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 Jack trades the family cow for some magic beans. Expected results include big vine, crabby giant, mechanical hen that lays golden eggs. 1970, 63 minutes, DVD
Fee, fi, fo, fum! I smell the stench of another shabby Barry Mahon kiddie picture! This is the other movie on the DVD from Something Weird that features The Wonderful Land Of Oz, a movie that looks positively big budget compared to this one. At least Barry's ill-advised trip to Oz actually had the actors in costume, In Jack And The Beanstalk, most of the folks who wander around the set are dressed up like they were extras on an episode of The Brady Bunch, resulting in some scary striped pants, fringed vests, and a haircut for Jack that Peter Brady would have appreciated.
I'll go ahead and confess that I was never the biggest fan of the Jack And The Beanstalk story when I was a wee lad. I hated Jack for being such a gullible dolt as to trade his family's cow for a handful of magic beans. How am I supposed to root for a kid that I would have tricked out of his lunch money had he gone to my school? Besides, I always root for giants when it's them against some little turd, because I love to see people get stepped on! Tell me this story wouldn't have been more effective as an object lesson in not getting took by slimy salesmen if it ended with the giant scrapping Jack's dumb ass off the bottom of his boot?
Sadly, even in the twisted, thrifty, world of Barry Mahon this doesn't happen either, but the little ones will still find this film a punishing and ultimately scarring experience since along with the nightmare-inducing fashions, Jack is a kid that sometimes decides to sing about his plight! One particularly offensive tune has Jack warbling about how someone stole his family's golden goose and talking harp and has him dropping mad rhymes on us about how his goose that laid golden eggs was stolen when someone grabbed her by the legs! Damn! That kid is a menace on the mike!
Jack lives with his ugly old mom who has a penchant for wearing orange and his hot sister who is characterized by her obsessive greed. The only thing on her mind is how she needs to have a dowry so that she can get married. Her mom reassures her that since she's hot and is pretty good at doing housework that someone will still want her as a wife, making this movie an excellent piece to show to young girls so that they'll know that their worth in life is based noton what kind of person they are, but how they fill out a pair of cut-offs while waxing the kitchen floor. See, these musty old fairy tales still resonate today.
So, how did the formerly wealthy Jack family manage to slip below the poverty line along with the rest of us? A little family history is in order. Back when Jack's dad was still alive, they were living the good life because dad had a job inventing stuff like a mechanical goose that can lay golden eggs. He also invented the forerunner to the player piano, this harp that could play tunes on its own, which while pretty nifty, probably didn't get a lot of attention what with this goose pooping out oval shaped gold nuggets whenever Jack needed a new XBox game.
Then Jack's dad croaked and his inventions got stolen. His family, who were obviously just worthless parasites, sat around and wasted the wealth and then sat around whining about how all the wealth was wasted. After getting a gander at his nasty wife, materialistic slut daughter, and his singing sissy of a son, I was guessing that his death and the resulting disappearance of the goose and harp were all part of an elaborate scheme where Jack's dad was going to start a brand new life in Mexico that involved trading golden eggs for tequila and whores.
While Jack's dad is working on his tan and his Spanish (Usted tiene un asno agradable!), his ex-wife makes the command decision that it's time to sell the last family possession she could get ten bucks or so for (other than Jack's sister), the family cow. For reasons unknown to anyone who has ever laid eyes on the dimwitted Jack, Mama has him take the cow to town to sell instead of getting off her dead ass to do it herself.
Jack takes it to Honest John, Used Cow Salesman and starts haggling with Honest John. Yes, it was really called "Honest John, Used Cow Salesman" and yes this is what's supposed to pass for contemporary humor in this movie. Much like Jack's family, it doesn't work either. As all of us know, Honest John gets Jack to take a handful of magic beans instead of cash for the cow.
Even though she has lived with Jack all her life, his sister is still stunned by this latest bit of poor decision making by Jack (nowadays, the courts would appoint someone like Jack a guardian to make his decisions for him if they didn't just institutionalize him outright) and is determined to find Honest John and make him give them real money for the cow instead of the leftovers from his Burpee's order.
Incredibly, this 63 minute movie goes into stall mode and we see Honest John walking around some fake trees trying to decide where to hide his sign! Maybe here, just off the path. No, over here by this rock. Yeah, that's it. Now, I'll just hide behind this tree and wait for Jack and his sister to come looking for me. They find the sign, but never him and eventually go home, leaving Honest John to sneak away. What was the point of all that? Did Barry Mahon need to get this thing over an hour so that it qualified as a movie for his credits or something? Sadly, this would not be the last we saw of Honest John and his poky subplot.
