Director: Nicolas Roeg
Cast: Anjelica Huston, Mai Zetterling, Jasen Fisher, Rowan Atkinson
Have I Seen it Before: Many, many times.
Did I Like It: With Jim Henson’s involvement—read, Mr. Henson’s actual involvement before his passing, not just his company—there’s already a certain level of quality delivered. The special effects in this film have aged astonishingly well since release. The creature effects for many of the witches are just as evocative of anything Henson’s company produced in either The Dark Crystal (1982) or Labyrinth (1986). Even the converted children mouse believably talk and interact with their environment. A film like Honey, I Shrunk The Kids (1989) would make large sprawling sets out of a small world. This one leaves the world as is and builds its impossibilities to scale.
Anjelica Huston swings for the fences, and I cannot readily think of a film where she appears to be having quite as much fun. Even in both of The Addams Family films she is in, there is a pretty heavy layer of irony in her presence. Here, she is the Grand High Witch, and will not be questioned in that capacity.
All of these elements recommend the film, but there is one thing that makes it truly memorable, and keeps me coming back to the film. In it’s opening scenes, Helga (Zetterling) introduces her grandson (Fisher) to the world of witches. She tells the story of her childhood friend, Erica (Elsie Eide) who is captured by a witch, and placed in her father’s prized painting. There, she is doomed to spend the rest of her life looking out at the world passing her by, eventually dying in that painting. What is essentially a children’s film spends its opening minutes remind every child that their future could very well be one of abject futility, punctuated by an anticlimax of a death.
This is before they eliminated Luke’s parents in a car crash. The film is brutal, and I don’t think it gets hardly enough credit for that.
Not a month has gone by in the last thirty years where I have not thought about little Erica at least once. And if you need something more from a horror movie, then you’re simply not getting enough enjoyment out of life.