#formula 86

I was playing bloodmoney one day and while I was playing, All I need to do is click Harvey to earn money, but when I get to the shop, I notice a potion called “Formula 86” that cost $100, I spent all of my money and when I click on Harvey. Something weird is happening to him, I’m witnessing Harvey transforming into a cute white mouse.

Closeup:

Now that we explored all the book had to offer, let's delve into the cinematic adaptations! Starting with the classical 1990 movie.

# Contrary to the book, in this movie the grandmother is the mother of the main protagonist father (main protagonist who is called Luke in this version). Named Helga, she is played by Mai Zetterling, a Swedish actress. The firt part of the movie takes place in Norway, like in the movie - however, Luke and his parents are said to be American, which actually doesn't make any sense since he is still raised and going to school in England, but anyway. Mai Zetterling is obviously not as massive as the grandmother in the books, and is actually also younger (being in her mid-sixties when the movie was shot). However, just like the book grandmother, she has a missing finger! But her missing finger is her left pinky (in the book, the grandmother had a missing thumb).

While the grandmother from the movie does not call herself a "witchophile" or a witch huntress, she mentions that in her youth she travelled the globe to find the Grand High Witch but failed. While still smoking cigars, this grandmother is much more relaxed than the one in the book. In the book, Grandma was very serious when talking about witches, clearly saying to the Boy her knowledge would save his life, and was still traumatized by her encounter with a witch, the mere mention of it making her shake and reducing her to muteness. But in this movie, the Grandmother tells her stories as if they were funny bedtime stories, and nearly brags about her missing finger.

# The movie adds the mention that in each country there is a "High Witch" that acts as a leader to all the witches in her country, and acts as a sort of bridge between the common witch and the Grand High Witch.

# The signs to recognize a witch are slightly different in the movie. They kept the idea of them being bald and wearing wigs that causes them nasty rashes. They also kept the idea that they have square feet ending in a stump where toes should be - but while in the book they wore small and pointy shoes to hide this, in this movie the witches are said to never wear "pointy or pretty shoes". They always wear "plain and sensible" shoes, large and/or square enough for their feet. The movie also kept the idea of witches wearing gloves, but while in the book they had claws, the witches of the movie merely have deformed hands - old-looking hands, with arthritis and bulging veins, sometimes a bad case of dry skin or boils or a reddish flesh, and always with long, thick, ugly-looking nails.

The witches do not have blue spit in this movie (however I noted that during the RSPCC meeting, all the witches appeared to have dirty, irregular or rotting teeth, despite them appearing perfectly normal and clean beforehand). The witches do not have a particularly large nose, but they still have the same sense of smell (something I forgot to mention from the book and that was carried on in the movie is that during the diner at the hotel the witches wear "nose-plugs" to resist the smell of children, mentionned to be made of cotton in the book). As for the eyes, this sign was slightly changed for the movie : in this canon, the witches can be recognized by the "purple tinge" in their eyes, which are always purple-colored. It is usually quite discreet, their irises appearing to be purplish, but it seems that when they feel intense emotions (surprise, fear, wrath or delight) their pupils actually start to glow a bright unnatural purple.

# While in the book there are five tales of Norwegian children that "fell" at the hands of witches, in the movie that is only one - the tale of Erika, who is precised to have been not just a neighbor but also the best friend of young Grandma. Erika is the girl that ends up living in a painting, however how she came here is different. In the book she disappeared after eating an apple a nice lady gave her in the street, and the following day she was in the painting. But in the movie, she actually got kidnapped (and violently, snatched away from the street) by the witch as she was coming back from buying milk, and appeared in the painting only six weeks after her disappearance.

We also get to see a bit of the witch who got rid of Erika. She appears to have been an aging red-haired woman. She is shown to be the owner of a black cat (traditional witch symbolism) and we also get a glimpse of her kitchen, filled with vials, herbs and unnaturally colored powders. There is a frog on her table (probably a nod to the frogs in the Grand High Witch room in the book), and she cooks something in a small cauldron - a huge bone with boiled meat on it. Either she is cooking one big lamb, either she is preparing a child... And the book hinted that witches could eat children... But it might also be the bone of one of the numerous magical beasts the witches mention using in their cooking in the book.

# The "woman in black", aka the witch that the Boy saw under the tree-house, is given more character here. She is seen wearing sunglasses to hide her purple eyes. While the witch in the book was very creepy, with a disturbing voice and an uncanny smile, this one (played by Anne Lambton, an actress from Warhol's Factory) is actually trying to be sweet and charming. She first tries to offer Luke a snake like in the book, mentionning that "little boys love snakes". She explains he is tamed and she found it "on her walk", even proving it by putting it around her neck, and she also mentions he costs a lot of money. When it fails, she tries to give him a chocolate, which Luke refuses. She is able to guess the boy's name, and she also talks to the snake, apparently to make the beast stay under the tree house as long as Luke hasn't come down. When Luke's grandmother arrives, the witch flees and her snake mysteriously vanishes in the air... before reappearing in her handbag.

