Over the past few years, there has been one goal every October: to watch The Witches of Eastwick (1987). Oh sure, it sounds easy but I promise you that as November rolls around, I have found that it’s become an afterthought. Having given up my Netflix disc plan, I was a slave to the TV rerun system, and it comes at a price, an inconvenience that I have no choice but to shake my fist at. Why was it so difficult to track down this movie? Sure, part of it was just that my mind was preoccupied with a million other things, but I’m now personally mad at myself. It turns out that I’ve been missing out on a masterpiece for oh so long, and there’s no good excuse for it.
This is one of those movies that is such an accomplished version of itself that you can’t help but stare in awe. It’s a sex comedy, proto-feminist, and finds Jack Nicholson delivering some of his most enjoyable acting. You think that The Shining (1980) had some primo freak-outs? Wait until you see the living embodiment of toxic masculinity yell at a church after blowing down the street like Buster Keaton in Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928). It’s this magnificent piece of art, and it’s only getting warmed up. There’s a sequence where Nicholson flies out the rear window of a moving car and has to climb through the sunroof.
It’s about then that you realize that this is directed by George Miller, who is one of Australia’s greatest exports. For those who are confused about how an aged filmmaker could make something as uproarious as Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), I think you especially need to see The Witches of Eastwick to understand that he’s always been this way. No matter what he’s done, he’s brought this ferocity, tweaking the familiar into something fun and perverse. Furiosa didn’t come out of nowhere. The DNA can easily be tied to Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer as they perform wild acts of voodoo on Nicholson, watching him swing across the room as a dog chews on the doll. It’s all so farcical that you can’t help but love the sadism.
Every frame of this movie is addictive and trashy, finding Miller elevate sleaze into an art form. Every phallic joke holds deeper symbolism of the looming power of the patriarchy, finding judgmental eyes peering from a central church setting. The three leads are women who don’t convey the typical role of women, especially during the second term of The Reagan Administration. The idea of being divorced, or making sculptures that celebrate women in all of their forms are these small uncomfortable ways that women aren’t allowed to be themselves. They almost need each other just to survive, knowing that nobody will accept them for their kind hearts despite a few deviances in personal interests.
One of the key things to know about why I love The Witches of Eastwick is because Jack Nicholson is my favorite actor. Ever since I was a teenager, there was something that compelled me by every role. It was the way he could talk in a low voice, raising his arched eyebrows and asking you to listen. It’s as evident in his counterculture status in Five Easy Pieces (1970) as it is in his later career. I will always be thankful that I was old enough to see The Departed (2016) in theaters and appreciate one of his last truly great roles. Once again, he had this laissez-faire attitude there that made him a convincing mob boss. You didn’t want to cross him because you knew he wasn’t afraid to cut you. Frankly, he should’ve gotten an Oscar nomination for that.
The journey of discovering every other role in his catalog has had the familiar hits and misses from an actor with a storied career spanning almost 50 years. While I can’t say that I’ve seen a bad role from him, there’s at best a strong focus on his average roles, finding him either stretching his muscles as a dramatic lead or doing some very weird things. For instance, he’s good in The Border (1982) and it has an important message about immigration, but otherwise, I can’t say that it’s necessarily one that you should track it down. Also, Wolf (1994) sounds like it should be better than it ends up being, though worth tracking down if “Nicholson as werewolf” gets your heart racing.
I’m thankful in reporting that “Nicholson as devil” plays a lot better. It isn’t just that everything coalesced beautifully under the watchful eye of Miller. It isn’t just that it manages to be an uproarious takedown of toxic masculinity with as much seriousness as it deserves. It’s that amid this struggle for women to be taken seriously, there’s Nicholson as Daryl Van Horne: a man who wanders into town and immediately demands your satisfaction. Even then, it isn’t just that he owns this seriocomic wardrobe of fashion that feels just enough tacky…
It’s the ponytail!
If you want to know how I know that Nicholson understands Van Horne, it’s that ponytail. I understand that he didn’t invent this fashion, but the way it sits on the back of his head feels so superfluous. While the rest of his hair hangs long, flowing in the wind, there’s this small part of his hair, pulled together in a pinky-sized ponytail that barely does anything. If you looked at it from the side, it looks like a skullcap glued on. It’s a pointless feature and you have to ask why he even did it. Then again, here’s this man who thinks that he can seduce anyone into loving him. He an endless resource of pointless features.
