History Headscratchers / HocusPocus

* What is the witch's goal in trying to live forever anyway? They mention a few times that they spent the intervening centuries in hell and enjoyed themselves; Sarah seems pretty cheerful to go back when they're defeated.
** If they made a DealWithTheDevil for eternal life and have been in hell, presumably when they were there at the time and said devil brought them back. They probably don't want to return as failures, because Old Scratch will subject them to some terrible punishment for [[YouHaveFailedMe failing to drain more children]].

** At times it doesn't even seem that Winnie is interested in eternal life--she's mostly driven by a desire to be eternally ''young.'' She also has a vendetta against Salem and its populace, given that her last words before being hanged are "The lives of all the children of Salem will be MINE!" As for her sisters: Mary's slavishly devoted to Winnie and would do anything for her, plus living children are [[ImAHumanitarian probably a lot tastier.]] And Sarah...well, Sarah's TheDitz and pretty much does whatever Winnie says; she's also probably on the hunt for some living men to "play with."

** Until the sequel addresses it, perhaps the sisters don't even get to go to hell when they turn to dust? Maybe the exchange for the spell to come back is that if they die again, it's complete CessationOfExistence with no afterlife at all.
* Why on all the pages for this movie is Billy referred to as being GoodAllAlong?? Isn't it far more likely (as this Troper believed since childhood) that Billy Simply finally had enough of taking Winnifred's shit?

*** The sign outside says it's closed for renovations. Allison tells Danni it's closed because spooky things kept happening there, but she's probably just entertaining the little girl. Still, the place is pretty damn dusty when they get there, so it's probably been shut up for a while. And you'd think it'd be open at Halloween of all times. Halloween in Salem is tourist central.

*** Especially since he said it in the museum that used to be their house.

*** Especially since he said it in their house.

*** The only one to break in on a Full Moon during Halloween and not be thwarted by Binx. He's been guarding the house on Halloween night ever since the witches died to stop people from doing exactly that
*** Seeing as the moon is only full 3 days a month that's roughly 30 times that the full moon would coincide with Halloween over 300 years. If you only count it as full when it's 'completely' full that number goes down to just 10. We also don't know how long the place has been a museum or when it was open. When it was open for business (and therefore under the watchful eye of an adult) it would have been a lot less likely for kids to mess with the candle.

* If they had enough potion for a child and we saw with Thack's sister Emily that they can survive off one child why didn't they use what was left on one of the kids walking to their house, aside from the "it's Disney" excuse, please.

** WordOfGod is that he couldn't talk until the candle was lit. Presumably, if he could, he would have to stop Max from lighting it.

*** Are you kidding? Most boys in my high school would never have admitted to being virgins (or having a sexual orientation other than straight) even if they probably were, and certainly weren't interested in chores or studies so much as in pretending to be macho thugs. And I lived in a "good neighborhood" in Western New York.

*** Are you kidding? Most boys in my high school would never have admitted to being virgins (or having a sexual orientation other than straight) even if they probably were, and certainly weren't interested in chores or studies so much as in pretending to be macho thugs. And I lived in a "good neighborhood".

*** Are you kidding? Most boys in my high school would never have admitted to being virgins even if they probably were, and certainly weren't interested in chores or studies so much as in pretending to be macho thugs. And I lived in a "good neighborhood".

** No, which confused the crap out of me at that age

*** There's a dropped plot where witches were candy makers. They gave candy crows to children so there's a deleted scene (missing from anything but 1990's video cassettes of the same movie) where the witches go to a store to get items including a BBQ. This also explains why Dani, Max, and Allison don't fall for Sara's song.

* How exactly did the witches begin to brew the potion at all? Their home has been turned into a museum for centuries and surely any remnants of dead bodies (dead man's toe and oil of boils) were done away with centuries ago. How could the witches have acquired such ingredients in the time between kidnapping Danny and Sarah returning from using her magic song? We can clearly see the potion is in its final stage, so it seems they either had the ingredients on hand (doubtful) or killed a few people on the way.
** What makes it even ''more'' unlikely that they'd have the ingredients on hand is that Binx overheard them listing some of those ingredients before he was transformed. You'd think that, even if his cat body wasn't dexterous enough to steal the candle (why didn't he?), he'd have at least taken pains to topple, destroy, scatter or even ''piss'' on everything else the witches might be able to make use of, if and when they ''did'' return.
** The book at least was enchanted so that it couldn't be burned or destroyed (and therefore wouldn't decay). Maybe the sisters cast spells on their other ingredients so they wouldn't decay? Dead man's toe isn't something you can stock for a long time normally, what with how quickly flesh decays.

