FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Vice Blog

CHILDHOOD TRAUMA THEATER - THE WITCHES

The Witches they made back in the 90s.

"I never actually saw this movie on account of the preview scaring the living shit out of me every time I walked into a room with a TV on. The first time it came on I remember I got really psyched because of Jim Henson or Roald Dahl or whoever's name I recognized and scooched up on the carpet about 10 inches away from the screen so that the picture basically took up my entire field of vision. Maybe a week or so earlier I'd watched Escape to Witch Mountain for the first time and decided I was now into 'dark movies,' but that descision evaporated in a pall of little-girl shrieks as Anjelica Huston took off her face and became some sort of splotchy, Alien Nation beak monster inside my eyeballs. It beyond destroyed me. Once I'd mustered the strength to stop screaming and pull my eyes away from the TV screen I propelled myself into a backward somersault and monkey-scrambled out of the living room and into the hall, where my father found me panting like retard. To this day I'm pretty sure that's the exact moment he gave up on me and began working on my little brother.

"So anyways, that face haunted me for as long as the movie was being advertized on TV. Actually, between the witches' faces in it and the klansmen in the trailer for Godfather Part III, I don't think I sat through a single commercial break for the better part of a year.

"Wow, that was it? Man, what a fucking pussy [referring to himself at age 7]. I guess that's sort of scary if you don't see it coming, but that head was totally cartoony. It kind of looked like they crossbred Mortiis with a Skelkie. …There's definitely some other stuff going on in this movie that's pretty weird though. I don't think I would have picked up on it when I was a kid, but all those bald witches in dresses have a real "Shaved Women" vibe, like those French collaboration women whose heads got shaved. You know, cause they collaborated with the Nazis and then they made them walk through town with their screaming babies? [long "Shaved Women" singalong]

"Oh and another thing, what's up with all the weird sexual tension in this. That scene where Anjelica Huston is getting ready to turn the fat kid into a mouse looked like she was sitting on one of those riding dildos. Now I'm sort of glad I didn't see this as a kid. That probably would have crossed some iffy mental wires."

DARREN SILVERBERG