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The Witches (1990 film)

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The Witches
File:Witches poster.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed byNicolas Roeg
Screenplay byAllan Scott
Produced byJim Henson
Mark Shivas
Dusty Symonds
StarringJasen Fisher
Anjelica Huston
Mai Zetterling
Rowan Atkinson
CinematographyHarvey Harrison
Edited byTony Lawson
Music byStanley Myers
Production
companies
Distributed byWarner Bros.
Release dates
United Kingdom
25 May 1990
United States
24 August 1990
Australia
30 September 1990
Running time
92 minutes
CountriesUnited Kingdom
United States
LanguageEnglish
Box office$10,360,553 (North America)[1]

The Witches is a 1990 comedy horror drama film based on the book of the same name by Norwegian-British author Roald Dahl.[2] It was directed by Nicolas Roeg and produced by Jim Henson Productions for Lorimar Film Entertainment and Warner Bros., starring Anjelica Huston, Mai Zetterling and Rowan Atkinson. As well as being the final film that Jim Henson personally worked on before his death, this was also the final theatrical film produced by Lorimar Productions as well as the final film Mai Zetterling worked in and the last film made based on Dahl's material before his death in 1990.

Plot

An old Norwegian woman named Helga (Mai Zetterling) warns her American grandson Luke (Jasen Fisher) about witches, demonic females who hate and destroy children. Helga explains that witches reside in every country in the world. While they look and act like ordinary women, it is really an elaborate facade. About the only way to tell them apart when undisguised is by their purple eyes. She tells him of her childhood friend, Erika, who was ensnared by a witch and trapped inside an oil painting until the day she died. It is also hinted that Helga herself was nearly destroyed by a witch when she was younger, losing one of her fingers in the process.

After Luke's parents are then killed in a car crash, he and Helga move to England. While playing in his treehouse, a black-clad woman (Anne Lambton) approaches him from below, and from her purple eyes he realises that she is a witch. The woman tries to entice Luke with a snake. Luke hopes for his grandmother to come and get him, but then, the woman offers him a chocolate bar instead. Suddenly, Helga interrupts the witch's coaxing and the witch walks away.

On Luke's ninth birthday, Helga falls ill and is diagnosed with diabetes, and the doctor recommends a holiday by the seaside to recover. They visit a hotel in Cornwall where it happens that a children's charity group called "The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children" (RSPCC) is holding its annual meeting. Shortly after Luke and Helga arrive, the RSPCC's chairwoman Eva Ernst (Anjelica Huston) also books into the hotel. Helga first spots Miss Ernst at tea, and recognizes her from her past, although she cannot remember exactly who she is or where she knew her from.

Luke wanders around the hotel with his pet mice. He ends up in a wide, deserted ballroom and hides behind a screen to train his mice. Suddenly, the RSPCC's members flood into the room. When Luke notices one woman with purple eyes, and another scratching under her wig (with a gloved hand), he realizes that the "RSPCC" is really a convention of witches. After the doors are securely locked, the witches unveil their true selves - peeling off their gloves to reveal their clawed hands and their wigs to reveal bald, pimpled scalps. "Miss Ernst" removes her beautiful human face mask to reveal a hideous and hunchbacked hag-like body beneath her elegant exterior. Luke now realizes that she is the witches' feared ruler, the Grand High Witch.

The Grand High Witch reveals she has had enough with her English underlings' dithering and failure to eliminate enough children. She orders that all of the country's children be exterminated, and has come up with a master plan to help them along. A witch named Beatrice (Nora Connolly) quietly scorns the idea, but the Grand High Witch overhears her. As punishment for the witch's insolence, the Grand High Witch incinerates Beatrice with magic beams projected from her eyes. Afterwards, the Grand High Witch goes on to discuss specifics of her plan. She orders the witches to resign from their jobs when they return to their homes and buy candy stores with money she will give them. She then tells them to lace their confectionery with a magic formula she has just brewed up, called "Formula 86," a potion which turns anyone who ingests it into a mouse. She plans to give each witch a bottle containing 500 doses — enough to wipe out an entire small town's population of children. The Grand High Witch explains that ingesting one dose of the formula causes delayed transformation two hours after it has been taken. However, more than five doses causes the formula to work instantly.

To show how the formula works, the Grand High Witch lures another boy at the hotel called Bruno Jenkins (Charlie Potter), whom Luke had met earlier, to the conference room with the promise of chocolate. The Grand High Witch had given him one dose of a contaminated chocolate bar two hours earlier in the day and promised him more chocolate if he met her in the conference room later. His arrival time planned perfectly as a demonstration for the witches to see how the formula works. After the witches hurriedly put their disguises back on, Bruno walks in. At precisely 6:15 pm, Bruno turns into a mouse on the stage.

