The Craft
My group of high school friends and I took a row at a late-night showing of The Craft, which graced the screen of Spring Valley Marketplace’s United Artists Theater, one of the many haunts from my high school years. I remember it being fun, but a typical teen flick, with some horror twists. It evaporated once I hopped into my rusty 1982 Toyota Corolla.
Many years later, I saw it on Netflix, and I remembered there being no romantic subplot. In fact, the one romantic interest was a villain who ended up being killed. So I had to rewatch it, and of course, it makes the pro-single list.
The plot: new girl Sarah arrives at a posh Catholic high school and befriends a trio of girls who dressed in goth gear and are rumored to be witches among their stuck-up classmates, who refer to them as “The Bitches of Eastwick.” As it turns out, Sarah has some supernatural powers, which allows her to be their fourth (apparently, you need one for all four points of the compass).
She uses these powers on the most dominant male character in the film, Chris. There’s hint of a romantic attraction at the beginning, but Chris quashes that one by telling everyone in the school he slept with Sarah after she rejects his advances. To get even, she casts a spell on him that makes him smitten with her. He follows her everywhere, carries her books, stands under her bedroom window a la John Cusack in Say Anything, and then attempts to have his way with her. In retaliation, lead witch Nancy pretends to be Sarah, lures him into her bedroom, and causes him to fall through a window to his death.
At this point, the film becomes a routine action-thriller with Sarah outmaneuvering the other witches when they turn on her. I echo Roger Ebert’s argument that the film could have been better as a satire of LA teenagers, as I was bored during the last thirty minutes. But, I do dig the pro-single message, and those special effects were nifty.
Many years later, I saw it on Netflix, and I remembered there being no romantic subplot. In fact, the one romantic interest was a villain who ended up being killed. So I had to rewatch it, and of course, it makes the pro-single list.
The plot: new girl Sarah arrives at a posh Catholic high school and befriends a trio of girls who dressed in goth gear and are rumored to be witches among their stuck-up classmates, who refer to them as “The Bitches of Eastwick.” As it turns out, Sarah has some supernatural powers, which allows her to be their fourth (apparently, you need one for all four points of the compass).
She uses these powers on the most dominant male character in the film, Chris. There’s hint of a romantic attraction at the beginning, but Chris quashes that one by telling everyone in the school he slept with Sarah after she rejects his advances. To get even, she casts a spell on him that makes him smitten with her. He follows her everywhere, carries her books, stands under her bedroom window a la John Cusack in Say Anything, and then attempts to have his way with her. In retaliation, lead witch Nancy pretends to be Sarah, lures him into her bedroom, and causes him to fall through a window to his death.
At this point, the film becomes a routine action-thriller with Sarah outmaneuvering the other witches when they turn on her. I echo Roger Ebert’s argument that the film could have been better as a satire of LA teenagers, as I was bored during the last thirty minutes. But, I do dig the pro-single message, and those special effects were nifty.
