And I’m not even not talking about early 1970s Dean Jones Disney movie antics here. I’m talking about 1976 live action Walt Disney big screen farts that almost cleared out the Magic Kingdom for good.

To trudge through Disney movies during this time period is to experience increasingly bad Herbie movies and films with Don Knotts. How bad would it get for the studio? The part of “befuddled dark-haired guy” would go from being played by Jones to Mama’s Family alum Ken Barry!

Obviously, Treasure Of Matecumbe doesn’t rate any sort of significance in Disney’s spiral into the toilet, but it is the sort of generic crud that marked the output of the studio at the time. Here it was 1976 and they were still remaking Treasure Island!

Treasure Of Matecumbe started off promisingly enough when young Davie learned of some buried treasure in the first six minutes of the movie. But once he and his buddy, Thad, had got done jumping out of their attic, watch their pal Ben get wasted by the evil Spangler (Vic Morrow), and make their escape down river, things start going slower than Peter Ustinov paddling a canoe down the everglades.

As soon as Ben breathlessly rattled off everything he knew and what his involvement was in this buried treasure I was completely lost. It had something to do with the Civil War and a ship with gold coins and a payday loan and the next thing I know, little Davie is creaming his pants because if he can find the treasure then he can save his aunts’ house and maybe even go out and get himself a decent haircut.

It goes without saying that Johnnie’s sneering and pouting Davie is completely unlikable and you aren’t rooting for him at any point in time during the movie and in fact would probably be prone to feel some sympathy for his co-star Thad since he had the embarrassing job of shucking and jiving in a couple of scenes.

With the help of a map that was hidden in a book in Davie’s house, he and Thad begin their journey down to Florida to find the treasure with Spangler in hot pursuit. I’m sure they explained Spangler’s role in all this, but I was so caught up in the prospect of a couple of kids riding the river after buried riches that I paid no mind to what this guy and his Snidely Whiplash mustache were babbling about.

Once Thad and Davie hit the road they run into a cast of very unattractive characters. There’s Ustinov as the crooked medicine man and he’s about the only hint of class in the whole film, so he naturally seems out of place and you quickly tire of his over-written character.

We also meet Davie’s Uncle Jim. They say that Jim is one of those ne’er do well schemers who always has some angle going, but once we meet him, he never displays anything remotely like that. In fact, when we first encounter him, he’s about to be strung up by the KKK. Jim’s biggest failing though is that he’s got this ugly Mike Brady perm that made me think I was looking at the guy from Land Of The Lost or worse yet, Mac Davis.

The worst character, hands down, had to be Ms. Paxton, the runaway bride. Wearing enough rouge to make you mistake her for Raggedy Ann, she drags everything down worse than Ustinov’s big butt in that canoe with her whining and constant attempts to make the kids quit the treasure hunt.

Just to make sure that I thoroughly loathed this film and to pad it out even further, there’s an utterly pointless scene on a riverboat where Ms. Paxton beats Dick Van Patton at three card monte! The only saving grace to that scene is that we never see Van Patton’s character again.

After we endure a variety of tortures including an impromptu hillbilly hoedown on a dock and a hurricane where Ustinov gets swept away while grinning and giving everyone thumbs up for finding the treasure, the movie finally ends with some bad Indians capturing Spangler and his men and everyone discovering that Ustinov was such a lard ass that not even gale force winds could sweep him out to sea!

I was unpleasantly surprised by how little adventure the kids had on this trek. The stuff they do is boring and goes on way too long. There’s a scene where they work with Ustinov on his medicine show and it just goes on and on and when Spangler finally shows up to try and kill everyone, you’re actually breathing a sigh of relief and thinking “here comes the cavalry.”

Aside from the non-action and distasteful characters (at least Uncle Jim disappeared for the last third of the movie until it was time to find the treasure), the movie is a technical disaster. Every time we have a close up of the characters on a boat, it’s some of the worst blue screen work you’ll ever see.

What’s worse is that once we get to the swamp, the movie settles into a lame pattern of three different shots in varying order: close ups on the canoe with horrific blue screen effect, long shots of people in the canoe, and stock footage of wildlife that doesn’t match either of the two preceding types of shots.

Combine that with the really cruddy treasure of Matecumbe that consists of a single chest of Mardi Gras beads and coins and the appearance of one skeleton that sort of tips over onto Davie when he falls into a hole and you can guess why no one involved other than Ustinov worked much after this one.

