Witch One Did It Better?
For Spooktober Day 4 I headed to the small, fictional Rhode Island town of Eastwick. The Witches of Eastwick 1987 is based on the 1984 novel by John Updike and starring mega-stars Cher, Jane Smart widowed mother of one, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sukie Rougemont abandoned mother of six, Susan Sarandon, baren-divorcee Jane Spofford, and Jack Nicholson, as the mysterious Daryl Van Horne.
I’m not going to waste this post on all the problematic sexism disguised as female empowerment in the movie or that Jack Nicholson would never fit the criteria the three ladies wished for, instead, I’ll award one of the lead actresses my version of an academy award for their stellar performance. Side note: the film did receive a real Oscar nomination for Best Sound and Best Original Score and won a BAFTA award for best special effects.
Michelle Pfeiffer does an amazing job of playing a woman with too many kids she doesn’t know what to do but all I could think about every time she’s on-screen is her performance as Stephanie Zinone in my Grease 2 especially in this pool scene.
Susan Sarandon is the epitome of an Actress deserving of a capital A, She’s in that Tom Hanks can do anything acting box. In this movie, she does her thing so it was hard not to give her the award and call it a day but this movie has a trio of witches.
And then there is Cher! With no last name needed, Cher is in her hay day of acting at the time of Witches of Eastwick’s release with Suspect and Moonstruck at the box offices in the same year. She brings her Cher-ness to this movie in the same way as her Academy award-winning performance in Moonstruck and like the Oscar voters I’m here for it. She makes her character strong yet venerable, sexy yet quirky and I look forward to seeing her onscreen every time. While watching I never think about wanting her to burst out in song. Then I add the fact she beat out Anjelica Huston for the role, I have to give her my vote.