THE WITCHES: Blu-ray (Lorimar, 1990) Warner Archive

More of a dud than a dynamo, and regrettably so for collaborators Jim Henson and Roald Dahl - both died the same year as its release - Nicholas Roeg’s The Witches (1990) is a bizarre outing – a crazy quilt of putrid and pacifying wigs, warts and wannabes, puppetry and loosely scripted plot points, based on Dahl’s children’s book. It is a picture that owes a lot of its latter-day cult status to Henson’s reputation, borrowing, at least stylistically, from his other darkly plotted – and vastly superior efforts exuded on 1982’s The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth (1986). The Witches, alas, was Henson’s swan song; the innovator behind all those lovable and wildly popular creatures, beloved the world over on TV’s The Muppet Show (1976-81) dying of toxic shock syndrome, age 53. The Witches was also the final theatrical hurrah for Lorimar, the production house that had swallowed whole the old MGM backlot in 1978, and, for a brief wrinkle in time, established itself as a force to be reckoned with on the small screen, producing such prime time runaway hits as The Waltons (1971-81), Eight is Enough (1977-81), Dallas (1978-91), Falcon Crest (1981-90), Perfect Strangers (1986-93) and Full House (1987-95). Alas, the company had far less success in its theatrical features. Of the many it either produced or distributed, only perhaps four or five have outlasted the company’s reputation. Meanwhile, Roeg, renowned for his quirky visual and narrative panache, categorized by fragmented and foxing edits, and, whose relatively brief directorial career was exemplified by such diverse offerings as Performance (1970), Walkabout (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) and, Bad Timing (1980), was not altogether well-suited to direct The Witches; a Norwegian fable, made sexually grotesque and sinister, even slightly perverse by Anjelica Huston’s incarnation of Miss Eva Ernst – a.k.a. the Grand High Witch.

Travelling to Bergen, Norway for the movie’s prologue, narrated with ominous presence of mind by Mai Zetterling as the otherwise kindly, Helga Eveshim - grandma to the orphaned Luke (Jasen Fisher), most of the picture actually took place inside Cornwall’s Headland Hotel. The early scenes in the film depict Luke as a mostly bewildered child, who loses his parents (Darcy Flynn and Vincent Marzello) under mysterious circumstances, but then becomes immersed in his grandmother’s captivating tales of witches lurking about every corner in modern-age society, hellbent on consuming the children of the world.  At first, disbelieving of their existence, Luke’s skepticism is tested by a mysterious stranger with searing purple eyes who tempts him from his tree house perch with a chocolate bar. Allan Scott’s screenplay lingers endlessly on these pointless particulars. The main titles, sailing over snow-capped mountains to the bouncy strains of Stanley Myers’ main title – is a sequence with virtually zero connection to the actual plot. We witness Helga, who has a sweet tooth, suffer a diabetic episode. Mercifully, she survives and is attended to by a kindly doctor (Serena Harragin) who still performs house calls. After the police arrive with the devastating news Luke’s parents have been killed in a car wreck, Helga inexplicably packs up and moves her young charge from Norway to England, though not before relaying a childhood story about her best friend, Erica (Elsie Eide) – a victim of the witches, stolen from her family as she was returning home from the corner store. All this is mood-inducing back story of a kind, and, reveled in by Roeg, who further muddies the waters, as well as the trajectory of the actual story about to be told by deliberating on Helga and Luke’s journey to the hotel, where they encounter two memorable faces: Rowan ‘Mr. Bean’ Atkinson as stuffy manager, Mr. Stringer - who despises Luke’s pet mice, and, future Downton Abbey alumni, Jim Carter, as a frantic Head Chef.

These narrative distractions delay the entrance of our star, Anjelica Huston by nearly a half-hour. For a movie barely running an hour-and-a-half, this prolonged debut seems pretty pointless, especially as Huston, after having appeared resplendently sexy in her human incarnation for barely six-minutes, is made the martyr of Henson’s obfuscating latex applications, which transform her into the grotesquely unrecognizable Grand High Witch; more reptilian, with a bald pate, crinkly veneer of crocodile’s skin, and, gargoyle-esque features, including long and tenacious, bony fingers, seemingly to protrude into perpetuity.  So too, it must be said of co-star Jasen Fisher, he rarely possesses the intellectual wherewithal, necessary to do battle with either the Grand High Witch or her motley crew of as hideous middle-age devotees, who strip their camouflage naked to reveal boil-infested, rotting tooth, and grimacing old hags and frumps of every conceivable shape and size, sycophantic in their fawning over the high mistress during an annual convention. It is only after being taken hostage by these witches and forced by the Grand High Witch to drink a potion that transforms him into a mouse (presumably to be stomped to death thereafter), that our Luke's errand – via a clever combination of animatronics and real-life footage of mice darting about the hotel, under carpets, up drain pipes, and down stairs – takes on a more prescient purpose. The rest of the plot, such as it is, involves Luke’s desperate race against time, along with Bruno Jenkins (Charlie Potter) – another boy transformed into a rodent – to expose this coven of evil-doers in their planned gesture to rid the world of its children by spiking their soup with the same formula, thus converting the witches instead into mice. In service of this bizarre scenario, Jim Henson’s visual effects are the real star of The Witches.

