All Spoilers Movie Review: Hocus Pocus

Greetings Fam!

Sorry again for the delay. I had wanted to get this one posted the first week of October. Unfortunately my hands have been hurting which in turn makes typing 30-something pages of a rough draft reality hard. I don’t like making excuses for things, I’d rather give you the truth so you know what is going on if things are not consistent. 

I won’t delay the goods, since there isn’t much house keeping to do this week and dang, today’s might be long because I have a lot to cover:

You read that right. This week we are looking at the 1993 nostalgic AF movie Hocus Pocus, starring Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy, as the three Sanderson Sisters Winnie, Sarah, and Mary respectively. We also have Omri Katz as Max, Thora Birch as his little sister Dani, Vanessa Shaw as Allison, Sean Murray as Thackery Binx, with Jason Marsden doing the voice of both the human and feline versions of the character… and the one… the only… Doug Jones as Billy Butcherson. 

Now hold up, I need to take a minute to talk about how much I love Doug Jones. Billy was always my favorite character in this movie and it was absolutely, one MILLION percent due to the physical acting of Doug Jones. I had no idea who this man was until I saw Pan’s Labyrinth more than a decade later, and imagine my freak out when I realized that the genius behind the physicality of the creatures in that film was the same phenomenon as my dear, sweet, sunshine-baby Billy Butcherson. If you aren’t familiar with this LEGEND, please check out his IMDB. 

Doug, when you read this, can we be friends? 

Where was I? Oh shit, right. 

The movie opens with some beautiful aerial shots of a forest and… what’s that? Is that the silhouette of a witch on the trees? OooOOooOO Spoopy! The shot pans over an adorable looking village that I would very much like to live in and wear old-timey clothes every day when…

We hear singing. 

Thackery hears it and jumps out of bed. He finds some dude named Elijah and asks, in language far too old timey for anyone’s good, if Elijah has seen his sister Emily. 

Thackery, my good bitch, hast thou considered a puffier shirt?

Note: I’ve read quite a bit about the Salem Witch Trials and they didn’t speak like this. Please check out this link here to see the court transcripts from 1692, the questioning of Sarah Good to see the language used. Nary a “thee” or “thou” present, though, plenty of weird-ass spelling because this was before radical English-language spelling reform…

ANYWAY

The boys see some purple smoke rising from the woods and Emily running off towards it with a cloaked woman. Thackery tells Elijah to gather everyone and then takes off after the two, barefoot, like ya do. 

Running through the woods, he trips and falls down a hill for entirely too long, landing exactly in front of the witch’s cottage in the woods. Just in time to see Sarah Sanderson leading Emily inside. Convenient. 

This cottage be’ith vibe and a half. 

Inside, we got three old women standing around his sister, who is just chilling in a chair being the cutest darn kid with her lil hat. They hear Thackery climbing the water wheel on the side of the house and go to investigate the sound.

Winnie throws open the shutters and says the thing I still utter when I stumble into work each day at 5am. 

Mood.

They don’t see anything, and determine the sound was just an imp, and now I’m mad that there weren’t any imps in this movie. 

Thackery gets inside and sees his sister, who might be under a spell? Honestly, I’ve always wondered, because she sees her brother and does this scared eyes thing, but doesn’t move. So is she under a spell or does she just have zero flight response?

I would have been out of there so fast #anxiety.

Mary smells a child, meaning Thackery, but gets told off because Emily is right there, so they ignore her, even though Mary is on to Thack’s shit. 

Thackery is up in the loft watching them mix their potion, sweating like a pervert who climbed in through the upper window of someone’s home… because that’s exactly what he’s doing. Perhaps he’s waiting for the right opportunity to jump down and interrupt their potion making…

Nah, he waits until it’s literally done before he does anything, and bada bing bada boom, Thackery gets his ass kicked, and Emily is all swirly. The witches drink her life force and now they’re young(er). Thackeray calls them ugly, which is a straight up lie because I would die to be the fourth Sanderson sister. 

My name is only one letter off… Come on, Rune Sanderson would be an absolute vibe.

Could’ve been an only child, but nah, you had to fuck around and find out.

