The moths that flew out of Billy Butcherson’s mouth in Hocus Pocus were real insects, not CGI. The 1993 Halloween classic used a variety of special effects to create the Sanderson sisters’ spells, including a flying rig for their broomsticks and animatronic cats to play the transformed Thackery Binx. Many effects were also used for the zombie character Billy Butcherson, but viewers will be surprised to learn how one particular visual was achieved.
Portrayed by Doug Jones in Hocus Pocus, Billy Butcherson was a young man from the 17th century who was resurrected by the eldest witch sister, Winnifred Sanderson in order to help retrieve her spellbook from the Dennison siblings and their friends. Effects artists gave the zombie character his deathly appearance with prosthetics and makeup, and they built an upper torso and magnetic severed head so actress Karyn Malchus could play a headless version of Billy. Among all the effects used to create Billy Butcherson, though, the strangest was the real moths that he coughed up after cutting the stitches on his mouth.
Tony Gardner, who worked on the special makeup effects for Hocus Pocus, used a rig created by Vance Hartwell to hold the moths inside of actor Doug Jones’s mouth. This rig was “essentially a latex pocket attached between upper and lower dentures, which completely blocked Doug Jones’s throat," Gardner explained (via Bloody Disgusting). It also had a small hole at the back that Jones could cough air out of to expel the moths and the fuller’s earth stuffed inside. After gluing the stitches on Jones’s mouth shut, the effects artists would run out of the frame so that the scene could be captured as quickly as possible. Filming with the moths didn’t go as smoothly as the team would have liked, though— as Gardner said, "It took a few takes to get this just right, but Doug was a real trouper!"
Why Hocus Pocus Used Real Moths For Billy, Not CGI
Hocus Pocus was the first Disney movie to work with CGI, which was used to animate Binx’s mouth when he speaks. However, CGI was still a new tool at the time of its release. The same year, even Jurassic Park mixed CGI with practical effects, digitally animating just four minutes of dinosaurs and using animatronics for the rest. Computer animation just wasn’t advanced enough to handle many of the effects in Hocus Pocus. Gardner's team had to make real, physical effects work for the majority of the movie. “Remember, this was pre-CGI," he said. "there was no option other than figuring out how to do it practically with real moths."
While the moths Billy coughed up were real, there’s no need to worry about the dangers the insects faced while sitting in Doug Jones’s mouth. Precautions were taken to ensure that no moths were harmed in the making of Hocus Pocus, as an animal wrangler would carefully place the insects in the mouth rig with tweezers while a representative of the Humane Society supervised. Praising the actors who made the effect possible, Garner said, “Those moths gave it their all as well.”