© 2011 MonsterHunter

The way that Robert Newton wears the role of the one-legged pirate like the filthy three days growth of beard he perpetually sports throughout the film will leave you wondering why anyone else would bother tying their leg up for this part in the future.

He nails everything perfectly in this performance, from the sweaty greed to the snarling “avast ye mateys” blather you’ll be running around repeating for weeks to come all the way down to the way he squinted, winked, and bugged his eyes out depending on the situation.

If Newton was the only good thing about Treasure Island it would still be worth your time but this movie is an hour and a half of pirate action and treachery, with that dastardly Long John Silver seemingly always one step ahead of the game. Of course he’s not exactly going up against Rommel or anything.

In fact, the biggest competition he gets is from little Jim Hawkins. Hawkins (So Dear to My Heart‘s Bobby Driscoll) is one of the toughest little buggers you’ll ever see. He befriends pirates, goes on a treasure hunt, battles the pirates, single-handedly rescues the ship from them, takes a knife in the shoulder and shoots one pirate in the face! He’s like Rambo without pubes!

I should have guessed that this was a manly movie when right off the bat, some scalawag named Black Dog comes into Jim’s bar (don’t ask me how a ten year old is running a bar – this is the 1700s after all) and demands a double rum. I’ve seen enough bottles of Captain Morgan’s to know that rum is a pirate’s booze of choice.

Black Dog is looking for Captain Billy Bones (I think this movie had probably the single greatest collection of character names that I’d ever seen), but Jim plays dumb. Billy is really there and he’s an old timer that’s about to shuffle off to that big pirate cove in the sky, but not before he can give his treasure map to Jim.

Before he croaks, Billy Bones manages to warn Jim Hawkins about a one-legged pirate. Of course, once Jim runs into Silver, he doesn’t exactly trip over himself to tell his squire or captain that the dude they hired as the sea cook is actually a blighter who’s better at cooking up doublecrosses than ham and eggs.

Jim shows the squire and the friendly neighborhood doctor the map and the squire immediately decides that he is going to launch a secret voyage to Treasure Island to recover the loot. The squire is a bit of a buffoon as he has a habit of babbling about how they’re looking for treasure as they stroll along the docks so that every shady character can hear.

Jim is taken in by Silver and he befriends the pirate. It probably helps that Silver gives him a gun to carry. What kid wouldn’t pal around with a guy that gives him a rod to protect himself on a long voyage in search of pirate treasure? Besides, it’s been my experience that you want to be on the good side of the guy that’s cooking your food.

Jim eventually hears of Silver’s plot to mutiny and take the treasure for himself and finally tattles to the captain, squire, and doctor. In spite of their efforts, the ship is taken over by the pirates and the good guys have to escape to a stockade on Treasure Island.

Since this was a Disney movie, the respect and buddy-aspect between Jim and Silver at the end is played up with Jim helping Silver escape and Silver not being able to shoot him in the face. It’s nice to see that a crusty old salt like Long John Silver deciding that he doesn’t have it in him to shoot an unarmed ten year old kid at point blank range in the head can pass for sentiment, but the fact that this is as close as the movie ever gets to slathering on the goody-goody stuff shows you that this movie was made before Disney became the bland Disney we know today.

The locations are highlighted by the early Technicolor effort and everything is just dripping with pirate atmosphere, with pirates drunk on rum, big ships, treasure chests of gold, and a seaside village. Unlike, the Sunday school version of the Revolutionary War presented in Johnny Tremain, Treasure Island has an ornery streak running through it that presents a fairly adult look at pirates and their penchant for treachery, drink, and booty. (Of course since this is a boy’s wish fulfillment movie and not a man’s, the only booty these pirates are interested in are doubloons.)

© 2011 MonsterHunter

Too poor to actually see the circus, Toby (Johnny Shiloh‘s Kevin Corcoran) hangs around outside the tent soaking up the atmosphere when he’s befriended by the guy selling peanuts, candied apples, and lemonade. Harry Tupper is a smooth talker and offers Toby a job being his assistant.

Toby wishes he could go, but he has an old jerk uncle to go home to, so he declines. Harry gives him a free pass to the circus for that evening’s performance and wishes him luck.

When Toby gets home, his uncle lays into him for hanging out with the circus instead of feeding the hogs. He tears up Toby’s free pass and tells him that he’s not his real son!

Just so Toby doesn’t miss his point, the uncle calls Toby as “millstone” around their neck and then sends him to bed without supper. You can practically hear Harry Tupper rubbing his hands together in eager anticipation.

