The Witches

The Witches (1990) is about a boy living with his grandmother. She tells him that witches are real and that they hate children. The two of them go to a hotel by the sea, where a witches' convention happens to be taking place. Its subject is turning every child in England into a mouse. The source is Roald Dahl's 1983 novel. Nicolas Roeg directed, and Jim Henson's Creature Shop built the prosthetics and animatronics for the scene revealing the witches' real faces, along with all the mice. It was the last film Jim Henson worked on before his death; Jim Henson Productions co-produced it. Its most contested element is the ending. In the book the boy stays a mouse and accepts the short life left to him with his grandmother. Before the decision was made, Henson offered to shoot both endings, the book's and a happier alternative. Dahl watched a rough cut with his own ending during the edit and was moved by it. Henson and Roeg nevertheless chose the happier version. Dahl then demanded his name be taken off the credits and threatened a campaign against the film, dropping it only after Henson talked him out of it. Anjelica Huston plays the Grand High Witch. The makeup took six hours to apply and six to remove. She won the Boston, Los Angeles and National Society of Film Critics awards for it. It cost eleven million dollars and grossed only 15.3 million worldwide. It runs 91 minutes. Good for: Roald Dahl adaptations, practical creature effects, and Anjelica Huston. Less good for: the witches' real faces are genuinely frightening for small children and the film has been argued about for that reason for years. The changed ending softens the whole point of the book. The first half hour is slow.