Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1993)

--Kenny Ortega

Pretty much every year I try to rent a Halloween-themed movie from netflix and pretty much every year hundreds, thousands, whatever, a lot of other people have the same idea and I can never get anything close to what I want. Obviously, this is one of the ones that is always! at somebody else's house and not mine. Instead I got stuck with "The Witches," I'm not sure if I reviewed that one yet, but if I haven't then I will after this one. Anyway, this is the first one on my list of movies that I would like to watch on Halloween. But since I can never get it, I decided just to rent it anyway on a non-halloween occasion so I could see it again.

Ya'll have seen this one right. An unbeliever (Omri Katz, who like dropped out of the celebrity universe after this!), his little sister, and a girl he likes go to on old house on halloween night that was apparently the home of three notorious witches from back in the day, the Sanderson sisters (Bette Midler, SJ Parker, Kathy Najimy). He lights a candle and they come back to life. A magical talking kitty (so cute!) tells him to steal their magical book and that forces the sisters to chase them around all night trying to kill them and get the book back. Yes, fun times.

I liked it. I will always like it. I'm fated to always think of this as the best--the absolute best!--halloween film ever made (that isn't a horror film and I don't include old b&w Dracula and Frankenstein and all that as horror films, I mean slasher horror films where most/many of the characters are brutally, obsessively hunted down and murdered by someone/something that just won't die). Next halloween, this film will still be at the top of my queue, in hope that I am the lucky one who gets picked (that is as long as I get to see Mister Lonely in the next nine months).

What a beautiful film. It's just someone immortalized in my childhood memory. And another example of how disney used to actually make worthwhile films. It's sweet, it's funny, it's moderately scary at times or at least suspenseful, it's sexy (hey, why not?). Can you believe that disney actually allowed a character dressed as madonna (pointy bra and all) and a character who is pretty much almost a nymphomaniac into one of their films? Oh, old disney, what happened? Why did you change? Why why why? If disney came out with a film like this now, I guarantee you it would not be PG and it would never play on the disney channel and there would be a huge controversy over SJP's character. Oh well.

Watch it. Now. So good. I don't really even have anything to say about it, other than I'm sure I will watch it again someday.