Corrected entry: At the beginning of the movie, Max's teacher tells the class the story of Binx and the Sanderson sisters (shown as a flashback). Later, Allison talks to Binx and says, "so the legends are true." If no one ever knew what happened to Binx, how did the story get passed down in the first place?
Corrected entry: When the witches leave the museum for the first time and think that the road is a river and push Sarah Jessica Parker in, as she twirls and dances you can spot that she's wearing a pair of denim shorts underneath the witch garb.
Correction: They are not shorts they are a type of pantaloon that woman often wore in the 1600s, but they may look like shorts, but they aren't.
Corrected entry: Mary is flying on a hoover vacuum. The hoover is in mid-air and making the sounds that hoovers make when they are plugged in. How could this happen if she is flying and not plugged into a power source?
Correction: She's a witch, she most likely can turn it off with her magic.
Corrected entry: When the witches catch Thackery Binx, Mary suggests that they 'barbecue and fillet him.' Barbecuing did not become popular in America until the nineteenth century.
Correction: The first known use of this word is in a work by Aphra Behn of 1690: "Let's barbicu this fat rogue", showing that it was well enough known even then to be used figuratively. The film was made in 1993, so was set in 1693 - 3 years after Aphra Behn's mention of it.
Corrected entry: In the end when they are all in the cemetery, Binx jumps on Winnifred and she drops the potion. When she drops it, Max lunges to catch it. Why didn't he just let it drop and smash? He would have saved his sister's life and he wouldn't have had to risk his life by drinking the potion himself.
Correction: Actually she does threaten to kill Dani if Max smashes the vial containing the potion.
Corrected entry: Towards the beginning of the movie, when the three kids go out to explore the old witches' house, and they bring the witches back to life; Max sets off the fire alarms to scare the witches. The whole place gets soaked, even the witches. In the next scene when the witches go outside, they are completely dry. The rest of the night the inside of the house is completely dry too. There is no possible way that everything could have dried off that fast.
Correction: The Witches could possibly say a spell to make everything dry.
Corrected entry: When the witches follow Mary into the alley after singing I Put A Spell On You, Mary Sanderson said she smelled Scrod, a bottom feeder that would be good with margarine. 300 years prior to that, butter would be the topping of choice as margarine hadn't been invented until the 1800s, when the sisters were dead.
Correction: She doesn't say margarine. She says marjoram, which is a herb.
The official subtitles on a retail copy of the movie says "margarine."
I agree she did say margarine; though it should be pointed out a subtitle should never be used as confirmation to what a line is saying. Just about every movie has incorrect subtitles at some point as the script is not used to create the subtitles. It is determined by watching and going off the audio ridiculous as it is.
The mistake is correct. She does say margarine, not marjoram. She even follows this up with "Or oil. Olive oil works", so she's talking about cooking with some sort of fat, not an herb.
Correction: Mary watched 10-30 minutes of television commercials at "The Master's" house earlier in the evening, so she could have learned about it from TV.
I half agree. Even witches can learn anything from TV. But some how they would have put something in the script to say that.
Corrected entry: Binx is shown pouring hot liquid from a cauldron that is over a flame, the iron would be too hot for him to touch without getting burned.
Correction: I think it's safe to say he isn't concerned about physical pain at this point.
Corrected entry: Near the beginning of the movie after Binx was transformed into the cat, he tries to get his father's attention and, toward the middle of the movie when the kids show up at the party at Town Hall, Dani tries to prove that the witches are back by telling her mom that the cat can talk. If throughout the entire movie Binx is talking then why didn't he say something to his father or Dani's mother to prove to them who he was?
Correction: Only the witches (since they put the spell on him) and Max, Dani, and Allison, (since Max lit the candle and they're his buddies) can hear Binx. When he goes to his father you only hear a meow - he was trying to talk.
I think this might be more related to them being kids. I think the whole premise of the film is wrapped around the idea of kids being the catalyst to their magic.
I've corrected this before and I said its because the witches returned that he was able to speak again.
Corrected entry: In the beginning when the boy runs after his sister to save her from the witch, it is morning and it is light outside. After he looks in the window of the Sanderson house, it is dark outside.
Correction: No it's not. If you look behind him you can really bright blue sky of an early morning.
Corrected entry: When the children go to the old Sanderson house, Allison shows Dani Winifreds spell book. It is in a glass box. After the black flame candle has been lit, Winifred comes and pokes it and talks to it. Later on, Max has to smash open the box to get it out. The glass disappears and reappears.
Correction: This was not a mistake. Winifred taps the glass as she speaks to the book. The glass is there the entire time.