The Sisters chant a spell that is a total bop and transform Thackery into a black cat. He is cursed to live forever with his guilt and failure, harsh. But WHATEVER. It’s not like Emily’s dead body is moving around in the background or anything. She’s probably fine.

Just as he becomes a cat the whole village shows up torches-and-pitchforks style. In a panic,  they toss a sheet over Emily like that’ll do the trick… and who knows, maybe it would have but Sarah blows their cover by yelling out what they’re doing. Sweet, sweet Sarah.  

Next thing we know the sisters are tied up outside with nooses around their necks. Thackery’s dad asks where his son is and Winnie quips that the “cat’s got her tongue” hehe, we love a snarky queen here. For their final words, they start singing, which causes everyone to cover their ears, and the dude who is holding Winnie’s wicked-ass spellbook drops it. The book, being a Winnie’s down-bitch, auto flips to the page she needs. 

Oh look, the last fuck Winnie gives just flew away.

Winnie and her sisters cast a final spell: One day, when there is a full moon on All Hallows Eve, a virgin will bring them back to life somehow. The villagers have heard enough by this point and… very anticlimactically, kick the barrels out from under the Sisters and we see their feet swinging. They’re dead now I guess? 

Suddenly three hundred years later. 

We are in a classroom, with a teacher dressed up as a witch. She is telling the story of the Sanderson Sisters to the class, and I love her. This is the teacher I could have been if my grade 7 teacher Ms V didn’t tell me I was too stupid to teach. In hindsight, I realize that she was actually one of the least intelligent people I have ever met, and she shot down my dream simply because she could. Fuck you, Ms V. 

This could have been meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I’m not salty at ALL. Don’t look at me like that.

Teacher-lady is telling the class about the Sanderson Sisters and suddenly we have Marshall Teller from Eerie, Indiana… I mean Max Dennison! We can tell by his tie dye shirt that Max is different than the other kids in his school. 

See, Gen Z, you didn’t invent the center-part.

Max thinks he knows his shit, telling everyone that Halloween was invented by candy companies. He’s an 8 but he hates Halloween... Insert Allison, who shuts him down by giving some fairly solid facts about the origin of Halloween/All Hallows Eve/Samhain, and tells him that he is, to his surprise, very, very wrong. 

Max, who clearly loves a woman who thinks he’s a moron, stands up in the middle of class and gives her his number like he’s going to score. Take several seats, Max, she’s outta your league. Max tells her that in case Jimmy Hendrix shows up, give him a call.

Note: Max is also working on a Grateful Dead drawing on his desk and we see a marijuana leaf in a Disney film. You’re welcome.

Some dude tells him in passing that he doesn’t stand a chance and I agree. Because as we soon discover, Max is a cute dummy and doesn’t recognize when he has been mocked.

After school, Max catches up to Allison and apologizes for “embarrassing her in front of the class” Max, my brother in Christ, were you there? 

Allison tells him that he didn’t embarrass her. Allison, you know you can just walk away right? You don’t have to be nice to him or entertain his ego. But Allison is a boss and gives Max back his phone number because he thinks Halloween is stupid and we don’t need that shit here. 

I can smell your Cool Ranch Doritos breath from here.

Having been shot down twice now by Allison, our boy is clearly smitten. Max rides his bike home and we get several nice shots of Salem before he cuts through a graveyard and gets stopped by two dudes, Jay and Ernie… I mean Ice… ugh, 90s males are unsanitary and these two are pure skeeze. 

If you thought the front was gross

When they discover that he has neither smokes or cash… they call him Hollywood. Because like actual Hollywood, he has nothing decent to offer them. 

Ernie… I mean Vanilla Ice… err, I mean Ice barf asks what he is supposed to do with his afternoon. Max tells him he “could learn to breathe through his nose” and this, my friends, is the only time Max is witty in the film. Enjoy it.

Guess which one of us smells like wet cardboard.

Jay comments on Max’s ‘cross trainers’ and that is the first and last occurrence someone under the age of 50 has called running shoes by that term in my life. Then Ice steals his shoes, because of course he does, and Max peddles home humiliated. Look on the bright side Max, you still have that ugly-ass backpack that looks like a hacky sack that you know smells like the inside of the Spencers Gifts you bought it from with the money your parents gave you.

