The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953)

Director:  Roy Rowland

Writers:  Dr. Seuss, Allan Scott

Composers:  Friedrich Hollaender, Heinz Roemheld, Hans J. Salter

Starring:  Peter Lind Hayes, Mary Healy, Hans Conried, Tommy Rettig, Jack Heasley, Robert Heasley, Noel Cravat

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  Bringing a new dimension of screen entertainment! The first musical Wonderama!

Plot:  A young boy travels to an imaginary world where, assisted by his family's plumber, he must save other piano playing kids like himself from the dungeons of his dictatorial piano teacher who also mind-controls his mother.

My rating:  5.5/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

It looks like this is the only feature Dr. Seuss wrote and I can see why.  I read that after test screenings, lots of scenes and songs were scrapped and more were written and shot for the finished product.  I haven't a clue as to what was cut but if this is what they were happy with then what the hell did they want in the first place?  It doesn't take long at all after the opening credits before we're in Bart's vivid imagination, and there's no doubt from the look and feel of the picture that this is from the fertile, creative mind of Dr. Seuss.  I'm guessing the target audience would've been children 8 and under, something the family could go to without the fear of seeing boobs or something scandalous.  The sets are colorful, minimal and strange.  The songs, and there are a lot of songs, aren't memorable enough to walk out of the theater humming.  I can't think of a single tune.  Maybe it's because there are so many.   I can't think of any way to make this better.  It feels low budget but it doesn't look it.  Those sets don't build themselves.  I was bored but the colorful visuals and constant sound kept me from nodding off. 

Winter Carousel (1958)

Original title: Carrousel Boreal

Director: Wladyslaw Starewicz

Writers: Irene Starewicz, Wladyslaw Starewicz

Composer: Daniel White

More info: IMDb

Plot: A small group of animals gathers around a frozen pond. The animals then play together on the ice and in the snow. Later, when the season changes, they look for new ways of passing the time.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again?  Yes.

I'm such a huge fan of stop motion animation that it takes a lot for me not to like any of it.  There's so much talent that goes into making this stuff that I can't help but respect the filmmakers.  This 12 minute French film is adorable.  There isn't any dialogue so everyone can enjoy this.  I would imagine that little kids would love this.  It's only 12 minutes so that's perfect for them.  Now, if you're like me and your mind runs on the filthy side...

This isn't the only scene that had me crawling out of the gutter.  There are some truly wonderful moments in this picture that really impressed me.  The technique alone is superb.  One scene baffled me when they're all on the carousel where the background is moving in the wrong direction to the carousel.  I wonder if it's a serious error or if it was intentional.  I'm sure I'll never know as the Russian-born animation master Starewicz died in '65 at the age of 82.

Bill and Coo (1948)

Director: Dean Riesner

Writers: Royal Foster, Dean Riesner, Ken Murray

Composer:  David Buttolph

Starring: Burton's Birds, Jimmy the Crow, George Burton, Elizabeth Walters, Ken Murray, Pinto Colvig

More info: IMDb

Tagline: You've never seen anything like it!

Plot: The feathered residents of Chirpendale are terrorized by an evil black crow by the name of "The Black Menace". But to the citizen's rescue comes a brave young taxi puller named Bill!

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Yes.

This movie is absolutely adorable!  The tagline doesn't lie.  It's unique, funny, fascinating and loads of fun.  What they got these birds to do is often remarkable.  And everything is funny when you've got animals dressed and acting like humans.  That's one of the laws of nature or something like that.  Proven fact!  Science is amazing!  Hahahahahaha.  Anyway, this picture is short (60 minutes), quickly paced, loaded with silly bird puns and a great sense of humor.  The only downside is that the print, while in gorgeous color, isn't that great.  I'd love to watch this again someday with a sparkling remastered print.

White Fang (1973)

Original title: Zanna Bianca

Director: Lucio Fulci

Writers: Guy Elmes, Roberto Gianviti, Rhom Keyes, Jack London, Piero Regnoli, Guillaume Roux

Composer: Carlo Rustichelli

Starring: Franco Nero, Virna Lisi, Fernando Rey, John Steiner, Raimund Harmstorf, Daniel Martin, Rik Battaglia, Daniele Dublino, Maurice Poli, John Bartha

More info: IMDb

Plot:  The wolf dog, White Fang, aids a reporter, a fur trapper, a nun, a young Eskimo boy and his father of ridding a gold mining town of a sleazy crime lord in 1896 Yukon, Canada.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

Think of this like it's Lassie with a vengeance.  This is a family picture but it's violent as hell...and that's what I dug about it.  The cast is filled with loads of famous names from Spaghetti Westerns and other Italian flicks from the 60s and 70s.  The movie's OK.  It gets hokey periodically but the violence that peppers it is harsh.  That poor dog, I mean wolf that looks just like a German shepherd is put through a lot.  Fang fights people, dogs and a bear.  The best thing that could've happened to him at the end of the movie is live on a farm free of predators and assholes.  I actually liked the last few minutes of this flick with Fang wandering around the recently abandoned town looking for his master.  That was nice.  Another oddity is that this was directed by famed horror director Lucio Fulci.  That would explain the abundance of violence.  I'm not one to watch family films like this but how could I resist when I'm on a mission to watch all 500+ Spaghetti Westerns and this stars Franco Nero, John Steiner, et al directed by Fulci?

