Psycho's Movie Reviews #63: The Witches (1990) Vs Roald Dahl's The Witches (2020)

The Witches (1990)

The Witches is a 1990 dark fantasy comedy horror film directed by Nicolas Roeg, produced by Jim Henson and starring Anjelica Huston, Mai Zetterling, Rowan Atkinson, and Jasen Fisher. Based on the 1983 book of the same name by Roald Dahl, the story features evil witches who masquerade as ordinary women, and a boy and his grandmother who must find a way to foil their plans.

The film was produced by Jim Henson Productions for Lorimar Film Entertainment as the last theatrical film to be produced by Lorimar before the company was merged into Warner Bros. in 1993. The film was very well received by critics, and it developed a cult following over the years.

Plot:

During a vacation with his grandmother Helga in Norway, 8-year-old American boy, Luke Eveshim, is warned about witches, female demons who immensely hate children and use various methods to destroy or transform them. Helga tells Luke that unlike ordinary women, real witches have claws instead of fingernails which they hide by wearing gloves, bald heads which they cover by wearing wigs that give them rashes, square feet with no toes which they hide by wearing sensible shoes, a purple tinge in their pupils and a powerful sense of smell which they use to sniff out children. To a witch, clean children stink of dog's droppings; the dirtier the child, the less likely she is to smell them. Helga says her childhood friend, Erica, fell victim to a witch and was cursed to spend the rest of her life trapped inside a painting, aging gradually until finally disappearing a few years earlier.

After Luke's parents are killed in a car accident, Helga becomes Luke's legal guardian and they move to England. While playing outside in a treehouse, Luke is approached by a witch trying to lure him with a snake and a chocolate bar, so he stays in his treehouse for protection and the witch goes away. On Luke's 9th birthday, Helga falls ill with diabetes. Her doctor advises they spend the summer by the sea. At their seaside hotel, Luke meets and befriends a gluttonous but friendly boy, Bruno Jenkins. Luke unintentionally antagonizes the hotel manager, Mr. Stringer, after his pet mice frighten his maid girlfriend. Also at the hotel is a convention of witches, masquerading as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The Grand High Witch, the all-powerful leader of the world's witches, is attending under the name Eva Ernst.

Luke hides inside the ballroom and spies on the witches' meeting. Eva unveils her latest creation: a magic potion to turn all the world's children into mice, which will be used in confectionery products in sweet shops and candy stores to be purchased using money provided by Eva. Bruno, who was given the potion earlier, is brought into the room, turns into a mouse and flees. Luke is discovered and runs to Helga in their room but finds her resting after having a diabetes-induced dizzy spell. The witches seize Luke in the room and take him back to the ballroom, where he is forced to drink the potion and turned into a mouse before escaping. He finds Bruno and reunites with Helga, who has since recovered. Luke devises a plan to defeat the witches by sneaking into Eva's room to steal a bottle of the potion, then sneaking into the kitchen and put it into the soup for the special RSPCC party. Luke and Helga try to get Bruno to his parents, but they do not believe her story and are frightened by the mouse.

Mr. Jenkins orders the soup, though Helga stops him from consuming it. The Jenkinses finally realize Bruno is a mouse when he speaks up. As the witches enter the banquet, Miss Susan Irvine, Eva's long-suffering and mistreated assistant, quits upon being banned from the celebration. The formula turns all the witches into mice, and the staff and hotel guests join in killing them, unknowingly ridding England of its witches. Amidst the chaos, Helga spots the transformed Eva and traps her under a water jug before helpfully pointing her out to Mr. Stringer, who chops her in two with a meat cleaver. She then returns Bruno to his bewildered parents. Luke and Helga return home to where Eva's trunk full of money and an address book of all witches in the United States is delivered, allowing them to plan an operation to wipe out all the witches in America. That night, Miss Irvine, now a good witch, drives to Luke and Helga's house and returns Luke to human form, as well as his pet mice and glasses. She leaves to pay Bruno a visit, as Luke and Helga wave goodbye.

