The Witches
Short description
After the death of his parents, nine-year-old Luke goes to live with his grandmother Helga, who tells him stories about witches and how to recognise one. When Helga falls ill, the two take a rest at a seaside hotel in England, where Luke stumbles on a gathering of the country's witches, held under the cover of a charity event. Their leader, Miss Eva Ernst, lays out a scheme to rid the country of its children, and when the witches catch Luke listening, they try the method out on him. He escapes in his new form and, with Helga's help, sets out to stop them.
The film adapts Roald Dahl's children's book, with a screenplay by Allan Scott and Mark Shivas producing. Nicolas Roeg directed; it is the tenth of the thirteen films he directed, arriving between Track 29 and Samson and Delilah. Jasen Fisher plays Luke, Mai Zetterling plays Helga, and Anjelica Huston plays the Grand High Witch, with Charlie Potter, Rowan Atkinson and Bill Paterson among the thirty-five credited cast. Jim Henson's company was involved in the production.
Made for about 11 million dollars, the film took roughly 15 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.2 out of 10 from around 17,000 votes, and on TMDB 7 out of 10 from about 1,420 votes, with audiences rating it somewhat more favourably there in scoring terms than the smaller sample might suggest.
What's left behind the scenes
- Anjelica Huston's transformation into the Grand High Witch in the makeup chair took 8 hours.
- When the boys are turned into mice, rats and puppets were used for the filming.
- The props department, under the leadership of Jim Henson (1936-1990), created mouse models of various sizes. Size A creatures were the size of real mice and were controlled via thin wires. Size B mice resembled large rats and were also controlled by wires. Size C mice were nearly a meter tall and were operated manually. The latter were used in only a few scenes, as director Nicolas Roeg decided that editing close-ups of a human and such a mouse together would be too difficult. Roeg preferred working with a consistent shot width, so small mouse models in miniature sets were used most often.
- The snowy landscape against which the opening credits roll was filmed in Ulvik, the center of the Hordaland municipality in Norway.
- The Headland Hotel in Newquay, UK, served as the Excelsior Hotel.
- Cher, Eartha Kitt, Geneviève Bujold, Anne Bancroft, Sigourney Weaver, Linda Blair, Faye Dunaway, Susan Sarandon, Jodie Foster, Vanessa Redgrave, Frances Conroy, and Liza Minnelli were considered for the role of the Grand High Witch.
- The witches at the hotel gathering were played primarily by men in disguise.
- For the British release, a couple of scenes (the witch's face and Bruno's transformation into a mouse) had to be re-edited so that the British Board of Film Classification would grant it a PG rating (general viewing, but some scenes may be unsuitable for young children).
- Neither the novel nor the film explains why the witches hate children so much, or why the Grand High Witch intends to get rid of all the children in the country.
- In addition to the happy ending, an alternative ending more faithful to the original book was filmed. Both versions were shown to test audiences, and it turned out that viewers preferred the happy ending.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