*** Regarding the ingredients, an unspecified amount of time passed between the Sandersons abducting Dani and them preparing to give her the potion, so it's possible they spent that time collecting the ingredients once they had the book back; raid a morgue for the dead man's toe, break into a market for the herbs, etc.

* There's a dropped plot where witches were candy makers. They gave candy crows to children so there's a deleted scene (missing from anything but 1990's video cassettes of the same movie) where the witches go to a store to get items including a BBQ. This also explains why Dani, Max and Allison don't fall for Sara's song.

* Why did Creator/{{Disney}} allow so much fetish material in this movie? Sarah's obvious bewb window on the front of her dress (and her obsession with 'playing with' every male character in the movie)? The scene where Max is humiliated by little Dani's statements, one being, "Max really likes your yabos. In fact, he loves them." -shrug- It doesn't seem completely Disney to me, but then again, there are those Website/YouTube subliminal messages.

* It might be just me, but I can't seem to wrap my mind around the fact that there were only two scenes where the witches showed their unfamiliarity with the modern world - the black river, the fire truck scare, the television in the devil's house, OMGWTF BURNING RAIN OF DEATH!!! Then suddenly they're going up to sing their VillainSong with the microphones and other new stuff, and somehow they know how to harmonize and sing pop-style. They aren't scared of the vacuum cleaner. Then Winnie yells at Max during one of the many {{Chase Scene}}s, "Pull over, let me see your driver's license." Whaat? Why would they know how to deal with all of this when they've only been alive for about three hours?
** RuleOfFunny for most of it, but always figured that the singing was part of their magic powers, i.e. "In exchange for eternal service to {{Satan}}, the Dark Lord will grant you the magical ability to sing mind controlling songs that are pleasing to the listeners."
*** Justified in that Sarah's special power was enchanting song so it IS a valid magical ability.

** Also, keep in mind that they spent some time riding a bus, with a bus driver who explained a little about what said vehicle was and even let Sarah try to drive it. They could easily have been repeating something they heard from him. The guy seemed like the kind who'd sarcastically shout something like that at another driver.

** The sisters weren't truly dead the first time, since there was the candle that could bring them back. The second time they came back, that would be their only chance if they did not get the potion (which they never did get). Since the second time they were really and truly dead with no escape clause, presumably their spell on Binks was destroyed as well. Since the spell placed on the party-goers also seemed to have only worn off after the witches died, it seems that this is the case.

** The curse was so he would live forever with his guilt, so if he didn't felt guilty anymore, the spell would be broken. Saving Dani and finally defeating the witches allowed him to overcome that.
* What's with all the "virgin this" and "virgin that" in this movie? Yeah, it's a plot point, but the audience didn't need to know it every two seconds. And speaking of audience, this was shown on 1990s Disney channel! Did YOU know what a virgin was when you were 9?

*** Otoh, I did, so your [[strike:mileage]] knowledge may vary on that?

*** I got something completely different from Dani calling him a virgin all the time, it just seemed like something to antagonize her brother with, considering his consistent frustration with it. She probably doesn't even know what it means, just that it annoys her brother to be called that, so she calls him a virgin to get his goat. I mean, I call my little brother Spawn all the time, and even though it is totally true, him being a spawn of my mother, it still drives him crazy. Just siblings being siblings.

*** Considering that Binx came from a puritan society where, considering that he seemed to be unmarried (as he was still living with his family, and while girls of that time period were often married off as young as 13 it was generally to older men rather than boys of their own age group) either, and considering that after his transformation it would have been really [[HotSkittyOnWailordAction difficult (anatomically speaking) with a human]] [[InterspeciesRomance and]] [[UnequalPairing not any better]] [[BestialityIsDepraved with a cat]]... well, [[TalkingAnimal he's]] probably not one to [[AccidentalPun talk]], [[OldMaid himself]].

