Penny Marshall’s curmudgeon Hocus Pocus character drinking booze and smoking a cigarette in a robe and hair curlers is the perfect spirit animal for the fall. She wants Halloween visitors out of her house. Her husband invites 3 witches in.
Marshall’s uncredited role in the 1993 comedy is known as “The Master’s Wife.” Her real-life brother, Garry Marshall, plays her husband, whose Devil costume convinces the resurrected Sanderson sisters they’ve found their master. He takes them for Halloween partygoers.
Penny’s character, wearing a robe and hair curlers, has a question for them: “Aren’t you broads a little old to be out trick or treating?” Janet Maslin quoted the line in her opening-day New York Times review on July 16, 1993.
After she catches her husband dancing with Sarah Jessica Parker’s witch, she throws the visitors out.
The siblings’ cameo gets a nod in Hocus Pocus 2 (2022): their scene plays on a TV, and carnival-line extras wear versions of their Devil costume and curlers, an homage confirmed by director Anne Fletcher.
