Kids These Days Keep Lighting Black Flame Candles
Hey all! Happy Halloween! Welcome to the final post of the 2025 So Desensitized Spooky Season Spooktacular: Witches! Get ready for some witchy Halloween mayhem courtesy of the Sanderson sisters, and then a wrap-up post tomorrow, including plans for the rest of the year. Happy reading, support your local witch, stay safe, and stay spooky!
[Also, as today is the last day before SNAP benefits are paused due to the government shutdown, please consider contributing however you can, especially volunteering at or donating to your local foodbank.]
Hocus Pocus is possibly the most widely known - and beloved - Halloween movie of all time. Thousands of people a year dress up as the iconic Sanderson sisters, merch is all over every store, and there was even a second movie a few years ago that mostly, in the grand tradition of sequels, served to prove that the original was brilliant. But when Hocus Pocus came out, it was one of the biggest flops that year. Clearly, the people needed a couple years to properly appreciate the vision.
To really give you all an idea of just how big a flop Hocus Pocus was, it lost Disney about $16 mil from a budget of $28 mil upon its initial release. This might have something to do with the fact that it came out in July, and maybe even more to do with the fact that The Nightmare Before Christmas came out in October of that year, absolutely ruining any chance of Hocus Pocus being rediscovered, come the right season. But really, it still took about a decade for Hocus Pocus to start getting the recognition it deserved. So whence the disdain?
Turns out, the thing about Hocus Pocus is that it’s really, genuinely, strange. There’s a talking cat, a zombie with his mouth stitched shut, a book made of human skin, three witches out to steal the souls of children, and a plot weirdly centered on the concept of virginity. It’s an odd one to try to market to children especially in summer. Most parents aren’t going to be taking their young kids to a movie they don’t know much about other than the fear factor and the witches in July, or at all really, in 1993. The creep factor combined with how plain weird it was to pitch just meant that most people didn’t bother taking the risk to see it at all. So Hocus Pocus was just about forgotten, even by the cast and crew, for another decade or so. But at the end of that decade, the people who were kids in 1993 kind of looked up and remembered that one Halloween movie they saw on TV that one time, or that their parents brought them to just to get everyone out of the house, the one that might’ve had Bette Midler in it, remember? And so they found that movie again, and watched it again, and went, huh, this is better than I remembered.
But then, if Hocus Pocus was so poorly received when it came out, what in it was so redeeming as to make it the ultimate family friendly Halloween classic for decades afterwards? Well, some of it was, as I’ve discussed before in regard to the summer months, nostalgia. It was a movie that could be used to look back on childhood, on all the sequins and witches and spooks that came with trick or treating when you were little, how badly you wanted your pets to be able to talk to you, and the love that Halloween came with back then, before you grew up and had to give out the candy yourself. A lot of the people that watch it every year say they do it for the nostalgia, or call it a nostalgic classic. But, thing is, most of those people probably didn’t see it in the time they’re being nostalgic for. What the nostalgia is for isn’t the movie itself, but the time. Because weren’t things just so much better back then? And the answer is, probably not, it’s just that you were, like, ten, so you didn’t have to worry about that. But there’s gotta be something else to this movie, because plenty of Halloween movies were made at about that time. What does Hocus Pocus have that, say Halloweentown or Casper didn’t? Because, no hate to either of those movies, but I’ve seen at least a full shelf of Hocus Pocus merch at Spirit Halloween every year I’ve gone there, and I think I have yet to see that level of commitment to the Halloweentown bit. And what I mentioned before about Hocus Pocus being genuinely odd might have a little something to do with it.
Because, see, people know from Casper, and there have been just about plenty small towns with curses on them. And while the Salem, Massachusetts of Hocus Pocus is, in fact, a small town with a curse on it, that curse has a level of fabulousness to it that others are simply lacking. It has both Bette Midler and Doug Jones. What can anyone else do. But in all seriousness, the kind of strange that Hocus Pocus is is very compelling. It’s camp as all hell (literally), includes the lounge number that I believe Bette Midler was contractually obligated to do in every movie she was in, and has a well-written, well-acted cast of characters that have clear chemistry with each other on and off screen. It’s a movie that has, for lack of a better word, real and true heart.
It is crystal clear in every moment of that movie that everyone involved in the production absolutely adored Halloween. The absolute spirit of the thing is captured perfectly, like a golden hour polaroid taken on the steps of the house before running out to take candy from strangers. From Dani’s unbelievably nineties orange witch costume with the pointy hat and all to the beautiful leaves all over for the kids to run around in, even in the Sanderson sisters’ iconic outfits, this movie is bursting at the seams with Halloween spirit. I dare you to watch it and not only want to go out trick or treating, but also curse the local magistrate. I dare you. And the most compelling thing about spirit like that is that it can’t really be faked.
To tell a good story, you have to love the story you’re telling, and David Kirschner and everyone else that worked on Hocus Pocus could not have more clearly loved that story and those witches. David Kirschner even pitched the story to Disney by filling the entire room with Halloween memorabilia, including cauldrons of candy corn and a witch’s broom to really get them in the swing of it. All of the child actors involved have ever since professed a deep love for that set and the environment they performed in. And this isn’t to say that there haven’t been absolutely brilliant movies made that weren’t always enjoyable for the cast - see, for example, Texas Chain Saw or The Shining - but you can generally tell from movies that were good for the people in them, especially the comedies. Humor doesn’t hit as well if you’re miserable doing it, and every single line in Hocus Pocus works like a charm. It’s so clear that all three of the witches are having an absolute blast the whole time, Bette Midler in particular, who has said that she loved the role so much in part because it gave her an opportunity to be kind of ugly and insane for a movie for once. The point I’m trying to make here is that Hocus Pocus could so easily become a movie people loved after its initial rocky start (seriously, whose idea was it to release that in July?) because it’s a good, unique movie with a clear soul to it.
The best movies are happy movies. And I don’t mean movies with happy endings or happy messages or whatever, I mean movies where most everyone involved was happy to be there, making it. And that’s what Hocus Pocus really is. It’s a happy movie full of camp and Halloween and beautiful, over-the-top witches. It’s drag, in a way. It loves itself for what it is, and so, too, do people who are willing to not take things to seriously. It has, as all good spooky/horror movies do, a very bad Rotten Tomatoes score (41%). It’s not a movie for critics, it’s a movie for people. And, given even the slightest, decade-late chance, people loved it. Because it’s good, goddamnit. It’s really just that simple. There’s nothing too profound about it like with The Witch or Weapons or The Craft. It doesn’t have the kind of haunting beauty that The Nightmare Before Christmas would sweep onto the scene with later that year. But it has real, true, magic. Hocus Pocus is real, and that’s what got it back and kept it going this long. It’s the kind of movie you remember, then watch again and again, then show to your kids. It’s lasting, because there’s a spirit in it that’s undeniable, even three decades later. Hocus Pocus know what it was to be a kid on Halloween, and it’s not going to let you forget it.
So maybe celebrate this year with some witchery of your own. Run amok a little, and remember how it felt in elementary school when you got candy at school, and worked so hard on your Halloween costume only to end up having to cover it with a coat anyway, but being so happy because you got free candy to eat and trade with your friends. Remember the true spirit of Halloween and carve a horrifying face into a turnip to scare away demons. Create a blood pact with your friends, go wander around the woods, dance naked under the full moon, bewitch the neighborhood kids, read a good book, or relive that precious, precious nostalgia…whatever works for you. Just be safe, be kind, be spooky, and, above all, have a happy Halloween!🎃🧹🪦🐈⬛🔪🩸