*** Unless he had sex with another 15 year-old person, as most normal people do. Who wrote this headscratcher? Doug Walker? When I saw the movie as a young teen I did get the joke, we all were assuming that virgin meant female, but it applies to him too, he is ashamed of that as, whether we like or not, most teen boys of that age want not to be virgins and many, especially someone good looking like he, are not. Teens do have sex before 18 even when it's currently become an issue among socially conservative people, but in the 90s it wasn’t such a scandal and many movies and TV series implied or openly established that teens were sexually active.
*** It doesn't change the fact that even for a dead joke ''it's baffling''. Virginity here is treated like something you're supposed to be ashamed of, and you need to get rid of it asap. Max is still developing, and thus, hasn't had the time required to identify his sexual orientation yet. Most functional 15-year-olds would generally be more concerned with their studies, chores, and recreational time with friends... than getting laid. And just to confound things further, the cast demands he becomes mature enough to have sex - yet still should go out treat or tricking for Halloween like a little child! Just... give the kid ''a break'' movie!
** This tends to be overblown. It's only ever said to mock Max by Dani first after he lit the candle (and the emphasis is on his idiocy for lighting it) and then to the guy dressed as the cop - and Dani was just saying the requirements for lighting the candle (virgin lights it on a full moon on Halloween night) and that Max fills that requirement. The guy himself was just being a dick, {{Troll}}ing the kids. I don't believe it's mentioned again until the end as a final BrickJoke ("I had to wait three hundred years for a virgin to light a candle"). There's not really any point in the film where Max's lack of sex life is mocked, apart from the {{Jerkass}} who trolled the kids in other ways too.

** And the 90s were a different time. The AIDS epidemic had led to a renewed focus on sex education out of necessity. See the film ''{{Film/Kids}}'', in which a twelve-year-old loses her virginity in the opening scene, and ''Film/PoisonIvy'', where two teenage girls literally have to buy a condom for their homework. The reasoning behind this was because AIDS was a death sentence back then, and it spread through unprotected sex, so children as young as eleven and twelve had to be educated about condom use - because there was a very real possibility that they could end up with a fatal STD if they weren't careful. So this was all born out of a huge MoralPanic that meant 90s kids and teens knew a lot more about sex or were familiar with the concept of it, because they had to out of necessity. Especially girls, because they tended to be affected by AIDS worse than boys. To a 90s audience, it would be seen as a harmless joke, because fifteen-year-olds having sex was part of the zeitgeist - and it was really not until TheNewTens that the world really started examining its attitude to how teens could be sexualized in the media.

** The magic of the candle brings them back for that Halloween night and for then they are invincible - which is why they don't die in the fire.
* Billy is a frustrating character. How is he so well-preserved? It would be highly unusual for a corpse to be that intact a few months after death, let alone a few centuries. And how can he reattach his limbs so easily? If Winnie's spell gave him his healing and preservation, why didn't she just restore him to a fully living state? He'd be a lot more competent that way.

** Or the witches mummified or otherwise preserved him somehow when they tortured him and killed him. AWizardDidIt is actually a fairly plausible explanation for this movie.
** As to why Winnie didn't bring him all the way back: SelfishEvil. Or to put it in more detail, from what she did to Billy because he cheated on her, and how she treats him throughout the movie, it's pretty clear she never really loved him ([[EvilCannotComprehendGood if she even can love anyone]]), that he was just a pawn to her, and she only killed him because of his disloyalty. She wasn't interested in fully bringing him back because that would require she actually care about him. And as for him being more useful if fully restored, this wouldn't be the first time she carried the VillainBall.
* How about the point at which Winifred drops the vial of potion - and Max runs forward to catch it? If he had just let it fall, it would have spilled or broken, and the movie would have been effectively over. I understand why the writers wrote it that way - it would be awfully anticlimactic for the witches to just spend the next ten minutes waiting around to die - but, from a character standpoint, it makes absolutely no sense.
** Either it was just Max's reflexes, or he realized that if anything bad happened to the potion the witches would be ''very'' displeased and would most likely do something really awful to him and his friends. Or maybe he intended to use the vial as a bargaining chip - which, of course, is exactly what he winds up doing.
** As I recall, Winifred had Dani. Had the potion smashed Dani would have been the one to face her wrath, so instead he forced Winifred to switch her attention from Dani to himself. Either he'd hold her off long enough for the sun to kill her or he'd die, [[XanatosGambit either way he's saved his sister.]]

