Hocus Pocus – Nostalgia Critic

A Halloween classic or a repulsive mess? The holiday’s not over until Nostalgia Critic takes on some witches, and Hocus Pocus.

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About Doug Walker

Creator of 5 Second Movies, Nostalgia Critic, Bum Reviews and more.

367 comments

  1. Hoooo boy, Doug. You stepped into forbidden territory because I actually like this movie! XD

    • ThatManWithTheHeadband12

      It’s not an all-out bashing

      • Yeah, you’re right!

        Anyways, that was a good review, errr sketch/skit/short film/Demo Reel episode. I know Doug’s been doing more clipless reviews but I’m a bit baffled why he went with a clipless review for a 20+ year old movie. Was Disney being assholes about copyrights?

        I honestly had to look twice before I realized it was Doug as Bette Midler, lol XD

        Also loved all the cameos and my favorites were Paul from Lucky Six and Horror Guru (did he try to imitate the angry German kid smashing his keyboard?). Nice to see some newcomers make their first NC appearances.

        As for the actually movie, I love this movie mostly because I’m an Omri Katz fanboy from a short lived show called Eerie Indiana. I always felt this movie was a good spiritual successor to Eerie Indiana. And yes, Doug, what makes this movie so enjoyable is that EVERYONE involved is having a great time, especially the witches. Thanks for pointing that out.

        So if you’re gonna do clipless reviews on older movies, will they be based on good films?

        Good work to everyone involved! πŸ™‚

        • MidnightScreeningsman2014

          Who else cameod in this episode rock man besides paul and horror guru?

          • Some Jerk with a Camera
            Battle Geek Plus
            Calluna
            The Dom
            Bargain Boy
            Bennett the Sage
            Fard Muhammad
            Count Jackula

            are the ones aside from Horror Guru and Paul of Lucky 6

          • And Linkara makes a brief appearance at the end.

          • Also

            Heisanevilgenius
            Rocked Reviews

            Apologies for missing them!

          • MidnightScreeningsman2014

            Thanks rockmanX3 my fellow battle geek plus fan(and buddy too). It’s not your fault that you missed them its ok.:)

            Anyways loved the review Doug I don’t know why I’m so picky and I want to watch it on screenwave cause YouTube will be my new format for nc vids. Beth looked hot in this though you really should use here in yellow wigs(and longer wigs especially) more. Love the twist ending and this is my favorite clip less review beating out even the mad Max review(seriously this video was that awesome). Enjoyed your review and can’t wait till come MORE COMMERCIALS(but I hope it’s some commercials I’m familiar with this time that would be appreciated;)

        • I doubt Disney would be assholes with copyrights, seeing how Disney basically owns this show now, and have done for a while πŸ˜›

        • Another Eerie Indiana Fan! WOW I thought everyone had forgotten that show… I too had a massive crush on Omri Katz…. that’s how I heard about Hocus Pocus…

      • No, just bashing the fans.

  2. The Nostalgia Chick already talked about this and Doug, u did too in Disneycember. So let’s see what you think.

  3. I like this movie. The witches are so funny most of the time but also fairly mean and even intimidating when they need to be. Great video Doug.

  4. Awesome review! My girlfriend officially hates you, this is her favorite halloween movie.

  5. She said stop ruining her childhood.

    • Really? This ruined her childhood? Because he didn’t even really review the film. He just mocked it while maybe occasionally bringing up his dislike toward it.

    • I don’t think she even had a childhood worth remembering if this was the most important part of it holding it together. If she can’t handle a critique of it, then she shouldn’t even be here. No one is entitled to their opinion unless it’s an informed opinion. If you really want to enable your brat of a girlfriend like this by posting for her instead of letting her defend this herself, then she’s not doing herself any favors and neither are you, pinprick dick.

  6. ThatManWithTheHeadband12

    Ummmm in 1993 Melissa Joan Hart was still Clarissa. While Sabrina did already exist in Archie Comics, she wasn’t popularized until MJH played her in ’96

  7. “Pokemon will become popular again”

    >Implying Pokemon ever died in first place.

  8. I think we all saw this one coming lol xD

  9. I never got to watch this as a kid, so I never really got it as an adult. Shit, this is one that a lot of goth genuinely like for whatever reason, so I’ve now seen it a lot, but, like I said, not with any nostalgia goggles.
    That said, I feel like this review did a good job of catering to Hocus-Pocus cynics like me while pointing out why people who remember it like it.