Once home, barges into his room, and throws his hat on the stairs. Yes. Stairs. Max is angry that they moved to BEAUTIFUL Salem Massetusets and that his bedroom has a fucking staircase leading up to a widows watch. MAX. MAXIMUS MAXIMILLIAN MAXINE DENNISON. DO NOT MAKE ME COME OVER THERE. 

Woe is my life, but at least I have you, Pinhead skateboard

I would have A. figuratively killed to move to a place like Salem, Mass. and away from the shit people I knew. And, 3. I would have literally killed to have that as my bedroom. 

I still would, don’t test me.

Life is hard for Max, so he does what any teenage boy would do after having his shoes stolen. He throws himself onto his bed, with his bedsheets covered in… s…salmon… trout? 

What in the Bass Pro is happening here? And not just in his room, this house has a lot of fish… we’ll get to that later… 

He decides that the one thing he can do to make his awful day better is to feel up his pillow, moaning “Oh Allison,” like it isn’t the cringiest possible thing and actually takes a moment to give it the up-and-down look, checking out pillow-Allison’s delightful rectangle body. 

This is what a real woman feels like.

However, Max made the mistake every older sibling eventually does. He forgot that he has a little sister. And as any older sibling knows, there is a 100% chance that the little shit has been in your room touching your stuff, and there is a 72% chance they are still in there… 

Suddenly his little sister, Dani, bursts out of his closet, shouting “Boo!” and throws herself on his fish bed. He’s pissed at her for being in his room and Dani… uhh… Dani decides to lay there saying “Kiss me, I’m Allison” and I threw up in my mouth. 

Now, I need to take a moment to get this out. Dani’s character has never not been weird to me. I do NOT blame Thora Birch for this. The film had a director and I’m looking squarely at him and the writers for this mess. Someone directed her in these scenes and chose this take for the final cut. 

Now, I’m not insinuating anything… I’m just going to casually mention that there is a Salem, Alabama and maybe that is where they meant to be the setting for this film.

No refunds. 

Dani tells him that he has to take her trick-or-treating and he refuses, saying that she can go alone. Dani needs him though, because it’s a full moon and the ‘weirdos’ would be out ignoring that she is in the bedroom of someone who has fish bed sheets. Long story long, Max goes up his staircase to get away from her and Dani does what any younger sibling would do in this situation: Lets loose a blood-curdling scream for their mother. 

Can you tell I am the older sibling? 

Note to my brother: I love you, bruh, but there were actual times growing up that I would have rather eaten wet Skittles off the platform of the New York subway system than save you from being run over by a train. 

Needless to say, the next scene we get is of Max and Dani coming down the stairs to go trick-or-treating like Dani hasn’t been wearing her costume all day in preparation for this… Max, however, has put on a hat, some sunglasses, and is dressed up as a “rap singer” but I’m pretty sure he means “angsty teenager who  needs to be reminded to shower so that he doesn’t smell like a funkberry field at high noon.”

While out, they encounter Ice, Jay, and some other goons tormenting kids on the street. Thankfully, the adult who just gave her candy does fuck all to help these kids, and shuts the door on them. Max suggests they go a different way, but Dani ain’t afraid of no unwashed teenagers. 

Dani tells the bullies to drop dead and Max has to get involved. Jay and Ice do that… over preformative bully nonsense where they act like it’s a three ring circus of laughs, even though they literally look like fools. 

You mean people aren’t laughing with me?

Note: If this was you, get the fuck off my blog. I don’t care how much time has passed since you were an asshole child; if you haven’t taken the time to apologize to the kids you tormented, you have not improved, and there is no place for you on my little corner of the internet. 

Max gets pissed at Dani for “humiliating” him in front of half his class like he didn’t get shot down by Allison in class completely on his own earlier. She runs off and cries without any tears into a pile of hay and they make up pretty quickly because this movie is a tight 96 minutes long and we need to get the story rolling. Dani gets her ass off the pile of straw and they’re in front of a big house. 

In 1993 this house cost 11 raspberries and a handful of kind words.

