The Witches

(That's Angelica Houston as The Grand High Witch, after she put her face back on.) Caught this 1990 movie in HBO yesterday--it was one of my favorite movies when I was a child because the witches were so grotesque, their magic so intriguing and their dislike for children so unnatural, and of course the grandma was cool and the boy Luke turned into a cute little mouse (what more could a kid ask for?).

The Witches is about a little boy who ran into a witches' convention (disguised ironically as a "Convention of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children"). If the witches kept their wigs, faces, gloves and shoes on, they'd look like the average nice lady you meet on the street. So basically, what sets them apart is their "mission" to destroy all the children. They hate the smell of clean children. They have a rabid dislike for all children, and come to think of it, maybe that is what makes them, er, witches.

Some women may not be fond of kids, but they wouldn't want to eliminate kids. Because they know that eventually, kids grow up, and if you guide them well, they'll grow up to be perfectly sensible adults. These witches, on the other hand, just plain want to get rid of kids, forgetting that kids should eventually replace adults in twenty years or so. Without these kids, there will be no one to fill schools (like what's happening in Japan), and later, offices. No one will become parents who will bring forth a new generation of kids...and so on and so forth.

The movie directed by Nicolas Roeg is produced by Jim Henson (genius!) and based on the book by Roald Dahl (another genius!). If you haven't seen it yet...where have you been?