I saw THE CRAFT when it came out 30 years ago. I’m a little younger than the actors, so I was a little older than the characters, and thought I was above it, going to see it for a laugh. This is what they think teens think is cool, ha ha ha. But I was not as removed from that life as I imagined I was. I was practically the target audience, I just didn’t want to admit it.

Watching it now, of course, there’s an added layer of nostalgia: for when music sounded like that, even though that wasn’t the stuff I was listening to; for when I would definitely have had a crush on Nancy, even though she’s a psycho and Rochelle is way nicer and prettier; for when they made movies like this, which is code for when I was young and the horizon was widening instead of narrowing. The good old days. Obviously.

I know I’ve seen bits of it on cable over the years, but I think this is the first time I’ve seen it in full since the theater. It’s an interesting type of teen horror because it’s not a body count movie, and it doesn’t exactly have an antagonist. It’s timeless teenage girl material like the sisterhood of girls who don’t fit in at school, revenge against bullies and exploitative boys, etc., and then they add the supernatural into that. I guess you could say some of that about CARRIE, though, couldn’t you? So maybe it was nothing new. But in 1996 it felt a little different to not have a Freddy to worry about. We are the Freddys, mister.

It does have a protagonist, and she’s even in the final girl tradition, the square one who doesn’t want to shoplift and who we see noticing when things are getting dangerous. Sarah (Robin Tunney in her third movie, after ENCINO MAN and EMPIRE RECORDS) is new to L.A., mourning her mother, living with her nice dad (Cliff De Young, THE HUNGER, F/X, DR. GIGGLES), but how much can he really understand what she’s going through? In science class she tries to sit by Nancy (Fairuza Balk, RETURN TO OZ, GAS FOOD LODGING), Bonnie (Neve Campbell, THE DARK) and Rochelle (Rachel True, CB4, EMBRACE OF THE VAMPIRE), but Nancy just scowls at her. Balk is an all-timer when it comes to crazy eyes and rubber lips, and in those departments this is her masterpiece.

But Bonnie has seen Sarah somehow balance a pencil on its point, so she later approaches her. See, those three have gotten into witchcraft, but their circle needs a fourth person so they can each represent a direction and an element. Sarah is hesitant, but shows an aptitude, and it’s fun to do all the rituals: lighting candles, sitting in nature, saying “blessed be,” and you fucking know these are girls who are into rings and necklaces and dangly trinkets and shit. Things that rattle around. Oh, I really don’t like the putting blood in wine and drinking it thing, though. I have decided not to be a witch.

They’re surprised when they each do a hex and they seem to actually work. Rochelle’s racist bully Laura (Christine Taylor, SHOWDOWN, NIGHT OF THE DEMONS 2, THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE) starts to lose her hair, Bonnie’s severe burns miraculously peel off and she becomes so much more confident she starts doing “The Way You Make Me Feel” style street harassment of boys, and the funniest one is Sarah’s love spell on Chris (Skeet Ulrich in his debut not counting uncredited background work in WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S and TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES), the jock asshole who dissed and dismissed her for not going back to his house with him one night. He turns into a smitten puppy following her around, carrying her books, eventually getting annoying, showing up in a tree outside her window at night. Ulrich plays it just right for us to laugh at his sudden change but start to feel qualms because he seems to have a vague sense that something is wrong and be helpless to control it.

Meanwhile Nancy is getting pouty and tantrummy about hers not working yet, but it’s just taking longer. She’s the angriest of the girls because she lives in a trailer park with an abusive stepfather (John Kapelos, WEIRD SCIENCE, THE SHADOW) and a mom (Helen Shaver, THE LAND BEFORE TIME) who won’t get rid of him. But it’s a funny turn when Nancy’s magic causes Ray to die and leave them an inheritance. Mom gets a cool apartment with a jukebox that only plays Connie Francis songs. Nancy’s not the first quirky lady in her family, it turns out.

But she’s sort of the Bishop-in-JUICE of this crew, the loose cannon who gets out of control, and when Sarah wants to dial it back Nancy turns the other two against her. It’s funny to read the 1996 reviews now – they’re not all bad, and most have nice things to say about the cast, but Roger Ebert said “it tilts too far in the direction of horror and special effects,” Emanuel Levy said it “gradually succumbs to its tricky machinery of special effects,” and TV Guide said that “any subtlety soon gets lost in the thud and blunder of special effects,” but by today’s standard it seems kind of nice that there’s only a handful of big effects parts. The witch battle climax is refreshingly small scale, not some comic book apocalypse. I remembered the fingers turning into snakes from back when a CG shot could still be notable. I can’t remember if I thought it was cool or cheesy. Now I thought it was kind of cool.

