National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

Hocus Pocus was released by Walt Disney Pictures in July 1993, directed by Kenny Ortega and produced during a period when the studio was experimenting with live-action genre fare alongside its animated renaissance. Though it performed modestly at the box office, the film found its true audience through cable and home video, becoming a genuine Halloween perennial that has only grown in cultural stature over the decades.

This cell captures Winifred Sanderson in a dramatically lit interior moment, the figure rendered inverted in a way that suggests flight or a suspended fall. The three consecutive frames present the same action across shifting registers — deep blue-purple tones and a stark high-contrast silver rendering — offering a rare look at how a single cinematic instant can exist in multiple photographic states within the same strip of original 35mm film.