where Anjelica played Morticia Addams. She does an excellent job in both movies. And she's genuinely terrifying in this movie as she's hunting down the children.

This is where I get into my slight concerns in regards to the movie. While the premise is creepy and dark and the performances are excellent, there's some things that bothered me with the middle portion of the movie. They set this up as a world wherein these witches are nearly impossible to find and the Grand High Witch is like the devil in that you know she's there, but no one has ever seen her, so she's almost a myth. Yet everything becomes really easy as our main characters just so happened to go to the same exact hotel as all the witches in the area. If they were so secretive with how they do things, I think it should've been a lot more difficult for are main characters to accidentally walk into their annual meeting. But that was more of a nitpick than anything. Perhaps it's something that works well enough in the book, but doesn't exactly translate as well to the movie, which is going to continue to become a theme here as we dive deeper into this. The other part of this middle section is that the main kid, who has an odd obsession with mice, ends up getting caught by all the witches and turned into a mouse. This idea I loved. It adds to the darkness of the movie as things aren't rainbows and butterflies the whole time and there's some strong themes there, but we have issues with the execution.

The biggest thing here is almost not even the movie's fault, but rather the unfortunate consequences of not having the technology in 1990 to properly pull off the ideas of Roald Dahl's book. When the kid turns into a mouse, we then spend the rest of the movie following him as a mouse as him and his grandma device a plan to stop all the witches from turning all the kids in England into mice. And in doing this, we switch back and forth from actual mice running around to some pretty good puppetry work. In fact, Jim Henson worked on this movie. It was the final film he worked on before dying in 1990. Him and his team do a solid job with all the puppeteering, but it's extremely obvious and a bit distracting when we transition from real mice to puppet mice. And when we have real mice, the kid still has the ability to speak, thus we hear a voice on screen as he's running around, but I wasn't convinced that this voice I was hearing was coming from the mouse that was running around. I think they were all doing their best with this, but the lack of technology holds them back a bit, making this a movie that doesn't quite hold up, especially not after watching Disney's work on their "live-action" animals in "The Lion King" and "The Jungle Book." It looks a bit silly.

However, despite the lack of technology, the movie does do an excellent job of being satisfyingly terrifying in moments. There's a scene with the kid being chased by a cat that had me on the edge of my seat. And every time Anjelica Huston is on screen, she absolutely owns it, especially when she peels off her woman skin and reveals her creepy witch appearance, which apparently took six hours to put on and six hours to take off, and was absolutely miserable for Anjelica. Props to her for sticking it out and giving a solid performance despite all of this. However, I also got the feeling that the movie was holding back a bit. After an incredibly creepy and unsettling set up, it becomes a bit safe and cartoonish as the witches aren't even fast or smart enough to chase down a young kid in certain sequences and are rather easy to stop when all is said and done. It kinda took away from the movie because they didn't quite stick the landing. Then I read that director Nicolas Roeg cut some of the movie's more scary scenes after seeing his young son's reaction to the original cut. So that tells me that they did purposely hold back as they tried to pander to a young audience, which was disappointing as this had a whole lot of potential.

But hey, remember how I told you that there's a remake coming out next year? I read that and realize there's a real opportunity here to do something great. The director is Robert Zemeckis and we have Anne Hathaway starring as the Grand High Witch, with Stanley Tucci, Octavia Spencer, Chris Rock and Phillip Spall a part of the supporting cast. I'm not exactly sure who is playing what role, but that's a great cast there. If Zemeckis owns this idea as a PG-13 horror film rather than holding back in order to appeal to the younger crowd, I think there's a lot they can do with this remake to improve upon the 1990 film. And they have the technology to do CGI mice that won't be distracting. This is a good opportunity. If they don't make this for kids, is it possible that they'll end up leaving some money on the table? Sure. But it can't be any worse than how the original movie did. I wasn't able to figure out what the actual production budget was, but it only made $10.4 million domestically, which adjusts to just $22.1 million in 2019 ticket prices. The studio that worked on it was Lorimar Studios, which ended up shutting down in 1993. This was their last theatrical film. So yeah, I think you focus on making a good film and rather than trying to compromise the story to fit a certain audience.

Speaking of which, the final thing I have to bring up is the ending. And this is where I spoil the film, so if you haven't seen it and you are still reading this, turn away now. As it turns out, the kid and his grandma are able to come up with a plan that turns all the witches into mice while the Grand High Witch is killed by one of the cooks. But the kid doesn't turn back into a human. Instead, they get back to their home and they have a wonderful conversation about how he is just fine being a mouse. But then a random good witch comes by and transforms him back into a real boy and they live happily ever after. This made Roald Dahl really upset and he initially demanded his name be removed from the credits because in Dahl's novel, the kid never gets turned back. He lives the rest of his life as a mouse. Dahl had seen the script where they changed his ending and demanded a re-write, so the director comprised and filmed both endings. When Dahl watched the ending that was faithful to his book, he was moved to tears. But the director ultimately decided to go for the changed ending. And that's upsetting because in reading the book's premise, I think Dahl's original ending is much better, but this is another example where I feel the director wasn't willing to take the risks.

All that aside, though, ultimately this still was an enjoyable experience for me. It's not like I'm a hardcore fan of the novel and am angry at the film's final results. I didn't know either of these things existed prior to this month. But I'm grateful that I do now and the movie as is is still a creepy, unsettling movie with some great acting and solid moments. The problems with technology can be forgiven and the director's unwillingness to take risks don't make this bad. It is kinda sad, though, that this was the last film adaptation of a Roald Dahl book before Dahl passed away and it ended on a sour note. But we do have an opportunity to now do Dahl justice next year and I think Robert Zemeckis is a good enough director to get it done. As I'm looking at the schedule, it's currently set to be released on the same day as "Halloween Kills," the sequel to 2018's "Halloween" reboot that was massively successful. So that might be a problem. But maybe with "Halloween Kills" targeting the adult audience, "The Witches" can still bring in a slightly different audience with a PG-13 rating that I would like it to own up to? We'll see how that pans out. In the meantime, if you want to give the 1990 version of "The Witches" a shot, I think its a solid choice. My grade for it is a 7/10.