This is one lady you do not want to cross... not unless you have a Death Wish.
- The story of a girl trapped in a painting who grew older and older as the years went by until she just vanished.
- As the Grandmother narrates the disappearance of her childhood friend, the flashback shows young Erica head out to buy milk. From a nearby window, a middle-aged woman watches. With a shivering orchestral jolt, we see a chillingly huge close-up of her glaring purple eyes.
- The Grand High Witch's hag-like true appearance (pictured). On top of looking positively ancient, the Witch bears a huge hook nose with giant nostrils, drooping ears weighed down by earrings, and an enormous hump. The shots of her removing the mask for the first time are also incredibly freaky.
- The transformation scene of Bruno turning into a mouse is pretty frightening in itself (so much so that most of the scene had to be cut to get a PG rating in the United Kingdom). It starts off with him violently shaking while the witches cheer in excitement, then his face takes on a creepy mouse-like appearance (achieved through prosthetic makeup) before he suddenly (but briefly) morphs into a horrifyingly grotesque mouse-human hybrid
◊. It only lasts a few seconds, but this shot alone is enough to traumatize any young, unknowing viewer.- If you imagine this scene from Bruno’s perspective it makes it even more terrifying - he’s under the impression that he’s going to be given chocolate, then he’s suddenly going through the transformation into a mouse, whilst everyone else in the room is filled with excitement and enjoyment at it.
- When the Witches try to catch Luke, he manages to hide briefly outside; the Grand High Witch then sees a baby in its carriage with the Nannynote who might be catching a little sleep. She interacts with the baby by playing with it, but then she sees Luke about to run off and so she pushes the carriage down the cliff with heinous glee. The carriage rolling down the cliff has the mother screaming in fear running down the hill after her child but Luke stops the carriage before it's too late. What's really scary is the scares of the baby's nanny; it's very believable and sets the pulse racing. Thankfully, Luke saves it in time as he then resumes his escape.
- It additionally establishes the Grand High Witch and the Witches as pure evil beyond their hatred of children based on smell alone, given that that she and the witches gleefully applaud the idea of sending a baby to its death, and secondarily motivated by doing the deed for sick amusement.
- Luke's Oh, Crap! moment when the Grand High Witch shows up in his room and is then taken back to be turned into a mouse.
- While we don't see his full transformation like we did with Bruno, the fact that Luke looks like he's having a seizure as he transforms is a bit unsettling.
- One of the witches — who gets turned into a mouse after sampling the cress soup doped with Formula 86 — gets a pretty horrible on-screen death. She runs back into the dining room and under the witches' table to warn the other witches about the soup... and then promptly gets stomped under the Grand High Witch's foot, complete with a Sickening "Crunch!" and green vital fluids splattering into the carpet. The Irony is that the Grand High Witch mistook her for a transfigured child, and accordingly killing her without hesitation; which only adds to the horror.Witch Mouse: Don't touch it! It's in the soup! Don't touch the-
Grand High Witch: Child! [crunch] - It leads to the Transformation Trauma as the witches are slowly turned into hideous human/mouse hybrids before becoming mice.
- The Grand High Witch's Clipped-Wing Angel form; her mask peels off to reveal a nightmarish exaggeration of a hairless rat-dragon-hag beast that is then turned into a hairless rat. Showing the monster behind the mask in a literal fashion.
- The witches' purple eyes, especially the first witch Luke meets, when she removes her glasses and reveals her eyes.