Tom Thumb and Little Red Riding Hood vs. the Monsters (1962)

Original title: Caperucita y Pulgarcito contra los Monstruos

AKA: Little Red Riding Hood and the Monsters

Director: Roberto Rodriguez

Writers: Fernando Morales Ortiz, Adolfo Torres Portillo

Composer: Raul Lavista

Starring: Maria Gracia, Cesareo Quezadas 'Pulgarcito', Jose Elias Moreno, Manuel 'Loco' Valdes, Santanon, Ofelia Guilmain, Armando Gutierrez, Miguel Inclan Hijo, Alfredo de Soto, Elvira Lodi

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Now...the famous characters of the fairy tale world...together for the first time!

Plot: Caperucita, the Wolf and the Ogre are captured by the Witch Queen, accused of treason by the Vampire. Caperucita, followed by a host of old and new characters begin the adventure to rescue their friends.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

Way back when American producer K. Gordon Murray bought the U.S. for Mexican made kiddie films and had them dubbed in English, giving him the nickname of "King of the Kiddie Matinee".  This is the first one of these pictures I've seen and, as you probably would expect, it's hit and miss.  The miss is it's incredibly silly and obnoxious as it was made for, well, small children.  But the hits are worth watching this for.  The large lavish sets are fantastic.  The colors pop beautifully for this children's fairy tale.  It's like real life isn't that colorful but it's what you'd expect for a fantasy world such as this.  There's some real horror going on, too.  If this were remade today and it played to the horror element that exists in this 1962 version, you could really get some scary shit going on.  The dragon fight at the end gets a little hairy when the flames get way too close to the actors.  I wouldn't be surprised if someone got hurt.  The songs are fine.  The audio is bright and tinny so when the children are running around screaming in terror (normally that's music to my ears), it's so shrill it hurts.  It's only an hour and twenty two minutes long and I bet if you took out the boring bits you could whittle this down to a fun forty five minutes.  The whole thing is on YouTube below so watch away...

Popeye (1980)

Director: Robert Altman

Writer:  Jules Feiffer

Composer: Harry Nilsson

Starring: Robin Williams, Shelley Duvall, Ray Walston, Paul Dooley, Paul L. Smith, Richard Libertini, Donald Moffat, MacIntyre Dixon, Roberta Maxwell, Donovan Scott, Bill Irwin, Linda Hunt, Dennis Franz

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Haves a happy holiday wit me an' Olive!

Plot:  Popeye arrives in the seaside town Sweethaven in search of his long-lost father. Popeye finds that the town is governed by the pirate and big bully Bluto.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  Nope.

Wow.  I haven't seen this since the theater 35 years ago.  I still remember some of the songs, the finale with the octopus fight and Pappy saying "haul ass" a lot.  And that's what I enjoyed on this viewing.  It's cute for kids.  The casting is spot on and the sets are amazing.  They did a fantastic job in recreating the world of Popeye but there's something missing that keeps this from being so much better than it is and I can't figure it out.  Maybe it needed to be more quickly paced or shorter.  Beats me.  One of the best bits for my money is the under the breath dialogue from Popeye.  It's just like it was in the old cartoons from the 40s.  I loved that about the original shorts.  It's a cute film but it's also somewhat of a misfire even if it's not all that bad.  The Paramount DVD sports a great looking anamorphic widescreen print with no extras. 

The Love Bug (1968)

Director: Robert Stevenson

Writers: Bill Walsh, Don DaGradi, Gordon Buford

Composer: George Bruns

Starring: Dean Jones, Michele Lee, David Tomlinson, Buddy Hackett, Joe FLynn, Benson Fong, Joe E. Ross, Gary Owens, Bill Hickman, Jock Mahoney

More info: IMDb

Tagline:  Herbie Will Honk His Way Into Your Heart.

Plot:  A race car driver becomes a champion with a Volkswagen Beetle with a mind of its own.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again?  Yeah, in another thirty years.

