The Witches
Hey, Do You Remember...?
Christopher Schrader
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2017
⏱️ 86 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The phrase "nightmare fuel" gets tossed around pretty liberally these days, but back in the 90s there were few kids movies more befitting of that title than The Witches. Based on an already frightening book by Roald Dahl, this adaptation ratchets up the scares even further thanks to Angelica Huston's scenery-chewing performance and the incredible effects work of Jim Henson.
Not everyone was a fan though. Dahl famously hated some of the alterations made to his source material (particularly the new ending) and thought that the filmmakers had missed the point entirely. It had been a long, long time since any of us had seen this and we were interested to find out if a more objective viewing would reveal that some of Dahl's complaints were valid or that this was still the pull no punches thrill ride we remembered.
Topics include: key differences between the movie and the novel, how unprepared one of us was for Bruno's transformation sequence, whether or not the Grand High Witch knew the mice would be able to talk, how director Nicolas Roeg was able to capture the feeling of reading one of Dahl's books, our thoughts on the different endings, and much much more!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, do you remember The Witches? |
| 0:06.6 | Hello and welcome, Hey, You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose tinted glasses to see how it holds up. |
| 0:32.2 | I'm Chris. |
| 0:32.9 | I'm Donna. |
| 0:33.7 | And I'm Carlos. |
| 0:34.5 | And today we're revisiting The Witches. |
| 0:53.1 | Thank you. And I'm Carlos. And today we're revisiting The Witches. Like many authors, Rall Dahl had a difficult relationship with the cinematic adaptations of his work. |
| 0:59.3 | After feeling shunned during the production of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, |
| 1:02.8 | he prepared himself for a similar experience with the witches. |
| 1:07.0 | He knew his opinions on casting would be politely entertained and then immediately ignored. |
| 1:11.8 | He championed Cher for the role of the Grand High Witch, for example. |
| 1:15.3 | And he also realized that many of the book's darker elements would have to be somewhat muted for a feature film. |
| 1:21.0 | Because if you were a child of the 90s who found this movie to be a little too intense, |
| 1:24.9 | a more faithful retelling of the book might have left you catatonic. |
| 1:29.0 | Some of the key differences are that Luke is actually in the car with his parents when they're |
| 1:33.1 | killed. His grandmother is a far less compassionate character. It's heavily implied that Bruno is |
| 1:38.9 | drowned in a bucket by parents who don't want to get rid of their cats. The witch's plan for wiping |
| 1:44.0 | out children is |
| 1:45.0 | more gruesome. And there's no rogue witch who defects and restores everything back to normal at the end. |
| 1:50.2 | Our main character remains a mouse who, while happy with his transformation, realizes he only |
| 1:55.2 | has a few years to live. By all accounts, the new ending in particular was a bridge too far for |
| 2:00.6 | Dahl, to the point where he demanded his name be removed from the film. |
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