Hey, y'all! This here is Punkin Nightshade, speakin to you through this computer blog for The MonsterGrrls' 31 Days Of Halloween, and today I am in a swivet cause I am doin a movin picture review about somethin I know a lot about. I have been doin postins about vampire slayers and swamp things and first one thing and then another, but this one is about witches. This here movin picture is called The Witches, and it was first a book by a 
feller name of Roald Dahl, who lived over in England and had writ another book about a young boy named Charlie and a chocolate factory, which was made into a movin picture twice. The picture was produced by a feller named Jim Henson, who was the feller who made up those Muppet folks, and had also made him up one of those special effectin departments called Jim Henson's Creature Shop, which I am mentionin here cause I just like that name. They done a bunch of stuff our Mad Doctor likes.This picture starts out bein about a young one named Luke, whose granny is tellin him a story about witches and what they done to a young girl named Erica. He is stayin with his granny while his parents is off somewhere, and I don't know if she was tellin him the story to get him to behave or not, but anyhow the next day they find out that Luke's parents done been killed in an accident, so Luke is now stayin with his granny from here on. Both Luke and his granny are natural upset about the accident, so they decide they will take a vacation out to a hotel at the seashore. Luke is holdin up well, but he is the only young one at the hotel, which is uncommon filled with all these women meetin for some convention. Then Luke meets another young one named Bruno, who is a bit rambunctious cause his parents don't pay no attention to him. Everthing goes along for awhile until Luke is playin in one of the convention rooms with his pet mice, and then all them women that's conventionin at the hotel come rushin in and fill up the room, so Luke decides that he should hide himself. Then this other woman with long black hair comes struttin in and you can tell she is the grandie dame of all them other women, and they shut up the room and start pullin off wigs and masks, and Luke is seein that all them women is witches and the grandie dame is the leadin one, what's called the Grand High Witch, and they's the same kind of witches his granny was tellin him about.
Now, when I seen this part, I decided that Mr. Henson and Mr. Dahl had not ever met no real witches. There are elderly witches among us, right enough, and when it gets coven meetin time there ain't none of us that don't tart up, but these here witches in this movin picture was almost critters. Ain't no real witches look like that, which is how you can tell this is a movin picture and not the real world.The Grand High Critter Witch tells all the other critter witches that she has got a plan to get rid of all the children in the world, cause it is part of the story in this movin picture that witches do not like children because children smell like nasty stuff to witches. Well sir, I say that this is twaddle, cause a real witch would have done with bad-smellin children what we did to little Timmy, who is a young one what lives down the road from me and is all the time runnin with the young ones of Miss Cecily, who also lives down the road and is a werewolf, and one time they was out playin and little Timmy fell in an old waterhole that had stagnant water and swamp slime in it. The werewolf cubs all set up howlin and we come to see what's the matter, and Timmy was right ripe-smellin when we got him out, so we just set him in a tub full of hot soapy water and scrubbed him till he hollered. I am thinkin from the look of them that all these critter witches is really smellin theirselves, but of course one should be polite and respectful to folks, even the mean ones.
So anyhow, the old Grand High Critter Witch wants to use a secret potion to turn all the children in the world into mice so cats will eat them, which ain't nohow practical. So Luke is hearin all this and knows he got to tell his granny so they can find out what to do, and then the Grand High Critter Witch brings in Bruno to test the secret potion on. Luke tries to save Bruno, but it don't work, and both him and Bruno get turnt into mice. So in the rest of the movie Bruno, who likes bein a mouse, and Luke, who don't, got to save the world.
Jasen Fisher plays Luke, Mai Zetterling plays his granny, and Charlie Potter plays Bruno. Angelica Huston plays
the Grand High Critter Witch, and she has also played in some other movin pictures about the Addams Family, and got to look better in them than she does here. She does get to look all right at the start, but not for long. There is also another feller in this picture that our Mad Doctor likes, named Rowan Atkinson, and he is playin the hotel manager, who is natural upset when he finds Luke and Bruno runnin round the hotel after they been turnt to mice, cause he is worried about mice in his hotel and people not wantin to stay there. But those mice are savin the world, so that is all right. I am likin this picture fine and think it is a good picture to watch with little ones, but probly not very little ones since the critter witches look so awful. But I am also tellin you that it is not a factual picture about witches, and real witches would not hurt no young ones cause we got young ones too. So I am tellin you here as a witch that you should always look after your young ones and treat them right and keep them safe from bad folks like these critter witches in this picture, not just on Halloween, but any old time.So I am done here, and blessings be to you and yours. We're comin back tomorrow with more Halloween postin, and I shall be doin another movin picture review soon cause I'm kind of likin it.
Sincerely,
Petronella Nightshade
POST-MORTEM: I am mentionin here that all of us and the Mad Doctor would like to say thank you and howdy to Mr. Greg West, his wife Kay, and his young ones Zephyr and Katie-Brooke. It was him what suggested that I should of writ this review, cause he showed this movin picture to his little boy Zephyr and they all liked it though it was scary. --P. N.
