Amazon.com DVD Review: Based on Jill Murphy's book, this charming movie is set in an English boarding school for witches--complete with orange and black school uniforms, broom-flying exercises, and potion assignments for lab. The incompetent student of the title, Mildred, is played by a fetching young Fairuza Balk. Diana Rigg is the nasty head teacher, Tim Curry the (oddly) idolized Grand Wizard, and TV's Facts of Life maven Charlotte Rae does double duty as the school's kindly dean and her evil witch twin, who's bent on taking over the school. Directed by Robert Young, this 68-minute video features less than state-of-the-art effects and several songs that stop the action--most bizarrely an outdoor assembly performance by Curry that turns into a weird music video. Still, preteen girls will identify with the beleaguered heroine who overcomes her wickedly snooty rival, a teacher who doesn't believe in her, and a band of dastardly witches and, of course, saves the day. (Ages 6 and older) --Kimberly Heinrichs
| Anything Can Happen On Halloween (The Worst Witch) by Tim Curry - 3 minutes 12 seconds (466x360, 30 fps, 15.3 MB). Tim Curry's big musical number as The Grand Wizard, in HBO's original film The Worst Witch. As near as we can tell, someone in the mid-80s had access to a video editing machine with a number of different effects and was determined to use EVERY SINGLE ONE of them in this segment. Very trippy! |
Television
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