Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Today is actress Anjelica Huston’s birthday, which seems as good a time as any to talk about the role that left an indelible mark on my childhood: her portrayal of Evangeline Ernst, the Grand High Witch, in Nicholas Roeg’s phenomenal adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches.
The Witches follows the young, orphaned Luke who, along with his grandmother, visits the Excelsior Hotel in the English countryside. It’s there that he happens upon a gathering of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children — which, in reality, is a meeting for English witches in disguise, who, after pulling off their rubber faces and wigs, reveal a plot to turn all of England’s children into mice with chocolate bars laced with the magic potion named Formula 86.
I still get chills when I think of Evangeline Ernst’s transformation into the horrific and ugly Grand High Witch. Seeing the scene today still fills me with awe because that shit looks REAL.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrjLNpfDTi0]Even as an adult, I can’t help but be fascinated with the somewhat exotic beauty of Anjelica Huston, primarily because of how terrifying she was to me when I was a kid. The Witches was that movie I watched with friends over and over again (sometimes immediately rewinding to watch a second or a third time in a single day), possibly in an effort to be less scared by the Grand High Witch when she reveals her true identity. (That simultaneous fascination and terror I felt became more confounding throughout the years thanks to her pitch-perfect performance as Morticia Addams in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values. She really nails the combination of sexy and scary, doesn’t she?)
Even Huston’s most acclaimed roles — in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, Stephen Frears’ The Grifters, and her father John Huston’s Prizzi’s Honor (for which she won an Oscar) — have always paled in comparison to her most sinister performance in The Witches. Sure, you can chalk that up to the fact that I was about seven years old the first time I saw the movie. But it’s also worth considering Huston’s performance as an example of her incredible acting talents; any lesser actor might chew the scenery and ham it up, whereas Anjelica Huston embraces the camp while taking the role seriously.
Like what you see? Follow Decider on Facebook and Twitter to join the conversation, and sign up for our email newsletters to be the first to know about streaming movies and TV news!