Just as the witches are about to leave, one of them, a maid at the hotel, catches Luke's scent. The other witches sniff Luke out as well, forcing him to make a break for it before they can corner him. The witches chase him, hellbent on eliminating someone who has spied on their affairs, but Luke initially escapes back to his grandmother's hotel room after fleeing through a fire escape and onto the beach (after saving a baby that the Grand High Witch had pushed down a steep hill in its pram in a failed attempt to lure Luke into a trap) before re-entering the building.

Helga remains in a deep sleep (unconfirmed later by Luke as either magically induced or possibly diabetes induced). The Grand High Witch then appears in Helga's room, and identifies Helga as a "very old adversary." She kidnaps Luke and returns to the conference room, somehow avoiding being caught on her way down. With all of the witches watching, she pours an entire bottle of Formula 86 down his throat, thus instantly transforming him into a second mouse, leaving behind his shirt, pants and underwear. He escapes through a hole in the wall before the witches can trample him to death.

Luke finds Bruno, and the two reach Helga, now awake. They explain to her that all of England's witches, as well as the Grand High Witch, are in the hotel. Later, with Helga's help, Luke steals a bottle of Formula 86 from the Grand High Witch's room. Luke plans to turn the tables on the witches by slipping Formula 86 into their food. Helga then tries to tell Bruno's parents (Bill Paterson and Brenda Blethyn) what has happened, but they don't believe her.

All the witches attend the banquet, except the Grand High Witch's mistreated assistant Anne Irvine (Jane Horrocks), who resigns after an argument. Helga slips Luke into the kitchen, and Luke drops the Formula 86 into a batch of cress soup specially prepared for the "RSPCC" party. Luke detects that one of the cooks in the kitchen preparing the soup is also a witch. She taste tests the spiked batch before it is served. Having ingested a massive overdose, she turns into a mouse several minutes later. The witch-cook races into the dining room to warn the other witches not to eat the soup. Mistaking the talking mouse for a transformed child, a witch seated next to the Grand High Witch (the same witch Luke encounters earlier in the film) squelches the mouse under her boot.

Helga notices Bruno's father is about to eat the soup which he demanded from the manager, Mr. Stringer (Rowan Atkinson) even though it was not on the standard menu. After Helga tips out his soup and returns Bruno to his parents, she offers to reveal to them who is responsible for Bruno's alteration. As she is preparing to tell them who did it, chaos breaks out as all the witches start turning into mice.

The Grand High Witch is petrified as she watches all of her witches transform around her, as she herself seems to be unaffected at first. Noticing Helga across the room, the Grand High Witch advances menacingly upon Helga until Bruno leaps onto her and bites her. The formula finally begins to work and the Grand High Witch turns into a repulsive, snarling, hairless mouse. Soon both hotel staff and guests are attacking and killing the rodents, unknowingly getting rid of England's witches. After Helga traps the Grand High Witch under a water jug, she points her out to Mr. Stringer, who kills her with a meat cleaver.

As Luke and Helga then return home from the hotel, Miss Irvine watches from a window and smiles as the taxi departs.

Later on, Luke surprises Helga when a trunk is delivered to their house. In it is all of the money the Grand High Witch planned to use to turn England's children into mice, as well as an address book filled with the names and addresses of every witch in America. They discuss their plans to return there by ship.

Later that night when both have gone to sleep, Miss Irvine drives up to Luke and Helga's house. She uses her magic to turn Luke back into a human and returns his glasses, clothes, underwear and pet mice. As Miss Irvine is in the car about to drive away, it is observed that she no longer wears gloves or square-toed shoes or wears a wig, as she has turned over a new leaf and decided to use her powers to do good. While Miss Irvine leaves to help Bruno, Luke and Helga look out of the window and wave goodbye.

Cast

Puppeteers

The following have done special puppeteer work in this film.

Reception

During the 1980s, Nicholas Roeg made a string of films that got mixed reviews or were simply disliked.[citation needed] Those that did appear in theaters ran for a short time or went to independent release. However with The Witches, he returned to mainstream film and the film opened to critical praise as it had the best of both worlds. It was a film featuring the puppetry of Jim Henson (of Muppet fame) and the hallmarks of Nicholas Roeg's offbeat storytelling. Though it was liked by critics and audiences alike, it performed poorly at the box office.[3]

Roald Dahl regarded the film as "utterly appalling" because of the ending that contrasted from the book.[4]

Awards[5]

Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films

BAFTA Awards

Boston Society of Film Critics Awards

Fantasporto

  • 1991
    -Nominated- International Fantasy Film Award for Best Film Nicolas Roeg

Hugo Awards

Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards

National Society of Film Critics Awards

Filming locations

The whole section in the start of the film (until they move to the United Kingdom) is shot in Bergen in Norway, and both Erica and Luke's grandmother Helga speak Norwegian in some parts. The street where they live is called Nykirkesmuget. The police officers drive Norwegian police cars with both Norwegian uniforms and license plates. Much of the film was shot on location in the Headland Hotel[6] (which was named "Hotel Excelsior" in the film) situated on the coast in Newquay, Cornwall.