Production:

The Witches was adapted from the children's book of the same title by British author Roald Dahl. 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 died that year).

The following people did special puppeteer work in this film: Anthony Asbury, Don Austen (Bruno's mouse form), Sue Dacre, David Greenaway, Brian Henson, Robert Tygner, and Steve Whitmire (Luke's mouse form). The early portion of the film was shot in Bergen in Norway. Much of the rest was shot on location in the Headland Hotel situated on the coast in Newquay, Cornwall.

During the shoot, Rowan Atkinson caused a Mr. Bean style calamity when he left the bath taps running in his room (the frantically knocking porter was told “go away, I’m asleep”). The flood wrote off much of the production team's electrical equipment on the floor below. At the time, Huston was dating Jack Nicholson, who frequently phoned the hotel and sent huge flower bouquets, much to the excitement of the staff.

Director Nicolas Roeg later cut scenes he thought would be too scary for children after seeing his young son's reaction to the original cut.

The elaborate makeup effects for Huston's Grand High Witch took six hours to apply, and another six to remove. The prosthetics included a full face mask, hump, mechanized claws, and a withered collarbone. Huston described a monologue scene she had to do where "I was so uncomfortable and tired of being encased in rubber under hot lights for hours that the lines had ceased to make sense to me and all I wanted to do was cry."

The green vapour used extensively at the end of the film was oil based, and would obscure the contacts in Huston's eyes, which had to be regularly flushed out with water by an expert. Roeg chose a sexy costume for the character to wear and emphasized to Huston that the Grand High Witch should have sex appeal at all times, despite her grotesque appearance in certain scenes of the film.

Dahl was incensed that Roeg had changed his original ending in the script. As a gesture of conciliation, Roeg offered to film two versions before he made his final choice: the book version where Luke remains a mouse, and the happier version where he is transformed back into a human. (Upon watching the scene loyal to his book, Dahl was so moved that he was brought to tears.) However, Roeg decided to go with the changed ending, which led Dahl to demand that his name be removed entirely from the credits and to threaten a publicity campaign against the film. He was only dissuaded from this on the urging of Jim Henson.

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 Symphonie fantastique Movement V, "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath".

Release/Reception/Box Office:

The film was slated to be distributed by Lorimar, but when the company dissolved their theatrical distribution operation, it wound up sitting on the shelf for more than a year after filming was completed. The film premiered on 25 May 1990, in London and was scheduled to open the same day in the United States, but following Florida test screenings earlier that year Warner Bros. delayed the American release until August. The film took in $10,360,553 in the United States, and 266,782 in Germany.

The Witches received critical acclaim. The film holds a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on reviews from 43 critics, with an average rating of 7.55/10. The consensus reads: "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." On Metacritic it has a score of 78% based on reviews from 25 critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews".

Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, calling it "an intriguing movie, ambitious and inventive, and almost worth seeing just for Anjelica Huston's obvious delight in playing a completely uncompromised villainess."

Despite the overall positive reception, Roald Dahl disliked the film, and regarded it as "utterly appalling" and although he praised Huston’s performance as the Grand High Witch, he was critical of the ending that contrasted with his book.

The film earned £2,111,841 at the UK box office.

{I'll do my review at the end}

The Witches (2020)

Roald Dahl's The Witches, or simply The Witches, is a 2020 fantasy-comedy film directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Zemeckis, Kenya Barris, and Guillermo del Toro. It is based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Roald Dahl and is the second feature-length adaptation of the novel, after the 1990 film of the same name directed by Nicolas Roeg. The film stars Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, and Stanley Tucci, and is narrated by Chris Rock.

The Witches was released on HBO Max in the United States on October 22, 2020, also having a traditional theatrical release in some markets a week later. The film received mixed reviews from critics, who criticized its writing and deemed it inferior to Roeg's film.

Plot:

In 1968, a young boy named Charlie Hansen goes to live with his grandmother, Agatha in Demopolis, Alabama after a car accident kills his parents in Chicago. Gradually, Charlie is cheered up by Agatha who buys him a pet mouse whom he names Daisy. One day, Charlie goes to a store to buy a box of nails to train Daisy and to build a house for her as well. The boy is approached by a witch trying to lure him with a snake and a caramel, but Agatha calls him, and the witch disappears.