Toby turns up at the circus, prepared to run away to vend peanuts. Life at the circus though isn’t all cotton candy and limber trapeze girls as Tupper soon reveals himself as a slimy dingus who tries to cheat Toby, yells at him, and even steals his mail!

Toby meets a varied cast of characters during his time at the circus. There’s Ben, the over-sized gruff, but lovable chap in charge of the monkeys. He spends most of his time alternately complaining about having to look after a little runaway and protecting Toby from Tupper’s unscrupulous ways.

There’s Sam, the clown who dispenses wisdom about circus life (save your money, never agree to play stinkyfinger with Tupper, etc.).

There’s also two other little kids who do trick-riding on the horses – Jeanette and Ajax. Jeanette likes Toby, while Ajax is a self-centered brat who we all laugh at when does some showing off on a horse and gets his leg broken off, sending him to rehab and forcing Toby to step up and save the show by learning to be a expert trick rider in two weeks.

And then there’s Mr. Stubbs. Mr. Stubbs is the chimp that Toby ends up palling around with though as is the case with most of these boy-chimp relationships, things start off a little rocky.

See, Mr. Stubbs is one of those chimps that runs around in bib overalls, squawking and stealing stuff. He steals food, he steals money, and he even steals Toby’s mail back from Tupper!

Stubbs is worth the price of admission just by himself and somehow he ends up with all the dramatic scenes. There’s the time he eats too much and almost croaks. There’s that time that he escapes from Toby, breaks into the county jail, steals a gun and starts shooting at everyone. This is by far the greatest scene in any Disney movie as young Toby has to come in and talk Mr. Stubbs down from doing anything stupid.

Then there’s the time that Stubbs goes and gets himself shot by a hunter who has somehow mistaken the Osh-Kosh wearing little fella for a bobcat or something. Oh Mr Stubbs! Why? You were just realizing how valuable life was!

As entertaining as the majority of this one was, I found the ending of the movie to be less than genuine, chiefly because of the sudden change that the uncle apparently underwent. Those letters that Tupper was hiding from Toby were from his aunt and uncle and it turns out that they want him to come home, because the uncle is having problems doing all the work by himself. Well, too bad, jackass! You should have thought of that before you went and scarred Toby for life with your heartless blather!

Toby is young though and his heart still hasn’t shriveled all up from a lifetime of rejection so he decides to run away from the circus. Huh? Who ever has run away from a circus?

Tupper brings Toby back to the circus, his aunt and uncle are there and his uncle is real sorry and all reformed and crap. Toby is glad to see them and triumphantly performs in front of the family that up until a week ago thought he was nothing but a burden.

The ending notwithstanding, the ninety-plus minutes of this movie flew by in a blur of circus antics, colorful characters and solid work by performers like Corcoran.

This is classic wish-fulfillment stuff here. I defy anyone to watch Toby ride away on the circus wagon in the middle of the night, all the problems in his life left behind him, and not think how it was when you were a kid when anything seemed possible as long as you were willing to take a chance.

A fun diversion full of the magic of the old-time circus and the exuberant adventure of childhood. What Top Gun did for military recruitment, Toby Tyler does for running away with the circus.

© 2011 MonsterHunter

There are some scenes where he actually looks like a dwarf standing next to some of the other actors and I was starting to wonder whether this wasn’t some version that had recast the Robin part as some kind of wood gnome. And maybe I was spoiled by Errol Flynn, but where was the sword fighting in this movie? And for that matter, where was the bow and arrow action?

There was also the rather silly Bat Signal-like system the Merry Men had of keeping everyone up to date on all the forest gossip, but was it just me or does the idea of guys randomly shooting arrows through the forest into Robin’s secret camp strike you as a wee bit dangerous?

This isn’t to say that Richard Todd doesn’t go through motions of our favorite woodsy rogue though. He smirks frequently, flirts and bickers with Maid Marion and whines endlessly about how great King Richard is and how sucky Prince John is.

For a movie that doesn’t even run an hour and a half, they spend a lot of time setting up Robin’s secret origin. We get to see the good guys go off to the Crusades (King Richard and Maid Marion’s father) and we see Robin and his dad hanging out together at the big archery competition and also get to see Robin and Marion rolling around the forest with one another. I thought this was a Disney movie!

Even worse was when Friar Tuck was sitting all by his lonesome in the woods talking to himself in a woman’s voice! Paging Norman Bates! Paging Norman Bates! A fat, bald guy has just stolen your gimmick!

