Happy Halloween! The countdown is over and Halloween is finally upon us. Tonight, hopefully, you'll be relaxing, eating some candy, and watching a scary, or not-so-scary, movie. There are a lot of options for tonight and I hope I've been of some help. Here is my final recommendation to help bring an end to Shocktober:
Night 13: Happy Happy Halloween
“It’s all just a bunch of hocus pocus.”
You never know which movies will stick around or why.
Throughout the 2010's, I and the rest of the staff at Vulcan Video noticed that
in October Hocus Pocus rented more and more each year. It is quite
peculiar to actually notice as a film grows into a cult classic. There aren’t many horror or horror themed
movies that families can watch together on Halloween, so from that perspective
it is easy to see why Hocus Pocus has stuck around. Now, 29 years after
it flopped at the box office and was panned by critics, this increased
popularity led Disney to produce a sequel. I’m skeptical about the new sequel,
but I rewatched the original for the first time in years and had a fun silly
time.
Omri Katz plays Max, a teenager whose family just moved to Salem, Massachusetts. He doesn’t like his new town, school, or Halloween. His little sister, Dani (Thora Birch), is very into Halloween and the legend of the Sanderson sisters, three witches who were executed for their crimes against children three hundred years ago. On Halloween night, in an attempt to impress Allison (Vinessa Shaw), who he has a crush on, Max takes Dani to the old Sanderson sisters’ house, which Allison’s parents now own. Wouldn’t you know it, Max accidentally summons the Sanderson sisters back from beyond and it’s up to the kids to stop the witch sisters from stealing the souls of the children of Salem.
The highlight of the movie is of course the Sanderson
sisters: Winifred (Bette Midler), Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker), and Mary (Kathy Najimy). They are over the top and hamming it up and it is great. Winifred is
the leader and frustrated by her bumbling, clueless sisters, though she is not
much more competent. The actresses have great chemistry together and of course
you wish there were more scenes of them (I suppose this sentiment helps explain
the sequel). The scene where they think they meet the devil (actually just Gary
Marshall, in an uncredited cameo, in a Halloween costume) is very funny. Of
course, there is a musical number where Bette Midler sings “I Put a Spell on
You” as she puts a spell on the parents of the town to keep them dancing all
night at the town hall. This scene is a great example of how the movie can be
hokey and silly but still entertaining.
The Salem, Massachusetts presented here is a movie version
of Salem, lacking the very real historical baggage of the infamous and tragic
witch trials. Everything about this movie is very broad and not meant to be
taken seriously, so the Salem setting does not feel as irresponsible as it
could have been, but it also could have been set in a fictional town.
Most of the special effects hold up well, the witches flying on their brooms, or Kathy Najimy flying on a vacuum
cleaner look pretty good. There is a talking black cat named Binx, who is actually Thakery Binx,
a teenage boy the Sanderson sisters cursed to live forever as a cat with the
guilt of failing to save his sister from them. In certain shots the talking cat
effects look better than in others. Doug Jones, who would go on to work with
Guillermo Del Toro as Fauno/Pale Man in Pan’s Labyrinth and the
amphibian man in The Shape of Water, plays Billy Butcherson, a
reanimated corpse with his mouth sewn shut. For most of the movie the witches
are chasing the kids and trying to get back their book of spells, which has a
large blinking eye. It is not a big effect but it is a nice touch.
Of course, nostalgia plays a factor in the enduring and still
growing popularity of Hocus Pocus, but perhaps it has also stuck around
because it is ridiculous Halloween fun. Parents can watch it with kids, kids
can watch it on their own, you can have it playing in the background of a
Halloween party, or you can grab some candy and unwind with a fun, stress free
Halloween movie. Hocus Pocus was released in theaters during the summer,
perhaps one of the reasons it flopped at the box office, but now it is where it
belongs, as a part of Halloween.
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