“It’s a full moon tonight. That’s when all the weirdos are out.”
There’s a curious anthropological phenomenon I’ve noticed in the past few years, and if you have an Internet connection, or have ever spoken to a human woman during the month of October, I’m sure you’ve noticed it too: for thirty-one straight days every year, every woman between the ages of 22 and 30 talks nonstop about one thing: Hocus Pocus. The film is a campy family comedy that doesn’t exactly fit the bill of this feature, but it’s become a Halloween classic, so I think it merits discussion. And before you accuse this article of being sexist, let me add: women be shoppin’ (for Hocus Pocus on Blu-Ray).
This is my second time watching this film, and I’m still not sure why exactly Hocus Pocus attained its cult-classic status seemingly overnight. The jokes aren’t particularly funny, the plot is pretty patchwork, it’s not scary, and at times it really tells you how badly it wants to be a musical (the director, Kenny Ortega, went on to helm High School Musical). That said, I don’t hate it. The film has its own kind of charm, even when it’s a mess narratively. At times it’s even a lot of fun.
Hocus Pocus starts in 1693, when Thackery Binx (Sean Murray of NCIS fame, giving a community theater-grade performance) gets turned into a cat by the Sanderson sisters, who are subsequently hung for witchcraft. The Sandersons are Winifred (Bette Midler, with stupid buck teeth), Mary (King of the Hill‘s Kathy Najimy, doing something with her mouth that I’m convinced is meant to poke fun at stroke victims), and Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker, who…you know, she looks pretty damn good here). 300 years after being executed, they’re brought to life by Max Dennison (Omri Katz), who lights a black-flame candle in their old house. Max, along with his sister Dani (Thora Birch), his crush Allison (Vinessa Shaw), and cat-Thackery, spend the rest of the film trying to evade the Sandersons, who need to consume childrens’ souls in order to stay young.
Look, the plot is pretty boilerplate. There are characters who exist for no reason (the low-rent Bulk and Skull, named Jay and Ice, played respectively by Tobias Jelinek and Larry Bagby), a couple of musical numbers that stop the film dead in its track (a pointless one performed by Parker and a frankly dreadful one performed by Midler in the manner of a Reno drag queen matinee), and a scene of the sisters in the house of an old man dressed up as the devil, who they think is the devil. A lot of it, quite frankly, is dumb, but I have to remind myself: I’m a 28-year-old man, and kind of a dick, so am I really the demographic here?
When you have a film as determinedly silly as Hocus Pocus, it lives or dies on the strengths of its performances. Midler, to her credit, knows exactly what kind of movie she’s in. She is vamping it the fuck up and having the time of her life. I’ve never been the biggest fan of Midler as an actress, but she’s a lot of fun to watch here. Actually, all the witches are kind of a hoot once you realize that they’re playing the Three Stooges: Winifred is Moe, Mary is Curly, and Sarah is Larry (there are a few scenes where Parker is straight-up using a Larry voice). Doug Jones (who went on to become Guillermo del Toro’s muse, playing Abe Sapien in the Hellboy movies and the Pale Man in Pan’s Labyrinth) plays Billy Butcherson, Winifred’s ex-lover who she resurrects to help the sisters. Jones kind of bumbles around like a jackass, but that’s not a criticism; he’s a terrifically gifted physical performer, and his long neck, gaunt cheeks, and gangly limbs serve the film well. But it’s Thora Birch who makes the best impression. Barely 11 years old when Hocus Pocus came out, she has a preternatural sense of maturity and confidence in front of the camera. She gets some of the film’s biggest laughs, and never seems like a child actor, but rather like an actor who just happens to be a child. Her sense of self-possession served her well in her most famous role, in American Beauty, and it’s a pity that she doesn’t get more work.
But as good as Midler, Jones, and Birch are, it almost hinders the film, because it shows just how bland Katz and Shaw’s performances are. There’s really nothing in the film that would suggest they fall in love, and at any given point they’re the least funny, least interesting people on screen. There’s a sentient spellbook that can only blink its eye, and it has more presence than Katz and Shaw combined.
There are a couple glaring issues with Hocus Pocus. The first is, who is this for? The obvious answer is “kids,” but there are some elements here that seem pretty adult: decapitation, hanging, fingers cut off, a cat dies (twice), the sisters get burned alive, and Max gets called a virgin about fifty times throughout the film (to be fair, that’s the best running joke here, because everyone from a ghost to a cat is making fun of him for it).
Secondly, there’s a weird, incestuous vibe I hope that the filmmakers didn’t intend on. Max and Dani are really touchy for siblings, but especially for siblings with such an obvious age difference. They’re constantly hugging; at one point Dani throws herself onto Max’s bed, pretending to be Allison and crying “Kiss me, kiss me!”; and at the end of the film, Max wraps his arms around Dani, not Allison, who is his appropriately-aged girlfriend. Likewise, Thackery pines for his sister Emily the way that a ghost in any other movie would pine for his lost wife. Not coincidentally, the age difference between Thackery and Emily is about the same as it is between Max and Dani. Maybe I’m reaching, but watch Hocus Pocus and tell me I’m wrong.
Look, this is never going to be my favorite Halloween film. But it’s a tradition for a lot of people, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a messy, at times incoherent film (please explain how and why the witches come back to life after being incinerated), but I like plenty of messy films that I will go to bat for (Crank, BASEketball, et cetera). At the end of the day, millions of people celebrate October, Halloween, and autumn by watching and quoting Hocus Pocus, and isn’t that what makes it a classic?
10/1: Dawn of the Dead (2004)
10/2: The Exorcist
10/3: Pontypool
10/4: Hocus Pocus
10/5: The Orphanage
10/6: Rosemary’s Baby
10/7: Alien
10/8: Scream series
10/9: Scream series
10/10: Cujo
10/11: The Cabin in the Woods
10/12: Pulse
10/13: The Babadook
10/14: Friday the 13th
10/15: The Last House on the Left (both versions)
10/16: The Thing (both versions)
10/17: Little Shop of Horrors
10/18: Hush
10/19: Silent Hill
10/20: The Shining
10/21: Funny Games (2007)
10/22: Evil Dead series
10/23: Evil Dead series
10/24: The Mist
10/25: The Ninth Gate
10/26: The Fly
10/27: A Nightmare on Elm Street
10/28: The Nightmare Before Christmas
10/29: 28 Days Later/28 Weeks Later
10/30: It
10/31: Halloween
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