Hocus Pocus (film)/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Why did Disney allow so much Fetish Fuel in this movie? Sarah's obvious bewb window on the front of her dress (and her obsession with 'playing with' every male character in the movie)? The scene where Max is humiliated by little Dani's statement, one being, "Max really likes your yabos. In fact, he loves them." -shrug- It doesn't seem completely Disney to me, but then again, there are those Youtube subliminal messages.
    • Dude, it's DISNEY. They made a career out of Getting Crap Past the Radar.
    • 1) Disney's reputation as super ultra squeaky clean wholesomeness is largely Memetic Mutation (arguably deliberately on Disney's part to some extent). 2) It's called a Parental Bonus for a reason: most kids won't notice it or get it on the level you get it on now. To them the joke is "Dani said a funny word and now Max is embarrassed", to older viewers the joke is "Heh, boobs."
  • It might be just me, but I can't seem to wrap my mind around the fact that there were only two scenes where the witches showed their unfamiliarity with the modern world - the black river, the fire truck scare, the television in the devil's house, OMGWTF BURNING RAIN OF DEATH!!! Then suddenly they're going up to sing their Villain Song with the microphones and other new stuff, and somehow they know how to harmonize and sing pop-style. They aren't scared of the vaccum cleaner. Then Winnie yells at Max during one of the many Chase Scenes, "Pull over, let me see your driver's license." Whaat? Why would they know how to deal with all of this when they've only been alive for about three hours?
    • Rule of funny for most of it, but always figured that the singing was part of their magic powers, i.e. "In exchange for eternal service to Satan, the Dark Lord will grant you the magical ability to sing mind controlling songs that are pleasing to the listeners."
      • Justified in that Sara's special power was enchanting song so it IS a valid magical ability.
    • Just before getting up and singing, Winnie did appear to be watching the band rather intently. It's possible that she caught on very quickly and the others followed her lead. As for the other parts, they probably overheard or learned bits and pieces of modern culture (for example, Winnie only called Max "dude" after they kept the two idiots in cages, so this troper assumed she learned it from them).
    • It's pretty safe to assume, then, that Winnie is just really intelligent and therefore able to comprehend even the strangest things pretty quickly. Note that she, of course, was the first one to realize that the 'burning rain of death' was merely water.
  • Why did Thackery die for good when the witches died the second time? He was cursed to live forever with his guilt. Then the witches were killed for real, with the possibility of coming back, but still genuinely dead. A spell that is supposed to last forever but is broken when the caster dies doesn't make sense. Sure, the sisters were trying to live forever but either the spell should have lasted forever, or at least until something broke it specifically, or it should have been broken the first time they died.
    • The sisters weren't truly dead the first time, since there was the candle that could bring them back. The second time they came back, that would be their only chance if they did not get the potion (which they never did get). Since the second time they were really and truly dead with no escape clause, presumably their spell on Binks was destroyed as well. Since the spell placed on the party-goers also seemed to have only worn off after the witches died, it seems that this is the case.
    • We have an entire trope for spells the end when the caster dies.
    • The curse was so he would live forever with his guilt, so if he didn't felt guilty anymore, the spell would be broken. Saving Dani and finally defeating the witches allowed him to overcome that
  • What's with all the "virgin this" and "virgin that" in this movie? Yeah, it's a plot point, but the audience didn't need to know it every two seconds. And speaking of audience, this was shown on 1990s Disney channel! Did YOU know what a virgin was when you were 9?
    • No, which confused the crap out of me at that age
      • Otoh, I did, so your mileage knowledge may vary on that?
    • The thing that bothered ME about that was that his little sister was the one constantly mentioning it and belittling him for it; it gives me the horrific impression that she looks down on him because she is NOT a virgin.
      • I got something completely different from Dani calling him a virgin all the time, it just seemed like something to antagonize her brother with, considering his consistant frustration with it. She probably doesn't even know what it means, just that it annoys her brother to be called that, so she calls him a virgin to get his goat. I mean, I call my little brother Spawn all the time, and even though it is totally true, him being a spawn of my mother, it still drives him crazy. Just siblings being siblings.
    • She's not the only one. Binks makes fun of him for it, the fake cop has fun with him with it...and really, I wouldn't be too sure Dani doesn't know what it means. She's not that young.
    • Product Placement. After Capcom's deal to make 16-bit video game adaptations of Disney films ran out, Virgin had it next.
    • You know how on South Park the kids are constantly using profanity and adult terms? Well, a major part of the humor from that (at least early on in the series) was that they had no idea what they were saying actually meant. When Cartman shouts "Mom, kitty's bein' a dildo!" and his mom responds by saying kitty will be sleeping with her tonight, Cartman is completely clueless as to what that could mean... because he doesn't actually know what a dildo is. He just knows it's a word he heard and the context made it seem dirty, so he uses it as a default dirty word. Same thing with Dani... she might only have a vague concept of what a virgin is, or none at all, but what she does know is that it really annoys Max when she brings up that he is one.
  • How the hell did they survive the oven? I'm sorry, but that special effect makes no sense. It's just a cop-out.
    • They burn up in the fire, the oven timer shuts it off, and they're magically revived. The Black Flame Candle spell brought them back and would keep them alive until they used the life-sucking potion to give themselves non-spell-bound life or the light of dawn, whichever came first.
      • I don't remember anything ever being established about their being UNKILLABLE until dawn. Plot Armor is risky enough business in and of itself, but when it fails to be established?!
      • The characters assumed fire would work because of the sterotype. Binks doesn't think they're dead and he's more in the know about magic stuff than they are.
  • Billy is a frustrating character. How is he so well-preserved? It would be highly unusual for a corpse to be that intact a few months after death, let alone a few centuries. And how can he reattach his limbs so easily? If Winnie's spell gave him his healing and preservation, why didn't she just restore him to a fully living state? He'd be a lot more competent that way.
  • How about the point at which Winifred drops the vial of potion - and Max runs forward to catch it? If he had just let it fall, it would have spilled or broken, and the movie would have been effectively over. I understand why the writers wrote it that way - it would be awfully anticlimactic for the witches to just spend the next ten minutes waiting around to die - but, from a character standpoint, it makes absolutely no sense.
    • Either it was just Max's reflexes, or he realized that if anything bad happened to the potion the witches would be very displeased and would most likely do something really awful to him and his friends. Or maybe he intended to use the vial as a bargaining chip - which, of course, is exactly what he winds up doing.
    • As I recall, Winifred had Dani. Had the potion smashed dani would have been the one to face her wrath, so instead he forced Winifred to switch her attention from Dani to himself. Either he'd hold her off long enough for the sun to kill her or he'd die, either way he's saved his sister.
  • At the beginning after Thackery is turned into a cat he tries to get his dad's attention, obviously hoping he'll some how realize what happened, but to get his attention he just meows and scratches at his shoe. In the rest of the movie he can talk, why didn't he say something there?
    • Given the location and time period, it was more likely that he'd think Binx was a familiar (a demon in the shape of an animal that serves witches) using Satanic powers to imitate his son's voice.
    • He probably hadn't figured out how to talk as a cat yet. He had plenty of time to learn while waiting for the witches to revive.
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