After telling Agatha about the encounter, Charlie learns that the witches are in fact real. She says a witch cursed her childhood friend Alice into spending the rest of her life as a chicken. Agatha says that witches never leave once they find a child. Frantically, they decide to stay in a nearby hotel where her cousin Eston is the executive chef. While there, Agatha teaches Charlie how to tell a witch from an ordinary woman: real witches have claws instead of fingernails, which they hide by wearing gloves; are bald, which they hide by wearing wigs that give them rashes; have square feet with no toes, which they hide by wearing sensible shoes; have a purple tinge in their pupils; and have a powerful sense of smell, which they use to sniff out children.

The next day, Charlie takes Daisy and a rope to do some training at a grand hall. During his walk there, he meets a gluttonous but friendly boy named Bruno, who is pulled away by his mother. Charlie then goes into the grand hall, thinking he will be alone. As he is getting ready to train Daisy, a group of witches led by their all-powerful leader, The Grand High Witch, enters the grand hall. Charlie hides under the stage, and so overhears the Grand High Witch planning to give the world's children a potion, mixed into confectionery products, that will transform them all into mice. The Grand High Witch waits for Bruno to arrive, to whom she earlier gave a chocolate bar laced with the potion. After Bruno arrives, he turns into a mouse and enters the vent where Charlie and Daisy are hiding. The Grand High Witch discovers Charlie and forcibly transforms him into a mouse with the potion, before they escape.

Fleeing to the hotel room where Charlie and his grandmother are staying, they tell Agatha about the witches' plan and discover that the Grand High Witch is staying in the hotel room below them and that Daisy was once an orphaned young human girl named Mary turned into a mouse by a witch. Charlie, Bruno, and Mary devise a plan to get a bottle of the potion so that Agatha can devise a cure to turn them back into children. The plan to get the potion is successful, but since she is unable to create a cure, they instead decide to put the potion into a broth of pea soup which will be given to the witches during their dinner. All the witches drink the soup except the Grand High Witch, who realizes that she met Agatha before; she was the witch who turned Alice into a chicken. While the mice steal the Grand High Witch's room key, the witches all begin turning into rats, and chaos ensues.

After she and the mice flee to the Grand High Witch's room, Agatha starts to collect all the potions to destroy them. The Grand High Witch finds Agatha, and prepares to kill her, but the mice intervene and trick the Grand High Witch into swallowing her own potion, transforming her into a rat. They trap her in an ice bucket and prevent her from escaping. Before they leave the room, Agatha takes the Grand High Witch's trunk full of money and also releases her cat Hades from its cage. As they close the door, Hades attacks and kills The Grand High Witch.

Since his parents can no longer accept him, Bruno joins Mary, Charlie, and Agatha to go home with The Grand High Witch's trunk and become a family. Years later, Charlie (now a grown mouse) and Agatha advise young children against the witches.

Production

Development:

Talks of a new adaptation of Dahl's novel began in December 2008, when Guillermo del Toro expressed interest in making a stop motion film. No further developments on the potential project emerged until 10 years later in June 2018, when Robert Zemeckis was hired to direct and write the script. Del Toro would produce, alongside Zemeckis and Alfonso Cuarón, in addition to having a screenplay credit.

The film takes place in Alabama during the 1960s, instead of the novel's 1980s England and Norway, and the boy protagonist is African-American, instead of Norwegian-British like the boy in the original novel and previous adaptations. Nevertheless, the adaptation was described by Zemeckis as being closer to the original novel than the 1990 adaptation, directed by Nicolas Roeg. Kenya Barris co-wrote the film.

Filming:

In January 2019, Anne Hathaway was cast in the role of Grand High Witch. Octavia Spencer was cast in February, with newcomers Jahzir Bruno and Codie-Lei Eastick also joining. In May, Stanley Tucci and Chris Rock were added. In September 2020 it was revealed that Kristin Chenoweth was cast in the film.

