Witches of Eastwick, The (1987)

Nothing ever happens in the sleepy little New England town of Eastwick. But that’s about to change when three bored, independent women make a wish for a dynamic man to enter their lives.

Alex (Cher) is a leggy, raven-haired widow with one child and a cottage business in roly-poly clay figurines. Jane (Susan Sarandon, pictured at right), the timid, childless divorcee, is a music instructor at the local primary school. And Suki (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a sensitive but rather vapid abandoned mother of six and reporter for the local rag.

Feature by feature the trio dream up the perfect male until Jane, to the amazement of her friends, concludes that he should ride into town on a big black steed.

When the charismatic and mysterious Daryl Van Horne (Jack Nicholson) – a middling fat, middling bald, exceedingly rich eccentric – arrives on the scene, they find themselves happily taken in by his charms.

To each of the three witchettes, he is just what the doctor ordered: a good fuck, a nice guy, a liberator and a temptation. But then strange things start to happen.

Laden with special effects, this film version of John Updike’s book from Mad Max director George Miller was anything but subtle.

Nicholson provided plenty of comic mileage as a charming Satan, and Cher, Pfeiffer and Sarandon were perfect as the three frustrated women who conjured him up (and ultimately put him down) through witchcraft.

The fictional township of Eastwick was, in reality, Cohasset, Massachusetts.

In 2002, a pilot was made for a comedy TV series called Eastwick, set 15 years after the events of the movie – and with a completely new cast. Alex, Jane and Sukie had married and were the parents of teenage warlocks. The pilot never aired, and the series did not eventuate.

Daryl Van Horne
Jack Nicholson
Alexandra Medford
Cher
Jane Spofford
Susan Sarandon
Sukie Ridgemont
Michelle Pfeiffer
Felicia Alden
Veronica Cartwright
Clyde Alden
Richard Jenkins
Walter Neff
Keith Jochim
Fidel
Carel Struycken
Mrs Biddie
Helen Biddie

Director
George Miller