* At the beginning after Thackery is turned into a cat he tries to get his dad's attention, obviously hoping he'll some how realize what happened, but to get his attention he just meows and scratches at his shoe. In the rest of the movie he can talk, why didn't he say something there?
** Given the location and time period, it was more likely that he'd think Binx was a familiar (a demon in the shape of an animal that serves witches) using Satanic powers to imitate his son's voice.
** That early after his transformation, Binx probably hadn't figured out how to talk as a cat yet. He had plenty of time to learn while waiting for the witches to revive.

** WordOfGod is that he couldn't talk until the candle was lit. Presumably if he could, he would have to stop Max lighting it.

** He'd tried that already with his father three hundred years ago. If he ever tried to talk to anyone during those three hundred years (if he even could talk during that time), they probably just assumed he was a demon or devil, or they were hearing things, or it was a ventriloquist trick. After enough times trying and failing, maybe he just gave up. It's also possible the spell made it so only kids could hear him.

** Fridge brilliance if you consider the fact that all their parents are still at the party under Winnie's spell. Most of the parents probably expected to be home hours ago so they may not have gotten anyone to watch the kids. At that age I would have probably stayed up and waited for my parents... especially if it was Halloween and I was hopped up on candy.
** If you watch the scene, not all the children are wearing costumes. Some are wearing dressing gowns and pyjamas. So it's safe to say that some were in bed and some were still up, wearing the costumes.
* If they had enough potion for a child and we saw with Thack's sister Emily that they can survive off one child why didn't they use what was left on one of the kids walking to their house, and besides the its Disney excuse please.
** The witches in general and Winifred in particular are kind of vindictive and after an entire day of fighting with these damn meddling kids it probably didn't occur to her that any old kid would do fine. I guess you could chalk it up to IdiotBall or VillainBall either will do for why they didn't take a random kid initially and get their revenge later. Or just leave town and go to one of millions of cities around the globe where people don't even believe in witches anymore.
** Sarah and Mary point that out to her, but she herself states that she wants Dani since the kid called her ugly.

* Winifred can summon lightning from her fingertips, she and her sisters can hypnotize people with their voices, transform people into animals, curse them with diseases and have the power of {{flight}}. So how did the Salem townfolk capture and execute them so fast? And why didn't they try it before? Even if they didn't think they were witches (opposed to the movie's implication that it was common knowledge), Winifred poisoned her lover Billy Butcherson and the whole town seemed to know about it. A lot of arguments could be made to answer questions like this, but the film doesn't seem particularly bothered to.
** The townsfolk could have been really ignorant of the sister's activities. The three of them didn't seem particularly well known. As for how they overpowered them, well, they outnumbered three women by at least thirty and had flaming torches with them. The sister's magical abilities (particularly, Winnie who shoots lightning out of her fingertips) may be extensive, but when cornered, potentially of no use.
*** Maybe the townsfolk actually didn't know, or if they did they had no proof of any of it; the sisters would likely not have been out and about using magic in front of people, they lived alone in an isolated cottage, and anyone who saw what they could do likely became their victims and therefore dead. What happened to Billy could just be rumor or hearsay. But once the townspeople came and caught them red-handed with Emily's body they had all the proof they needed to hang the sisters. It's pretty likely that with strength in numbers they overpowered the sisters in the cramped confines of the cottage, and also if they stripped them of the book, this may have lessened their powers.

** The entire town surrounded the house. The sisters may be powerful, but there's only three of them. A whole mob of people could probably overpower them (considering Max, Dani, Alison, Binx and Billy did just fine on their own).

*** The only one to break in on a Full Moon during Halloween and not be thwarted by Binx. He's been guarding the house on Halloween night ever since the witches died to stop people doing exactly that
*** Seeing as the moon is only full 3 days a month that's roughly 30 times that the full moon would coincide with Halloween over 300 years. If you only count it as full when its 'completely' full that number goes down to just 10. We also don't know how long the place has been a museum or when it was open. When it was open for business (and therefore under the watchful eye of an adult) it would have been a lot less likely for kids to mess with the candle.

