The Witches (1990)
My sister was physically sick watching this. Not metaphorically. Not "she felt a bit queasy." She threw up, right there on the living-room floor, in front of the telly, in the middle of a children's film. I have carried that image with me for decades, and sitting down to rewatch Nicolas Roeg's 1990 adaptation of Roald Dahl, I understood immediately exactly what did it to her.
The witches peel off their human faces. That is the scene. Anjelica Huston's Grand High Witch presides over a ballroom full of women who then reach up and remove their own skin, revealing something monstrous underneath: bulging eyes, clawed hands, ruined flesh. The prosthetics work was overseen by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, one of the last major projects the man himself had a hand in before his death, and the results are extraordinary in the most uncomfortable sense of the word. They are genuinely horrible. Impressively, skillfully, unforgivably horrible. The kind of horrible that burrows into a child's brain and stays there.
And that is the puzzle at the centre of trying to review this thing honestly. On every outward measure, it presents itself as a British children's film. Dahl story, plucky boy hero, wicked witches, a streak of knowing fun running through it. Roeg tells it well. The story holds together. The acting is decent to good by the standards of the genre, and Rowan Atkinson pops up as the hotel manager, all flustered dignity, doing essentially the same turn he would bring to Four Weddings and a Funeral a few years later, and it is exactly as charming as you would expect. Huston, meanwhile, commits absolutely and magnificently. She is having a wonderful time being appalling, and that energy carries the whole film.
But here is my problem. I cannot in good conscience file this under cosy family viewing when it is this actively disturbing to the very children it is supposedly aimed at. The transformation sequences are not the harmless pantomime-villain stuff of most kids' fare. They are the sort of thing that sits behind your eyes at night. I think of the body horror Rick Baker pulled off in An American Werewolf in London, a film squarely made for adults, and The Witches at its worst moments is not that far off the dial. The fact that it is aimed at eight-year-olds does not make the imagery less extreme. If anything, it makes it more so, because those eight-year-olds have nowhere to put it.
So where does that leave me? I genuinely cannot grade it purely as the children's film it nominally is, because I would not sit my own kids down in front of it, and that has to count for something in the reckoning. The question a children's film has to answer is whether it works for children, and the honest answer here is: some children, yes, and some children will end up being sick on the carpet.
And yet it is no failure. It is a well-made, sharp, effectively creepy piece of work with a strong central performance and a real sense of menace. The trouble is that it has wandered into the wrong age bracket and never quite found its footing there. It is too nasty for the little ones and perhaps not substantial enough for adults looking for something more. It exists in an odd middle ground of its own making.
Three stars. A good film and a genuine fright. Just perhaps not the one you put on for a cosy Sunday afternoon with the kids, unless you have already factored in the cost of cleaning the carpet.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 1990 | Watched: 2026-08-14
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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