Hocus Pocus is the tale of three sisters hanged in Salem three hundred years ago for practising witchcraft. Winifred (played by Bette Midler), the oldest sister’s dying words are a curse that will bring them back to life on Halloween if a virgin lights the black candle in their den. Three hundred years later, Max and his family move to Salem and Max is stuck in Salem on Halloween night taking his little sister Danni “Trick or Treating”.

Max is tyring to impress Allison a girl at his new high school and when they end up at her house he offers to take them to the witches’ den to prove the legend is not real. Max lights the candle and the witches are brought back and all hell breaks loose. The witches; Winifred, Mary, (played by Kathy Najimy) and Sarah (played by Sarah-Jessica Parker) will suck the life out of the children of Salem before dawn in order to live forever, but they need the help of their spell book to do this. The witches will stop at nothing to get their hands on this book and they prepare to have a night of terrorising the city of Salem.

Max, Allison and Danni find a cat named Binx in the witches’ den, three hundred years ago Binx used to be a boy; Winifred cursed him to live forever as a cat. Binx helps them find the spell book but can he help them catch the witches before dawn?

This movie was a lot of fun; Bette Midler is a wonderful actress and played the part of Winifred the dominant witch really well. Kathy Najimy and Sarah Jessica Parker play the parts of the stupid sisters perfectly. There are many scenes that are really funny due to the skill of the actors involved, these three women worked really well together. The antics of these witches must been seen to be believed. The set is dim and gruesome and just what you would expect from a “Halloween” movie, but is by no means a horror movie. There is no gratuitous blood and guts scenes and the grave yard creatures end up being “friendly”. Rated PG the movie has a few scary minutes but nothing too horrible and my children aged 6 and 9 really enjoyed it but my 5 year old left half way through claiming it to be too scary! So maybe you will have to pick if it’s OK for your child or not. Hocus Pocus is a typical Disney movie with clever humour and a great cast this is a DVD that is great value and a must have in your home collection. Disney DVD do the “home collection movies” really well and if you have a selection of them, you will find that when your kids are stuck indoors you will have something for them to watch.

CONCLUSION

Hocus Pocus is the tale of three sisters hanged in Salem three hundred years ago for practising witchcraft. Winifred (played by Bette Midler), the oldest sister’s dying words are a curse that will bring them back to life on Halloween if a virgin lights the black candle in their den. Three hundred years later, Max and his family move to Salem and Max is stuck in Salem on Halloween night taking his little sister Danni “Trick or Treating”.