Hocus Pocus (1993)

Hey all!  It's been a long time since I posted a film review.  I was scheduled to retire from the US Air Force in July 2022, so my life got very busy last year in preparation.  I meant to do a full Spider-Man film marathon, leading up to the climactic Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021).  But even though I did marathon all those films with my wife, I didn't have the energy to review every single one.  So it's on hiatus for now and I'll get back to it eventually.  You'll just have to live with the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man trilogy reviews for now.

But October is here, which means... Halloween Month Movie Marathon!!  I probably won't be reviewing films daily, but I do plan to write as many reviews as I can this month.  First up on the docket: Hocus Pocus (1993)!

SYNOPSIS:
On October 31st, 1693 in Salem, Massachusetts, three witches known as the Sanderson Sisters were hung for the crime of witchcraft.  Before they died, they uttered a curse, ensuring they would return one day.  Exactly 300 years later, Max (Omri Katz), a kid from LA, moves to Salem with his little sister, Dani (Thora Birch), and as a skeptic of witchcraft, Max asks his classmate, Allison (Vinessa Shaw), to show them the old Sanderson house on Halloween night.  While exploring the house, Max accidentally resurrects the three witches!  The kids have to find a way to stop the sisters, before they capture all the children of Salem!

REVIEW:
This film originally released to mediocre reviews and low box-office earnings, but subsequent replays during the Halloween season has slowly made it into a cult classic.  The screenplay was actually sold to Disney back in 1984 (and was a much darker tale), but they sat on it for 8 years before finally deciding to make a family-friendly film of it.

Still, there's something haunting for me about the mortality this film plays with.  Here are three witches who were attempting to brew a potion that would make them immortal.  Instead, they end up being captured and hung by an angry mob.  But they find a way to return to life for a single night, in which they need to recreate their immortality potion or else they'll turn to dust at dawn.  There's a scene later in the film where the witches believe they've failed and they accept that their one shot at life is over.  They cry and mope about their home, waiting for the end to come.  The hopelessness, even hammed up for comedic effect, still stung a bit for me.  I could feel their pain and anguish at losing.  They had only a few hours left to contemplate their own mortality before returning to oblivion, and I truly felt it.  I was kind of hoping they'd find a way to live on regardless, even though they were the villains.

On top of that, they "curse" a boy with immortality (ironic, I know), but he must live out eternity as a black cat.  I wondered why they didn't just use that curse on themselves instead of the complicated potion that requires child sacrifice, but I guess the curse came with shape-shifting, and they wanted to keep their human forms.

You can tell that the three actresses had fun in their witch roles.  Winifred (Bette Midler), Mary (Kathy Najimy), and Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker) were the most energetic and entertaining parts of this film. Halfway in, I forgot I was supposed to be rooting for the kids; I was having so much fun watching the three Sanderson Sisters exploring the modern world that I kind of started rooting for them.  Until I remembered their plan was to consume the life force of all the children of Salem.  Oops.

The Sanderson Sisters, putting a spell on you!

My wife and I agreed that the scenes with Max and his little sister, Dani, were super cringey.  It was hard to watch them sometimes.  Mostly, it was Dani, who would run her mouth and say super embarrassing things to everyone.  But she's like 7 years old, so that's kind of expected.  Max's most cringe-worthy scene was actually near the beginning, when he talks shit about the Sanderson Sisters story in school, then when Allison corrects him, he walks up to her and gives her his phone number.  Right in the middle of class, in front of everyone.  Dude!  Not the time nor place.  She played it pretty chill though, taking his number, then later giving it back to him.

Kid sisters are super cringey and embarrassing. I know; I had one!

There was a little subplot with a couple bullies who harass Max and steal his shoes.  They made several appearances throughout the film, but I felt like their story never really went anywhere, except to exact some bully revenge near the end, when they're captured and caged by the Sanderson Sisters.

Some interesting related trivia: there was a sequel book written in 2018 that revealed that the two bullies straightened out their lives after running into the witches.  One became the principal of the local high school, while the other became a park ranger, hoping to rescue lost and trapped people, since he had experienced it first-hand as a teenager.  So they actually got a bit of a redemption arc, which is awesome!  That's a good story to tell!  I wish they had included something like that in the film.  But this was the early '90s, where the only story resolution that mattered was the main characters'.

Jay and Ernie, the two bullies, get a redemption arc in the book sequel!

Some more interesting trivia: Sarah Jessica Parker found out in the mid 2000s that her 10th great-grandmother, Esther Elwell, was accused of witchcraft in Salem, MA in the late 1600s.  Her case never went to court, and the accusation ended the Salem Witch Trials.  So she has some personal ties to the Salem Witch Trials, and is closer to being considered a real witch than any of the other actors.

Billy Butcherson (Doug Jones), is a zombie resurrected by Winifred to hunt down the main children. I never realized it until this viewing, but his back story is that he dated Winifred, until her sister, Sarah seduced him.  As punishment, Winifred poisoned him and sewed his mouth shut so he couldn't tell any secrets, even in death.  If you look closely, the stitching across his mouth is sewn in the shape of XIII, or the roman number 13.  You may not recognize his actor, Doug Jones, but he does a lot of famous creature work in films.  He also plays Abe Sapien in the Hellboy films, the amphibian man in The Shape of Water, and Fauno and the Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth, to name a few.

Billy Butcherson, freshly resurrected

There was also the curious case of Thackery Binx (Sean Murray/Jason Marsden).  He was a boy from 1693 who was cursed by the witches to live immortal as a black cat, and he helps the children fight back against the witches.  They had an actor, Sean Murray, play his human role.  But they cast Jason Marsden to do all the voice work, both for his human and cat forms.  I guess they wanted a more accurate voice for the time period Binx comes from, but had a different face in mind for the actual actor.

The cat's head while he's talking was all CGI, and for 1993, it was excellent work!  I read that it was even more realistic originally, but the studio decided it was too real and might scare children, so they had to soften up his features and make the cat's fangs smaller and more rounded.  I would've loved to see their original CGI effects.

Amazing CGI for the early '90s!

This film also had some excellent original music, including the fun I Put a Spell On You and the haunting lullaby Come Little Children.  It's rare that a film will have a song so good that I add it to a playlist, but this film has two!  You should search them out on YouTube for a listen.

Maybe my only true negative critique of this film (besides the cringey interactions of the main children) is that the kids spend an inordinate amount of time running around town, trying to convince adults that the Sanderson Sisters are back.  It's Halloween night, in a town that (in this movie universe) is famous for the urban legend of the Sanderson Sisters.  Did you really think anyone would believe you?  It just feels like wasted time that could've been spent coming up with a solution for the problem. But I guess they gotta pad that runtime somehow...

RECOMMENDATION:
This film is so much fun to watch! It could've just been a film about resurrected witches hunting kids, but they decided to add in several scenes with just the Sanderson Sisters discovering the modern world.  Learning about paved roads, grasping the concept of a city bus, figuring out electronic devices... they were truly out of place in the modern world and there were so many scenes of learning and discovery that really makes this film enjoyable to watch.  I would hope that you've seen this film by now, but if you haven't, it needs to be on your bucket list!

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to see Hocus Pocus 2 (2022), which just released a couple days ago.  Hopefully it lives up to the energy and spectacle of the first film.  Expect my review of it tomorrow!