Twist the bones and bend the back
Hocus Pocus is one of those movies I love so much it's hard for me to write rationally about it. I watched it as a preteen who didn't see many movies, and I thought it was the best thing ever. Recently I rewatched it with kestrell, and then again with other friends. It has held up really well.
This movie relies on the audience agreeing to believe that there were real witches at Salem. Funnily, that has never annoyed me. Everywhere else, that idea has made me explode with wrath. (Q: How many witches were executed in Salem? A: None.) But in this case, I don't mind it. I think this movie was so blatantly ahistorical that it made my twelve-year-old self go off and look up the real facts of the matter. So there you go, it made me do research. Supernatural horror: it will help your kids educate themselves. Sometimes out of sheer dread. Anyway, all you have to do to enjoy this movie is to tell yourself it's happening in the alternate universe where witchcraft is real, the Satan-worshiping-child-murdering-broomstick-flying witches meme is true, and the Salem witch hysteria continued into November of 1693 and actually happened in Salem. There you go, out of your difficulty at once!
Now that's out of the way. Let me gush a little.
Resolved:
--The Sanderson sisters (Winnie, Mary, and Sarah) are fantastic comedy performances who do not get enough love or recognition from horror fans or pop culture in general. As Kestrell said, "They're like the witchy Marx Sisters!"
--This movie is way the hell more entertaining and thought-provoking than it had to be. It's a kids' Halloween movie about witches and talking cats; everybody could have flung it together halfheartedly between other gigs, but instead the writers, director and actors all seem to be bringing their A-game.
--Bette Midler is a majestical being. I read somewhere that this was her favorite of all her roles, which is heartwarming in the same way as Vincent Price's saying that he'd achieved his fondest goal in life now that he'd been on the Muppet Show and been bitten on the neck by Kermit.
--This movie is the best thing Sarah Jessica Parker has ever done, full stop.
--The two human girls of this movie are pretty badass, and:
--They both become witches too, in their own way.
Anybody disagree? No? Good.
Let me tell you how much I love Winnie Sanderson.
Firebrands of Hell
"We are just three kindly old spinster ladies!"
"Uh... Spending a quiet evening at home!
"Sucking the LIVES out of LITTLE CHILDREN!"
So, I love funny female villainy. I can't get enough of it. There's not enough of it in fiction; it seems we can have female villains aplenty, but women aren't often allowed to be funny, and villains who are women and get to have some laughs? Vanishingly rare. Every time I find a good example, I consume it greedily. And of all female villains, Winnie, Mary, and Sarah Sanderson make me laugh most.
It's the way they move. The way they physically relate to each other. They have the body language of people who have known each other all their lives. It's the little things: moving in unison without having to think about it, having facial tics and abusive patterns that none of them think are at all odd or unusual. Walking in step everywhere they go with their skirts hiked up and their heads thrust forward and swaying like cobras. The first time I saw them do this, I assumed it was a one-time joke. But, no: they really do walk like that all the time. Most actors wouldn't put this much thought into every little gesture. As I said, the performers didn't have to be this good, and yet they are. Each of the three witches moves in a distinct way, is uniquely herself. You don't look at them and go, "Gee, that's a funny performance," you assume that she gets up in the morning and behaves this way every day of her life.
Winnie's my favorite. Of course she is. We tall red-haired buck-toothed wild-eyed women who wear a lot of green and have maniacal laughs have to stick together. Seriously, I want to cosplay as her (but you can't have just one Sanderson sister, and I'm having one hell of a time recruiting friends to be Mary and Sarah. It's like people don't WANT me to bully and boss them and blow my nose on them, or something). Isn't this the best look ever? This is the best look ever. Can't you just see me? Yes, Winnie can shoot Sith lightning out of her hands because of reasons.
If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, until my change come.
Winnie Sanderson is master of the situation. I have come to believe that pretty much everything she does to set up the main plot is intentional. Including letting the lynch mob hang all three of them. Yes, hear me out: she's a forward-planning villain to rival that other time-travelling wizard, Joseph Curwen. They're both playing a long game, in very similar wise.
Both of them are magic-workers who work from books and have a special understanding with the Devil. Curwen even danced in the woods with the Salem witches, back in the early days. Both of them have abnormally long lives, extended directly by feeding on the living. Winifred literally sucks the souls out of children, like she was skimming fat off the top of the gravy. Joseph Curwen preys upon people, like a vampire, or a Skeksis, drawing out life essence or sometimes actual blood. He and Winnie both prosper for a long time by only preying upon vulnerable populations. Curwen gets his victims by slavery purchases, or kidnapping passing sailors and soldiers. Winifred Sanderson probably has killed a lot of Native children and poor people's kids, children whose families were dead or couldn't go to authorities for help. (The only reason she gets into a difficulty with the townsfolk of Salem is that she has gone too far and preyed on the Binx siblings, who have local powerful family members.)
