by Jason Adams
What's your favorite flavor of witch? Do you prefer a goth punk madwoman like Fairuza Balk in The Craft? A sexy hyper-stylish artiste like Tilda Swinton in Suspiria? A cackling crone like Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz?
What if I told you you didn't have to pick just one? That there exists a witch out there already that snatches a dash of this, a dash of that, until her cauldron bubbles over with the cartoonish bombast of Cruella de Vil meets Helena Markos. I think you'd nod, say duh, throw your head back and holler, "Anjelica Huston as the magnificent Grand High Witch forever, darling-kk!!!"
Before 2020 became a pinball game of one-upmanship in the inexplicability department it could have been said that the most inexplicable thing out there was the fact that somebody in Hollyweird had gone and green-lit a remake of Nicolas Roeg's 1990 nearly-perfect adaptation of Roald Dahl's book The Witches. (I say "nearly perfect" because Dahl was right to despise the film's tacked-on happy ending, a real stinkeroo of a decision picked by that scariest beast of all, a test audience.)
However, given the way 2020's turned, a reboot of The Witches only ranks somewhere on the twelfth or thirteenth page of possible atrocities. And I say this with no ill feeling in my heart towards Anne Hathaway, the oft popular punching bag who's stepping into Huston's square-toed sensible Grand High Witch shoes -- I think Anne would probably be a fine choice for the part if, you know, we had a time machine and we could go back and erase all of the videocassettes that contained evidence of Miss Huston's exquisite turn.
But we don't, and anyway the folks at Warner Archive finally just released a beautiful print of the film on blu-ray a few months back as if to say alongside us no, never, we will never let Anjelica Huston's grand high Grand High Witch go.
Because perhaps you are a young person who doesn't know, or are yourself the parent of a young person who doesn't yet know. Who is to say? Well I am here to say. I am here to smack you upside the head with my tattered childhood copy of Roald Dahl's book, my favorite childhood book of all the books, to turn it to page whatever where that iconic drawing of the Grand High Witch first appears, arms flung high above her head, her rubber-masked face a kabuki scribble of wicked exhilaration, and to say to you, see? See there? Anjelica Huston already did that. She did all of that.
And a vitch who dares to say I'm wrong vill not be vith us very long!!!!