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31 Days of Horror Movies - Day 5

 

This is where the fun begins! Welcome to the fifth day of our recommendation series and if you think that we've been pretty lenient, then we have good news because this is one of the turning points... while still, somehow, keeping a PG rated classic.

 

Day 5 - The Witches (1990)

Not the most recent Robert Zemeckis adaptation, we are going with the original Nicolas Roeg's The Witches, itself an adaptation of a Roald Dahl book. The Witches is pure nightmare fuel for kids and one of the best horror films of the '90s. The set-up is classic: a young kid stays with her grandma at a hotel and discovers a coven of witches who want to turn little kids into mice. If you're a kid, which I was when first watching it, this film is an absolute nightmare from beginning to end. It doesn't help that the entire film has the point of view of a kid, which is one of the reasons of why it is so scary. This classic is directed by British arthouse director Nicolas Roeg (Don't Look Now), it has genuinely terrifying creature effects by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, and has a completely unhinged and committed performance by Anjelica Huston, who is so delightfully unnerving that it all adds up to create a film that still shocks even after it's release. Roeg shoots the entire film like a children's nightmare and the fact that he treats like a legitimately scary dark fantasy fable is one of the many reasons of why this film is so timeless. The Witches is scary, unnerving, and scarring for kids but it's also a delightfully dark fantasy horror film for adults as well. 


*All of the recommendations that we make can be found at the El Paso Public Library Catalog!

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