Both Winnie Sanderson and Joseph Curwen laugh in the moment when they die. ("Pox on that ____, but he had no business to laugh while he screamed. T'was as though the damn'd _____ had some'at up his sleeve," mutters a minor character. Flip the pronouns and he could be talking about Winnie.) They both promise to return one day. After hundreds of years of waiting outside the spheres, they both fulfill the promise with the help of a clueless modern person who knows just enough to make a lot of trouble. They even both bring people back from the dead in an imperfect form, just to be jerks to them. Winifred Sanderson has Billy the ex-boyfriend, and Joseph has Ezra Weeden, the man who led the torches-and-pitchforks mob against him the first time around.
Dance! Dance! Dance until you die!
So, now that we've traced parallels. Where are they going with all this?
Joseph Curwen wants what most Lovecraftian heavies want: to bring on the "legions from beneath," which looks likely to mean the Apocalypse, the end of humanity's rule on earth, the return of old gods and the tyrannical power of evil magic users like Curwen. It doesn't sound too appealing to me, even for a sorcerer, but it's his decision, not mine. And what does Winnie want from her own attempted killing spree? We never really find out if she has ambitions, beyond the things she already knows and likes doing. Her goal within the movie is to murder every child in town and slurp up their souls to stay alive and gain health, strength and longevity. I must say that's a compelling motivation for the moment. But, supposing it had worked, we never find out what she would have done next. (I say "what she would have done" because Winifred is the one with the brains in the family. Mary and Sarah operate by going, "What's this? Can I eat it? Can I have sex with it?" and living in the moment, like puppies. Evil puppies, mind you; but they're as happy and simple-minded as Golden Retrievers.)
There are two ways this could go. Winifred wants to become a sorceress-queen of New England, or something dippy like that, and accumulate power and wealth and thralls, and crush the thrones of the world beneath her pointy red shoes. I wouldn't put it past her. On the other hand, maybe she's not interested in any of that. Not every villain wants to become Mussolini McSauron. Winifred could just want to maintain a status quo, where she stays young by eating souls forever and ever, acquires some power and wealth, has lovers, fights with her sisters, keeps on adding to the Book, and generally enjoys herself in the ways to which she's accustomed. Frankly, I think she'd go for the second option, the quieter option that villains don't usually take. But perhaps I am over-identifying and want her to make the sensible choice. Well, well, it's what I'd do if she were my PC.
Hello, Salem, my name's Winifred! What's yours?
The most wonderful thing about Winnie is her ability to learn quickly and think on her feet. This is a useful skill, and it keeps the story from becoming annoying, for those of us who are tired of time-traveler jokes. She can learn from experience (losing her fear of cars, roads, flashing lights, and technology nice and fast), she can learn from watching other people (the dance party at Old Town Hall), or she can learn from context ("It is a prison for children"). And if she doesn't understand something, she'll experiment.
PROBLEM: I don't understand a thing [modern paved road].
TEST: Throw Sarah into it.
RESULT: Sarah didn't die or explode or anything.
CONCLUSION: It's safe!
Most importantly, if she doesn't understand a thing, she plays along with it until she figures out what's happening. This is why Winifred gets a long way with her evil plans. She doesn't need to understand what a bus is in order to get a ride; she doesn't need to know how microphones work to get up onstage and start enchanting people. (Yes, I know that moment was just there for laughs and shouldn't be taken as feasible character development. Go with me here, I'm enjoying being literal-minded.)
This is also why Winifred is a much smarter villain than Joseph Curwen. He is felled by modern technology: faking signatures poorly on checks, misunderstanding how banking and the US postal system work, that sort of thing. It's a lot like Al Capone being brought to justice by the IRS for his dishonest tax practices. I can't see the same thing happening to Winnie. I can see her hiring forgers and carrying right on with her evil schemes, though.
Mary and Sarah Sanderson are also in this movie
but I'll post about them later, for right now I am so tired that it's unpleasantly like being drunk, and I can no longer operate my fingers.
