The Witches is a 1990 dark fantasy comedy horror film directed by Nicolas Roeg from a screenplay by Allan Scott, based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Roald Dahl.

The plot features evil witches who masquerade as ordinary women and follows a boy and his grandmother, who must find a way to foil their plans of turning children into mice.

[4] During a vacation with his grandmother Helga in Norway, eight-year-old American boy Luke Eveshim is warned about witches, female demons who hate children and use various methods to destroy or transform them.

Helga says her childhood friend, Erica, fell victim to a witch and was cursed to spend the rest of her life trapped inside a painting, aging gradually until finally disappearing a few years earlier.

The Grand High Witch, who somehow snuck into the room, appears and captures Luke and takes him back to the ballroom, where he is forced to drink the potion and turned into a mouse before escaping.

Amidst the chaos, Luke spots the transformed Grand High Witch and points her out to Helga, who traps her under a water jug and leaves Mr. Stringer to chop her in two with a meat cleaver.

During the shoot, Rowan Atkinson left the bath taps running in his room (the frantically knocking porter was told "go away, I'm asleep").

Huston described a monologue scene she had to do where "I was so uncomfortable and tired of being encased in rubber under hot lights for hours that the lines had ceased to make sense to me and all I wanted to do was cry.

"[10] The green vapour used extensively at the end of the film was oil based, and would obscure the contacts in Huston's eyes, which had to be regularly flushed out with water by an expert.

[10] Roeg chose a sexy costume for the character to wear and emphasized to Huston that the Grand High Witch should have sex appeal at all times, despite her grotesque appearance in certain scenes of the film.

Throughout the score, the Dies irae appears, highly reminiscent of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique Movement V, "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath".

However, Henson and Roeg decided to go with the "happier" ending, which resulted in Dahl stating that he would launch a publicity campaign against the film if his name was not removed from the credits.

[2] It premiered in London on May 25, 1990, and was scheduled to open the same day in the United States,[13] but following the test screenings earlier that year, Warner Bros. Pictures delayed the American release until August 24.

The critics consensus reads: "With a deliciously wicked performance from Anjelica Huston and imaginative puppetry by Jim Henson's creature shop, Nicolas Roeg's dark and witty movie captures the spirit of Roald Dahl's writing like few other adaptations.

[18] Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, calling it "an intriguing movie, ambitious and inventive, and almost worth seeing just for Anjelica Huston's obvious delight in playing a completely uncompromised villainess.