Bette Midler’s Halloween Costume Is the Next Best Thing to Hocus Pocus 2
Every year on Halloween the 24- to 38-year-old women of the Internet join together to celebrate the deep, unbreakable sisterhood of people who have spent most of their lives loving Hocus Pocus.
And we’re not the only people who love Hocus Pocus! The cast loved it too, especially Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy. Midler said at the time that filming Hocus Pocus was the most fun project she’d ever done in her career. She’s been teasing us with ideas of a sequel for a couple years now, and all three Sanderson sisters have said they are ready to sign on for that project if it ever gets the green light. (Come on, Hollywood. I paid $12 to see Suicide Squad in the theater and didn’t even walk out. You guys owe me.)
Yesterday Bette Midler made everyone’s Halloween and showed up dressed as Winifred Sanderson. She’s still got it! Hocus Pocus happened 23 years ago, and all Bette Midler has to do is pop that costume on and she’s ready to go. She looks great. We need this to happen.
The entire Internet loves Hocus Pocus. It’s a great movie, and it really holds up as you get older. When you’re a small child, it’s funny and has some safe scares that aren’t really scary. As a slightly older child, there’s some jokes and innuendo and a bit of slow-burn spookiness to keep your attention. Then you watch it again as an adult and it’s still fun and full of nostalgia, and that’s when the really creepy stuff comes out. Thackeray Binx is cursed with immortality and is stuck in the body of a cat for 300 years! The witches killed his little sister at the beginning of the movie. Winifred Sanderson actually sews up her ex boyfriend’s mouth and makes him a zombie. As a kid that stuff is just background fluff, but as an adult it’s like, “Jeez, Winnie. That’s fucked up.”
So basically everybody has been obsessed with this movie for the past 23 years. And everyone who saw this as an adolescent was hot for someone in Hocus Pocus, right? I don’t think I’ve spoken to a woman between the ages of 26 and 36 who didn’t have a crush on at least one of the characters. Somewhere between Sarah Sanderson’s outfit and Thackeray Binx’ crabby, “I’m a snarky cat, but deep inside I’m a heroic blond teenager in a poet blouse” thing, Hocus Pocus planted the seeds of sexual awakening for half the Millennials of the world. Then Casper came out two years later and watered those seeds with our tears and cemented this whole thing in place. Bam. An entire generation of adolescent girls who like boys had suddenly developed a lifelong fetish for supernatural romance. I’m pretty sure this is why Twilight eventually happened.
Hollywood needs to listen to the Internet and listen to Bette Midler and get on this right away.
