The Witches (1990 film)  

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The Witches is a 1990 British/American dark fantasy horror-comedy film based on the 1983 children's novel of the same title by Roald Dahl, directed by Nicolas Roeg and stars Anjelica Huston, Mai Zetterling, Rowan Atkinson, and Jasen Fisher. As in the original novel, the story features evil witches who masquerade as ordinary women and kill children, and a boy and his grandmother need to find a way to foil and destroy them.

The Witches was produced by Jim Henson Productions for Lorimar Film Entertainment and distributed by Warner Bros. as the last theatrical film to be produced by Lorimar before the company shut down in 1993. The film was very well received by critics, but performed poorly at the box office and was also hated by Dahl because its ending differs from the book.

Plot

During a vacation with his grandmother Helga in Norway, nine-year-old American boy Luke Eveshim is warned about the witches, female demons with a boundless hatred for children and various methods of destroying or transforming them. Helga tells him that her childhood friend fell victim to a witch and cursed to spend the rest of her life trapped inside a painting, ageing gradually and changing her position in the canvas until she finally disappeared 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 building a treehouse, Luke is approached by a woman he quickly realises is a witch, though he sees through her ruse and escapes, hiding at the top of the tree until his grandmother comes outside and the witch walks away. On Luke's ninth birthday, Helga falls ill with diabetes. Her doctor advises them to spend the summer by the sea.

They stay at a seaside hotel, where Luke meets and befriends a gluttonous but friendly boy, Bruno Jenkins, while getting on the bad side of the hotel manager, Mr. Stringer, after his pet mice frighten a maid who is having an affair with the manager. Also staying at the hotel are a convention of witches, masquerading as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, with the Grand High Witch, the all-powerful German-accented leader of the world's witches, attending their annual meeting under the name Eva Ernst.

Luke inadvertently discovers the witches while training his pet mice behind a screen inside the ballroom, where the witches hold their meeting. Ernst unveils her latest weapon: a magic potion to turn children into mice, which they will use on confectionery products in sweet shops and candy stores to be opened using money provided by Ernst. Having already been given chocolate laced with the formula a few hours earlier, Bruno is lured into the room, turns into a mouse and flees. Luke attempts to escape and runs to Helga in their room, but finds her resting after having a dizzy spell. The Grand High Witch then appears, seizing Luke and taking him back to the ballroom (somehow without being spotted), where he is forced to drink a potion, turning him into a mouse, though he avoids being squashed. He finds Bruno and reunites with Helga, who has since recovered.

Luke devises a plan to kill the witches by sneaking into Ernst's room to steal a bottle of the potion. Luke manages to drop the bottle into a pot of cress soup destined for the witches' dinner tables. Mr. Jenkins also orders the soup, though Helga stops him from consuming it at the last minute. As the witches enter the dining room, Miss Irvine, Ernst's assistant who has become disillusioned by her mistress's harsh treatment of her, quits working with the witches and thus gets spared from the massacre that is about to happen. The formula turns all the witches into mice, and the staff and hotel guests join in killing them, unknowingly ridding England of its witches. Mr. Stringer slays Ernst with a meat cleaver as Helga returns Bruno to his parents.

Luke and Helga return to their home, where they are delivered Ernst's trunk full of money and an address book of all witches in the United States. That night, Miss Irvine pays a visit to the house and uses her power to return Luke to his human body and return his pet mice, along with his glasses, before leaving to repeat the process with Bruno.

Cast

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See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "The Witches (1990 film)" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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