10 Horror Movie Endings You Can No Longer See
3. Luke Stays A Mouse - The Witches (1990)
Nicolas Roeg's 1990 adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Witches is an excellent film, albeit one that nevertheless invoked the ire of author Dahl himself.
Though the film ends with young Luke (Jasen Fisher) being turned back from a mouse into a human by Miss Irvine (Jane Horrocks), Dahl's novel wrapped up quite differently.
In the book, the boy remains a mouse for the rest of his life, and when an incensed Dahl heard that Roeg planned to change his ending, Roeg agreed to a compromise - to film both his happy ending and Dahl's more downcast one.
Test audiences were unsurprisingly in favour of Roeg's happier ending, and even though Dahl was apparently moved to tears by seeing his original ending on the big screen, the test audience reaction predictably won out.
As a result, Dahl insisted his name be removed from the film's credits and later called the movie "utterly appalling."
Robert Zemeckis' otherwise rancid 2020 remake did ultimately hew closer to Dahl's original ending, which for the 1990 version remains sealed away in a Warner Bros. vault somewhere - if not lost entirely.