Casting:

Principal photography began on May 8, 2019, with filming locations including Alabama, Georgia, and at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden in Hertfordshire, England and Virginia Water Lake in Surrey, England. It was expected to wrap on June 25. On June 19, crew member Darren Langford was stabbed in the neck with a Stanley knife on the Warner Bros. Studios set in Leavesden. On March 18, 2021, crew member Johnny Walker was convicted of wounding with intent.

Marketing:

The film collaborated with a Roblox game named Islands for a limited-time Halloween event. It features a boss battle with the Grand High Witch, the main antagonist of the film.

Music:

In July 2019, Zemeckis's regular collaborator, Alan Silvestri, was revealed to be scoring the film. A soundtrack featuring Silvestri's score released by WaterTower Music on October 23, 2020.

Release/Reception/Box Office:

The Witches was scheduled to be released on October 16, 2020. On October 25, 2019, Warner Bros. moved up the release of the film by a week. However, on June 12, 2020, Warner Bros. announced that they pulled the film off the 2020 schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The film was digitally released in the United States on October 22, 2020 via HBO Max. In November, Variety reported the film was the ninth-most watched straight-to-streaming title of 2020 up to that point.

In some countries that have no access to HBO Max, the film was released in theaters a week later since its digital release.

The film was criticized for its writing, and was deemed inferior to Roeg's film. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 49% of 180 critic reviews are positive for The Witches, with an average rating of 5.5/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "The Witches misses a few spells, but Anne Hathaway's game performance might be enough to bewitch fans of this Roald Dahl tale." According to Metacritic, which sampled 31 critics and calculated a weighted average score of 47 out of 100, the film received "mixed or average reviews".

In his two out of four star review, Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times praised the special effects and the performances, but found the film to be "far too disturbing for young children and not edgy enough to captivate adults." David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a D+ calling the film "dreadful" and stating, "Zemeckis has made some unsuccessful films over the last 20 years, but The Witches is the most frustrating of them all because it feels like it could've been made by somebody else. Anybody else. Roeg's version may have scarred a generation of kids for life, but at least they remembered it." Korey Coleman of Double Toasted wrote that the film was a missed opportunity to tell "the ultimate Karen story", as the Grand High Witch displayed mannerisms associated with that stereotype, stating, "This is an entitled, rude, rich white woman who hates black people, poor people and kids, just because she feels inconvenienced by them and...is always calling the manager."

The film grossed $4.9 million in twelve countries in its first week of release. The weekend of November 20, the film made $1.2 million from 23 countries, for a running total of $15.1 million. By January 4, 2021, the film had a running total of $26 million from 32 countries.

My Review

The 1990 film adaptation of The Witches was produced by Jim Henson, and The Witches is considered one of the scariest children's movies ever made. The 2020 remake promised to significantly depart from the 1990 movie by changing the setting and time period from the source material. Written by Robert Zemeckis, Kenya Barris, and Guillermo del Toro, this version of The Witches tried to lean even further into the terrifying dark comedy while updating the story for a modern audience.

Although the 1990 adaptation of The Witches did not do well at the box office when it was released, it has amassed a cult following in the years since. The 2020 remake was marketed as a major blockbuster and had been scheduled for a theatrical release before it was pulled from the release schedule due to the coronavirus pandemic and moved to HBO Max. Considering all of the changes that The Witches 2020 made, how does it compare to the success of the 1990 cult classic — and to the reputation of the original novel?

How The Witches 2020 compares to Roald Dahl's Book:

One of the most significant changes that The Witches 2020 makes to the novel is changing the setting. Instead of England and Norway in the 1980s, The Witches 2020 takes place in Alabama in the 1960s. The unnamed white narrator is replaced with a young Black boy named Charlie Hansen (Jahzir Kadeem Bruno) and his grandmother Agatha (Octavia Spencer.) Subsequently, this changes the central mythology in The Witches: the titular Witches, led by the Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway) are specifically targeting children who they claim no one will miss, meaning underprivileged children or children of colour, like Charlie.

