The screen adaptation of John Updike's novel is a more-or-less typical package deal: a generic assembly-line production marketed for adults but aimed at adolescents, and supported by the crutch of high-tech (circa 1987)special effects. Somewhere lost within the cartoon scenario about three restless New England divorcées and their pact with Satan is an underhanded comment on male chauvinism and gender aggression, but the film is never allowed a chance to rise above the level of a summer bubblegum fantasy (with literary pretensions). Was it meant to be a horror film? A comedy? An allegory of Women's Lib? By trying to be all three it ends up as an awkward mishmash of each, with only Jack Nicholson's juicy-ham performance (he plays the Prince of Darkness like a dirty old man) holding any interest.
Review of The Witches of Eastwick
