Jason Richard I had to rate this 10.I saw it has a 6.8, and that's just not good enough. My son is 4 and I just let him watch this movie for Halloween. Its by far the scariest movie he could watch. This is not a 10 for adult movies, just kid movies. If you want to scare a kid for Halloween show them this. Its a shame so many people do not know about this movie. This should easily be a cult classic. There is no other movie like this one. Its horrific, but no 4 letter words, and 100% what you would want for a family movie aimed at scaring kids. This will also make them afraid of strangers.

Claudio Carvalho The boy Luke (Jasen Fisher) is spending vacation in Norway at the house of his grandmother Helga Eveshim (Mai Zetterling) house with his parents. She tells stories of evil witches and how her best childhood friend was kidnapped by a witch. Out of the blue, Luke's parents have a car accident and die and Helga becomes Luke's guardian. They move to England and one day, a woman approaches and speaks to Luke, but he identifies that she is a witch. One day, Helga falls ill and her doctor tells that it is her diabetes. She decides to travel to a seaside hotel to recover from her diabetes. On the arrival, Luke befriends the fat boy Bruno Jenkins (Charlie Potter) and has problems with the manager Mr. Stringer (Rowan Atkinson) because of his pet white mice. Meanwhile a group of women from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children arrive for a convention with their leader Miss Eva Ernst (Anjelica Huston). But soon Luke learns that Eva is indeed the Grand High Witch and their convention is to distribute a magic potion to turn boys into mice in England. When the Grand High Witch sees Luke, she turns him into a mouse. What will the boy do?"The Witches" is one of the most delightful movies from the 90's. This film has not aged and the timeless story is wonderful no matter the age of the viewer. That cast is perfect and Anjelica Huston is fantastic in the role of a powerful witch. The make-up and special effects are magnificent and still impressive twenty-seven years later. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Convenção das Bruxas" ("Witches Convention")

gwnightscream Anjelica Huston, Mai Zetterling, Jasen Fisher, Charlie Potter and Rowan Atkinson star in this 1990 fantasy film based on the book. This focuses on young boy, Luke (Fisher) who lives with his grandmother, Helga (Zetterling) after his parents are killed. They travel to England where they stay at a hotel where Luke discovers a coven of witches who plot to rid all the children. Huston (The Addams Family) plays Miss Ernst aka the Grand High Witch who is their leader and an old foe of Helga's. After she turns Luke and other boy, Bruno (Potter) into mice, they and Helga try to stop her and the other witches. Atkinson (Mr. Bean) plays Mr. Stringer, the manager of the hotel. I grew up watching this and always enjoyed it. Huston is great in it and there's neat effects. I recommend this good children's fantasy.

Bonehead-XL As a kid, Roald Dahl held a reputation as the "thinking child's" favorite author. His stories always had an undertone of darkness about them, a cruel edge. Even his lighter stories, like "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," doesn't spare its young characters. Later in life, when I discovered that Dahl also wrote dark thrillers and even erotica, it wasn't surprising. Dahl's style has always made him a rough fit for Hollywood, who like their children flicks to be safe and sanitized. When Dahl adaptations do turn out alright, like "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," they tend to only loosely resemble their source material. Which brings me to "The Witches," a surprisingly macabre family film."The Witches" starts appropriately, as a dark fairy tale told by a grandmother to her grandson. The old woman lays down the movie's ground rules. Witches are evil inhuman beings, with purple eyes, no toes, and bald heads. They live to murder children, who smell like dog droppings to them. The parents are killed in a car crash soon afterwards, leaving Luke alone with his grandmother. After a diabetic attack, the old woman is sent to a English hotel to recuperate, joined by her grandson. Fate would have it that the hotel, that same weekend, would be holding a gathering of witches, led by the Grand High Witch. There, the boy overhears the witches' newest plot, a plan to turn of all of England's children into mice."The Witches" is a children's film. Its protagonist is the kind of can-do, heroic kid usually seen in films of this type. The story's climatic thrust depends on a child outsmarting adults, another stalwart feature of the genre. There's almost a layer of "gee-shucks" sincerity to the way Luke interacts with his grandmother and the other boy his age. Luke and his friend Bruno spends the entire second half of the film in the form of a mouse, which allows for all sorts of cute antics. The emotional center of the story is the boy's relationship with his grandmother, one of safety and warmth. The film ultimately does not transcend the genre.But, boy, does it try. "The Witches" is amazingly grotesque at times, enough so that you can fairly categorize it as a kid-friendly horror film. The film makes it clear, from the beginning, that witches want to kill children. It doesn't use any softer synonyms or dance around it. The film's highlight is the witches' meeting. Angelica Huston's head witch removes her skin and hair, revealing a grotesque true face, her skin stretching, body contorting. It's a moment of body horror worthy of Cronenberg. The Grand High Witch has the wart covered skin, sunken eyelids, and hook nose of your stereotypical witch but the film extends the stereotypes to their extreme. That sequence also features a whole room of old women revealing stub feet and balding, scaly heads. The image of young boys similarly stretching and morphing into a mouse is equally unsettling. The finale, a room of witches shrinking into mice, maintains those nasty creature effects. Though the Jim Henson Creature Studio effects are somewhat cartoony I bet they still provided many young watchers with vivid nightmares.Another thing to like about "The Witches" is the mythological footprint it puts on the witch concept. The script treats witches as if they were vampires or werewolves, classical monsters with specific traits, powers, and weaknesses. The script speaks in sweeping, fable-like terms. All witches are evil, devoted to murdering kids. Why? Because they're monsters, that's why. Their nasty appearances match their attitudes, only able to disguise their evil for so long.The movie is also helped out by its strong cast. Anjelica Huston is delightfully over-the-top as the film's villain, the wicked head witch. She speaks with a cartoonish German accent, fully committed to the material. Even while under extensive make-up, the actress' mannerisms are visible. Mai Zetterling is also notable as the grandmother, warm but with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. Though a bit flat as the young lead, Jasen Fisher is a strong enough actor to carry his role. His performance actually improves when the character is turned into a mouse, the young actor's voice working quite well.Nicolas Roeg's usually stylish direction is muted a bit here but he still pulls off some memorable visuals. The film is uniformly strong up until the very end. The script wimps out, providing an unlikely solution to the hero's problem, de-mouse-fying him at the last minute. It's an especially lazy screen writing decision and the only blotch on an otherwise strong film, a surprisingly twisted kids flick.