Clearly no one answers the door for them, because they enter some random person’s house, and start calling for the people who live there exactly twice before getting distracted by candy. They immediately go for it when Max hears his name and sees Allison at the top of the stairs. She comes down wearing a decent replica of a robe a la Francaise for a Halloween costume which I guess works since there are a bunch of dudes in colonial costumes in the background that Max and Dani somehow didn’t see when they just walked into a stranger’s house. 

How come my family never threw parties like this?

Dani does her due diligence as Max’s younger sister by throwing him under the bus, complimenting Allison on her costume. Dani tells her that she could never wear something like that because she doesn’t have tiddies, or as Max calls them, “yabbos.” Dani, deciding that wasn’t enough, throws the bus in reverse and backs it up over Max by saying “Max likes your yabbos. In fact, he loves them!” 

If you look close enough, you can see Max’s soul leave his body.

Thankfully, Allison doesn’t seem to expect much else from Max and just entirely brushes it off, complementing Dani’s costume right back and admitting that she loves witches. Dani tells her that they learned about the Sanderson Sisters in school and Allison admits that her mother used to run the museum inside their old cottage before it was shut down. 

Max decides that they should go, despite Allison and Dani not really being into the idea. However, since it’s the plot of the movie, they go anyway. 

Note: This is where Allison changes out of her costume. This one detail used to infuriate me as a kid, and still kinda does now. You’re telling me that as a Halloween fan, Allison isn’t going to keep that damn costume on until the early hours of the morning? I call BS. 

Allison takes them to the Sanderson House and they just straight up break in. It is apparently still full of all the merchandise and displays, which seems entirely reasonable…

Another Note: this is how we know this movie isn’t real, because if that museum existed, I would have cleared it out a long time ago.

Max grabs a lighter and uses it for all of two seconds before Allison finds the light switch. He pockets the lighter, because what is a little casual B&E if you don’t also steal some shit? 

We see Binx who watches them from above as they wander around looking at things. 

Another Another Note: Thackery and Binx are the same person/cat/character. However, the human is referred to as ‘Thackery’ throughout the movie while the cat prefers ‘Binx.’ So I will be continuing this tradition. 

Max finds the Black Flame Candle just sitting there out of a display case and conveniently near a bunch of lighters. A plaque next to it that says if a virgin lights the candle the spirits of the dead will come back. Because what kind of 90s movie would this be if it didn’t have a weird obsession with virgins? Binx jumps down onto Max to scare him away, and it almost works. But just as they go to leave Max declares that it’s “all a bunch of hocus pocus” and lights the candle. The flame turns black, and shit gets weird.

Maybe I should listen to the grown-ups more…

What I like is that we can clearly see that the candle has been lit before, as there is melted wax. But clearly everyone in Salem likes to get their freak on, and in 300 years nary a person who has messed with it has been a virgin. 

All the lights blow out, the fire under the cauldron bursts back into life, and the Sanderson Sisters are back, baby! 

Mary immediately smells children, and uses her power to track down Dani behind the counter. Dani pretends to be the person who lit the candle, calling them ‘sisters’ insinuating that she is also a witch. Her plan works great and they grab her. Max tries to intervene, and Winnie uses her magic lightning to zap him up a wall by his nipples.

“No, my bumpy sun hats!” - Max, probably.

Allison, realizing that Max does not have this under control, takes out Mary, then Dani hits Sarah and Winnie with her candy bag to save Max, proving once and for all to let the women do the fucking work. Max climbs up to the loft and announces that he is the “Great and Powerful Max” because that is the best name he could come up with and uses the lighter to set off the sprinklers, telling the sisters that he has summoned the “burning rain of death.” The Sisters, not understanding sprinkler systems, hide from the water. Before Max can leave escape, Binx appears and tells him to get the spellbook. 

After a few moments, the Sanderson Sisters realize that it’s just water and give chase to the kids only to be stopped by a black asphalt road thinking it might be a river. Winnie tests it by throwing Sarah onto it, and when she doesn’t drown they get moving again… for all of two seconds before the flashing lights and sirens from the approaching fire trucks scare the shit out of them. They scream and run away. Love it. 

