Featured Creature The Rat File 1: The one with witches

 

Title: The Witches

What Year?: 1990

Classification: Mashup

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

As I’ve pondered the possibilities for this feature, one thing that’s become clear is that a lot of the material not yet covered could easily fall into their own genres and odder subniches. I already covered some examples of these, like Leviathan and the strange dead end of underwater sci fi, and I tried doing a dedicated spinoff for fantasy movies starting with The Dark Crystal. With this review, I’m going into the middle ground, the kind of offbeat branch of the genre that’s worth more than a representative example but not really enough to sustain a feature of its own. As it happens, the one that I’m kicking off with wasn’t even really on my radar when I first considered the idea, but once it came up in my regular reconnaissance, I knew it belonged here. I present The Witches, as nothing less than a definitive example of the rat movie, and needless to say, it’s the only one under consideration made for kids.

Our story begins with an introduction to a orphaned boy named Luke and his grandmother, who tells terrifying stories of her own encounter with witches. Per the grandmother, witches are neither cultists engaged in black magic and human sacrifice nor misunderstood practitioners of a pre-Christian religious tradition, but mutated humanoids who use their seemingly innate supernatural or psychic powers to kill children out of pure hatred. When the pair go on vacation, Luke quickly recognizes that a number of the guests are witches in disguise as ordinary women. With help from a new friend named Bruno, he discovers that the hotel is hosting an international gathering of witches with a new scheme to wipe out the world’s children  turning them into mice. Before they can act, both boys are captured and transformed. Can the boys turned mice turn the tables on the witches? And if they win, will anyone be left to make them human again? Spoiler- not if you go by the book!

The Witches was a 1990 film based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Roald Dahl, made by Lorimar Films and Jim Henson Productions. The film was distributed by Warner Bros following the dissolution of Lorimar, resulting in a reported delay of more than a year. The film was directed by the late Nicolas Roeg, whose credits included Don’t Look Now and The Man Who Fell To Earth, with Jim Henson credited as producer.  The cast was led byAngelica Huston as the Grand High Witch and Mai Zetterling as grandmother Helga, with Jasen Fisher as Luke and Rowan Atkinson as the hotel manager Stringer. The film’s effects included puppet/ animatronic mice from the Henson crew and further makeup for the true form of Huston’s character. The film was a likely disappointment at the time of release, earning $15 million against an estimated budget of $11M, but gained in popularity on home video. Dahl condemned the film for changing the ending of the book, though he reportedly praised Huston. Jim Henson died immediately before the film's general release, while Dahl died near the end of the year,  Zetterling died in 1994, with over 60 TV and film roles beginning in 1941 and a number of additional credits as director and screenwriter.

For my experiences, I know the original book and some others by Dahl from of old. I recall reading the book in part because the movie raised my interest, but never watched the film. In hindsight, the book is a very dark tale even compared of his adult fiction like “Man From the South”, which also somehow fell into my hands back when (see the Hitchcock anthology post). The villains are terrifyingly powerful and incomprehensible in their motivations, the protagonists remain at an overwhelming disadvantage, and the ending is no better than an arguable Pyrrhic victory. My usual world’s-worst-superpower memory must have kicked in stronger than usual, as I had no trouble looking up scenes I remembered when I picked up a copy sometime around the end of 2021. While that still didn’t motivate me to see the movie, I did end up getting it in my rental queue right when I was making room to read the book. That left me with a fresh perspective as I watched it, with no immediate intention of reviewing it until one or two hilarious failures left me with literally nothing else on deck. So, I went in with only the one viewing a couple days back, and the real surprise is that I’m not having any trouble.

Moving in, the foremost thing to say is that this is the kind of material where rational analysis must be disregarded as the outset. Dahl’s tale, more than usual, proceeds on the half-logic of a child’s nightmare, and it’s impressive enough that the film makes no effort to “improve” the situation. Of course, the witches have no logical motive, or for that matter any backstory that might explain what they are or how they could sustain themselves if the normal reproduction of the human species was ended. Of course, the setting and timing of their scheme is as disastrously ill-advised as selling weed in the middle of the cops’ favorite donut shop. Of course, the villains would be easily exposed or at least put on the defensive if the families of their victims went to the authorities with a prosaic charge of kidnapping or abuse. This is all like saying that if you left for school in your underwear, someone would point it out and send you home long before you got there. Again, it’s an honest approach to the source material. This is as good a point as any to state my further suspicion, that the cop-out happy ending was put in to provide a “good” witch as much as to soften the ending of the book.

After this much space, it might seem like I’m treating the central element that got the movie here as an afterthought. This is in fact a non-trivial problem with the film itself. While I can’t check the exact times, the transformations happen at least a third of the way through a quite short movie. The subsequent adventures are done with a combination of puppetry and live animals, and there’s no serious attempt to hide which is which. Within their limitations, the Muppet mice are always convincing in representing the characters and their emotions even if they don’t seem to try to be “realistic”.  It’s of further interest that the action sequence that really matters in the kitchen is relatively subdued compared to the slapstick of many a cat-and-mouse chase. The hero mostly manages to escape attention as he completes his mission, then when he is detected, the staff remain surprisingly levelheaded as they try to catch him. I was especially amused by a butcher who only stood out on reviewing a few online clips, who simply swings a cleaver without interrupting his work.

Meanwhile, I’m going longer for the witches, who are by all means fitting antagonists. Th as petty and vain in each other’s company as they are inscrutably malevolent in their treatment of the protagonists. In the process, they generate a lot of worthy “one scene” I felt I couldn’t leave unmentioned. There’s the introductory tale of a girl trapped in a painting , which I remembered from the book more vividly than anything else. There’s a minor witch literally incinerated over what amounts to a point of protocol. There’s a transformed witch from within the hotel staff who tries to warn their leader, only to be dispatched without further thought. Then the most mindboggling moment is a chase scene where the witches pursue Luke. In the middle of it, the Grand High Witch pushes a baby carriage downhill, perhaps to force the boy to delay his own escape. If that is the intent, it certainly works, but with this bunch, can we really be sure they understand ordinary human reactions any better than we understand them?

For the “one scene”, though, I decided to go with the ending, which I confirmed was filmed in a different version that got far enough for test screenings, only to disappear. After the defeat of the witches, we find Luke talking to his grandmother while he rides a toy train. Of course, what won me over is that multiple closeups clearly show that it’s from the Lego Space line, which I of course have a misbegotten collection of. The shots make both the toy and the in-scale puppet look very good. There’s one more good line as Luke muses if he will ever get to drive a real car, as the train disappears into a tunnel. It’s a good sequence that really feels like it would be fun for the kid, without downplaying the implications of rodent mortality in the book. I can believe that this was about where the movie was intended to end, and certainly the note I would have said it should have ended on.

In closing, the one thing I find I still want to add is why Dahl’s work was ever accepted for children. It’s long since become axiomatic that his work is extremely dark, with plenty of extra cringe both from the contend and the author’s personal life. (Seriously… don’t look it up.) I think The Witches encapsulates why his work resonates with real children. At face value, it’s a harsh ending, but it’s balanced with an upbeat note if you’re willing to look for it. For me personally, after decades of self-advocacy, semi-employment and generally figuring out who I am, it feels more relevant to my life than it ever could have when I first read the book. There are going to be times when you can’t fix what’s gone wrong, what you’ve suffered and ultimately who you are. But you can still keep going, keep learning, and hunt down your enemies one by one. It may still be a warped message, but it’s just right for a  kid to hear and an adult to remember. With that, I can call it a day.