Director: Nicolas Roeg
Writers: Roald Dahl, Allan Scott
Stars: Anjelica Huston, Mai Zetterling, Jasen Fisher
1 Hour, 31 Minutes
Watch it at Amazon: https://amzn.to/2LGinci
Synopsis
before bedtime one evening, Grandma explains to Luke, "Real witches dress in ordinary clothes, look like ordinary people, and world ordinary jobs. The Grand High Witch is most evil woman in all creation. Real witches hate children."
As we’re told this, we see a flashback where a witch captures a little girl named Erica. They never found her, but they did find her image locked in a painting. The image in the painting aged and died over the years.
The police come to the door and explains that Luke’s parents have been killed in an accident. Luke goes to England to live with Grandma.
As Luke plays in his treehouse, a witch walks up and offers him a snake and chocolate. Grandma approaches, and the snake vanishes. Grandma gets Luke a pair of mice for his birthday, then she passes out from diabetes. The doctor tells her to give up cigars.
The two of them later go to a big hotel on the ocean. Miss Ernst, played by Morticia Adams, comes in and is greeted by Mr. Bean. She has a whole group of fans that swarm her; she’s very popular for some reason. She walks past a painting of a child standing in the woods, and the child vanishes. Mr. Bean gets on Luke’s case about keeping his mice in his room, but Grandma threatens him with a health code violation if he doesn’t STFU and go away. Mr. Bean looks prissy and stomps out.
Luke and his mice are hiding out in the conference room when Mr. Bean leads Ms. Ernst and a huge crowd of women in to have a meeting. The meeting begins. They pull off their shores and their false faces; there’s all witches! Ernst starts bitching about "Why are there still children? Every single child in England shall be rubbed out!" One of the other witches whines that this may be difficult, and Ernst shoots lasers out of her eyes, making her explode.
The plan is to buy every candy store in England and use them to kill all the children. She offers them "Formula 86," which is a time-delayed poison. It will turn children into a mouse within 25 seconds. We watch as another boy Luke met earlier turns into a mouse. Luke sees and overhears all this. The witches finally smell Luke, and they chase him around.
They eventually catch Luke and turn him into a mouse. He runs away and meets up with Bruno, the other talking mouse-boy. They manage to get back to Grandma’s room and mouse-talk to Grandma. Grandma lowers him down to the next balcony, where there is literally some cat and mouse action. Luke manages to steal a bottle of the formula and return it to Grandma.
Grandma shows Bruno to his parents, and they react… badly. Ernst sends her assistant to her room without her dinner. Luke the mouse dumps the formula into the witches’ dinner.
Mr. Carson from Downton Abby pulls a soft piece of veal out of the garbage can and feeds it to one of the restaurant patrons before the mouse crawls up his pants. Afterwards, they cover the floor with a million mousetraps.
The witches all start eating their soup, as does Bruno’s father. Grandma pours his soup out on the table and lets Bruno explain it to them. Meanwhile it’s mousapalooza in the next room where the witches go ballistic. Ms. Ernst vows her revenge as she, too, mouses out. Grandma catches her in a pitcher, and Mr. Bean cuts her in half with a butcher knife.
They leave the hotel, and Ms. Ernst’s assistant waves goodbye as they drive off.
Later, a package arrives for Luke from the hotel. It’s all the money that the witches were going to use to buy candy stores. There’s also an address book containing the name and address of every witch in America. They’re going to go off and become witch-hunters.
Ernst’s assistant comes by the house that night and turns Luke back into a real boy and even gives him his broken glasses and pet mice back. Maybe out of gratitude for killing her boss, I don’t know.
Commentary
This is why I don’t like going to conventions. Like Ms. Ernst, I, too, generally want to puke when the word "children" is spoken.
The mouse animation is really good and the witches’ makeup is good too. The film is really slow for the first 40 minutes. There are a few good effects scenes where Bruno turns into a mouse and when Ms. Ernst has her mask half-off.
This is clearly a precursor to Stuart Little, and the concept is similar. Unlike that film, this is all done with Jim Henson puppets and real rats.