    • I saw it as a teen it in one of those morning movies on local TV (we don’t celebrate Halloween here so it’s just telecasted as “Disney Holiday Specials”) and I only find it to be nothing special but just your generic Hallowee-ny film about witches with 90’s special effects. The fact that the sitcom Bette was also airing that time (and I find myself hatting that show) just made me not even want to at least dig a bit into this movie, It’s not until I had Internet at home where I found out that there’s an extreme overprotective “cult-following” on it

  10. People who hated the Pixels or Jurassic World reviews, don’t watch this. There are no actual clips from the movie.

    And for something over 20 years old, that’s pretty unacceptable.

    • The Jurassic World review sucked, but the Fury Road review was awesome. This review… Yeah, it sucks.

      • Don’t blame Doug for the quality of some of these newer videos. He has legal limitations now because of artists trying to protect their work from piracy. If anything, blame the industry.

        • No. He doesn’t. He picked Screenwave for this very reason. The whole point of using Screenwave is to avoid the copyright issue. Ever noticed how no reviewer on Screenwave has changed their content? Notice how Doug uploaded all his old reviews?

          Furthermore, you can show clips on YouTube, too. You have to be more creative. There are multiple Channel Awesome people who use YouTube. And even big famous channels that do clip reviews.

          This has nothing to do with why Doug is doing this.

        • Convenient excuse but sure.

      • Hewylewis, what’s the deal with writing three negative comments after you made your point on the first. You conceited dork, you should at least attempt to be remotely funny or clever in your insults. And hey, aren’t you only allowed to watch “The News”. Bamm

    • Do you have ANY clue how video content is now? Disney Owns what’s left of Blip.tv and by extension pretty much owns the Nostalgia Critic in a way. If they used more footage from the source material the copyright robots would have a field day! At best they would have a shit ton of paperwork to fill out which would have delayed the episode before they could even start planning and shooting it.

      Or I’ll put it another way:

      Copyright robots claim video

      Doug and everyone gets ZERO ad revenue for the video. Much as I’m sure they’d love to just make all these for free they need to make money =P

      • That may be the case, but, it doesn’t mean I have to watch it. Suppose a chef ran out of good ingredients (The format of reviews the fans have come to know and love), and instead was cooking only with pig manure as ingredients (This garbage). Would you continue to eat there? I think not.

        The copyright flag bullshit is an issue, but, Doug has had videos/channel taken down before, and it always got resolved in the end. Fair use covers reviews, and that’s how I see it. YES, there may be some bumps here and there, but, he TRIED the 100% skit aspect with his little movie parody series I forget the name of, and we all know how well that went over.

        He can totally do videos this way, but, the fanbase will bottom out. YES there are loyal fans. Some of them may even like the skits better than the reviews themselves, but, I’m fairly sure they are in the minority. One of the most common comments is to say to cut out the sidetrack stuff and stick to the actual review. If this is the future of NC reviews, maybe he should have stayed retired.

        I love Doug, and appreciate all the work and effort he puts into this show. I am not bashing him or his work, but, that said, I am NOT going to pretend that this new direction is something I like or will continue to watch, just because of past enthusiasm. Not giving up just yet, but, if this format becomes the general rule, I’m passably certain fanbase will drop sharply.

        • I agree. I think my problem with the review is that it’s not just a clipless review, it’s a 26-minute long sketch with review bits woven in. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, in fact Doug does do a good job combining the two, but it’s just not something I like to watch. That’s why I didn’t like the Mad Max: Fury Road review all that much. It had great production values, and you could tell that Doug put a lot of hard work into it, but the format it was in just wasn’t something I liked.

          Now I’m not saying that I don’t like any of the plot-centric shows here. I was one of the people who enjoyed Demo Reel, and I am an avid fan of Atop The Fourth Wall BECAUSE of the plots. But when I watch those, I expect them to have a lot of plot in them. I never click on a new NC review expecting this much plot. I watch because I like to see the Critic review movies and sometimes be evil. So it’s a bit of a shock when I click on his newest video to see Doug in lipstick and a wig mugging for the camera for 20 minutes.

          tl;dr I don’t like this new 100% sketch-review format. I’m not saying it’s bad, or that Doug’s bad, I’m just saying I don’t like it. It’s just too much unexpected plot for me to swallow at once. Who knows, maybe there’s a compromise. Maybe Doug could slowly add more plot to the show over time so it’s not as much as a shock, or maybe he could mark the episodes that are in this format to make it easier on the fans who aren’t expecting all the plot. Either way, don’t expect me to be watching episodes with this format regularly. And if this becomes the norm, I’ll be leaving faster than you can say “I remember it so you don’t have to.”

