George Miller's The Witches of Eastwick (1987) is a lavishly produced, operatic comedy starring Jack Nicholson in a menage a quatre with three women played by Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Susan Sarandon. The actresses are not ingenues but exhibited in this picture at the very height of their mature beauty. The camera wielded by Vilmos Szigmond loves them almost as much, or, even, more, than their devilish gentleman-caller played by Nicholson. They are filmed with supernatural radiance infusing their tangled locks of hair, posed like pre-Raphaelite Madonnas or Tuscan angels -- sexual love, it seems, makes them shine like icons in candle-lit niches. Although deeply erotic, the film never really sexualizes its leading ladies -- there is no nudity and they are always dressed, more or less, in a lady-like if glamorous way. Eros, in this film, is palpable but, also, somewhat abstract, almost Platonic in its manifestation. At times, the film veers unsteadily into horror but Miller is so accomplished that he manages to juggle the ghastly with the romantic and comical in a way that doesn't rupture the tone of bemused adoration directed at women in the cast -- they are goddesses and not to be besmirched. (I can understand this film better having seen Miller's most recent, highly feminist-inflected, iterations of the Mad Max movies -- the heroines of The Witches of Eastwick are earlier versions of the indomitable women warriors that we find portrayed in the post-apocalyptic road warrior films.) Although there are several scenes set in a strait-laced Protestant church in the hamlet of Eastwick, the film is fundamentally and exuberantly pagan -- the picture pits the voracious energy of the masculine Devil against the serene and complacent trinity of the three goddesses, clearly muses for both Miller and his director of photography.
Sukie (Michelle Pfeiffer) has been deserted by her husband who has absconded leaving her with six daughters (whom miraculously all seem to be the same approximate age). Sukie works for a small-town newspaper that mostly retails local gossip. Janey (Sarandon) is shown in the film on the first day after her divorce --she teaches music at an elementary school and is sexually harassed by the bombastic Principal. Alexandra (Cher) is a sculptor who makes clay figures of fertility goddesses to sell in the local gift shop catering to tourists to the picturesque sea-side village, located apparently somewhere near Cape Cod. Alex's husband has died. At a Fourth of July picnic, the loathsome Principal makes an elaborate and boring speech. The three women daydream and imagine the oration cut short by a violent thunderstorm -- and, no sooner thought than done. A storm boils out of sky and sends the crowd scattering with bolts of lightning. Later, when the women meet for drinks -- a weekly custom, it seems -- they muse that their wishes came true to bring a precipitous end to the Principal's tedious speech. As they get drunk, the three women talk about their desire for a mysterious stranger to arrive in town, woo them, and bring sexual passion to their presently celibate lives. Out of the storm, a long black vehicle appears, rushing through the tempest to their town. Jack Nicholson playing a sinister figure called Daryl Van Horne is riding in the sedan driven by his servant, the uncanny giant Fidel (he looks a bit like Lurch on the old Addams Family shows.) Van Horne buys the Lenox Mansion, said to be built on a seaside bluff where witches were executed, and fills the place with objets d'art and musical instruments -- the interior of the mansion is an elaborate, opera set with filigree, plaster bas relief and the huge blue lagoon in an enclosed natatorium. First, Van Horne seduces Cher's character, Alex. He is unremittingly vulgar, obscene, and lascivious. Alex tells him that she despises him, thinks he's dressed like a fool (he lolls on a bed in pajamas like Hugh Hefner) and, even, smells bad. But Van Horne, who describes himself as a "horny little devil", prevails on her and she becomes his lover. He, next, consoles Janey to improve her musical skills by encouraging her to play with more passion. Delicately, he parts her thighs to place her cello between them. As he accompanies her, she plays with such unbridled passion that the cello and its strings ignites and burns up on the floor. Alex and Janey, who learn that Van Horne has had sex with both of them, go to his mansion to confront him. They find Sukie lounging around, sitting in a sort of caparisoned tent on the front lawn under the Downton Abbey-like facade of the mansion. Van Horne summons the women to a game of doubles on his tennis court -- he uses magic to make the ball hover in the air, dart here and there, and fly into the sky where it ruptures a cloud to cause another downpour. The women come to accept their roles in this Devil's menage -- we see them hovering in the air over the swimming pool, eating cherries out of a great floating bowl, and flying through clouds of pink balloons to the music of Puccini's Nessun dorma. Meanwhile, another woman, Felicia, the newspaper editor's wife, (played by Veronica Cartwright) senses that deviltry is afoot in Eastwick. She plays the part of Linda Blair in The Exorcist -- she seems entranced, possessed, spouting admonitory obscenities about the devil and his "whores". (Characters vomit cherry pits somehow transferred to their gullet from the orgies at Lenox mansion.) The three heroines wish Felicia gone and, once again, this wish is fulfilled -- her husband, the mild-mannered newspaper editor beats her to death with a iron fire poker. Appalled at what has happened, the three women vow to end their relationship with Van Horne. Although Van Horne has played the part of the cynical caddish seducer, in fact, he has fallen in love with each member of the trio. He's miserable that he has been rejected and tries to re-ignite his love affairs with them. By now, the balance of power has shifted to the three women. Van Horne tires to coerce them back into bed with him by various devilish tricks and, in fact, tortures Sukie, causing her extreme pain. Alex and Janey fight back and, ultimately, make a wax voodoo doll representing Van Horne. Sukie is cured and she joins her sisters at the Lomax mansion for the final showdown with Van Horne. This is a noisy spectacular affair, involving all sorts of picturesque mayhem. In the end, the Devil is defeated. But the women are now all pregnant. In a short coda, we see them bathing their sons, all of whom are, of course, the spawn of Satan.
The movie is very impressively shot, with fabulous locations, and wonderful action sequences -- parts of the picture are reminiscent of the Road Warrior films with Nicholson wildly crawling over the top of his sedan as its spins out-of-control down a winding seaside highway. There is a sequence in which Janey's fifth grade band plays Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik with satanic inspiration -- the kids throw aside their music and perform like demonic infant prodigies. Nicholson is fantastic, strutting around cock-sure with banter of this sort: "I like a little pussy after lunch". He wines and dines his prey in an oriental-looking Saracen tent set up on the front lawn of his vast manor. The characters are always gorging sensuously on exotic fruits, whipped cream, chocolates. In the last 15 minutes, Nicholson gets to pull out all the stops and reverts to the character he played in The Shining seven years earlier -- he rolls his eyes, grunts, and bellows and runs around like an enraged chimpanzee: "all I want is my family all together," he laments. I don't know the extent to which the film adapts and follows John Updike's source novel. Nicholson gets to howl some spectacularly misogynistic harangues: "When God makes mistakes, we call it nature. Woman is a mistake." Notwithstanding the Devil's misogyny, the power in this film is decidedly female -- it is the women who summon Van Horne; he doesn't call them. And, when they find him inconvenient and dangerous, they don't hesitate to cast him aside notwithstanding all his wiles. In the end poor Satan is desperately enamored with three heroines -- and this makes sense, we are also.
