E12 Teen Favorites: 'Teen Witch' With Candace Jane Opper

Louise (Robyn Lively) is a high school student who longs to be one of the cool kids but is teased or ignored by everyone … until she turns sixteen and finds out she’s a witch. With her new powers and the help of her psychic mentor, Madame Serena (Zelda Rubinstein), Louise has the ability to get everything she’s ever wanted. But do love and acceptance hold the same weight when they’re not earned organically? This kooky '80s movie has everything you could ever want: boys throwing footballs in midriff hoodies, rap battles between white people, choreographed musical numbers, one extremely overzealous child actor, and a classroom full of teens shouting “CONDOMS, CONDOMS.” It’s like a proto-”Jawbreaker” mixed with “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” and “Sixteen Candles.” It is batshit crazy, defies genre, and is something I would have watched 10,000 times had I seen it at the right age.

Here are some things we mentioned during the episode that we think you should check out:

• Candace's writing, including this fantastic Bright Wall/Dark Room piece on "Earth Girls Are Easy"
• Candace's book, "Certain and Impossible Events," which I am currently reading and digging so hard.
• The "How Did This Get Made" podcast episode on "Teen Witch"
• Slash Film's oral history on "Teen Witch"
• Vernon Zimmerman, one of the co-writers of the film, also got into directing and made some interesting films over the course of his career. This FilmInk piece is a good primer.

For some reason, we never talked about the movie poster, which features Louise riding a broom even though this is something she never does in the film. As far as we know, she's not that kind of witch. The '80s were fucking weird and I wish I was around for more of them.