Binx brings the three kids to a graveyard where the witch’s can’t set foot, as it is hallowed ground, and leads them to the grave of Billy Butcherson. Binx explains that Billy was Winnie’s lover, but he cheated on her with Sarah. So Winnie killed him and sewed his mouth shut. If that isn’t a whole-ass mood for getting rid of a garbage cheating partner, I don’t know what is. 

We’re back with the sisters, hiding in the bushes. Winnie tells them they need to get their shit together, because the magic from the candle will only last one night. While she speaks, Sarah finds a big juicy spider and eats it. 

Love that for her.

Winnie tells them it’s time to fly and they take off into the house. 

Back to the squad in the cemetery: Binx is telling them the story of Emily, and how he has been keeping an eye on the house and the candle. But somehow in 300 years it never occurred to him to just abscond with the candle and bury it somewhere, or let it melt in the sun without being lit… 

Note to myself: I wonder if Binx is the reason that everyone thought the Sanderson House was haunted…

The witches show up on their brooms and the Squad defends themselves. Winnie casts a spell that makes the whole ground shake, and Billy Butcherson rises from his grave all zombie-like. 

When the Squad runs off, Winnie tells him to “catch” the kids and Billy instantly gives her the sass.

Billy Butcherson: Lost Soul and Queen of Sass. 

Billy nearly catches Max, reaching out his hands to grab him, but Max knocks Billy’s head off; and while Billy flails around trying to find his head the kids escape into a crypt. 

Outside the cemetery, Winnie rages and Mary makes them form a calming circle to regroup: because anger management is important. A bus pulls up and the driver is the only guy with even a hint of a Massachusetts accent in this film. He lets them on without paying the fare and cat-calls them the entire time. Gruss. 

HAHAHAHAHA ew. 

The Squad follows the crypt into the sewers and comes up through a manhole where Binx immediately GETS HIT BY THE BUS THAT SARAH IS NOW DRIVING. The rest of the squad comes up, broken hearted that Binx is roadkill, tire-track and all, but wait! Binx inflates and comes back to life! Le gasp! Clearly this happens a lot. 

Back on the bus, Mary stands up and yells for them to stop, because she smells children once again. They leave the bus and Mary thinks her nose is broken because there are no children, just a bunch of hobgoblins running around. 

That Mrs Potts costume in the back is peak 90s costume technology

A girl in an angel costume stops when she sees them, does a curtsey, and says “bless you” which causes all the sisters to scream. But them Satan appears behind them, they all call him “Master” and fully just go into this dude’s house, leaving their brooms outside against a fence. 

Meanwhile the Squad finds a cop and tells him what happened. The cop straight up virgin shames Max and I ask yet again, what is everyone’s obsession with virgins? 

Anyway, turns out that the dude on the unmarked motorcycle wearing a plastic police hat, a plastic badge and patches on his leather jacket that are definitely not police-issue isn’t a cop and is just some dude in a Halloween costume. Fake cop guy rides off on his bike and we see our boy Billy coming up through the same manhole the others just came out of. The fake cop runs over it, cutting off Billy’s poor fingers because my sweet, sweet zombie darling can’t catch a break. 

We’re back with the Sanderson Sisters who are chilling in Satan’s living room. Satan’s wife catches him slow-dancing with Sarah, gives them each a chocolate bar, then tells them to GTFO. 

What was the point of this weird interlude, you ask? Let me tell you. 

While they are inside the house, three little girls dressed up as the Sanderson Sisters see their brooms against the fence and think “Oh wow, these are perfect to go with our costumes. Let’s steal them!” We hear whooshing noises as they run off-screen, implying that these children are now airborne on brooms, and we love that journey for them.

Again with the casual theft.

The sisters go outside and find their brooms missing, which means for the time being they are on foot. Mary somehow knows what candy is, and Winnie realizes the hobgoblins are actually children in costumes, and Sarah bounces around singing “Amok Amok Amok” because she is adorable and we want the best for her.

The Squad turns up at a Halloween party in town that Max and Dani’s parents are supposed to be; and shocker, their parents also don’t believe a word they say. Max notices that the Sisters have arrived at the party and runs up on stage, grabbing the mic from the singer in the middle of a performance, and exposes what is going on. 

