Teen Witch: Go and Top (or Bottom) That

As its theme song warns—or perhaps threatens—you’re never gonna be the same again after watching Teen Witch (1989). The phrase is emphatically repeated no fewer than 17 times in the track that accompanies the film’s baffling opening sequence, which plays like a ponderous perfume ad aimed at tweens. When that sonic nightmare is finally over, 15-year-old Louise Miller (Robyn Lively) awakens to find her little brother, Richie (Joshua John Miller), binge-eating junk food beneath her bed.

It is as difficult to convey Richie’s essential gayness as it is burdensome to adequately describe the many tortures of the Teen Witch soundtrack. Louise will soon learn, on the cusp of her sixteenth birthday, that she is a witch poised to assume control of her powers. But to focus solely on her supernatural gifts is to overlook the flaming young Richie’s demonic possession by the spirits of Paul Lynde and Alice Ghostley. Zelda Rubinstein plays Madame Serena, Louise’s mentor in mischievous magic, and I kept imagining her Poltergeist character spotting Richie and chanting “Cross over, homos. All are welcome!”

Richie antagonizes Louise in all the usual little brother ways, but his withering delivery is bitchy beyond his years—he’s ruthless in undercutting his sister’s self-esteem. (Dick Sargent, two years away from publicly coming out, appears as their father in a winking, or perhaps nose-twitching, bit of casting. But, like Caren Kaye as their cheerfully superficial mother, he’s given nothing to do.) Miller’s unusual performance anchors the gayer side of Teen Witch. On the surface, it’s a conventional ’80s teen comedy: ordinary Louise pines for star quarterback Brad (Dan Gauthier), a Stanford-bound senior with well-defined abs and a convertible, and she isn’t above using her newfound magic to attract his—and everyone else’s—attention.

At school there are a number of scenes that silently scream “Gay!”, ranging from a campy sex-ed lesson to Shelley Berman’s Mr. Weaver, a grown-up and less slovenly version of Richie who savagely humiliates Louise in front of her classmates at every opportunity. Even Louise’s attraction to Brad feels gay to me (particularly her worshipful gaze as he conducts a football field workout), but that one’s tougher to argue than Witch’s gay centerpiece: a gaggle of cheerleaders, clad in purple leotards, perform a hellish nightmare of a musical number called “I Like Boys.” A lesbian gym teacher predictably, and mercifully, puts an end to it; it’s a collection of everything I once hated about school locker rooms.

Lost in the rainbow shuffle at times is Louise, whose realization that she is ‘different’ from others coincides with what could be tritely described as her sexual awakening. It’s not enough for Brad to notice her or ask her out; she wants to proceed directly to sex. Her desperation to sleep with an already-coupled guy who barely knows she’s alive feels incongruous at times with the film’s exceedingly broad humor, which is aimed more at children than teenagers. Assisting her in this carnal pursuit is Serena, who is blithely unconcerned about whether Louise (whose hair possesses more depth than her character) is mature enough to embark on such a relationship.

There is little more to Teen Witch’s plot than whether Louise will get her MTV-ready hookup with the school stud. When she finally registers on Brad’s sexual radar, he leads the hesitant sorceress through a field of giant flowers to an abandoned home, imagery that always makes me cackle. (By then, Mr. Weaver has cruelly revealed to the class not only Louise’s crush, but her birth control pills.) There they spend an eternity posing against exposed lath and plaster walls—as if teenage sexuality isn’t dangerous enough without asbestos exposure—exchanging not-so-smoldering looks from opposite sides of the room like characters from an early ’90s non-alcoholic beer commercial.

Fortunately, no I Think I’m Having a Baby hijinks ensue, but Louise immediately second-guesses her choices. “When he kissed me, was he really kissing me?” she asks Serena, questioning whether Brad genuinely loves her or was merely under her spell. “What’s the difference?” Serena replies, in what might as well be Teen Witch’s motto—she’s about as detail-oriented as the filmmakers. What does the screenplay, credited to Vernon Zimmerman (who made 1980’s Fade to Black) and Robin Menken (co-writer of the obscure disaster Young Lust), tells us about any of the characters? What insight are we given into their motivations, other than Louise’s raging hormones?

Director Dorian Walker is just as incurious. The acting ranges from poor to acceptable, with a standout exception being Marcia Wallace’s brief appearance as a drama teacher. As Polly, the requisite best friend who feels left behind when Louise’s ill-gotten popularity soars, Mandy Ingber (Annie Tortelli on Cheers and its short-lived spinoff, The Tortellis) is confident and more recognizably human than most of her classmates. It is Ingber who appears, opposite Noah Blake, in Witch’s best-known scene, the endearingly horrible rap-battle musical number “Top That.” Had the producers tried, it wouldn’t have been difficult to accomplish just that.

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Streaming and DVD availability

Teen Witch is available on DVD and Blu-ray and currently streams (free with ads) on both Freevee and Tubi.

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… But wait, there’s more!

The heart of Louise’s romantic quandary, so breezily dismissed by both Madame Serena and Teen Witch’s filmmakers, brings to mind one of my favorite songs, the Shirelles’ indelible 1960 recording of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” In only two-and-a-half-minutes, writers Gerry Goffin and Carole King perfectly captured the aching uncertainty of a new relationship with a series of vulnerable questions, including “Can I believe the magic of your sighs?” The warier, more plaintive version King released on 1971’s Tapestry is just as beautiful.