(Hey, if you want a movie that has two or more female characters who talk to each other about something apart from a man, this is the film for you. I can't remember a point when the Sanderson sisters DO talk to each other about a man, for that matter. The only true love of their mean and gross lives is Satan the Master.)
This movie relies on the audience agreeing to believe that there were real witches at Salem. Funnily, that has never annoyed me. Everywhere else, that idea has made me explode with wrath. (Q: How many witches were executed in Salem? A: None.) But in this case, I don't mind it. I think this movie was so blatantly ahistorical that it made my twelve-year-old self go off and look up the real facts of the matter. So there you go, it made me do research. Supernatural horror: it will help your kids educate themselves. Sometimes out of sheer dread. Anyway, all you have to do to enjoy this movie is to tell yourself it's happening in the alternate universe where witchcraft is real, the Satan-worshiping-child-murdering-broomstick-flying witches meme is true, and the Salem witch hysteria continued into November of 1693 and actually happened in Salem. There you go, out of your difficulty at once!
Now that's out of the way. Let me gush a little.
Resolved:
--The Sanderson sisters (Winnie, Mary, and Sarah) are fantastic comedy performances who do not get enough love or recognition from horror fans or pop culture in general. As Kestrell said, "They're like the witchy Marx Sisters!"
--This movie is way the hell more entertaining and thought-provoking than it had to be. It's a kids' Halloween movie about witches and talking cats; everybody could have flung it together halfheartedly between other gigs, but instead the writers, director and actors all seem to be bringing their A-game.
--Bette Midler is a majestical being. I read somewhere that this was her favorite of all her roles, which is heartwarming in the same way as Vincent Price's saying that he'd achieved his fondest goal in life now that he'd been on the Muppet Show and been bitten on the neck by Kermit.
--This movie is the best thing Sarah Jessica Parker has ever done, full stop.
--The two human girls of this movie are pretty badass, and:
--They both become witches too, in their own way.
Anybody disagree? No? Good.
Let me tell you how much I love Winnie Sanderson.
Firebrands of Hell
"We are just three kindly old spinster ladies!"
"Uh... Spending a quiet evening at home!
"Sucking the LIVES out of LITTLE CHILDREN!"
So, I love funny female villainy. I can't get enough of it. There's not enough of it in fiction; it seems we can have female villains aplenty, but women aren't often allowed to be funny, and villains who are women and get to have some laughs? Vanishingly rare. Every time I find a good example, I consume it greedily. And of all female villains, Winnie, Mary, and Sarah Sanderson make me laugh most.
It's the way they move. The way they physically relate to each other. They have the body language of people who have known each other all their lives. It's the little things: moving in unison without having to think about it, having facial tics and abusive patterns that none of them think are at all odd or unusual. Walking in step everywhere they go with their skirts hiked up and their heads thrust forward and swaying like cobras. The first time I saw them do this, I assumed it was a one-time joke. But, no: they really do walk like that all the time. Most actors wouldn't put this much thought into every little gesture. As I said, the performers didn't have to be this good, and yet they are. Each of the three witches moves in a distinct way, is uniquely herself. You don't look at them and go, "Gee, that's a funny performance," you assume that she gets up in the morning and behaves this way every day of her life.
Winnie's my favorite. Of course she is. We tall red-haired buck-toothed wild-eyed women who wear a lot of green and have maniacal laughs have to stick together. Seriously, I want to cosplay as her (but you can't have just one Sanderson sister, and I'm having one hell of a time recruiting friends to be Mary and Sarah. It's like people don't WANT me to bully and boss them and blow my nose on them, or something). Isn't this the best look ever? This is the best look ever. Can't you just see me? Yes, Winnie can shoot Sith lightning out of her hands because of reasons.
If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, until my change come.
Winnie Sanderson is master of the situation. I have come to believe that pretty much everything she does to set up the main plot is intentional. Including letting the lynch mob hang all three of them. Yes, hear me out: she's a forward-planning villain to rival that other time-travelling wizard, Joseph Curwen. They're both playing a long game, in very similar wise.
Both of them are magic-workers who work from books and have a special understanding with the Devil. Curwen even danced in the woods with the Salem witches, back in the early days. Both of them have abnormally long lives, extended directly by feeding on the living. Winifred literally sucks the souls out of children, like she was skimming fat off the top of the gravy. Joseph Curwen preys upon people, like a vampire, or a Skeksis, drawing out life essence or sometimes actual blood. He and Winnie both prosper for a long time by only preying upon vulnerable populations. Curwen gets his victims by slavery purchases, or kidnapping passing sailors and soldiers. Winifred Sanderson probably has killed a lot of Native children and poor people's kids, children whose families were dead or couldn't go to authorities for help. (The only reason she gets into a difficulty with the townsfolk of Salem is that she has gone too far and preyed on the Binx siblings, who have local powerful family members.)