    • “Man, this is a really long intro” is what I thought, shortly before realizing it’s the whole video.

      I really don’t like these.

      • My thoughts exactly. I’ve never seen this movie so I had no idea what was going on. After around 6 minutes I stopped watching because I was confused and not laughing. With the previous reviews that had clips, I didn’t need to have seen the movie to enjoy the review or understand the jokes but it seems like that isn’t the case anymore.

  11. I’m so proud of him to do this. I watched it as a kid, but as a teen I didn’t think it was a good movie… but I still watched it.

  12. So where is the review actually ? Because only thing I saw was bad acting in extremely low budget costumes and CGI.

  13. OMG that ending was perfect! I literally threw my hands up in the air and screamed “YAAS!” when I saw the t-shirt!

  14. OH SH**!!!! THE DONUT SHIRT IS OUT!!!!!!! GET ME A TABLE TO FLIP!!!!!

  15. All I can say for this ending, Tiro Finale Mother Fucker!

  16. Wonderful work, as usual. Can’t wait for the next one!

  17. The fake cat did look more realistic than the one they used in the Dr Who story, Survival.

  18. that was so entertaining and a wonderful way to end nostalgiaween. Everyone did a fantastic job on this and your Bette Midler was awesome

  19. Doug in drag Bette Middler is even more terrifying than the real thing… and I loved it

  20. You know, he didn’t actually review the movie. He just parodied it…

    • Yeah, what a gyp. Wasn’t really that funny, it was basically just him saying “I hate this movie and the people only watch it to make fun of it.” Just like his Jurassic World review!

    • Yeah, he already tried to go 100% skit and live action. It was called Demo Reel. And it was more or less universally hated, and the Nostalgia Critic was unretired pretty soon after they realized it was a flop. If this is the new direction, maybe it would have been better to stay in retirement.

    • Wait, what? You’re telling me I sat through a 26 minute video and never noticed that no clips from the movie were actually played?!?! Unbelievable! I, for one, am shocked.

  21. wait i have never heard about this movie
    i say still great and funny review, but i wish he showed some clip from the movie too

  22. disembodiedvoiceofreason

    I watched this movie on a class field trip as a kid and honestly never got what people liked about it.

  23. 12 minutes in….

    Ah, now eventually you do plan to have a review in your, in your review video, right?

  24. I said it before and I’ll say it again: if you keep doing these clipless reviews too much, they’re going to get old. I can understand doing this for recent theatrical releases, but a film that’s been out for years thus you can actually get footage for it? Seriously, these are fine once in a while, but again, just like the copious number of crossovers you did before your retirement, it’s getting old already because you keep milking it. Throughout the whole thing, I was seriously wondering when the actual review was going to start. Don’t you know the more you do something different, the less special it becomes?

  25. I get why you did this for Fury Road by this is a nighties movie who was stopping you from using clips this time

    • Well, it’s owned by Disney and they’re pretty controlling of their content.

      • Then why the heck did he try to do a review of it??? We already got his real thoughts in Disneycember, if he’s going to go beyond that he should use the effing movie!?!?

        I get wanting to do this and his sketches are good in moderation, but they grow old to me after a while when he does it for the ENTIRE VIDEO instead of letting the film speak for itself.

  26. yaasss more commercials!!! please do the house hippo one! it’s a classic here in Canada!

  27. Kill John Lennon. Kill John Lennon. Dad! Where does John Lennon live?
    John Lennon is dead son!
    Oh.

  28. Why do he never talk about how the witches kill little girl in a DISNEY movie Is that not a big deal.

  29. For those wondering why it is a clipless review, it’s becaue they want to show off their actor skillz.

  30. OH. MY. GOOOOOOD, KIKI JUST COMPLETELY KILLED ME. XDDD Such a great payoff, Doug. She most certainly wipes the floor with the Sanderson Sisters any day of the week.

    I’m not one of those people who watch the film every year or anything (mostly because I feel like the main kids are really bland and sometimes irritating and the witches really should have been more of a legitimate threat instead of wasting so much of their time), but I absolutely agree that there are good things in it. Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Nejimy are so very entertaining, I really like the character of Thackery Binx even if yeah, he could’ve talked sooner, and although Billy the Zombie’s role in the story was lacking, I love what Doug Jones brought to the role. I think you really did a good job pointing out what was wrong with the movie without going through the whole thing all over again, considering that you did talk about it previously in Disneycember and just about everyone in the U.S. already knows the story. Wonderful work as always, Doug! I look forward to the new Commercials review and, of course, the Christmas season! (β™«It’s the most wonderful tiiiiiime of the year~~β™«)

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