I haven't seen this since the 70s and even then I'd seen it a few times either at the theater in a re-release or on TV.  There's a good deal of nostalgia with this one but even still, it's a fun kids movie.  The car is great.  The scene where Herbie is bashing the crap out of the Jaguar is hilarious.  The cast is great all across the board.  Dean Jones is so charismatic it's criminal.  Michelle Lee, Buddy Hackett - fun.  Tomlinson and Flynn are great bad guys.  The music from Disney staple George Bruns is fun.  The Disney DVD special edition has a great looking anamorphic widescreen print.  It's a 2-disc set.  The extras on the first disc are a commentary track and a cartoon short SUSIE THE LITTLE BLUE COUPE.  Disc two has a 7 minute featurette on the differences in Herbie between the four original films, galleries, a vintage 5-minute featurette on the film narrated by Dean Jones, Love Bug Day at Disneyland (12 minutes),

a 9 minute piece about the sound design (this is great, fascinating and fun!), 2 deleted scenes reconstructed from stills, script and storyboards, the theatrical trailer (fullscreen), 3 radio spots, galleries,  a featurette called That Lovable Bug with interviews with the surviving cast among others (43 minutes, great fun seeing the three leads reminisce), The Many Lives of Herbie featurette (13 minutes, covers the three sequels, shows, etc. and Don Knotts is interviewed) and finally, Herbie Mania (6 minutes all about the fans).  It's nice that Disney went the extra mile to make this release worthy of the film.

George and the Dragon (2004)

Director: Tom Reeve

Writers: Tom Reeve, Michael Burks

Composer: Gast Waltzing

Starring:  James Purefoy, Piper Perabo, Patrick Swayze, Michael Clarke Duncan, Bill Treacher, Jean-Pierre Castaldi, Rollo Weeks, Paul Freeman, Stefan Jurgens, Stefan Winert, Phil McKee, Caroline Carver, Joan Plowright, Val Kilmer

More info: IMDb

Tagline: George left England as a Knight and soldier. He Came home a Dragonslayer... and a Legend.

Plot: The first crusade to free the Holy Land has ended. A mass of weary knights, squires, soldiers of fortune and priests are making their way home across a Europe that has changed forever. George, a handsome English knight, unsettled by the horrendous bloodletting he witnessed in Palestine, desires to hang up his sword and settle down to a quiet, peaceful life. On returning to England, George heads north where he's heard the land is good and the population sparse and of a kindly King named Edgaar. He finds King Edgaar in a terrible state. His beautiful daughter, Lunna has recently disappeared. In return for a small plot of land, George agrees to search for Princess Lunna. With Edgaar's faithful servant, Elmendorf, George sets out. George discovers both the princess and the truth behind her strange disappearance. The quest now set before them ends in a love, a lie and a legend that has lasted a thousand years.

My rating: 5/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

I can't imagine any of the actors taking on this project for the artistic merit, can you?  It's silly in so many ways.  I felt bad for Purefoy, really bad.  He's trying to make the cornball dialogue work but it's not easy.  Patrick Swayze is just awful.  Michael Clarke Duncan felt out of place and, I can't believe I'm saying this, Val Kilmer, for as brief as he's in the picture, is kind of fun.  The bad acting doesn't stop there...it's just getting started.  Piper Perabo was sub-par, too. Part of it could have been the writing but her character was painful to handle.  The music was cartoonish and silly which mimicked the on-screen antics.  It's low budget for sure but this wasn't a picture that was aimed at someone like me.  OK, well maybe if I were six years old.  Little kids would probably dig the fairy tale stuff but it wasn't sitting right with me.  The First Look DVD presents the film in anamorphic widescreen and the only extras on the disc are interviews with the principle cast (17 minutes) and trailer for this and three other films I've never heard of (THE SNURKS, anyone?).  And how about that awful song during the end credits?  Woof!

Mouse Hunt (1997)

Director: Gore Verbinski

Writer: Adam Rifkin

Composer: Alan Silvestri

Starring: Nathan Lane, Lee Evans, Vicki Lewis, Maury Chaykin, Eric Christmas, Michael Jeter, Debra Christofferson, Camilla Soeberg, Ian Abercrombie, William Hickey, Christopher Walken

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Who's hunting who?

Plot: Two stumblebum inheritors are determined to rid their antique house of a mouse who is equally determined to stay where he is.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again?  Probably not but I wouldn't be opposed to it.

For years I figured this was nothing more than a silly kids movie until the insistence of a friend praised it above that.  Nathan Lane is fucking hilarious.  Period.  The film plays out like a live action cartoon short from the 40s and 50s and it works perfectly well as that.  I also dig the sense of time and place and how it's got one foot in the 40s and one in the 90s with its spare use of technology.  It's a silly film where the jokes don't always land but that largely depends on your penchant for slapstick comedy.  Enough of the gags work and there are enough laugh out loud moments to make it worth while.  I adore Lane in this and if you love his funny then that's all the ammo you need to want to see this now.  I'm glad I did.  It's currently streaming on Netflix.