Anjelica Huston, the biggest name on the marquee, is – at best – a glossy footnote to these proceedings. She appears with barely an audible line of dialogue in her human form, but is given a rather impressive monologue to recite to her followers, delivered as her horrendously disfigured alter ego. Huston in gargoyle’s drag is a performance at best, fraught with theatrical over-emphasis that makes the Grand High Witch more of a caricature than nightmarish creature devoted to our blind terror. It’s pure camp to be sure, though not entirely satisfying, given Huston’s chutzpah and class as a very fine actress elsewhere. In her human form, Huston cavorts and gesticulates as though she were a cross between an upper-crust/pinkies-up English maven of the maison, and, a sexualized Ziegfeld follies tart on crack cocaine. As her mutilated counterpart, she is marginally impeded by the heavy latex applications – her grandiloquence brought to heel under the weight of her costume. Yet, even reincarnated as this outwardly scarred hellcat, Huston fails to terrorize so much as to thoroughly repulse. It just does not work!

The Witches was fraught with difficulties during its making; Rowan Atkinson, inadvertently causing the bathtub in his hotel suite to overflow, thus damaging not only the room but virtually all of the production’s electrical equipment stored in the room one floor below. As The Witches was squarely aimed to appeal to children, Roeg shot considerably more shocking sequences, but later elected to edit them out after he pre-screened a rough cut for his own prepubescent son, who found the picture too scary for his liking.  Even with these edits, The Witches is a fairly perverse and disturbing movie; Anjelica Huston’s elaborate makeup alone, complete with mechanized claws, a hump and withered collarbone, taking 6-hours to apply (and another 6 to remove), leaving the actress deflated at the end of a long-day’s shoot. Even more trying – the oil-based ‘green vapor’ effect, that caused considerable eye strain and irritation. But the biggest hurdle for Roeg was Roald Dahl, deeply troubled by the director’s insistence to shoot an entirely different ending from the one as depicted in the author’s book. In Dahl’s story, Luke remains a mouse forever, despite his victory over the Grand High Witch. To appease Dahl, who threatened to sue and have his name stricken from the credits, Roeg shot two endings – one faithful to the book, the other according to his own likes for a happier ending; Luke, reborn in his human form by the benevolence of the Grand High Witch’s social secretary, Miss Irvine (Jane Horrocks), the only one not afflicted by the soup-spiking incident. Dahl approved of the first finale. Indeed, it brought him to tears. Unfortunately, Roeg elected to run with the latter instead as his official version. In reply, Dahl threatened a publicity campaign to disavow the picture; an act of retaliation narrowly averted by Jim Henson’s ginger massaging of Dahl’s ego.

The Witches was delayed in its arrival to the big screen by almost an entire year, thanks to Lorimar’s decision to dissolve their theatrical distribution apparatus. While the prints collected dust in the vault, a new deal was struck with Warner Bros. to release and market the picture. Alas, the passage of time did not improve its prospects. By the time The Witches hit theaters, Jim Henson had already passed, and Roald Dahl was fast approaching the expiration date of his own mortality. Given considerable fanfare, the picture proved a disappointment for all concerned. Despite its mostly positive critical acclaim, The Witches lost money and was all but dismissed by the general public. Viewed today, it has acquired a queer cult following, primarily for its thoroughly gruesome narrative and ghoulish special effects. Unevenly paced, however ingeniously executed, The Witches remains a blip on the creative CV’s of its enterprising artisans. Its chief difficulty is a very clunky screenplay by Allan Scott. This repeatedly delays our shock and terror to wallow in the startlingly grotesque special effects put forth by Henson and his make-up artists. The other hurdle here is casting. Apart from Anjelica Huston, the picture has virtually no star-drawing power to recommend it. The predominantly English cast – all accomplished in their own right – nevertheless, and with few exceptions – represents a cavalcade of forgettable faces, given precious little to show off their acting chops. Even the more prominently featured players are moved about the proscenium by Roeg - strategically placed, merely to keep the plot perfunctorily trundling in a foreword trajectory.  After investing considerable time and energies establishing Mai Zetterling’s Swedish-born Helga as a protector of Luke’s welfare, Roeg and Scott’s screenplay all but relegates her to a bumbling frump – plump and too powerless to affect the rescue of her grandson, even from the Grand High Witch’s black cat, who nearly makes Luke – in his reincarnated mouse form - its midnight snack.

The Witches arrives on Blu-ray via the Warner Archive (WAC) in a better than passable, though hardly polished hi-def offering. WAC’s affinity in promoting ‘B’, even ‘C’ grade flops to hi-def ahead of some of their bona fide classics from the same vintage is, I suspect, commendable to some. After all, where else could a movie like The Witches find a home on Blu-ray ahead of, say, Reversal of Fortune, made and released the same year, but an infinitely more compelling candidate for the 1080p treatment, if for no other reason, than a superb Oscar-winning performance by Jeremy Irons. But I digress.  Most of the visual shortcomings to manifest themselves on this 1.85:1 Blu-ray of The Witches are the result of imperfect film stock, exhibiting slight color fading and density issues during the first act, but steadily improving thereafter. Shot rather flatly by cinematographer, Harvey Harrison the image here is bright and can exhibit bold hues, although flesh tones lean toward an artificial soft orange or piggy pink.  Contrast is solid and film grain appears indigenous to its source.  The DTS 2.0 audio compliments the original Dolby Stereo theatrical mix with Stanley Myers’ orchestral renderings and main title, the real beneficiary. Dialogue and effects are well-placed.  Apart from a theatrical trailer that woefully misrepresents the finished film, there are NO extras. Bottom line: if you prefer this sort of grotesque nonsense, then WAC’s Blu will do quite nicely. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2

VIDEO/AUDIO

4

EXTRAS

1