The novelty of dark and weird kid’s movies has always been popular in several different decades, but it’s hard to pretend like the quintessential period for wanting to traumatize your children wasn’t the 1980s. While earlier Disney had its fair share of messed up qualities and current children’s television have gotten away with far more now than they could before in terms of complex, mature and of course, disturbing content, the 80s was home to several kid’s movies that felt like they were made specifically to horrify your child to the point where they would never forget them, whether for good or bad reasons. From Watership Down, Secret to Nimh, Return to Oz, Labyrinth, etc, each one houses a strong feeling of creepiness underneath its fantastical nature, and despite these movies being pretty iconic names, it’s important not to ignore the freaky imagery they left on those who witnessed them, and arguably one of the most crushingly memorable movies of the type was the 1990 film based on the popular book by renowned children’s author, Roald Dahl, The Witches. During a vacation in Norway, a young boy named Luke (played by Jasen Fisher) is forced to live with his grandmother, Helga (played by Mai Zetterling) after his parents meet a tragic fate. Being a woman who is greatly informed on the ways and rules of witches to how they look, how you can spot them and how they steal children, she trains Luke on how to detect and avoid them which will need to be put to good use when the two head to a hotel where the Grand High Witch (played by Angelica Huston) is meeting with every other witch in the world. After hearing of an evil plan to kill every child in the world through the use of a magic potion that will turn children into mice and make them easier to catch and to eat. After being turned into a mouse himself, Luke along with a fellow child also turned into a mouse named Bruno (played by Charlie Potter) and his grandmother need to devise a plan to stop the witches before they enact their massacre. Based on the popularly creepy Roald Dahl book, this movie captures that similarly terrifying atmosphere which is crafted through delightfully intense direction and overly invested acting. While still featuring some issues, the film’s passion and even desire to truly scare children in a way that still resulted in a movie they can sit through is weirdly admirable.

It’s fitting that if you want to properly adapt a Roald Dahl story that, even by his standards, is going pretty heavy on scary material (you’d be surprised how many children are dead or at least maimed in his books), that for the movie based on said book, you get a director whose filmography is populate with adult-based flicks that range from adventure, sci and even thrillers with his most notable being the 1973 film, Don’t Look Now, that being Nicholas Roeg. He is able to craft this pretty simple story into something that really elevates its uncomfortable creep factor to the point where it manages to get scares on both a fantasy level and on a realistic level. The way children are taken by witches can be hauntingly creative (especially the first reveal involving a painting), but there’s also this uncomfortable feeling of ‘’stranger danger’’ whenever they come face to face with the kids in this movie, it weirdly fits all the criteria for freaking kids out on an extreme and on a subtle level, yet doesn’t overstep itself to the point that kids wouldn’t want to continue watching. The movie honestly feels like its run by its scary atmosphere as the actual meat of the story isn’t anything that special or even that interesting to follow, which probably explains why the movie feels a bit split in parts. While the first half is pretty enjoyable and engaging, the second half starts to get a bit dull as it keeps going. The movie provides a lot of crazy insane visuals in the second half and a climax that given the context is surprisingly graphic, but they are mostly reserved towards the end while a majority of the second and third acts are just scenes that feel pretty repetitive and standard in nature. This movie is clearly on when it’s doing something extreme and wildly different from the norm, it really likes those specific dark scenes and portrays them in a pretty faithful way for a majority of the movie. The script for this film written by Allan Scott (another filmmaker known for working in more adult-oriented material and who helped write Don’t Look Now) does a good job at emulating Dahl’s dialogue and creatively morbid imagery in a way that is equally fantastical and creepily real at the same time, but it mostly works in a cinematic fashion as well despite some of the obvious problems with the later parts of the film. The movie’s ending is very different in tone to how the book end’s and despite Roald Dahl himself being pretty against it (and fairly so), it doesn’t destroy the movie overall. While it’s obviously tacked on after the higher ups didn’t want it to end on a less than perfect note, it’s just moreso so sudden and weird rather than anger inducing.

The actors in this movie are really putting in effort to work as these pretty standard cartoon characters but portray them in an enjoyable enough way that it doesn’t come across as too forceful. While everyone in this movie doesn’t really act like real people, they act in a believable enough way that makes what they say feel more genuine and that they really believe what they are saying. It’s true that for a world and a movie that’s so off-the-walls and insane, the main kid, Luke, is really not that interesting to be around. He’s kind of just supposed to be a bland everyday kid thrown into this magical horror situation, but in an environment where people feel pretty odd and larger-than-life, it’s a shame he couldn’t be a little stranger. Also, the actor for him isn’t the best, but he’s a kid so it’s really not a big deal. Also, some of the side characters feel pretty wasted with actors like Rowan Atkinson and Jane Horrocks being perfectly fine and talented in their own rights, but don’t really stand out strongly enough to feel like legitimate characters and rather just themselves inserted into the movie. Where the real enjoyability comes from is Mai Zetterling as the grandmother, who has a kind but grizzly attitude that’s soft and tough in the right moments, and Anjelica Huston as the Grand High Witch, who is so enjoyably over the top that she is easily the best part of the whole experience. Seeing her play this character who hides her shouty brutishly wicked nature under this figure of grace and elegance is a fun role for someone like her to play and she does a really great job at conveying both sides. Her outwardly haggard and witchy design provides a striking image and despite how over-the-top goofy her performance can be in both the normal and monstrous forms, this movie’s tone makes it so that she can come across as pretty creepy in moments as well.

The effects for this movie are still impressive even to this day and really do help this movie not only stand up within this generation, but also helps make the scary elements all the more effective because they feel legitimate. It’s true there’s an occasional awkward make-up job on the extras and some of the mouse puppets look a little too unrealistic from a distant (which is especially weird considering the movie was produced by Jim Henson Productions who notoriously have fantastic puppet work), but the rest of the effects result in some truly creative and truly creepy creations. Since some of the special effects people helped work on Alien, it makes sense how some of these creature designs are so wonderful expressive and grotesquely engaging. The Grand High Witch’s design looks so amazing and so massively uncomfortable that you really appreciate how Anjelica Huston worked in that make-up for such a long scene. While the music for the film composed by Stanley Myers is strangely off-beat in the opening half of this movie which does result in an uncomfortable mood, it isn’t as odd-ball as it continues, yet still gets the job done. A lot of the camera angles handled by director of photography, Harvey Harrison, do a great job making the witches in this movie look and feel threatening even if in the movie, they can come across as a pretty clutsy. There’s some fun framing here and there and even a few creatively weird shots that feel like they exist just to make things creepier, yet they don’t feel out of place or like they’re trying to show off, it really does a good job at making this hotel feel more unpleasant and disturbing. It’s always trying to find that correct balance between genuine skin-crawling and creepy in a fun way, and both types of scares do pop up throughout the film.

Overall, The Witches is a memorably dark kids movie from the 80s which managed to capture that specific cynical mindset that Roald Dahl stories usually have but made it ten times more effective through the directing, the acting and the imagery. There are some wonderful dark creepy moments in this movie that will even make some adults wince in certain points, and even with the recent remake in 2020 dumbing down some of the practical effects and not really changing too much to warrant its creation, it shows that it has left its mark on people who’ve seen it and will most likely never be forgotten by them either. It’s true that it’s not for everybody and it does have its own share of flaws, but if you wish to see what one of the scariest kids’ movies from the 80s, this is the one to check out.

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