Hocus Pocus | 1993
Hollywood and witches – well, it has to be Salem, Massachusetts, and while much of the film really was shot in the area, there's also some California in the mix.
The splurgy fun is kept afloat by energetic performances and naturally enough, it's set in Salem, Massachusetts (but let's not dwell on the real horrors that happened in the city and stick with Hollywood's take). It was partly filmed in Salem and its surrounds – as well as Los Angeles, of course.
Salem, a historic coastal city about 16 miles northeast of Boston, was one of the most significant seaports in early US history but it's now more famous – or infamous – for the witch trials of 1692. They still strongly inform the city's identity (it can get packed in October as Halloween looms) though there are calls to downplay this image in favour of a broader historical and cultural image.
The city is only 32 minutes by train from Boston’s North Station via the MBTA Commuter Rail.
For the '1693' prologue setting up the hanging of the three witches and their transformation of Thackery (Sean Murray) into an immortal black cat, two separate locations are used – the first of which can be found in Plymouth, which is some 40 miles to the south of Boston.
The aerial flyover, which nowadays would simply be an FX shot, is Plimoth Patuxet (formerly Plimoth Plantation), 137 Warren Avenue, Plymouth. It's a complex of living history museums on the shore of Eel River founded in 1947, replicating the original 17th century settlement of the Plymouth Colony established by English colonists.
If you’re wondering, the museum takes its name from Governor William Bradford’s historical spelling of the name.
On to Salem itself, where scenes set in the village were filmed in Pioneer Village, 98 West Avenue. A little earlier than Plimoth, this museum was built in 1930 to mark the 300th anniversary of Massachusetts and has become one of the main attractions of Salem’s Forest River Park.
One of the thatched cottages was used as the home of Thackery and Emily, and is now known as the Binx House (Thackery's name as a cat).
Needless to point out, the crazy home of the three witchy Sanderson sisters (Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy) was built back at the Disney Burbank Studios in California.
Fast forward three hundred years, and the legend of the witches is being passed on to the pupils of 'John Bailey High School', to the obvious disinterest of cynical Max (Omri Katz) whose family has just moved here from California.
In fact, he's really still in California. The high school interior was filmed in East Whittier Middle School, 14421 Whittier Boulevard, Whittier. If the name sounds familiar, that's because Whittier is home to another school made famous on screen – in Back To The Future.
The film splits many locations between Massachusetts and Los Angeles and once the kids get outside, the exterior is back in Salem. It was Phillips Elementary School, 86 Essex Street, which had already closed down, going on to become a health / wellness centre, but that too seems now to have closed.
The park through which Max walks with Alison (Vinessa Shaw) after school, is Salem Common, which really does stand directly in front of the school location.
There's a bit of cheating for Max's journey home as he cycles through the streets of Marblehead, the town on a peninsula just to the east of Salem. He cycles along Washington Street to Old Burial Hill Cemetery on Orne Street at Pond Street, which is where he crosses paths with locals Jay and Ice, who steal the newcomer's trainers.
Although this is the cemetery featured throughout the film, all the nighttime sequences were filmed on a recreation of the historic burial ground back at the Burbank Studio.
For Max's house, where he's pestered by his kid sister Dani (Thora Birch) to go trick-or-treating with her, we're in Salem again. This is 4 Ocean Avenue at Shore Avenue just north of Pioneer Village. It seems the current residents are not happy with the attention so, as always, take a peek if you want but be discreet.
Trick-or-treating takes them to a rather grand house where there's a posh costume party going on and which belongs to – surprise! – Alison, Max's crush from school. This is Salem's historic Ropes Mansion, 318 Essex Street, but only on the outside.
Once again the interior is back in California, where the party itself was filmed inside the Crank House, 2186 East Crary Street in Altadena, east of Los Angeles. This went on to be used as the ‘New Orleans’ home of the Strong family in Steven Spielberg's 2002 Catch Me If You Can.
Naturally, the kids just have to traipse off and sneak into the old Sanderson house, where resides the Black Flame Candle which has the power to bring back the three witches if lit by a virgin on Halloween. It's seems that Salem has had a bit of a shortage of virgins for the last 300 years so the privilege falls to Max (erm, so the first virgin to light the candle hails from Los Angeles?).
Yes, the witches are back – but only until dawn unless they can abduct more children and extend their lives indefinitely.
Catching a strange invention called a 'bus', the sisters find themselves dropped off at a house which, this being Halloween remember, is seemingly owned by their master Satan himself. Well, a guy in a Devil costume.
Satan and Mrs Satan are cameos by directors Garry Marshall and Penny Marshall and that house is back in Whittier, California. It's the 19th century house at 6536 Friends Avenue opposite Central Park at Bailey Street.
The less-formal costume party attended by Max and Dani's parents appears to be held in Salem's Old Town Hall, 32 Derby Square (now an events space) but again, the outside ain't the inside.
The party itself where Winifred (Bette Midler) performs I Put a Spell on You, while putting a dancing spell on the guests, is the Ballroom of what was the old Park Plaza Hotel, 607 South Park View Street, overlooking MacArthur Park, Westlake Los Angeles.
The hotel was once one of the most popular filming locations in Los Angeles, you can see the Ballroom again in the Coen brothers' Barton Fink, Richard Attenborough's biopic Chaplin, Martin Scorsese's New York, New York, Steven Spielberg's Hook, Mystery Men, Primal Fear, Stargate, What's Love Got to Do With It? and Not Another Teen Movie among many others, as well as in countless TV series and music videos.
The Park Plaza closed as a hotel in 1998 but lives on as events space The MacArthur.
I was lucky enough to have stayed there a couple of times in the Nineties before it closed, and had the chance to photograph its interior, hence the rather old photo (though I don't believe it's changed much).