I don’t know where all this father stuff comes from, but he’s a good role model for Robin which means that he gets shot in the back by the sheriff’s men. This murder sets Robin on his course as outlaw with a heart of gold and it isn’t long before we see that not only is the sheriff so evil that he would have Robin’s dad killed for not joining up with the bad guys, but he would also raise taxes and steal everyone’s goats! First Prince John connives to usurp his brother’s throne and now his cronies are kidnapping farm animals!

Robin and the rest actually mess up the big “Bring Richard’s Wimpy French Ass Back Home” telethon that the Queen is holding in Nottingham’s town square. The sheriff is cajoled into donating and claims that he just can’t give any more, but Robin and his compatriots though have snuck into his castle and liberated all his treasure and “donate” it for him in front of everyone!

A plan is promptly hatched by Prince John and the Sheriff to steal it all back from the Queen and the archbishop while it’s in route to the ransom location. This plan is even made more cunning in that they are going to steal it all back while dressed up as Robin Hood and his Merry Men!

The plan is thwarted and a final showdown is hastily arranged back at the castle so that Robin can rescue Marion and confront the Sheriff.

Instead of the monumental sword fight where Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone clashed like two young gods bent on rending the very Earth from its axis before yielding to one another, you had Richard Todd watch as Peter Finch (yes, the one from Network) gets crunched in a draw bridge before Todd hastily climbs over it and falls into the moat below. The Sheriff of Nottingham defeated by a defective garage door? Is Prince John going to slip in the shower?

The rest of the cast is passable though they aren’t given a lot to do, other than to appear for their standard incidents. Little John gets his moment in the sun during the big stick fight on the bridge with Robin (the closet we get to any real action from Robin). Friar Tuck gets to do his thing when he and Robin fight over who’s going to carry the other across the river. (It goes on so long that when the Sheriff shows up to arrest Robin, you breathe a sigh of relief). Will Scarlet even gets to do his classic bit where he stands around wearing a red outfit instead of green.

Nothing much in this seems too authentic since this is one of those costume movies where everyone is dressed in bright colors and all the clothes look like they had just been bought from the Nottingham branch of JCPenney’s.

Even more questionable was the amount of the budget that must have been devoted to Brylcreme for all the men in this movie. These guys had hairdos that look like they were sculpted by Rodin. Can you imagine how nasty it would be to be running around the forest and sweating all that gunk in your eyes? Or how much the bugs would appreciate it?

It’s all innocuous enough, but it has noting to offer that Flynn’s The Adventures of Robin Hood didn’t do ten times better. And in a scheme so devious that even the evil Sheriff of Nottingham couldn’t have conceived of it, two more Richard Todd/Dinsey collaborations, The Sword And The Rose and Rob Roy, The Highland Rogue follow this pointless retread.

© 2010 MonsterHunter

Johnny is the little Nancy-boy of John and Sally. For reasons that remained fuzzy, Suzy and Johnny were being dropped off at Suzy’s mom’s plantation and John was going back to Atlanta without them. This proved to be a bit traumatic for the wussy boy because he starts bawling and begins plotting his grand escape. Johnny takes off down the dirt road and wanders by a group of folks that are singing about Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit. He’s momentarily entranced by the singing, but moves on down the road and sees Uncle Remus telling stories about the various animals that inhabit these parts.

Uncle Remus sees Johnny hiding behind the trees and tells the people who come looking for him to just tell his mother that Johnny is with him. He talks to Johnny after they leave and Johnny tells him that he’s running away. Uncle Remus offers to go with him, but gets him to delay his trip until the morning since it is so late.

While Remus is stalling him, he busts out his first Brer Rabbit story. He tends to let loose these tales whenever little Johnny needs to be taught a lesson about life and such. I guess that’s better than putting his cigarette out on his head or something like my step dad used to do.

The first story just happens to be about when Brer Rabbit tried to run away from his swanky little pad in the briar patch. It ended up with him trapped by Brer Fox, and it was only through a bit of tomfoolery lifted straight out of Tom Sawyer and his whitewashing gag that Brer Rabbit was able to escape, piss off Brer Fox, and make Brer Bear look like a boob. Somehow the point of that story was that you can’t run away from your problems. I personally didn’t get it, but little Johnny did, so he decided to stay put at the plantation.

