Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
The Witches is hands down the best Halloween movie of all time and I won’t be told otherwise.
No really, I mean it. Take your slasher franchises and be gone with them! They are too scary and too gruesome for the kiddos to watch (and let’s be honest: half of the fun of Halloween is that it is a kids’ holiday). Family fare like Hocus Pocus and It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown are great, but they aren’t quite creepy enough to deliver the kinds of chills Halloween demands. No, The Witches is the one film out there that hits that elusive sweet spot: It’s family-friendly and completely horrifying. It is, in essence, Halloween splashed upon the screen.
The Witches is based on the Roald Dahl book of the same name. Dahl was an expert in exploiting the quirkier corners of our collective childhood imaginations and The Witches is a clear example of this. Dahl’s witches are perhaps the most terrifying sorceresses in all of literature. It’s not they’re sexual, creepy, or even that they’re badgering MacBeth on the Scottish moors. Dahl’s witches are evil incarnate — and they look like everyday normal woman. Early on in the film, Helga explains, “What makes her dangerous is that she doesn’t look dangerous. You can never be sure if it’s a witch you are looking at or a kind lady.” It’s that uncertainty that feeds our worst nightmares: you can’t tell good and evil apart.
The most memorable scene in the entire film then is the moment when the grimly glamorous Anjelica Huston doffs her real woman disguise and reveals her truly disgusting form. It’s a moment that not only calcifies the horror of the witches but it also plays into fears about femininity (what are girls hiding under all that makeup anyway?).
This scene also brings us around to another reason why The Witches is so great. The film was made in 1990 — at the height of the Jim Henson studio’s creative power — and therefore feels like the very last bonafide “weird” movie of the ‘80s. You know what I’m talking about. Nowadays everything is heart-warming and super glossy. Sure Laika is doing some audacious stuff in animation, but for the most part contemporary family films lack the bite that ’80s flicks were stewed in. Consider the wacky horror inherent in Labyrinth, The Goonies, The Neverending Story, The Dark Crystal, and Gremlins. These were films that were meant for kids and yet they were jam-packed with grisly creatures and hard-core scares. The Witches was all about this. The Witches is the best!
The Witches is bizarre and heart-warming. It’s grotesque and wondrous. It presents children with both mundane tragedies (like losing your parents in a car accident) and the gonzo horror of being trapped in a painting your whole life. It’s got a brilliant cast, a gorgeously offbeat style, and some of the trippiest visual effects caught on screen. Because its mission is to force children to confront their worst fears, it’s able to hit that Halloween sweet spot. It’s a night for kids and a night for thrills.