The soundtrack features Heather Nova, Sponge, Letters to Cleo, Matthew Sweet, Julianna Hatfield, Tripping Daisy, Jewel, others. My wife says “this is the soundtrack that really kicked off the shitty covers” because some of them are covers of The Beatles, The Cars, Peter Gabriel, I’m not sure who else. Siouxsie and the Banshees and Portishead have songs in the movie that are not on the album.

I enjoyed this in the ‘20s about the same way as I did in the ‘90s, but I had a little problem with the ending. The main appeal of the story is definitely the friendship of the girls. I felt sorry for Nancy, who ends up locked in a mental hospital hallucinating snakes. That’s our friend! Poor Nancy. But it seems like maybe we’re not supposed to have that much sympathy for her, because Sarah kind of makes a joke out of her fate, and when the other two come to apologize to her she says “For trying to kill me?” and they laugh and say “Yeah” and my instinct was to enjoy that they could laugh about it together, but that’s not what’s happening. She’s telling them off. She’s saying tough luck, bitches and we’re supposed to enjoy that punishment.

That disappointed me, and I wondered if it was me becoming accustomed to the modern, nice sensibilities of horror movies made for an audience that feels betrayed if horror things happen to the horror characters they like. But I decided it’s not that. When Sarah refuses to make up with her friends because they used their witch powers against her, it’s director Andrew Fleming (BAD DREAMS, THREESOME) and co-writer Peter Filardi (FLATLINERS) making a reasonable, adult decision for her. The problem is that the rest of this movie is not told from a reasonable adult perspective, so this feels like some bullshit. It makes it seem like the boys were right all along, you do have to have a scary bitch alert, you do have to look out for weirdos, but luckily Sarah is not part of that anymore. Fuck that. I don’t agree with that. Overall the movie’s fun, though.

THE CRAFT was a surprise hit, making more than three times its budget in theaters, then I’d imagine being seen by way more people on video and cable. If you think about it it’s surprising that there were never DTV sequels to this, and in fact Bloody Disgusting reported in 2006 that one was in the works. When it finally did a get a sequel it was meant to be a theatrical release, but went straight to VOD on account of it was 2020. I’ll say more about that when I review it tomorrow.

It’s interesting to me that Breckin Meyer had already played a funny gamer/stoner in FREDDY’S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE and the lovable Travis Birkenstock in CLUELESS, but now is in a smaller part as just the asshole friend of the lead asshole, but I guess you take work where you can get it. In less than a decade he’d land the iconic role of Jon Arbuckle in GARFIELD. But I don’t have to tell you that.

Balk is the veteran among the young cast, but she’s such a standout that this feels like a breakout role for her. I did not guess at the time that Campbell was actually the one on the verge of superstardom. She had done little of note in movies but was on Party of Five, and would follow this with SCREAM, SCREAM 2, WILD THINGS and 54 all in a row.

I mentioned that THE CRAFT was released 30 years ago. It was May 3, 1996. So, almost summer. This right now is the time of the year when I start thinking “Oh shit, I better figure out which summer to do a retrospective on.” In recent years it has been hard to decide – I’ve covered too many of them. But this time I got lucky: as soon as I started looking at the summer of ’96 it was obvious that was what I had to do. There are a surprising number I haven’t reviewed, some old favorites worth revisiting, I’d been wanting to watch THE CRAFT again so I could watch the sequel, it all worked out.

Well, except one thing. To me at the time this was the summer of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, which was in fact a huge movie. But according to the numbers, and also to the zeitgeist, the movie of the season, and of the year, was undeniably INDEPENDENCE DAY. When I told somebody I was watching movies from ’96 the first question was “was that the summer of INDEPENDENCE DAY?” And I must confess that it was.

But we’ve been over this before. I hated that fucking movie, I assumed everyone else would also hate it, I was very opinionated and maybe even disillusioned when it turned out everybody loved it. I can get a laugh out of it now but I don’t want to sit down and watch it again, and you definitely don’t want to read me complaining about it again. So in this ’96 retrospective there will be no INDEPENDENCE DAY. I also don’t need to relitigate #4 box office hit THE ROCK. I was thinking of even skipping #2 box office TWISTER, but I changed my mind. I’ll do that for you. I’ll give you that one.

But I’ll be focusing my energy on the ’96 pictures I’m more interested in, sometimes that are a little out of the mainstream, or that were just not as popular with normal people, or that I just didn’t bother with at the time and maybe it’s time I tried. That’s why I’m calling this series 1996: SLAM EVIL SUMMER!. If THE PHANTOM is the movie of the summer to me then that’s what I’m gonna name the series after. And no one can stop me.

I’m excited for some time travel. In ’96 I was a young man and movies were one of my main preoccupations and social activities. During the summer they were my actual occupation, because I was taking tickets and cleaning theaters at a nine-screen multiplex. I can’t remember when I moved up to projectionist, but I know I cleaned some of these, because I remember the end credits music.

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at THE CRAFT: LEGACY, but then 1996 – we invoke thee. So mote it be.