My blog: Some thoughts on films
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Derelict Farm House by marts_uk on Flickr.
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Not now Silent Singer!
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Halloween is fun, which is why not all the films I’m going to suggest are going to be scary. Like today’s, huzzah!
Hocus Pocus
I’m not sure if this film will have the same effect if you didn’t watch it as a kid, but who knows. I watched it last year for the first time in a while and it was still excellent.
It has the perfect setting for a film about witches on Halloween, it’s set in Salem where Max Dennison (Omri Katz) has just moved with his family. He’s not into the whole Halloween thing, but has to take his little sister Dani (Thora Birch) Trick or Treating. They have been told about the story of the three Sanderson witches who are just waiting for someone to light a candle in their home to resurrect them. Through a chance meeting out Trick or Treating, Max bumps into a girl he has a major crush on who takes them to the witches house for an extreme Halloween experienced they’ll never forget.
This film is just fun and captures what Halloween should be about: sweets, costumes and witches. I remember being slightly scared by a few bits of it when I was 8, especially the story of how Winnie found her husband cheating on her with her sister so sewed his mouth up with a dull needle so he couldn’t tell anyone her secrets. Nasty.
Bette Midler stars in it so OF COURSE there’s a musical number, it just happens to be my favourite part of the film!
This is only a short Disney film, so as a good companion to this you should definitely watch a few episodes of Eerie Indiana immediately afterwards. You will probably want to anyway as Omri Katz is in Hocus Pocus, but I’m going to just suggest it anyway. I used to love this show and I think it’s in the running for best TV Theme ever, they don’t make TV shows like this any more. The episode that I always remember watching is the one where Marshall falls for a girl with a heart condition, and after the bad boy at school dies tragically she gets his heart. She then starts acting like him in every way. Creeeepy, yet bizarrely beautiful! And here its is, enjoy!