Corrected entry: When Billy used the knife to open up his mouth from the stitches, he has no teeth, or any he does have are black. However, in the scene where Max takes the potion, the first shot of Billy after that shows him with clear white teeth. Then they disappear, until after Winifred blows up, and Billy says "Yea" it shows him with white teeth again.
Correction: His mouth is black when he first opens it and coughs up dust because it's wide open and he's not showing his teeth. As soon as he speaks you see his teeth and they don't go away except when his mouth is wide open and his lips obscure them.
Corrected entry: The legend is that the Sandersen sisters will be brought back from the grave if a virgin lights the black flamed candle. In fact, that's what happens 300 years after they are burned at Salem. If the citizens of Salem believed in the witches' curse, then why did they leave the candle intact? Why didn't they have a non-virgin destroy it immediately?
Correction: The witches are magic. They probably made it so only a virgin could light or touch the candle.
But the candle and wick already seemed to be previously lit.
It was probably lit before the witches were burned.
Even if it has been previously lit; it's a pretty moot point unless we know it was another virgin on Halloween night who lit it as this was a very specific thing that had to happen for them to come back from the grave. So if it was somebody who tried lighting it on Christmas, wouldn't have worked for the prophecy. As to why no-one tried to destroy it; I'm sure they did but as we can see from the book the witches know magical protections spells so it's a safe bet there's one on the candle too where the flame might simply go out if someone not prophesied to light it try.
Corrected entry: When Winifred summons Billy Butcherson out of his grave, he comes out all in one piece, with all his skin still on. If according to the story, he died over three hundred years ago, he would be completely decomposed. Even his clothes and bones would be gone.
Correction: Being from Massachusetts and knowing the old cemeteries, I can say most have oak trees throughout. Oak trees give off tannic acid which preserves the dead as if they were mummified. Many Scandinavian corpses have been unearthed and looking as if they were only buried a few years ago when they are literally hundreds if not thousands of years old. Clothing included. The Peat Bogs of Britain preserve in the same fashion.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Max lights the black flame candle and the Sanderson sisters return from the dead, Dani tells the sisters she lit the candle. However, later in the graveyard Sarah Sanderson calls Max the virgin who lit the candle. She could not have known it was Max and not Dani who lit the candle.
Corrected entry: The lacing on the bodices is wrong, three hundred years ago the 'X' style lacing we use was almost non-exsistent, they would have used spiral lacing or ladder-style lacing.
Correction: Just because something is ALMOST non-existent, doesn't mean it is totally non-existent.
Corrected entry: When the sisters are about to be hanged, the lynch mob can see that Winifred is casting a spell to allow them to come back to life, yet the mob just politely allows her to finish the spell before finally hanging them. Bear in mind that this scene takes place at a time when people genuinely thought witchcraft was real, so the townspeople had no reason to let her recite a spell.
Correction: Two things about this. 1. They had just been singing, which could in itself have been a spell to disorientate the people enough to prevent them from trying to stop their next spell. 2. Mr. Binx had just told everyone not to listen to them, and most of them covered their ears. Also, it's likely that if anybody was in a position to stop them, they could very well have just been too afraid to try.
Corrected entry: When Sara lures Emily to the Sanderson house with her song, Emily is laughing and running even as she enters the house. Later in the movie when Sara lures the town's children to the Sanderson house with her song, they were all in a hypnotic sleepwalking state.
Correction: The difference is that Sarah was interacting and playing directly with Emily whereas she only cast the spell over the other kids from high above.
Corrected entry: Zach can't die until the end of the movie when the witches are killed. He says since they are dead his soul was set free. That should have been the case when they were hanged. Zach should have been set free then instead.
Correction: The witches were not truly dead when they were hanged, as Winifred had cast a spell to keep them "in limbo" until a virgin lit the candle. When they die at the end of the movie, no magic powers are used to offer them a chance at new life, thus making them officially deceased.
Corrected entry: When Max first hands Allison the note with his name and number on it, his name and number are spaced apart. When Allison later returns the note to Max, you can see that it is indeed a different note.
Correction: Not a mistake, but a deliberate plot point. Allison purposefully gives Max a different note to mislead him into thinking she was giving him her own number.
Correction: When the teacher says that no one knows what happened to Binx she means no one knows what his final fate was. Obviously this is because he hasn't yet met his end. At any rate, Allison could merely be referring to the fact that the Sanderson sisters existed or else there wouldn't be a talking cat in their old hometown. And *those* legends do not require knowledge of Thackary Binx for them to be passed from generation to generation.
Phixius ★