Yet Another Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 4 (The Worst Witch)

Sometimes I encounter shit on this blog and wonder what in the world I'm doing putting it in front of my eyes. The open suggestions are a good thing, usually, but at times they lead to oddities like this. Thanks to my pal Kat, I therefore find myself looking at something that once again steers away from the blood and gore of spooky slashers to something with more family friendly Halloween vibes. A classic tale about magically adept youth at a British school for witches-- NO NOT THAT ONE JESUS CHRIST ALMIGHTY ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND SHE WANTS HALF OF THE FRIENDS I CARE ABOUT TO FUCKING DIE GOOD GOD NO!!! No, we're talking about The Worst Witch. I remember they had a show based on this in the late 90's, probably imported from Britain, and it aired on YTV up here in Canada. I only know of it, however, and so I instead sat down and watched a 70 minute children's movie about witches today. It was alright, and a little weird in places.\

The Worst Witch has this odd little slice of life vibe, where it's just a bunch of misadventures happening with all these aspiring young witches at their witch school, and focusing on Mildred Hubble, the titular worst witch who is not very good at magic things. She gets taunted by the top witch of the class, she messes up her potions and her broomstick lessons, there's a hardass of a teacher (played with impeccable class by Diana fucking Rigg no less) who gives her a rough time... It's not the best time of it for poor Mildred Hubble. It's not that the story is a misery or anything, it's just highly relatable stuff. You feel for the poor kid and want her to get a W. Writing it out like this makes it sound sort of dull, but the scenarios and setups just sort of fly by. The presentation is also something of note here. Being a product of the 80's, and British to boot, it gives me these classic Doctor Who vibes. (Another aside: Something about the opening song sounded familiar to me, and when I got to the end and saw the credits I noted that it was sung by no less than Bonnie Langford. As if the Who connection wasn't strong enough.) Not only is it drowning in synth 80's beats, but it's full of all sorts of cute period-appropriate video effects and green screen trickery. The broomstick flying scenes are a highlight, as it's just girls sitting on broomsticks in front of a green screen while it plays B roll of flying over the English countryside. It's simultaneously hokey as hell and also something I buy.

Then there's just absolutely bizarre things that happen. Like the villains of the piece. The headmistress of the school is named Miss Cackle, and she has an identical twin sister with a posse of evil witches hanging out in the woods who are planning to take over the school. Said twin is also just Miss Cackle's actress in a pink wig doing a Southern accent. It's very odd, and it would be the oddest thing to note if it weren't for the thing this movie is perhaps most famous for. At the end of the second act, it's Halloween night and the school is being blessed with an appearance from a famous wizard called the Grand Wizard. The Grand Wizard is played by Tim Curry, and Tim Curry then shows up and delivers a fucking fever dream of a music video about Halloween. It has to be linked to, I fear, and I hope to God this upload works because it needs to be seen.

What do you say after that? After Tim Curry is processed by every video effect in the book (or on the video deck or whatever) rhyming as many things as he can with Halloween while it all shows up on the screen? It's the weirdest and wildest thing. It is, in itself, a work of cinema that makes this movie worth it on its own. The rest of the thing is pretty good and quite bizarre too. I didn't even mention the game of tag or the bully getting turned into a pig or the snails or other weird shit. Let's just leave this where it is. It's harmless. It's a children's witch movie without a problematic author for once (I hope) and probably made lots of kids happy in the 80's when they had it on tape. I'm way too old for it, but goddamn if I can't have fun with how fucking weird Tim Curry's music video is. Sometimes you just gotta have fun on Halloween, and this is fun.