Teen Witch (1989)
Ah, witchcraft. Worth getting pressed to death over, especially when the alternative is not getting to boink the hunk of your dreams while wearing your colorful leggings/tutu combo. (I’d like to think that Giles Corey, upon seeing our titular Teen Witch Louise [Robyn Lively] living deliciously, would have approvingly groaned, “More… tulle!”) Luckily for the newly elected most popular girl in school, the only naysaying villager decrying her newfound supernatural abilities in 1980s Anytown, USA is her oddly pale younger brother (Joshua John Miller)—and a quick dog transformation spell takes care of him.
Packed to the Day-Glo gills with oft-memed musical numbers, gentle teen sex comedy and never-memed-enough Zelda Rubinstein and Marcia Wallace master classes in screen acting, this movie spoke to my childhood suburban gay soul in the way I suspect certain religious texts must have inspired a similar fervor in medieval mystics. (“How could you?!” my mother wailed when she caught my younger self sneaking a viewing of this film she had forbidden me to watch.)
And so, like a mark in the devil’s book supposedly signed by countless other witches, this film became even more heightened and special to me, despite—or maybe because of—the shame I felt for still wanting to see it so badly and loving it even more. I wanted something different than what I was told was all I needed—I wanted magic powers! I wanted secret occult knowledge! I wanted to wear a Madonna impersonator’s jean jacket!
Today, I see that it’s campy and silly but I see something else in it, too, captured in the incredible opening credits. Over a driving, shoulda-been-a-freestyle-classic, Louise climbs higher and higher on the roof of a building, all slow-motion high heel close-ups and the daring—and perfectly crimped hair—that only occurs in a dream, in search of something else entirely than what she was told she should want. Fittingly, the song is called “Never Gonna Be the Same Again.”
Me neither. 5 out of 5 sacs of blood.
—Jonathan Riggs