Every Roald Dahl Movie Adaptation Ranked Worst To Best

A collaboration between Don’t Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth director Nicolas Roeg and The Jim Henson Company, The Witches is one of those kid’s movies from the 80s and 90s – like The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth before it, both funnily enough also featuring Henson’s trademark master puppetry – that manages to be enchanting, entertaining and slightly terrifying at the same time.

Angelica Huston hams it up perfectly as the film’s antagonist, the Grand High Witch, whose slinky and sophisticated façade masks the most gruesome of faces and leads an international entourage of fellow hags hell-bent on ridding the world of pesky children, and though pint-sized hero Luke is a tad annoying with his whiny American accent (let’s just say it isn’t too hard to forgive the coven for turning him into vermin) he’s offset by veteran Swedish actress Mai Zetterling as his feisty grandmother.

One very notable departure from Dahl’s work is the film’s ending. In the book, Luke is condemned to spend the rest of his short life as a mouse whereas in Roeg’s reimagining this is swapped for a more twee, Hollywood-esque ending in which he is transformed back into human boy form by a redeemed witch – a finale that Dahl was reportedly appalled by, but admittedly one that’s probably more suited to cinema than his original ending.