But Max forgot one thing: Winnie is an absolute legend. She thanks Max for introducing her and goes up on stage, using the opportunity to put a spell on the crowd. They sing “I Put a Spell on You,” possibly the greatest movie song of all time and Disney absolutely wishes they had made this a full fucking song. The Sisters aren’t even trying to hide what they are doing, because they don’t need to! The people are so willing to be caught up in the whole spectacle that they don’t heed any of the warnings from the Squad to cover their ears. Winnie curses them to dance until they die, just as Billy shows up and chases the Squad off

Note: I always loved this bit, because it reminds me of the dancing plagues of Europe. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but it’s a fun little factoid and to me, this seems like a spell someone like Winifred Sanderson could definitely put on a large gathering of people.

MOVING ON!

Allison gets an idea and the next thing we know, Winnie, Sarah, and Mary are outside of the high-school with no reasoning as to how they narrowed the Squad’s location down to that area. 

Seriously, are they tracking the book? That wouldn’t make sense though because later Winnie literally can’t find it… so like… how?

Max is uhh… playing with the PA system in the office and calls himself Boris Karloff Jr, which is a comment that is so radically obscure that I need to applaud him… I would have gone with Vincent Price.  

I’m not sure what the point of him playing with the PA system is, but I like to imagine that Allison and Dani knew it was literally the only ‘job’ they could give him where he wouldn’t mess up their plan with his virgin powers. 

The Sisters wander the halls where they hear a voice giving library dialogue prompts in French. Winnie follows it and finds a cassette player… inside of a giant walk-in kiln. The door slams behind them, the kiln turns on, and the Squad watches three women burn to death forgetting that Dani is there watching also. That kid will never be okay again.

A cloud of green smoke is seen coming from the chimney of the school and we see the Squad celebrating their victory over evil. Binx laments that he has wanted to destroy them for over 300 years, ever since they killed his sister, and Max essentially tells him to get over it, because it happened so long ago. You’re a good friend, Max. 

Let’s just ignore the fact that he’s standing in front of Clark Griswold’s house.

Binx tells Max to take care of Dani, and then we get another shot of Allison and Dani jumping around in front of the fountain from the Friends intro. 

Salem is a wild place. 

Before Binx can leave, Dani and Max inform him that he is a Dennison now and that it’s time go home, and Binx sighs with relief, saying “Home” before they all walk off toward the happy future-

AHAHAHAHA nope.

The Squad arrives back to the Dennison house and all its weird fish… I told you we’d come back to this. I wanted to bring it up later because I didn’t want… spoilers… in my all spoilers movie review? Shit… 

“Fish, but make it aesthetic.” - white folks, probably.

They notice that it’s super late and their parents still aren’t back. However, instead of questioning this or taking the opportunity to remove all the fish from the house, they just go upstairs. 

Dani is sprawled out on Max’s fish bed again with Binx, telling him about the good life he is going to have with her, and how her kids, and grandkids, etc. will take care of him forever and ever. Binx seems pleasantly annoyed with this and the promise of becoming a fat house cat.

Are those rainbow trout? I’m going with trout.

Max and Allison are on the stairs, because in case you forgot this dude has the coolest room ever, snuggling under a trout blanket, like ya do, and everyone gets a bit of sleep.

Seriously, can someone explain this obsession?

Back at the high-school, that green cloud gets sucked back into the chimney and hot damn, the witches are back again baby! On the street, the Sisters come across Ice and Jay who are sitting on a car while people just TP houses in the background. Mary goes right to Ice’s shoes, which were stolen from Max, and then is upset because it’s the wrong kid. Poor Mary, this whole movie she thinks her special power of sniffing out children isn’t working properly. 

Jay asks why only “ugly chicks” stay out late, and Winnie is offended by being called a “chick” feminist icon Winnie Sanderson FTW. The next thing we see is Ice and Jay in cages at the Sanderson cottage, and I am left to wonder how exactly they managed to kidnap these two kids without alerting the other idiots in the background. 

That’s what you get for supporting the patriarchy, fools.