And it all works because that was Nicholson’s persona. He was the great seducer, luring in women with his charm. In some ways, Van Horne feels sad because he’s reaching that age where his body is no longer athletic. He’s got a small portliness to him that makes him look goofy with his shirt off. Meanwhile, he thinks that giving women luxury can somehow compensate for any deeper emotional value. As he progresses, his ultimate catalyst is the belief that he’s not getting any validation back, and it’s the horrifying twist that makes the third act into one towering set piece after another, voodoo revenge and all.
With that said, it would be wrong to jump straight to the end. The initial interaction between Nicholson, Cher, Sarandon, and Pfeiffer has quite an incredible set of scenes. The most noteworthy comes (some pun intended) during a music scene. Miller has created one of the most delightful euphemistic sex scenes imaginable by having Sarandon play cello while Nicholson piano. What starts with Van Horne spreading her legs so that the cello can sit comfortably ends with them both in a feverous sweat, their hearts racing as the cello lies on the floor, on fire. It’s one of those moments that confirm what this movie is. It’s not going to be subtle about its gender politics. We’re going to see Sarandon enjoy her “cello sex” and it’s going to be wild.
That is what makes The Witches of Eastwick so great. It isn’t that it’s a Wiccan story of revenge. It’s that it’s based on a John Updike novel that updates the mythology to modern suburbia. As someone who really likes witch culture, I’ve loved studying how the media representation has evolved over the centuries, watching it evolve from pariah to sympathetic and mentally ill to the strong independent woman. Updike feels like he understands it even better than I do. This isn’t a story about three women fighting over a man, it’s about fighting a man who has mislead them, breaking apart the stereotypes and understanding that they all have their own self-worth.
And they do so in some of the most delightful ways possible. Everything is presented with perfect foreshadowing, finding Van Horne dumping cherry seeds into a voodoo doll only to have them expelled from a bookish woman that pissed him off. Of course, his general disregard for religion is obvious. He is the symbolic devil and will do anything to promote his self-interest. Nicholson has that confidence that you want to give it to him. He could seduce a phonebook, he’s that good.
What’s incredible is watching the women discover their own power and ability to fight back, using voodoo in a series of wild scenarios that allow Nicholson to prove his weight as a comedic actor. It starts with the familiar needle-prodding, watching him grow so intense from the pain that he punches through a glass window and calms himself in ice cream. Later his leg shoots with the pain while walking in the middle of the street. To watch him decay is a marvelous piece of acting, finding him committed to this strange world.
It’s a story of humiliation, and Miller knows that it’s cathartic. While not every man is the devil, there are people who have these personality traits, and it’s clear that he takes pleasure in watching Cher, Sarandon, and Pfeiffer fight them, especially as Nicholson gets mad (literally) with power. They have a contemporary coolness to them that starts over a round of drinks and finds them using their kitchen as ways to summon forces. It may be a story with stakes and dramatic moments of peril, but it never forgets that one of the joys is being a ribald horror movie, attacking the supernatural symbolism of awfulness.
Again, anyone who thinks that Mad Max: Fury Road came out of nowhere needs to watch The Witches of Eastwick. There’s clearly a passion for representing strong women, and this is a prime example. While they may not always reflect abnormal strength, they have the flaws and character growth necessary to make for a compelling narrative. Even the fact that Cher learns to control Nicholson’s body is some great quasi-abortion commentary amid a sequence of absolute chaos. The sky has grown cloudy, shooting thunder down on any moving target. What it lacks in conventional black robe imagery it more than makes up for in overall coolness, setting a bar that no witch movie since has really accomplished for me. None have been as wild, kinky, insane, and delightful as this.
I would be remised if I didn’t take a moment to shout out the great score by John Williams. One of two Oscar nominations for the film, it’s one of his best Non-Spielberg soundtracks of the era. You can tell by every note that, despite its professionalism, is going to be this campy and jaunty work. It has traces of haunting undertones, but it knows first and foremost to be fun, at times winking at the audience. It helps the rest of the movie go down smoothly, understanding that even if the themes of this are deathly serious, it’s a chance for horror to swirl with madness and cleverness in ways that are more than patronage.
I am thankful to finally cross this one off of my list. It’s such a wonderful discovery that hits so many of my interests, most notably Jack Nicholson and witches. Together they create a context that continually surprised me. Sometimes it was with jokes and subtext towards Nicholson’s aging playboy persona. Other times it was just in wanting to see how far the madness would go. I trust Miller to blow up the world and still find ways to make things crazier. This is one of those movies that doesn’t quit, saving the most perplexing twists until the end. More than that, it asks us what they all mean. I understand if crazy comedies aren’t your idea for horror, but how could you turn down such a powerful (some pun intended) movie that feels like it’s barely holding onto its hinges? It’s such a breath of fresh air, and I hope to add it to my collection so that it won’t take me another few years to potentially watch it again.
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