# The hotel the story takes place is here renamed the "Hotel Excelsior".

# Bruno Jenkins is more pleasant in the movie than in the book. In the book he was a nasty boy, arrogant and bordering on the bully. Here, despite being gluttonous, boastful and quite simple-minded, he is agreable, very chatty and acting quite friendly with Luke.

# We get the name of the Grand High Witch in this movie: Eva Ernst. She is played by the great Angelica Huston (also known to play Morticia in The Addams Family movies). Numerous famous women were considered for this role, in fact here is the full list of them :Anne Bancfrot, Cher, Eartha Kitt, Faye Dunaway, Jodie Foster, Olivia Hussey, Liza Minnelli, Vanessa Redgrave, Susan Sarandon and Sigourney Weaver.

# Angelica Huston plays the Grand High Witch in disguise as a haughty, disdainful woman with a cold and majestic beauty. Tall, she is always dressed in black and purple tones, and has a lot of jewelery made of silver and purplish stones and gems. She also has a quite stern and statuesque face (fitting with how said face is supposed to be a mask). This clashes with how the Grand High Witch was described in the book as a little, pretty and very kind lady with a voice so sweet it dripped with syrup. But we know for sure that Roald Dahl was absolutely in love with Angelica's performance. To reinforce the similarity with a traditional witch, the Grand High Witch wears during her stay at the hotel a modernized and fashionable cape (black and purple) that can actually turn into a traditional witch cloak. Another minor difference is that in the book the Grand High Witch dress was said to fall to the floor, while here it is actually a short one.

XVIII - Potion Bottle

Now, as I mentionned, in the book the Grand High Witch has samples of Formula 86 on her, in little bottles of dark blue glass. These samples are here for two purpose.

  The first is a demonstration of the potion effect on children. To do so, she chooses Bruno Jenkins, a little kid that stays in the hotel and is actually a true brat. He is the "Glutton Child TM" of Dahl's writing - Bruno is a kid that literaly eats all the time and constantly thinks about food, that keeps bragging about how his father and his family have more money and belongings than other people, and he takes a delight in burning ants with a spyglass. However something quite important should be noted - in the text, Bruno is not said to be fat. I want to precise that because in a lot of adaptations he is depicted as being fat, but in the text itself it is never mentionned that he is. Quentin Blake draws him with a larger, thicker, curvier abdomen than the boy protagonist, appearing a bit pudgy. But the text itself never mentions anything about that (or maybe I missed it) - so an adaptation with a thin or regular-framed body Bruno would not be unfaithful to the original book.

   The second use of the samples is that they are given to the old witches, the "ancient witches". Because witches age just like human beings, and over seventy they are considered "ancient". The witches apparently respect their elders, the Grand High Witch herself considering them faithful servants and offering them already-prepared potions. But the other witches will have to make their own potions. Because the Grand High Witch gives us the recipe to the Formula 86! (And the witches note it in their little notebooks using their saliva as ink).

Take the wrong end of a telescope (it will make the child smaller) and boil it for twenty-one hours, it should be enough to get it soft. While it boils take forty-five brown mice and chop off their tails before frying them in hair-oil until they are cripsy. The bodies of the mice should simmer in frog-juice for one hour. The next ingredient is an alarm-clock : it is what will make the formula have a delayed effect. You need to set the alarm-clock at the exact time you want the child to be turned (this is why you should use a 24 hours alarm clock), and then make it roast in the oven until it is crisp and tender. Then put it all in the mixer : the telescope and the tails and the mice and the alarm-clock. Mix it at full speed and you should have a thick paste. While the mixer is still on, add to the mix the yolk of a gruntle egg (a bird that apparently nests very high in tall trees), and then one by one the remaining ingredients: the claws of a crabcruncher (an animal that lives on high rocky cliffs), the beak of a blabbersnitch  (an animal that lives in deep waters and needs to be speared), the snout of a grobblesquirt (a beast living on the bleak moors and that needs to be shot), and the tongue of a catspringer (a speedy creature that lives in burrows).

The result is a green liquid: the Formula 86.

    Later in the book, the narrator/protagonist enters the room of the Grand High Witch, which is room 454 of the hotel (his own room being the 554, right above the one of the Grand High). Outside of the very strong scent of "witch stench" in the room, the Boy also notices that there are free frogs under the witch's bed. He believes that they are children she turned into animals, and later the Grand High Witch mentions that she plans on throwing the frogs on the beach to "feed the seagulls". The Boy enters in the room to find the Formula 86 bottles - which are actually hidden inside the mattress, sewn in it.

   And now, for the final part, the spoilers of the ending of the book!

At the end of the book, the grandmother and her grandson discover the real identity of the Grand High Witch, or rather the adress of her Secret Headquarters. They find it in both her passport, and in the registering book of the hotel. Because yes, she put her REAL adress in there. Since no one ever knew or discovered or even suspected her to be something else than a human being, she had no reason to be worried about giving real informations. It was right under everyone's nose - the best hiding place.

As it turns out, the Grand High Witch Secret Heaquarters are in Norway, the birthing countries of witches. The Secret Headquarters are actually a castle, located at the top of a high mountain near a small village - where the Grand High Witch poses as a kind and nice Baroness giving huge sums of money to charity.