Back home, Jack's mom is pissing her Serenity Guards that he went and sold the cow for some beans and chucks them out the window where they promptly sprout into a big vine made up of that fake ivy you can buy at Ben Franklin. Jack wonders where the vine goes and climbs it find out. Whoa! What do you know! The vine takes you to a magic land that looks like a stage filled with dry ice smoke and a really bad painting of a castle in the background (at least Barry sprung for a background this time around, unlike his solid color "backdrops" in some of the scenes in The Wonderful Land Of Oz).
In a movie replete with moments that involuntarily engage the viewer's gag reflex (like when Honest John decides that he needs to sing a few numbers), the worst has to be when Jack is either walking toward the castle or coming back from it. He kind of hops and lopes and I wasn't sure if he was trying to simulate that it was a really long distance to walk, or that the clouds were difficult to walk on or that he got some sort of jock itch from the vine. Ultimately, it looked like the kind of slow, spastic dance a kid like Jack would have been doing at his junior high prom (oh and you know he's going stag!).
Up in the castle lives a giant and he's a fat, hairy guy who shouts his lines to emphasize just how gigantic he is. He has a wife who spends the movie fixing him lunch and all the scenes in the castle take place in a room where there is an oversized chair and table. Oddly enough, it was oversized even for our giant. Maybe he was just a small giant with an inferiority complex who compensated by buying really big dining room sets. Or maybe he was trying to compensate for having to sing the same stupid "Fee Fi Fo Fum" song three times. 
The movie goes from being inept to repetitive when we have to watch Jack climb the vine to the giant's castle three different times. The giant turns out to be the one who ripped off Jack's family of their golden goose and the singing harp. He also has a bag of golden eggs. Jack steals each of these items back one at a time while the giant sleeps. The only time Jack interacts with the giant is when he runs in front of him to nab these items. Considering how poorly done these shots are with Jack superimposed over a blown-up shot of the snoozing fat guy, Barry shows admirable restraint in only showing it three times.
After he gets the goose back, Jack's sister and her boyfriend decide that she'll be rich enough for him to marry. (They buy an inn and try to run it, but Jack's sister thinks it's too much work and wishes they had gone into an easier business - like farming.). They show their appreciation for Jack's effort in braving the giant's wraith three times by getting married while he's up stealing the singing harp! I wouldn't worry about Jack - he makes it back in time for the reception and that's where he can best show off his dance moves! Let's get this party started quickly!
The giant wakes up and starts climbing down the vine to get his stuff back, so Jack runs out, chops the vine down and then the entire cast joins in for a final song about happy endings and such and Jack muses that he felt bad for Mrs. Giant because she just happened to get hooked up with the wrong kind of man.
Writer, director, and producer Barry Mahon gives new meaning to the phrase "triple threat" with this one as he somehow defies the odds and manages to pack in even more dumb ideas, bad costume design, and lame special effects than in his visit to Oz. Even at eight minutes less than the Oz movie on the DVD, Jack is the picture that lays the biggest not-so-golden egg of the two. And keep in mind that The Wonderful Land Of Oz movie also featured his own kid who couldn't sing and performers who had trouble remembering their lines.
Refusing to be left out of all this no-budget madness, legendary (to himself at least) gore director H.G. Lewis checks in with his own kiddie effort, the 32 minute carbuncle called The Magic Land Of Mother Goose. It's just as stomach-churning as his Blood Feast or The Wizard Of Gore, but without all the severed body parts. It would have been easily the worst of the three pictures on this disc if it had been as long as the other two, but has to settle for being a tedious curiosity.
Taking place entirely on a single stage, it involves Old King Cole getting bored and coming out of a Mother Goose book to find some real kicks, apparently at our expense. Merlin the Magician shows up and even though a wicked witch would later appear and taunt him by saying it looked like he was wearing a bathrobe, I thought it looked more like a modified shower curtain. In any event, a few more characters appear, including people in threadbare animal costumes and most of the time is devoted to Merlin putting on a magic show complete with disappearing rag dolls, levitating women, and even a dancing hankie!
Something Weird goes the extra mile with this DVD, packing it with all sorts of awful kiddie-oriented material (two movies, featurette, cartoons, coming attractions, poster gallery) so that your child will be in for hours of extra punishment when you put them in front of this (the back of the box promises "Over 3 1/2 Hours of Storybook Fun!") If you've ever been concerned that your tyke spends too much time in front of the boob tube, you need to set him or her up with this one. That kid will be begging to go outside and ride his Big Wheel into traffic almost immediately! Masochistic adults who revel in watching people humiliate themselves will no doubt be delighted with the entire package.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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