Editorials
Why 1990’s ‘The Witches’ is the Scariest Children’s Horror Film Ever Made
Roald Dahl is undoubtedly one of the most influential children’s book authors in history. Dahl, known for his quirky characters and colorful writing style, is responsible for classics like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach. However, Dahl also wrote stories that were dark and sinister – ones that ultimately reflected aspects of the real world that are not typically explored in children’s literature.
Originally published in 1983, The Witches tells the story of a boy and his grandmother, who discover a plot by the Grand High Witch to destroy all the children in England. The book was inspired by Dahl’s childhood fascination with witches and magic and the grandmother in the book was partially inspired by his own mother. The book is still widely considered to be one of the scariest children’s books ever written, now more than 32 years after its initial publication.
The feature adaptation of the book was optioned by Lorimar Productions and the film was completed in 1989. Warner Brothers eventually bought the rights to the film after Lorimar Productions went bankrupt. It released in the United States on August 24, 1990 and received positive feedback from both critics and fans but performed poorly at the box office, generating a total of only $10,360,553. The film has since garnered cult status on VHS and DVD and has a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes. The film also has the distinction of being the final one that world-renowned puppeteer Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, worked on before his death and also the final film that was completed while Roald Dahl was alive. Both men died in 1990.
The Witches, directed by Nicolas Roeg, an English-born director known primarily for adult-themed films such as The Man Who Fell to Earth and Don’t Look Now, translates Dahl’s book closely while exploring themes of child abduction and death through the eyes of “the boy”, who is given the name of Luke in the film.
The movie opens with Luke’s grandmother (Mai Zetterling) telling him all about witches: They dress in ordinary clothes, have ordinary jobs and live all over the world, led by the Grand High Witch. She details how they plot to kill children and how she herself was once a victim of a witch’s plot, displaying a stump where her pinky finger once was. She continues to describe witches as naturally bald (they wear wigs to look normal), with no toes, and having a purple tinge to their eyes. She also tells the story of her childhood friend Erika, who was abducted by a witch on her way to the market, and trapped within a painting until one day disappearing all together.
The visuals of seeing glimpses of what a witch looks like (which is fully explored later in the film) and the eeriness of seeing Erika trapped in the painting only hint at the true horror of this scenario. It is the idea of being abducted by a complete stranger that Roeg truly coveys with this opening scene. Child abductions have become common in society today and the thought of being taken and never seen again is all too real. Witches may use magic, but the real-life comparison is much worse to contemplate.
Roeg continues to explore the theme of death early on in the film, as we discover that Luke’s parents are killed in a car accident. The tragedy serves the purpose of reminding us that children are not immune to the tragic and somber aspects of life.
To cope with the death of his parents and a recent health issue with his grandmother, Luke and his grandmother take a holiday at a hotel, where all the witches in England are meeting to discuss their sinister plots – this is foreshadowed by an encounter Luke has with a witch who tries to abduct him by enticing him with chocolate and a snake… an unsettling scene to say the least.
It is the witches meeting scene that perhaps gives us the most terrifying visual aspect of the film: We see the Grand High Witch (played perfectly by Angelica Huston) and the rest of the witches in England transform into their true selves, removing their shoes to reveal stumpy toes, scratching their wigs off to reveal scaly, rash-riddled bald heads and removing their gloves to reveal claw-like fingers. The Grand High Witch herself has to go as far as to remove her entire face to reveal the most hideous and disturbing sight this side of Freddy Krueger. Luke is witness to this entire reveal behind a panel to the side of the main platform.
Throughout the meeting, we see the witches picking at their heads, cackling and showing off their yellow rotting teeth and purple eyes as the Grand High Witch scolds her minions and even goes so far as to kill one of them by burning her to death with magic beams from her eyes, simply for disagreeing with her. The witches are cruel to each other and almost salivate at the idea of seeing harm come to any of them. They hang on every word as the Grand High Witch describes how to kill children and are delighted when they discover they will soon witness a child transform into a mouse.
There is also a scene that shows the Grand High Witch trying to blatantly kill a baby with no regard and several scenes involving children and the witches themselves transforming into mice that are visually impressive, yet horrifying and painful to watch at times – although Roeg does inject some humor into these transformations.
Jim Henson and company did a spectacular job of creating a Grand High Witch that is beyond terrifying and still gives me nightmares to this day. This, coupled with Huston’s sinister performance, give a lasting impression of a movie villain that transcends time. The score composed by Stanley Myers also gives the film a creepy vibe throughout.
Nicolas Roeg directed an adaptation that incorporated many aspects of the book (most notably absent was the book’s original ending) and injected it with a visual style that continues to terrify audiences. However, it is the real-life implications of what is possible without the element of magic that is truly terrifying.
The fact that a film that garnered a PG rating could tackle adult themes this well is a testament to its legacy.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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