The Witches of Eastwick

In old days actors’ faces and names featured prominently on film posters in order to bring audience to cinemas. This strategy, at least at certain times, worked and many such films became hits. On a very rare occasions those actors delivered even more, with their presence and talent elevating films that would otherwise be subpar, like The Witches of Eastwick, 1987 dark fantasy comedy directed by George Miller.

The plot is based on the eponymous novel by John Updike. Three titles characters are three women who live in Eastwick, picturesque and conservative small New England town – widowed sculptress Alexandra Medford (played by Cher), divorced cellist Jane Spofford (played by Susan Sarandon) and divorced local newspaper reporter Sookie Ridgmont (played by Michelle Pfeiffer). They are best friends, unaware that they are witches and they form of powerful coven. By wishing exactly the same thing – a man who would be exciting, attractive and everything regular men in Eastwick are unable to be – they summon mysterious man to town. He is flamboyant rich playboy Daryl Van Horne who buys and renovates local mansion and begins to intrigue the townsfolk with his outlandish behaviour. When he meets three women, he doesn’t hide his intention of seducing them, and quickly succeeds in that, bringing them into his mansion whey they live like extended family and begin to fulfil their wildest fantasies, at the same time realising they indeed have magical powers. After a while it becomes quite obvious that Van Horne is actually Devil himself and when unexplained incidents begin to cause mayhem in town three women turn on him and decide to chase him out.

This was feature Hollywood debut for George Miller, Australian director best known for Mad Max films. He was quite keen on proving that he could direct something quite different and employed many of his skills and talents to create dynamic and interesting scenes. He was aided by famed cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, as well as composer John Williams whose score sounds very much like his later and much better known work in Harry Potter series. Miller’s experience while making the film wasn’t happy; he was often clashing with producers and some might think that those troubles reflected on general quality of the film. Main problem for The Witches of Eastwick was, however, in the script by Michael Christopher, writer who apparently didn’t know whether this film should be classic supernatural horror, satirical comedy dealing with life in small town or offer some serious observation about relationship between men and women. This confusion reflects on the film which is the best in first part, when we are introduced to characters and when there is much more focus on comedy. In the second part, however, characters and dialogue are suffocated with the orgy of special effects.

However, The Witches of Eastwick nevertheless ends up as very good and entertaining film. This is mostly to excellent cast which features three Academy Awards winners (Nicholson, Cher, Sarandon) out of four actors playing main roles. Among the women, Sarandon is the most prominent because her character goes through most impressive and entertaining transformation – from mousy and repressed high school teacher to flamboyant sex kitten. However, all three actresses are easily overshadowed by Jack Nicholson who plays one of his most memorable roles. Partly basing it on his real life personality and reputation of ladies’ man, Nicholson relishes in opportunity to show his talent for comedy, as well as ham it up in one of rare roles when this unrestrained approach makes perfect sense. Veronica Cartwright also does impressive job in supporting role of Felicia Alden, devoutly religious and paranoid woman, but her character is underused and disappears too early in the film. Richard Jenkins, reliable character actor who plays her husband and Sookie’s husband, is wasted in the film. Despite these flaws, Nicholson delivers enough entertainment to turn The Witches of Eastwick into devilish fun for most of the viewers.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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