No Hocus Pocus This Halloween? A Rant!
My favourite part about Halloween was always the trick-or-treating. I have a wee bit of a (read: unhealthy) sugar addiction and you’re telling me that all I have to do is dress up and knock on peoples’ doors and they’ll just give me candy for free?! Sign me up for life. Except, well, I don’t trick-or-treat anymore. I didn’t stop because I got too old, though. Rather, because I got too tall. I used to be adorably petite and then I grew eight inches in my early teens and now I’m some sort of 5’8″ monster who is too tall to trick-or-treat, AKA pass for a small child. (Listen up adult shorties, if you aren’t putting on masks and pretending to be small children on Halloween, you’re wasting your lives.)
Since I can’t trick-or-treat anymore, my next favourite part about Halloween is getting to watch Hocus Pocus. I’m not even going to explain what Hocus Pocus is because, like “Jingle Bell Rock,” everyone in the English-speaking world knows what it is. And if you don’t…
What do you mean you haven’t heard of Hocus Pocus?!
Fine. It’s a movie. And by “movie” I mean it’s only the greatest Halloween movie that has ever movied. It’s got witches and talking cats and a miniature Thora Birch and BETTE FUCKING MIDLER NEED I SAY MORE?!?!? Anyway, I was all jazzed because I just assumed, naturally, that at least one cinema in Toronto would be screening Hocus Pocus during the Halloween season. (Realistically they all should’ve been playing it. In every theatre. All the screens, all the Billy. But, well, I’ve learned not to expect too much from people.)
Imagine my surprise when I discovered the awful truth: no theatre is playing Hocus Pocus in Toronto. (At least, no where that I could find in the five minutes I spent on Google.) What in flying vacuum cleaners is going on here. How can the holiday season be complete without seeing Hocus Pocus on a big screen? Answer: it cannot. See guys, this is what happens when Rob Ford is mayor.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can watch it at home. (I already did. Twice.) But it’s not the damn same and you know it. A jabroni television simply can’t capture the majesty that is this movie. I need Winifred, Sarah, and Mary to be as big as possible. I want to be legitimately terrified of the size of Bette Midler’s teeth. I want to see the individual whiskers on Binx’s face. I WANT TO ABSORB THIS MOVIE’S LIFE FORCE LIKE A SMALL DELICIOUS CHILD.
Getting a bit carried away, are we?
Okay, maybe I’m getting myself a little worked up. But then again, imagine how much more oomf the cat spell would have in a movie theatre…
Or what about the calming circle? Or when the sisters experience a bus for the first time?!
I just want to be a part of the calming circle, guys. Is that too much to ask? Apparently. APPARENTLY.
I will find whoever is responsible for this and make them pay!
And we also can’t forget all of that sweet broom-flying action. Don’t try to tell me those billowing capes weren’t made to billow on a movie screen. Billow, my preciouses…billow!
Yeahhhhhhhhh, billow.
Hocus Pocus isn’t all fun and games, though. There’s a lot to be learned. Like, family always sticks together, it’s easy to trick witches because technology, and don’t let virgins near candles. Ever. Also, I’m pretty sure our vocabulary greatly improved after seeing this movie.
And I’ll see my Dani’s “yabbos” and raise me a Sarah’s “amok” because I can.
Why yes, that was a cleverly crafted sentence just so I could post this video. Amok, amok, amok! And runner up for the smoothest segue is this bad boy right here: I probably wouldn’t be running amok on here… IF A CINEMA WOULD JUST PLAY HOCUS POCUS FOR ME OR LESS I PARISH IN THE BURNING RAINS OF DEATH. *flails dramatically*
Yeah, I should probably go lie down now.
(If you too taste the bitter injustice in not getting to see Hocus Pocus this Halloween, let me know. Maybe if we all band together something can be… eh, who has the time.)
PS – didn’t think I’d end this without a shoutout to Ern…I mean Ice, did you?