While the setting change to 1960s Alabama in The Witches 2020 was an opportunity for the movie to add a layer of social commentary, that thread is quickly abandoned after Charlie and Agatha arrive at the hotel, and unfortunately it is not picked up again. From that point on, The Witches 2020 progresses almost exactly like the novel. Although the failure to follow through on the 1960s setting is a disappointment, The Witches 2020 still maintains the horror-fantasy feeling of Dahl's original novel, imbued with a lingering sense of dread from the very start, when a Witch tries to abduct Charlie and he and Agatha flee to a hotel to escape. The Witches 2020 is an excellent and faithful adaptation of the original novel, for better or for worse.

How The Witches 2020 compares to The Witches 1990:

Unlike The Witches 2020, the 1990 adaptation maintained the novel's original time period and setting. In this version, the narrator is a boy named Luke Eveshim, and he and his grandmother travel to the hotel after she falls ill from diabetes and her doctor recommends that they go to the coast. In contrast, in The Witches 2020 they are already on the run from Witches by the time they arrive at the hotel and accidentally stumble on their nest, and the constant threat of discovery pervades the movie from the very beginning.

The decision in The Witches 2020 to make the narrator and his grandmother Black instead of a well-off white family is a major improvement to the story. Much like Jordan Peele's Get Out, the change adds a layer of realistic fear and terror regarding Charlie's precarious place in the world and the institutional threat that the Witches represent to him. Even though the thread is dropped, it's important to the story that the Witches are deliberately targeting underprivileged children — it turns Charlie's fear of the Witches into something much more realistic and prescient, and it's something that was missing from the 1990 film.

The other significant change The Witches 2020 made was to the special effects. The Witches 1990 was produced by puppeteer Jim Henson, and was an incredible showcase of the practical effects and puppetry that he used to bring the fantasy element of the film to life. The Witches 2020 suffers comparatively from an overuse of CGI that sends the film to the precipice of the uncanny valley. The most terrifying moment in The Witches 1990 is when the Grand High Witch (Anjelica Hutson) peels off her face to reveal her true, grotesque form, and The Witches 2020 never manages to match the visceral horror of its predecessor.

The Witches 1990 made the controversial decision to change the ending of Roald Dahl's novel. In the book, the narrator remains a mouse for the rest of his life after his transformation. He accepts the reality of his much shorter lifespan, saying that he doesn't want to outlive his grandmother anyways, and the lack of a happy ending contributes to the high stakes and horror in the book. The 1990 movie has a radically different ending, where the long-suffering assistant of the Grand High Witch becomes good and transforms the narrator back into a boy. Roald Dahl famously hated the new ending, to the point where he was threatening to remove his name from the film entirely.

The Witches 2020 returns to the original ending from the novel — with a twist. Like in the book, Charlie never turns back into a boy, resigning himself to live his life as a mouse. Unlike the book, The Witches 2020 reveals that Charlie, now a much older mouse voiced by Chris Rock, is already preparing an army of children trained to take down the Witches with the Formula 86 Delayed-Action Mouse-Maker that he used to destroy the Grand High Witch and her cohorts. Comparatively, the novel ends with the narrator and his grandmother planning to travel to Norway and destroy the Witches there, while at the end of The Witches 2020, it's clear that plan is well underway.

The Witches 2020 might be a better adaptation of the novel, but that doesn't mean it's a better movie. The Witches 2020 keeps the terrifying ending of Dahl's book, but sacrifices the gut-wrenching effects and legitimate horror of the 1990 film. Although social commentary is introduced, The Witches never follows up in a meaningful way. The Witches 2020 is a beautifully made movie and The Witches 1990 is a terrifying one — but Roald Dahl's original novel is the best The Witches of them all.

In conclusion, I highly recommend both versions of the movie if you haven't already watched them;

* The Witches 1990; 9/10

* The Witches 2020; 8/10

{In my opinion, The Witches 1990 will forever reign superior}.