Since she can’t get her book back, Winnie tries to make the potion from scratch, but just can’t get the ingredients right; so she does what she should have done from the very beginning. Winnie throws open the shutters to a window and calls for the book to come home or make itself seen. 

Now it is 5am and Allison wakes up and realizes she needs to get home. Before she can leave though, Max suggests they go against the cat’s advice and open the book to see if there is a way to help Binx. Clearly Max’s intelligence score is contagious, because Allison rolled an Intelligence check with disadvantage and got a nat 1 THIS IS A DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS JOKE. Once open, the book starts glowing and they don’t seem to see it. 

But Winnie do.

The Sanderson Sisters take off at once to get the book using whatever they can find. Winnie has a wooden handled broom, Sarah has a mop, and Mary has an upright vacuum cleaner. Amazing, this movie is the best.

Binx jumps on Max and Allison and they close the book, but it is too late. He scolds them, and with the mood successfully killed, Allison decides to leave... However, Allison can feel that something isn’t right, and tells Max she would feel better about walking home if she had some salt. Max gets her some and she reads the label…

My salty personality keeps me safe.  

Max, being suave, asks “what about new boyfriends?” and they almost kiss, but are interrupted by a ruckus upstairs. By the time they return the book is gone, there is no Binx in sight, and when Max goes to check on Dani, he finds Sarah under the trout covers instead. Winnie hits Max with some more magic and he is blown back into his drum set. Allison uses her brain and the salt in her hands, and does a little salt dance to make a circle around them both. Winnie calls her a “clever little white witch.” 

Hehe, cute. I wonder if she actually is since she sensed something wasn’t right. 

Winnie, Mary, Sarah, and Dani go up the stairs with Binx in a bag and blow the whole widows watch off the house, flying away into the night. 

On their way back, Sarah sings a song that we ALL were obsessed with at some point in our youth. Don’t pretend you weren’t. It also happens to be the same song we heard faintly at the beginning when Emily was lured away from her home. This song causes all the children in Salem to start zombie walking toward the cottage. 

Thankfully though, Allison hears Winnie say out loud how they only have this one night until the candle goes out. 

Dani is loosely tied up and can’t escape, so she does her best Pennywise impression.

We all float…

Winnie is finally done making the potion when Max bursts in and tells them they dun fucked up, because they forgot about Daylight Savings Time. Suddenly orange light comes through the windows and the Sisters fall to the ground thinking the sun hath risen. Max frees Dani, dumps out their cauldron, and grabs Binx from by the fire. 

Dani stops because she wants to see the witches turn to dust, but then notices Allison dancing by the car motioning to the coloured plastic they have over the headlights of a truck that are only making it look like the sun has come up. They escape in the truck and Max clearly has no license

Get in, losers, we’re going shopping.

Now, Folks,  here is where our Queen Winnie’s ego leads to their downfall. They find out that there was just enough potion left for one child and Winnie wants to use it on Dani. Sarah reminds her that they have Jay and Ice in cages, and Mary points out the horde of kids outside. But Winnie needs her revenge, consequences be damned, because her sin is pride… very well deserved pride.

Winnie catches up to the truck on the road and demands Max’s drivers permit, which she would definitely know about, and attempts to run him off the road. But they make it to the cemetery and get onto hallowed ground. 

Billy tackles Max and manages to get a knife out of his hand, which he uses it to cut the stitches on his mouth, because Winnie’s orders when he woke back up as a zombie were just to “catch” the kids, not to hurt them. Clever boy, Billy.

With his mouth no longer sewn shut, he switches sides and offers to let Dani use his grave as a safe spot to hide. Allison throws down a ring of salt around the grave, and Max has a baseball bat to protect them all… 

Which would be great if Winnie didn’t immediately take the bat from him and run him down with it. Billy tells her to go to hell and she says “I’ve been there, thank you, I found it quite lovely.” What an icon.

Billy’s head gets knocked off again, and Dani climbs out of her safe spot to help him, because of course she does. Winnie snatches her off the ground and starts trying to give her the potion. 

Trollimog, by the way, is an incredibly awful term for a ‘dirty woman.’

Dani manages to knock the potion out of Winnie’s hand and Max catches it, then chugs it. 