Release

The film was premièred on 25 May 1990 in London.

The film took $10,360,553 (USA) and 266,782 (Germany)

Home media

The film has been released to VHS and to DVD in 2005, however both version (and any TV screenings) contain a full frame crop from the original wide-screen (1.85:1) format.

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."

Differences from the book

  • The child protagonist and his grandmother aren't actually named in the book, nor is The Grand High Witch; the movie gives them names.
  • The grandmother tells five different stories about five different children who had encounters with witches in the book; in the movie she tells only the story about the girl who was put into a painting.
  • In the book, the boy's parents are Norwegian while the boy was born in England; in the movie, the boy and his mother are American, while the father was born in Norway and moved to the United States.
  • In the novel, witches have long, cat-like claws; in the film, witches have deformed hands rather than claws, although The Grand High Witch herself does have claws.
  • In the book, it says that although their lack of toes would make in uncomfortable to wear pointed pretty shoes, the witches dare not wear comfy shoes, and must suffer, as they do with their wigs, to hide themselves, while a slight limp is apparently one way to detect a witch; in the movie, it says they wear the comfortable shoes, and that it is one way to spot them.
  • The movie omits the blue spit and shell-like nostrils as clues to a witch.
  • In the book, the narrator is in the car crash that kills his parents, and escapes with a small cut on his head; in the movie, his parents are going out for the evening (though it is not mentioned why), and leave him with his grandmother when it occurs.
  • The book has them moving permanently to England on his parent's wishes in their will (back home, living in the narrator's old house); in the movie, they go there as the grandmother owns a house there, and Luke's parents had enrolled him in a school there, before they had died (it was implied they would be going back to America later).
  • The Grand High Witch in the book is a petite woman, barely reaching five feet in height; in the film, she is tall and imposing, with an aloof and aristocratic demeanor.
  • In the book, the nationality of The Grand High Witch is unknown, other than that she lives in Norway; in the film, she appears to be of German origin, and has an extremely guttural Germanic accent (she is also observed in a couple of scenes speaking German phrases, and has a cat called "Liebchen", German for 'sweetheart'.
  • The Grand High Witch never took off her wig, gloves, and shoes in the book; she does in the film.
  • In the book, witches' eyes constantly change colour; in the film, witches have purple eyes.
  • In the book, the grandmother gets a bad case of pneumonia and the doctor orders her to cancel a planned holiday to Norway, instead prescribing the holiday in the hotel; in the movie, she gets diabetes, and there is no talk of holidaying in Norway at all.
  • The movie implies that The Grand High Witch and the grandmother have a history, while there is nothing in the book to suggest this.
  • In the book, the first interaction between Bruno and the boy culminates in a physical struggle when the boy tries to stop Bruno from burning ants with his magnifying glass, and so they do not become friends; in the film, he meets Bruno in the dining room nibbling the raisins off scones before teatime, and they immediately start on good terms when Bruno is amiable and polite to him, eventually becoming friends and sharing a good-natured goodbye at the end.
  • The character of Miss Irvine does not exist in the book.
  • In the book, the younger witches have to find the ingredients for Formula 86 and make it themselves, with only the elderly witches getting bottles of the potion; in the film, all the witches get a bottle.
  • In the book, the boy is cornered by the witches and turned into a mouse instantly; in the movie, he escapes from the witches and tries to get to his grandmother, before they ambush him and turn him into a mouse.
  • In the opening scene, Helga explains that every country has a High Witch, and from their interaction with The Grand High Witch, it is implied that either The Woman In Black or Nicola hold this position; however, in the book there is no mention of a High Witch in each country.
  • The endings are very different: the book ends with the boy — still a mouse — and his grandmother planning to travel around the world to exterminate all the other witches, while the boy is happy that as a mouse he won't outlive his grandmother; in the movie, Miss Irvine renounces evil and turns Luke back into a boy.
  • In the book, it is implied that Bruno's parents don't want him as a mouse, and the boy said he wouldn't be surprised if Bruno's father gave him to the hall-porter to drown in the fire-bucket; in the movie, it is suggested that Miss Irvine will turn him back into a boy as well.
  • Furthermore, in the book, Bruno's parents are downright rude and snobbish; while in the film, they are still snobby but much nicer and more sociable than in the book.

See also

References

  1. ^ "The Witches (1990)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved June 30, 2010.
  2. ^ "Bewitched, Bothered, Buried Under Latex". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2010-10-18.
  3. ^ "WEEKEND BOX OFFICE : 'Darkman' Shines Among New Releases". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2011-01-02.
  4. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4660873.stm
  5. ^ IMDB The Witches Awards
  6. ^ "The Headland Hotel". The Headland Hotel. Retrieved 2012-10-24.


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