Star Trek's Doug Jones Pulled Off A Disgusting Practical Effect For Hocus Pocus
After years of portraying fantastical creatures, I'm glad Doug Jones finally felt comfortable enough to appear as his regular self in "The Shape of Water." While his acting career began in the late 1980s, it wasn't until the '90s that the tall, lanky maestro of disguise found his niche performing in prosthetics. His minor role as "Thin Clown" in "Batman Returns" aside, though, it was Jones' turn as William "Billy" Butcherson in director Kenny Ortega's cult 1993 fantasy comedy "Hocus Pocus" that put the actor — who recently played the Kelpien Starfleet officer Saru on "Star Trek: Discovery" — squarely on the map.
Billy, as we come to learn, is a ponytailed gentleman from the 17th century who was poisoned by the witch Winifred Sanderson (Bette Midler). She also proceeded to stitch his shut mouth to keep him quiet, even in death. Why so harsh? "Hocus Pocus" implies that Billy was Winifred's lover before getting frisky with one of the other Sanderson sisters, Sarah, aka the horny one (Sarah Jessica Parker), prompting Winifred to murder him in revenge. However, in "Hocus Pocus 2," Billy clarifies that while he and Winifred did kiss one time, they were never a real thing and Winifred was merely jealous when Billy fell for Sarah instead.
Witchy love triangles aside, Winifred revives Billy's undead corpse when she and her siblings return from the grave 300 years after being executed for their crimes (including, but not limited to, magically draining the life out of children, so don't go feeling too sorry for Winifred). Rather that do her bidding, though, Billy slices his lips apart and tells her off the first chance he gets. He even spits some moths in her direction for good measure.
That wasn't movie magic, either. Those were actual living insects (specifically butterflies).
Doug Jones put real butterflies in his mouth
How's that for mothballs? The moment where Billy cuts his mouth open, letting out a blast of putrified air and fluttering moths, is brief but memorably disgusting. In an interview with Empire Magazine, Jones, Ortega, and legendary Hollywood "bug guy" Steven Kutcher revealed how they pulled the effect off. It involved putting a plastic shelf with air holes in Jones' mouth, which was then filled with Fuller's Earth (a clay-like powder) and three cabbage white butterflies. As Kutcher explained, moths move "like bullets," so they went with butterflies to ensure they could be properly caught on-camera when they went flying.
Unfortunately for poor Jones, he had to do the shot twice. During the first take, an overhead light blew, and Jones had to stand there with a mouth full of dirt, butterflies, and gradually pooling saliva as he waited for the light to be replaced. As he explained to E! News in 2020:
"The first take they get it all set in there, cameras were rolling, [mimes holding the butterflies in his mouth], and then a light burns out. I got my mouth open and out comes mud and the [butterflies] are kind of going, 'Ahhh!' [mimes butterflies falling out of his mouth anticlimactically]. That was a ruined take. Take two is where we got it right."
Nowadays, most filmmakers would probably (and understandably) save themselves a whole lot of stress and uncertainty by simply animating the dust and moths digitally. Still, I have to tip my hat to Jones, Kutcher, and the rest of the "Hocus Pocus" crew. The sight of Billy coughing up whatever gunk he's amassed in his throat from 300 years of being dead has been burned on my memory ever since I saw the movie as a kid. It's the sort of tangibly gross visual effect that you just can't match in CGI, like so many of the other strange and twisted creatures that Jones has played over the years.