On the arrival, Luke befriends the fat boy Bruno Jenkins (Charlie Potter) and has problems with the manager Mr. She decides to travel to a seaside hotel to recover from her diabetes. One day, Helga falls ill and her doctor tells that it is her diabetes. They move to England and one day, a woman approaches and speaks to Luke, but he identifies that she is a witch. Out of the blue, Luke's parents have a car accident and die and Helga becomes Luke's guardian. She tells stories of evil witches and how her best childhood friend was kidnapped by a witch. The boy Luke (Jasen Fisher) is spending vacation in Norway at the house of his grandmother Helga Eveshim (Mai Zetterling) house with his parents. There is a tacked on happy ending to the story which doesn't make much sense. It has the dark ugliness and some edgy fun. Huston is delicious as the Grand High Witch.
THE WITCHES ROALD DAHL REVIEW MOVIE
The parents dying would be a great place to go darker but the movie doesn't spend much time on it. The first 30 minutes have a bit too much to cover. Luke and another boy get caught and changed into mice. While hiding in the ballroom, Luke spies that the convention is actually for witches and she intends to transform every child into a mouse. Stringer (Rowan Atkinson) has it in for Luke and his pet mice. There is also a convention for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children with Chairwoman Eva Ernst (Anjelica Huston). They vacation at seaside Hotel Excelsior. His parents are killed and Helga takes him to England where she owns a house. As a child, she lost a friend to a witch who put her into a painting. While on vacation in Norway visiting grandmother Helga, she tells young Luke Eveshim about the existence of real witches who hate children. Yes, the sugar-sweet ending may be off-putting to some - and a departure from the original - but it doesn't spoil what is, in many ways, a perfect little movie. I consider the big reveal with Huston to be one of the best, and most shocking, ever put on film. I still love the mouse puppets they use in this film, and the effects really hold up even today. Then there's the cast: Anjelica Huston, completely sinister in THAT role (forget THE ADDAMS FAMILY, that's nothing compared to this), a deliciously deadpan Bill Paterson, a hilariously pompous Rowan Atkinson, and a sweet Mai Zetterling holding it all together as the kindly granny. The storyline is deliciously dark and, although it's kept simple throughout, the film achieves a remarkable level of world-building in a short space of time. The combination of Nic Roeg's outstanding direction (who thought of using an art-house director for a kid's film? It was a gamble that really paid off) and Jim Henson's great puppet work makes for a truly superlative movie. In addition, I think it's the film that most authentically captures the spirit of Roald Dahl's book, more so than either of the CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY adaptations. It was a childhood favourite of mine back at the time - I was born in 1981, so was roughly the same age as the kid in it.