CONDEMNED SALEM WITCHES ALMOST HAVE THE LAST LAUGH.
On Halloween, 1693, a trio of witches, Winifred, Sarah, and Mary Sanderson (Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy), abduct a young girl named Emily (Amanda Shepherd) to their cottage near Salem, Massachusetts, and work black magic to absorb her vitality to regain their own youth. The girl dies, and her brother, Thackery Binx (Sean Murray), who failed to save her, confronts the weird sisters, only to be turned into a black cat cursed to live forever with his guilt. The witches are captured and hanged, but not before a curse is cast that will resurrect them on Halloween if a virgin lights Winifred’s magic candle that burns with a black flame.
Three hundred years pass, and it is Halloween again. Max Dennison (Omri Katz) is a boy whose family has uprooted him from their Los Angeles home and relocated to Salem. He develops a crush on a girl named Allison (Vinessa Shaw), whose family owns the original Sanderson sisters’ house, which has been preserved as a witchcraft museum. Max asks Allison if he can see the house, and she invites him and his younger sister, Dani (Thora Birch), inside. Max, very interested in girls but still sexually inexperienced, lights the black-flame candle, satisfying the curse’s requirement that only a virgin can resurrect the witches.
Released from their long death-sleep, the wacky witches decide to suck the souls from every child in Salem, and they go after Dani first. They need to complete their rejuvenation by daybreak or risk disintegrating in the sun. The kids flee the museum, but not before Thackery the cat advises Max to take Winifred’s sentient spell-book, which can see through an eye embedded in its cover. The witches chase Max, Allison, and Dani to a cemetery, where Winifred resurrects her long-ago unfaithful lover, Billy Butcherson (Doug Jones), as a zombie to assist the chase. But as they pass through the streets of Salem, they are appalled at what Halloween has become: a common public holiday, not an esoteric rite. The chase continues all night and all around the town (and wouldn’t you know: Winifred even stops to belt out what sounds an awful lot like a Bette Midler number). After a great deal of slapstick, the whole group ends up back at the cemetery for a final blowout reckoning that sorts out everyone’s issues, interpersonal and supernatural, including the long quest of Thackery to escape the damnation of eternal cathood and be reunited and reconciled with his sister.
The Sanderson sisters: Mary (Kathy Najimy), Winifred (Bette Midler), and Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker)
Allison (Vinessa Shaw), Dani (Thora Birch), and Max (Omri Katz) aren’t quite sure what dark powers they’ve managed to unleash.
Hocus Pocus is a ridiculous, and ridiculously enjoyable, film—and not a bad choice at all to have playing as a backdrop during your next Halloween party. The nonstop, over-the-top mugging of Midler, Parker, and Najimy is a show in itself, even with the volume turned down. Hocus Pocus is yet another film that survived box-office disaster—it lost Disney a reported $16.5 million—and extraordinarily bad reviews (Entertainment Weekly called it “acceptable scary-silly kid fodder that adults will find only mildly insulting. Unless they’re Bette Midler fans. In which case it’s depressing as hell”), only to rise from its own ashes with a cult imprimatur and an eternally loyal fan base.
Bette Midler stirs up a spell.
Aaron Wallace’s 2016 book Hocus Pocus in Focus: The Thinking Fan’s Guide to Disney’s Halloween Classic called itself “a lighthearted but scholarly look at the film in all its spooky-kooky glory.” As the cover blurb describes things, “In 1993 Walt Disney Pictures released a movie that would change a generation… but it took a while.” The book also makes the case that “far from the forgotten relic it was destined to become, Hocus Pocus has taken its place alongside The Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter, and Home Alone—a bona fide classic that’s sure to stay alive for generations to come.”
Unsurprisingly, the film has especially endeared itself to the city of Salem, Massachusetts, where the story is set and some exterior scenes were shot. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the film’s release was celebrated by Salem’s Haunted Happenings Grand Parade, an annual Halloween event given an official Hocus Pocus theme in 2018. Simultaneously, the E! network cablecast its own Hocus Pocus 25th Anniversary Halloween Bash, which reunited Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy with other Hocus Pocus alumni in nostalgic fun at the decidedly movie-friendly Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Rumors of a sequel or remake have been percolating for years; in 2017 Mick Garris confirmed that he was working on a screenplay for a television film called Hocus Pocus 2.
Winifred treats Max to her own brand of shock therapy.
Winifred’s long-ago boyfriend, Billy Butcherson (Doug Jones), helps Max, Allison, and Dani elude the witches.
If you enjoyed Hocus Pocus (1993), you might also like:
THE WITCHES
LORIMAR FILM ENTERTAINMENT, 1990
Novelist Roald Dahl wasn’t happy with the happy ending Nicolas Roeg substituted for the melancholy one that concluded his widely admired young adult novel. Nonetheless, and despite initially poor box office, The Witches had a positive critical reception, and, like Hocus Pocus, eventually achieved cult status. Luke, a recently orphaned Norwegian boy, travels with his grandmother to a hotel in England, where an organization purporting to be the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is holding a convention. In reality, it is a gathering of witches intent on removing all children from England by turning them into mice. The striking character designs were created by Jim Henson Productions. Anjelica Huston’s hag getup as the undisguised Grand High Witch involved not only heavy prosthetics but mechanics as well, and, Huston reported, was exceedingly uncomfortable to wear. Despite Dahl’s displeasure with the ending, the film served his darker intentions quite well.
Anjelica Huston as the Grand High Witch in The Witches