Hocus Pocus

1993

Just so everyone is aware, this is NOT the film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s 1990 novel. So if anyone is here looking for information for a book report, then I feel sorry that no one has told you about Wikipedia or Google yet.

Hocus Pocus is one of those movies that Disney didn’t know what to do with. Make it a Saturday night Disney Channel release or show it in theaters? Beat children to death with commercials or beloved character merchandise? It’s really a flip-a-coin situation on a Friday afternoon decision for studio heads. I feel like this is director Kenny Ortega’s (dir: High School Musical, Newsies) MO: cult films with constantly refreshing nostalgia. There are at least 526 Buzzfeed articles about why this film is the “greatest movie in the history of all things that movies are.” Which I completely understand. It has everything:

• Bette Midler singing
• Choreographed walking
• Bette Midler’s zombie boyfriend
• Thora Birch crying in a heap on various things (hay bales, pumpkin patches, cat corpses)
• A talking cat
• Sarah Jessica Parker acting like an horny idiot (honestly, the only role she is good at)

It also puts in twists that you weren’t expecting:

• Male virgin conjures the dead
• The main character is the worst and you wish he would shut up and die
• Bullies who are more sympathetic then the main character
• High schools in Massachusetts have walk-in kilns (it’s a law)

The plot is so simple, but I’m beginning to gather that all horror/Halloween movies are just a re-conceived version of 10 films prior. Three sisters, who sold their souls to the devil to become witches, live in Salem in the late 1600s (ALMOST just in time for the Salem Witch Trials). They need children’s souls to look youthful. Fair enough. Snatch a few orphans, no one will miss them. Instead, they steal the sister of a very determined, but very adult British sounding adolescent named Thackery Binx. The witches steal the sister’s soul, turn Binx into an immortal cat, and then hang for their crimes.

Fast forward 300 years when a too-cool-for-school kid named Max moves to Salem with his family. No one ever really explains why they move there, but I assume it has something to do with the mom’s “party reputation.” Max is skeptical, but his younger sister (played by pre-American Beauty Thora Birch) believes in the legend of the “Sanderson Sister Witches.” With a girl from Max’s class (who looks 20, but I’m starting to think every teenage character in 90s films looked at least 25. I blame high-waisted jeans), they accidentally release the witches back to earth because Max The (cough:tool) Virgin lit a candle.

The remainder of the movie is the trio trying to escape the witches with the help of the immortal cat. I don’t want to ruin the ending, in case you don’t have children or are over the age of 65. However, let’s just say that Disney knows what they are doing. They even had PIXAR work on the special effects.

Some parts were a little gruesome (mostly the zombie ex-boyfriend), but nothing terrifying. The creepiest thing was that Gary and Penny Marshall played husband and wife. Come on Disney. Leave incest out of at least ONE of your films!