“But Rune!” Ye screameth, “Why didn’t Max just dump the potion on the ground?”

“Alas,” I respond, “his sister was thirty feet in the air and Winnie literally threatened to drop her to her death, so he was keeping her safe.”  

Winnie does a swoop and grabs Max. She starts to do the sippy-sip on his life energy and struggles because Max is being difficult. Mary tries to intervene, but Allison and Dani hold the cord of the vacuum so she can’t get there. When Sarah tries to help her sister, the girls let go of the cord and send them both flying off into the sky. 

Winnie and Max fall to the ground and she hauls him to his feet and tries to drink more of his life force. But she hasn’t been paying attention: she is standing on hallowed ground and is turned to stone. Mary and Sarah get hit by the first rays of sunlight and explode into glitter. When the sunlight finally hits the Winnie statue, it also explodes. 

We get a quick glimpse of Binx, lying down on the grave of his sister. He gives a sad meow and dies. 

Dani runs over to Max who is lying on the ground and FULLY LOOKS AT HIS DICK. 

Don’t tell me she isn’t, because her eyes go from here…

To here and I HAVE QUESTIONS.

Thora Birch, when you read this, call me.

ANYWAY. 

Billy goes to bed, i.e. he does a big stretch and collapses right into his open grave… which means someone needs to rebury a literal corpse…

Dani and the others cry when they find Binx’s tiny cat body, but a moment later the ghost of Thackery comes back. His soul is free. He takes Dani’s hand and gives her a kiss on the cheek, telling her that he will always be with her. Then Emily shows up calling his name and he goes with her. There is one last joke about how he had to wait 300 years for a virgin to light a candle before we can finally bury that joke next to Billy’s body.

Max, Dani, and Allison watch Thackery and Emily walk off into the sunlight hand in hand. 

Then we see their parents and all the people who were dancing emerge from the party under the assumption that it was just a really killer party.

Then a quick shot of Ice and Jay, still just chilling in their cages inside of the Sanderson Cottage waiting for someone to free them. 

Finally, the camera pans over to the book, left on a stand where Winnie set it down. It’s eye opens and looks around for a moment before going back to sleep.

WHEW! We did it everyone! 

Holy eff, I love this movie. I know, I know, my love looks a lot like being snarky and making fun of things. No really, it does. 

Is this movie for everyone? Of course not, but for me it is a Halloween necessity and I’ve watched it every single year since it came out. 

Now for a couple of random facts. As I mentioned before, Sean Murray played the human role of Thackery Binx while Jason Marsden did the voice for both the human and feline parts. According to IMDB this was done because Murray’s voice sounded too contemporary and they wanted it to sound the same as the Sanderson Sisters… Why Sean Murray couldn’t put on a believable bad, vaguely British accent is beyond me, but this is what we got. 

Sean Murray and Jason Marsden, let's hang out sometime.

Yes, we also have been blessed with a Hocus Pocus 2, which I have yet to see. Will I be reviewing it? Possibly, I’m honestly not sure if I should since it is very new and thus far I’ve only been spoiling movies that are over 20ish years old. We’ll see how it goes! 

So, what did I think?

Characters get 9 out of 10. The character’s are lovable, and memorable. Each sister has her own distinct powers and drawbacks, and the main characters are also fairly well-rounded. There is development throughout the film as Max and Dani’s relationship becomes closer, and he learns to accept Salem as his new home. 

Costumes get a 5 out of 10. Most of the characters just wear one thing in the whole movie, and even though the Sanderson Sisters’ costumes are iconic now, they could have been a touch more accurate to their time period. Allison’s Halloween costume wasn’t bad, but she only had that on for a single scene. 

Script gets a 7 out of 10. Yes, some of the language used is a little too fanciful for the time, but not everyone would know that. I just happen to be a weirdo who feels it's a little too Shakespere. 

Story is an 8 out of 10. It’s a good story. Sure it has some plot holes and some parts didn’t age the greatest, but overall this movie still stands up - enough that 30 years later we’re getting a sequel! 

Overall I give Hocus Pocus 8 sets of rainbow trout bed sheets out of 10. 

 

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As always, stay safe out there and save a few peanut butter cups for me. 

-R