Among the obscure Disney movies that Disney zombies throw a tantrum over its lack of availability is something called Child Of Glass. This was a TV movie shown on The Wonderful World Of Disney back in 1978. I had never heard of it, but I spent most of 1978 surfing, smoking grass, and going to KISS concerts, so I may have been out of town while it was on.
The stuff I read about this movie made it sound like it was everything from Gone With The Wind to Halloween. There were people who were crying during it. There were people who were peeing down their leg during the climax. There were people selling this thing for $150! There were even people selling bootlegs for $25!
I knew that it couldn’t live up to all the hype, after all this was no Toby Tyler (that kid ran away and joined a circus for crying out loud!), but like that dirtbag in Dirty Harry who wondered if Dirty had fired five or six shots, “I gots to know!”
And guess what? Once I finally sat down and watched this, I was greeted with an amazingly average TV movie!
The Armsworth family has gone and bought themselves an old mansion in the South and mom and dad plan on renovating it so they can hold fancy parties there. Alexander and his sister Connie Sue (worst name in the history of film) are less than thrilled because even though they don’t have to change schools or anything, they are living five miles further away than they were before. Someone should call family services on those parents! These kids are being positively abused!
Alexander is a whiny and crabby kid and is a little put out by some strange goings on in the old barn out back. That dang ghostly blue light coming from it is keeping him up at night. And his gal pal Blossom Culp (whom he treats like crap the whole movie) isn’t helping any by talking about ghosts haunting the old place.
The blue light is indeed a ghost though! More specifically, it is the ghost of Inez Dumaine who lived in the mansion years ago with her river pirate uncle who reportedly hung himself.
Inez herself died a mysterious death and now she’s floating around demanding that Alexander put her soul at peace so that she can go on and meet her parents in the afterlife. To help him do this, she tells him a rhyme that supposedly has all the info he needs. It involves where a murdered lass sleeps and a child of glass being reunited with that murdered lass.
Alexander and Blossom figure out pretty fast that the murdered lass is Inez and that where she sleeps is in her tomb at the local cemetery, but they’re a bit stymied by the child of glass bit. That’s okay because Alexander’s parents are having a big cotillion so Alexander has to get dressed up and go to that instead of ghostbusting for that evening.
Inez appears as she frequently does to whine about how Alexander isn’t busting his ass to solve her riddle and he’s telling her even though he’s at the party, he’s thinking about his next move.
Then she uses her one time only power to become real and waltzes with Alexander. Great. There’s a ghost and rumors of a treasure trove of diamonds the river pirate left on the grounds and we’re watching two 13-year-olds dance.
Luckily, Inez’s dog (I think it was hers, though it didn’t seem all that ghostly) shows up and wrecks the party chasing a cat around (think Brady Bunch wedding).
As if the hunt for this child of glass wasn’t enough drama for the youngins, Anthony Zerbe shows up to collect a paycheck for a few days work as the drunken, backwoods handyman who gets fired by Alexander’s family for not fixing up their gazebo the way they wanted.
He swears revenge and then burns up their barn while Alexander is inside it! Alexander escapes with Zerbe in hot pursuit and falls down a well! This provides the classic moment where Inez’s dog starts yapping at everyone as they look for Alexander and then leads them to the well. “What’s that, Ghost Dog? Alexander is trapped in the old well?”
While rescuing Alexander, Blossom solves the whole child of glass deal. I never figured out though why Inez needed this child of glass and what it had to do with the curse the river pirate put on her and how come she had to impart the information in riddle form and why couldn’t she just use her one time power of turning real to retrieve the child of glass for herself. I suppose those are questions best left to the spirit world and we should deal with more earthly matters.
The movie moves along for the most part, but really stalls once that party happens. Since there wasn’t a lot to the mystery (find the kid’s child of glass and dump it on her grave) they had to stretch things out a bit and throw in the drunken handyman to liven things up.
The kids were initially irritating, especially Alexander with his nasty southern accent and vaguely cross-eyed/inbred look, but for the most part I thought he and Blossom acted like normal kids would if they were getting haunted and chased after by Anthony Zerbe, so I can’t dump too much on them.
I’m especially not going to dump on the dude that played Alexander (Steve Shaw) because Steve bought it in a car wreck when he was only 25 and I don’t need his dead ass haunting me!
You might also find the sister Connie Sue to be vaguely familiar. She was played by Denise Nickerson and all of us have seen her end up all round and purple in Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory as that brat Violet!
It’s an innocuous enough movie for the kids to watch around Halloween, but certainly not worth donating a kidney to acquire. Now, I just need to find a copy of another fondly recalled, but unavailable Disney spook flick called Mr. Boogedy. (Shock ending! I was a Disney zombie all along!)
© 2011 MonsterHunter
Don’t know if you followed up on the Boogedy thing yet. It’s entirely stupid and still remains one of my fondest movies from my childhood. Although in my opinion Bride of Boogedy (the sequel) was better. Eugene Levy as a bitter and cynical man who oddly has barely changed in a appearance at all. Neat stuff
I guess that would classify me as a Disney Zombie because I have been looking for this movie as well. Netflix doesn’t have it, Hulu doesn’t have it. I might end up paying that $150 bucks to get my hands on it, or if I happen to find it at a Blockbuster might just lose it before returning it. Drat, now where did that movie go? I watched it when I was young, probably a little younger than the main character’s ages, and loved it. It was spooky, creepy, and had a lot of action and mystery for a kid. Plus, my mom’s name was Connie Sue, go figure. Anyone with a copy they want to sell, just drop me a line! RIght now, back to the 1965 classic, Dr. Who and the Dalek’s. Shows what kind of geek I am.
I just loved this movie as a kid and rented it every Halloween and would love to have a copy of it for my kids. Here is another odd movie for you, my mom always mentioned a movie called Death Race 2000. In the movie you were supposed to run people over for points. I think it was made in the 1970′s. If you find it please let me know.
Death Race 2000 is readily available on DVD and Blu-Ray from places like amazon.
What was the dog’s name?
I don’t recall, but Disney just released this on DVD last month, so you can buy it from them or Amazon and check it out yourself.