   And to know the location of the Secret Headquarters is especially important - not just because it is where the money-making machine of the witches is located, not just because the adresses of all the witches in the world are archived here. But because it is where the next Grand High Witch is groomed. You see, Grand High Witches are like queen bees. When one dies, another one replaces her. There is always a Grand High Witch in waiting in the castle, ready to take her new role as leader of the witches, and it is also where all the Assistant Witches reside (special witches that assist and help the Grand High Witch, groom and prepare her replacement, and take care of the Castle).

   I think this is all that I can say for the lore of witches in the original book. There is more to say, but this belongs to the category of the plot, or of spoilers.

To precise a bit the setting, the protagonist of the book "The Witches" is an eight (originally seven) year old boy, unnamed (but clearly inspired by young Roald Dahl), recently orphaned. He had Norwegian parents, but that lived and had a business in England - so he was born in, lived in, and went to school in England. He only went to Norway on Christmas and summer holidays to see his grandmother, the mother of his mother. After the death of his parents in a car accent north of Oslo, he goes to live with his grandmother (an old and massive cigar-smoking woman in her late eighties). She is the one that tells her grandson all about the witches - on top of having herself seen numerous cases of witches due to being a Norwegian woman, she is also a retired witchophile that spent her youth travelling around the globe to find more about witches.

Due to the will of the boy's parents, he goes with his grandmother live in England instead of Norway, and due to the grandmother (never named) developping pneumonia, they decide to go for holidays on a "healing" town of the English Southern coast (Bournemouth, where a lot of retired and old folks go due to the "good and healthy air" of the area). Note that all the towns I mentionned so far are real, Dahl only uses real places in this book. They reside for the holidays in a seaside hotel, The Magnificent.

A final note about the grandmother - she met a witch as a child. She survived it, but it caused her to lose her thumb, and she was so traumatized by the experience that even today she can't speak of the incident.

  Unfortunately for the boy and his grandmother, what they actually ignore is that The Magnificent is the hotel that was selected for the Annual Meeting of the English Witches. The Secret Society of English Witches poses as the RSPCC, the "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children", with the Grand High Witch acting as their Chairman (well, Chairwoman). It is actually a reference to the real life NSPCC, the English charity organization "National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children". Dahl actually here wanted to make a social criticism, because he deeply disdained a lot of so called "charity organizations" of England, that actually did nothing real or effective to act for the cause they defend.

The witches have their reunion in the ballroom of the hotel (one witch carefully locks the door of the room with chains to prevent anyone entering during the meeting), and a very telling fact is that when they start selecting chairs for the reunion, the witches immediately chose the last rows, the ones the most far away from the stage, terrified that they are of the Grand High Witch.  

   The Grand High Witch appears at first as a young and pretty woman, of maybe twenty-five or twenty-six, and really tiny, roughly four and a half feet tall (1m30). She does not wear a hat (the text does not mention her hair, but the Quentin Blake illustrations represent it as long, dark, straigth), has long black gloves going up to her elbows, and a stylish long black dress falling to the ground. Her voice is very sweet and soft, "dripping with syrup" as the Boy describes it.

But this is only her disguise. Because, like all witches, the Grand High Witch is disguised as a human being. But contrary to the Witches, who are at least humanoid, the Grand High Witch is... much more monstrous. Her pretty face? It is a mask. Probably a magic one, given that it moves in such a way it looks like a real face, but it is a mask - she can detach it by touching it behind the ears. And when she takes it off... let's say her real face is gross, terrifying, abominable. Dahl describes it as crumpled and wizened, shrunken and shrivelled, as if it had been picked in vinegar, and it seems to be rotting away, with a cankered and worm-eaten skin around the edges, in the middle of face, and around the mouth and cheeks. It is said to be so frightful, so horrific, one can't help but be hypnotized, mesmerized by this abominable ugliness. Her eyes are said to have "the look of serpents", when they are not outright called "snake eyes", brilliant and flashing, never blinking and set very deep in the rotting and worm-eaten face. Her teeth are pointy, and her mouth filled with a pale-blue phlegm. [I am sure you can find easily Blake's illustration of the Grand High Witch.]

She does not remove her wig, her gloves or her shoes, which actually suggests that there may be things even more horrible underneath. The only indication we have is that her gloved hand is "bony" and that her fingers are as "sharp as a needle". When she unleashes her true nature, the Grand High Witch voice changes, gaining the "same hard metallic quality" as the witch with the snake I mentionned before (hinting that it may be another sign of the witches unnatural nature), except the Grand High Witch has a much louder and harsher voice, that "rasps, grats, snarls, scraps, shrieks and growls". Outside of that, the Grand High Witch is noted to have a distinct foreign accent (but that the boy, who is both English and Norwegian and can speak both languages) does not recognize - she rolls loudly and harshly the "r" sound, pronounces "w" as "v", adds randomly "v" sounds where they shouldn't be (quietly becomes qvietly) and sometimes replace the "a" with "o" (and "was" becomes "vos"). All of that makes her voice even harsher and more guttural it already is.