The Witches
The phrase "nightmare fuel" gets tossed around pretty liberally these days, but back in the 90s there were few kids movies more befitting of that title than The Witches. Based on an already frightening book by Roald Dahl, this adaptation ratchets up the scares even further thanks to Angelica Huston's scenery-chewing performance and the incredible effects work of Jim Henson.
Not everyone was a fan though. Dahl famously hated some of the alterations made to his source material (particularly the new ending) and thought that the filmmakers had missed the point entirely. It had been a long, long time since any of us had seen this and we were interested to find out if a more objective viewing would reveal that some of Dahl's complaints were valid or that this was still the pull no punches thrill ride we remembered.
Topics include: key differences between the movie and the novel, how unprepared one of us was for Bruno's transformation sequence, whether or not the Grand High Witch knew the mice would be able to talk, how director Nicolas Roeg was able to capture the feeling of reading one of Dahl's books, our thoughts on the different endings, and much much more!