It’s Halloween night, and there’s a good chance a 1993 Disney movie is playing on a TV near you right now.
It’s “Hocus Pocus.” The Sanderson sisters, the three witches at the center of the story, are played by Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy. The movie was a slow starter when it opened in July 1993. It came in fourth on its first weekend. But year after year it kept coming back, and it turned into a Halloween favorite for millions of families. A sequel, “Hocus Pocus 2,” even arrived on Disney+ in 2022.
One of the most loved characters in it barely talks.
Billy Butcherson is a zombie the witches raise from his grave, and he gets just one spoken line in the whole film. He’s played by Doug Jones, an actor who won the part after auditioning in a dance studio and making the director laugh. Not a bad way to land a job.
Turning Jones into Billy took about an hour and a half every day. The makeup team used one pre-made piece that covered his face, neck and collarbone, and they moved fast. “I was baffled at the speed at which they did it,” Jones told The Hollywood Reporter in 2020.
In that same interview, he shared something that caught a lot of Michael Jackson fans off guard. Before we get there, here’s Jones sitting down to talk about playing Billy, so you can hear the man under all that makeup for yourself.
Doug Jones talks about playing Billy Butcherson
So what was the surprise? According to The Hollywood Reporter, Billy’s look “almost took inspiration from Michael Jackson.” The idea was the “uniform” kind of outfit “with epaulets on the shoulders,” because Michael “was incredibly popular at the time,” as the magazine put it.
If you were around in the early ’80s, that makes sense. Michael’s military-style jackets were one of his signature looks. At the 1984 Grammys he wore a sparkling blue one, and people are still recreating it for Halloween this year. A zombie in shoulder trim would’ve been a wink everybody in the theater got.
Here’s Michael at those 1984 Grammys, picking up an award for “Thriller” on the same night he wore that famous jacket.
Michael Jackson wins at the 1984 Grammys
In the end Billy never got the epaulets. The filmmakers went with an old-fashioned look instead, and Jones is fine with that. “I’m glad they ended up going with more of a period look,” he said. Jones never said whose idea the Michael look was, by the way. He just knows it almost happened.
He’s got a soft spot for how Billy turned out, too. “He was kind of pretty.”
There’s one more Michael connection, and it’s in the director’s chair. “Hocus Pocus” was directed by Kenny Ortega, who created and designed Michael’s Dangerous World Tour and HIStory World Tour with him and later directed “This Is It.”
If you’d like a little more of the man who played Billy, here he is chatting with a TV station in his home state of Indiana.
Doug Jones sits down with his home state news station
So when Billy shows up on your screen tonight, take a look at that old coat of his. Then try to picture it with a pair of shiny epaulets on top, the way it almost was. Happy Halloween.