Film

The Witches

Name: The Witches
Genre: Fantasy, Family, Horror
Released: 1990
Cast: Jasen Fisher, Mai Zetterling, Anjelica Huston, Charlie Potter, Rowan Atkinson

Nicolas Roeg directs Roald Dahl's nastiest fairy tale straight, with Anjelica Huston relishing every syllable as a witch queen who peels off her human face like a Halloween mask. It's genuinely frightening for a kids' film — practical effects, real menace, a hero stuck as a mouse for most of the runtime — but it's also tender and very funny. For kids brave enough, and grown-ups who remember being scared by it.

TMDb rating

7.0

If you liked this

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Another Dahl adaptation with the same DNA: a child outmatched by monstrous adults, saved by cleverness and a decent grown-up on their side. Danny DeVito nails the tone — cruel, cartoonish, warm underneath.

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Stop-motion nightmare fuel for children, built on the same premise as The Witches — a kid alone against something that wears a friendly face and isn't. Genuinely eerie, gorgeously crafted, unforgettable.

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Jim Henson's creature workshop at its most ambitious — no humans at all, just extraordinary puppetry telling a genuinely dark fantasy quest. If the practical effects in The Witches thrilled you, this is a whole film built from them.

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Suspiria1977

Same premise pushed all the way into adult horror: ordinary-seeming women who are actually a witch coven with a monstrous leader, preying on the young. Dahl's fairy tale with the safety rails removed.

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Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory1971

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Gremlins1984

Family horror-comedy that also refuses to protect kids from real dread — cute creatures turn monstrous, chaos ensues, and it's fantastic fun watching adults fail to control it.

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Hocus Pocus1993

Three delightfully hammy witches terrorise a town on Halloween night. Broader and campier than Huston's Grand High Witch, but the same pleasure in watching a great actress go full villain.

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The NeverEnding Story1984

Practical-effects fantasy adventure from the same era, with a lonely boy, real peril, and creature design that still holds up as genuinely strange and wonderful.

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Jim Henson's The Storyteller1988no page yet

Jim Henson's Creature Shop built the animatronics for both — this is the format that lets their darker, folkloric instincts run loose without a studio softening the edges.

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Häxan1922

The witch as ancient societal fear, made visual almost seventy years before Roeg's film — the same imagery of hags, transformation, and the persecution of the different, traced back to its unsettling root.

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But Silent, slow, and structured like an essay film — a real patience test if you wanted narrative momentum.