Both Winnie Sanderson and Joseph Curwen laugh in the moment when they die. ("Pox on that ____, but he had no business to laugh while he screamed. T'was as though the damn'd _____ had some'at up his sleeve," mutters a minor character. Flip the pronouns and he could be talking about Winnie.) They both promise to return one day. After hundreds of years of waiting outside the spheres, they both fulfill the promise with the help of a clueless modern person who knows just enough to make a lot of trouble. They even both bring people back from the dead in an imperfect form, just to be jerks to them. Winifred Sanderson has Billy the ex-boyfriend, and Joseph has Ezra Weeden, the man who led the torches-and-pitchforks mob against him the first time around.
Dance! Dance! Dance until you die!
So, now that we've traced parallels. Where are they going with all this?
Joseph Curwen wants what most Lovecraftian heavies want: to bring on the "legions from beneath," which looks likely to mean the Apocalypse, the end of humanity's rule on earth, the return of old gods and the tyrannical power of evil magic users like Curwen. It doesn't sound too appealing to me, even for a sorcerer, but it's his decision, not mine. And what does Winnie want from her own attempted killing spree? We never really find out if she has ambitions, beyond the things she already knows and likes doing. Her goal within the movie is to murder every child in town and slurp up their souls to stay alive and gain health, strength and longevity. I must say that's a compelling motivation for the moment. But, supposing it had worked, we never find out what she would have done next. (I say "what she would have done" because Winifred is the one with the brains in the family. Mary and Sarah operate by going, "What's this? Can I eat it? Can I have sex with it?" and living in the moment, like puppies. Evil puppies, mind you; but they're as happy and simple-minded as Golden Retrievers.)
There are two ways this could go. Winifred wants to become a sorceress-queen of New England, or something dippy like that, and accumulate power and wealth and thralls, and crush the thrones of the world beneath her pointy red shoes. I wouldn't put it past her. On the other hand, maybe she's not interested in any of that. Not every villain wants to become Mussolini McSauron. Winifred could just want to maintain a status quo, where she stays young by eating souls forever and ever, acquires some power and wealth, has lovers, fights with her sisters, keeps on adding to the Book, and generally enjoys herself in the ways to which she's accustomed. Frankly, I think she'd go for the second option, the quieter option that villains don't usually take. But perhaps I am over-identifying and want her to make the sensible choice. Well, well, it's what I'd do if she were my PC.
Hello, Salem, my name's Winifred! What's yours?
The most wonderful thing about Winnie is her ability to learn quickly and think on her feet. This is a useful skill, and it keeps the story from becoming annoying, for those of us who are tired of time-traveler jokes. She can learn from experience (losing her fear of cars, roads, flashing lights, and technology nice and fast), she can learn from watching other people (the dance party at Old Town Hall), or she can learn from context ("It is a prison for children"). And if she doesn't understand something, she'll experiment.
PROBLEM: I don't understand a thing [modern paved road].
TEST: Throw Sarah into it.
RESULT: Sarah didn't die or explode or anything.
CONCLUSION: It's safe!
Most importantly, if she doesn't understand a thing, she plays along with it until she figures out what's happening. This is why Winifred gets a long way with her evil plans. She doesn't need to understand what a bus is in order to get a ride; she doesn't need to know how microphones work to get up onstage and start enchanting people. (Yes, I know that moment was just there for laughs and shouldn't be taken as feasible character development. Go with me here, I'm enjoying being literal-minded.)
This is also why Winifred is a much smarter villain than Joseph Curwen. He is felled by modern technology: faking signatures poorly on checks, misunderstanding how banking and the US postal system work, that sort of thing. It's a lot like Al Capone being brought to justice by the IRS for his dishonest tax practices. I can't see the same thing happening to Winnie. I can see her hiring forgers and carrying right on with her evil schemes, though.
Mary and Sarah Sanderson are also in this movie
but I'll post about them later, for right now I am so tired that it's unpleasantly like being drunk, and I can no longer operate my fingers.
(Hey, if you want a movie that has two or more female characters who talk to each other about something apart from a man, this is the film for you. I can't remember a point when the Sanderson sisters DO talk to each other about a man, for that matter. The only true love of their mean and gross lives is Satan the Master.)