With Crisis #1 passed, it was time for Crisis #2. This involves Johnny getting a cute little puppy from the white trash that live just down the road. There’s two older boys that are threatening to drown the doggie because it’s the runt and they have a little sister (Ginny) that saves the dog by giving it to Johnny. Since Johnny has a mom whose own husband would rather live in Atlanta without her, she says that they ain’t having no white trash dog named Teenchy and that he needs to get rid of it. Johnny naturally gets rid of it right to Uncle Remus.

These two little hilljacks want their dog back and start bothering Johnny for it. It doesn’t help Johnny that before he got the dog, he showed up around those parts wearing a fancy lad’s velvet outfit complete with lace collar! God, mom! Why don’t you just tape a sign on his forehead reading “Sissy – Please beat the piss out of me!”

What’s Johnny to do about the dog and the local bullies who want him back? Naturally, Uncle Remus remembers when Brer Rabbit was in just such a fix and Johnny uses this story to outwit the mouth breathing brothers who are after Teenchy.

These two young punks figure out that they were played like a moonshine jug and go tattle to Johnny’s mom. She finds out that Remus was harboring this dog and tells him not to tell any more stories to Johnny.

With Uncle Remus on suspension, the drama ratchets up, because it is now Johnny’s birthday party and it promises to be a real gala. Johnny gets his mom to invite Ginny, in spite of her inferior breeding. (This movie gets a bad rap for being racially insensitive when it’s really the low class white family that look like dopes.)

Ginny’s mom makes her a new dress and Johnny comes over to get her. Her brothers follow and push her in the mud causing her to get dirty and cry and causing Johnny to become the Incredible Hulk in a red velvet suit!

Before Johnny gets clubbed with a big stick, Uncle Remus steps in to save the day. Despite his suspension, another Brer Rabbit story is told involving the Laughing Place. After this story, Johnny’s mom shows up and Ginny narcs them out about the all-new Brer Rabbit story they just heard.

Remus gets himself suspended again and this time he knows to get while the getting’s good because he packs up his crap and gets ready to leave the plantation. The movie then becomes Brer Awesome once Johnny gets his ass planted by a crabby bull and Johnny almost visits that big Laughing Place in the sky!

The movie presents a homey, magical version of the old South that surely never existed and the sets look like something you’d see at a Disney theme park, but the relationship between Johnny and Uncle Remus felt genuine. The animated sequences are vintage Disney and it’s fun to see Uncle Remus interact with the animated animals as he tells the stories of Brer Rabbit. The combination of live-action and animation that Disney would return to periodically in the years to come is very well done and one wishes that Disney would give this the release it deserves so we could see it with a pristine print. Overall, I would have to say that this movie was pretty satisfactorial.

© 2010 MonsterHunter

The movie is told through a grown up and off-screen Jeremiah going through a scrap book that he kept of his misspent and sheep-obsessed youth. We learn Jerry wasn’t always some sick freak who slept in the barn with his lamb. In fact, before he loved that sheep, he was in love with a horse!

He used to cut out pictures of famous racehorse Dan Patch and put them in his scary little scrap book, but Dan Patch doesn’t really play any part in the story except that Jerry names the black sheep that is born on his farm after him. At this point, Jerry descends into total madness and starts changing the pictures in his scrapbook from horses to sheep!

Jerry lives with his pinched up old granny who is always on Jerry’s back about saying his prayers, taking his vitamins and doing his homework (was his grandma Hulk Hogan?) and constantly tries to sabotage his budding love affair with Danny. I guess it was his granny’s rejection of his lifestyle choice that caused him to delve into a fantasy life within the scrapbook that was represented by these dumb animated scenes.

I was surprised by how little animation was in this already brief movie. There was maybe three or four different sequences and they tried to teach Jerry life lessons about not giving up and stuff. You had Christopher Columbus sticking it out to discover America, you had this Scottish king named Robert Bruce talking to a spider about not being a quitter (that worked out well, right? I mean, what with Scotland being its own country and all now), and this brainiac owl hosted all this blarney.

The animation looks fine, it’s just that the content is so generic. Let me put it this way: even if you’ve never seen Song Of The South, you probably have a good idea who and what B’rer Rabbit and all his B’rer friends are. You probably wouldn’t be able to pick any of the animated characters from this movie out of a police line up, even if the line up was made up purely of animated sheep, owls, and Robert Bruces unique to this film.

When these cartoon things aren’t happening, the movie eventually decides that it’s going to be about Jerry figuring out a way to take Danny to the county fair to enter him into some type of sheep beauty contest. His problems are multi-fold as Granny doesn’t believe in county fairs (she must be Seventh Day Adventist), Jerry doesn’t have the money to go, and Danny keeps running away (maybe Danny is tired of bad touches masquerading as grooming).

