By Guy Lodge
Plus IconGuy Lodge
Film Critic
@guylodge See All
20th Century Studios As an admittedly elder millennial, my first encounter with Tim Curry was not his defining role — not for most people, at least. His delicious, lascivious Dr. Frank N. Furter in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” may be the Curry performance that takes up the most real estate in the imagination once you get around to seeing it; a certain bracket of still-haunted Gen-X viewers may argue for his original Pennywise in the TV miniseries “It” on that front.
But for kindergarten-age me, Curry announced himself and his flamboyant gifts in a far more modest enterprise: the shabbily budgeted 70-minute British television adaptation of Jill Murphy’s children’s book “The Worst Witch,” a kind of pre-Potter magic-academy romp with much less complicated lore. For the most part, it’s innocuous, sweet-natured kids’ entertainment, even if 21st-century tots might be bewildered by its chintzy-even-for-the-’80s effects and the spirited stage-school performance style from much of the ensemble (including a pre-teen Fairuza Balk in the lead). For a full five minutes, however, it operates on a higher level — when Curry swoops into proceedings as the Grand Wizard Egbert Hellibore, and delivers a catchy little ditty called “Anything Can Happen on Halloween.”
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