*** He's probably communicated with people in the past. When first turned into a cat, he tries to get his father's attention, but can do nothing but meow. 300 years later he's capable of intelligent speech. Presumably he tried to talk to people at some point and told his story. But he's also GenreSavvy enough to know that letting the world know the witches are real would be TemptingFate, so he keeps quiet.
*** If you pay attention to the teacher's story, she just says that no one ever knew what happened to Thackery. So it's possible the flashback we see is what really happened but ''not'' the story the teacher is telling. What is known is that Thackery went to the witches' house to rescue his sister, while his friend raised the mob. The mob finds Emily dead in the house, but no sign of her brother.

** During the opening, Winifred comments on another gloriously sickening morning. During their execution, it's night again, which sets that mood perfectly. Even though the townsfolk were right at their door right as the sun rose, it took them all day to get in somehow. Maybe Winifred and the others did put up an epic magical fight after all before the mob [mostly] sealed their fate. I doubt their sentencing took that long given the evidence / sister corpse.

* What is the witch's goal in trying to live forever anyway? They mention a few times that they spent the intervening centuries in hell and enjoyed themselves; Sarah actually seems pretty cheerful to go back when they're defeated.

** And if the children come from a particularly Christian area (this troper had separate upbringings in both Britain and Ireland in both Catholic and Protestant schools) they're bound to have been raised hearing about the Virgin Mary - so it's not as though the concept of virginity is something a child will be completely unfamiliar with.

** Dude, it's DISNEY. They made a career out of GettingCrapPastTheRadar.

*** As for Binx not destroying the candle, considering the rules of the time, it seems likely he was a virgin himself, which would limit his available methods of destroying the candle himself, so he probably decided it was easier to leave the candle in one place where he could keep an eye on it.

*** I got something completely different from Dani calling him a virgin all the time, it just seemed like something to antagonize her brother with, considering his consistant frustration with it. She probably doesn't even know what it means, just that it annoys her brother to be called that, so she calls him a virgin to get his goat. I mean, I call my little brother Spawn all the time, and even though it is totally true, him being a spawn of my mother, it still drives him crazy. Just siblings being siblings.

* How the hell did they survive the oven? . It's just a cop-out.

** She could of easily been given the talk by her parents and later on, while on her own put the pieces together and thanks to an older friend she learned if you know someone older than you who hasn’t lost their virginity by high school you can totally make fun of them all the time especially if they are your brother.
*** (Although when I was a kid I actually thought she really ‘’had’’ sex with some poor boy around her age, JUST so she could make fun of her brother for still being a virgin.)

** Have you ''seen'' other 90s Disney films? [[Disney/TheLittleMermaid Ariel]], [[{{Disney/Aladdin}} Jasmine]] and {{Disney/Pocahontas}} were incredibly sexualised. We have a trope called ParentService - which is about {{Fanservice}} in family films specifically for the parents who'd be taking their kids to see them.

** WMG: They could only keep tracks of bits of modern culture that happened within their home. Since it became a museum it hardly would have been packed with all sorts of movies, but overhearing the janitor's walkman and picking up some songs and bits of lingo wouldn't have been out of the question. It would also explain Winifred taunting Max with "It's just a bunch of hocus pocus!"

*** Unless he had sex with another 15 year-old person, as most normal people do. Who wrote this headscratcher? Doug Walker? When I saw the movie as a young teen I did get the joke, we all were assuming that virgin meant female, but it apply to him too, he is ashamed of that as, whether we like or not, most teen boys of that age want not to be virgins and many, especially someone good looking like him, are not. Teens do have sex before 18 even when currently become an issue among socially conservative people, but in the 90s it wasn’t such a scandal and many movies and TV series implied or openly established that teens were sexually active.
*** It doesn't change the fact that even for a dead joke ''its baffling''. Virginity here, is treated like something you're supposed to be ashamed of, and you need to get rid of it asap. Max is still developing, and thus, hasn't had the time required to identify his sexual orientation yet. Most functional 15-year-olds would generally be more concerned with their studies, chores, and recreational time with friends... than getting laid. And just to confound things further, the cast demands he becomes mature enough to have sex - yet still should go out treat or tricking for Halloween like a little child! Just... give the kid ''a break'' movie!

** Have you ''seen'' other 90's Disney films? [[Disney/TheLittleMermaid Ariel]] [[{{Disney/Aladdin}} Jasmine]] and {{Disney/Pocahontas}} were incredibly sexualised. We have a trope called ParentService - which is about {{Fanservice}} in family films specifically for the parents who'd be taking their kids to see them.