Jerry (with the help of his abysmal animated daydreams) sets about solving these problems. To get the money, he goes out and finds a big tree full of wild honey. This was a disappointment because I was sure that at some point Jerry would be getting chased by a swarm of killer bees, but that never materialized.

As far as Danny running away, Jerry finally chases him down in the swamp. That only leaves Granny to deal with. It turns out that sheep aren’t the only things that can get “lost” in the swamp!

Jerry arranges for Granny to have herself a little accident in the bog and the next thing you know, Jerry’s telling everyone she’s off on a trip to the city to visit her sick sister and he’s dressing in her clothes and talking to himself in her voice. Wait a second – that may have only happened in one of my cartoon daydreams. She may have just eventually given in to get Jerry off her back.

At the county fair, Jerry and Danny have their big showdown with all the fancy sheep and the movie crosses us up by having Danny lose, but just when all is lost, the judges bust out a very special award (pink ribbon – need I say more?) that they haven’t awarded in four years.

I can’t recall what the award was for, but they make a big deal out of how you have to “use what you got” or some bogus feel-good junk all the liberals think we need to pour on kids to improve their self-esteem. Whatever happened to the America I grew up in where we weren’t afraid to tell kids that they suck?

Burl Ives is the best thing in this movie, but he was squandered in the older, buddy role. He didn’t get to sing that much and other than the classic Lavender Blue, the material they gave him was cornpone garbage that Hee-Haw would have rejected.

Bobby Driscoll who was so good in Treasure Island and didn’t screw things up in Song Of The South will irritate you with his toothy, wide-eyed, goober performance. (His best moment is when he briefly rails against God when Danny is lost in the swamp.)

Even Danny the black sheep was a disappointment, showing zero personality and doing little more than running around and busting through screen doors, though he did butt a guy in the ass at the fair. But other than that, this movie didn’t pull the wool over my eyes. Or was it a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Or were they closing the barn door after Danny had already run away to the swamp? Whatever, just crate that smelly animal up and ship him to the market already.

© 2010 MonsterHunter

Alan-A-Dale is depicted here as a rooster which causes the viewer to make an unfortunate comparison to Rock-A-Doodle which is also about singing rooster. Don Bluth, who worked on Robin Hood, directed that one and it makes you wonder what’s up with a guy that would use Alan-A-Dale from this movie as an inspiration for another film. It’s not healthy to be that obsessed with singing roosters.

The action begins long after Robin has formed his band of Merry Men since the first bit of business involves Robin and Little John dressing up as women fortune tellers to rob Prince John as he and his coach travel through Sherwood Forest. How come when a guy has to go into disguise, it always involves granny panties, lipstick, and falsies? Whatever happened to a pair of glasses and a fake beard?

This particular operation (like all of Robin Hood’s schemes in this film) is pretty forgettable and run of the mill and leads to the people of Nottingham getting taxed even more heavily than before. (Thanks Robin. Hope you at least had fun wearing heels.)

Following that debacle is perhaps the worst sequence where these little animals are playing and lose their ball or shuttlecock or whatever it is that 13th century talking British animals played with and they have to go on the grounds of Prince John’s castle to retrieve it.

The animals run into Marion and her attendant Klucky (a fat chicken or “fat chick” in today’s parlance) and the talk soon turns to love and Robin Hood. Marion and one of the little rabbits that idolizes Robin play act like they’re a couple and – I can’t continue or I’ll dry heave all over the keyboard. Let’s just skip to the big archery tournament.

I didn’t really hate the tournament as much as I did most of the rest of the movie, but that only lasted until the tournament degenerated into one of those deals where all the characters are running after and into one another while background music that sounded like surf music played. I thought it was Alan-A-Dale, not Dick Dale!

And even when I despise a movie like I did this one, I’m a big enough fellow to give it credit for what it got right so I can honestly say that it was quite refreshing that when Robin went undercover this time, he kept the leather bustier in the closet and showed up disguised as a stork!

All of this left Prince John a bit peeved and it wasn’t long before Friar Tuck got himself imprisoned for high treason by the Sheriff and is scheduled to be executed at dawn. Of course all this happened only after we had to gag on a particularly noxious scene involving some little bitty mice giving their last farthing to Friar Tuck’s church.

Robin hits the streets as a blind beggar to get the lowdown on this and eventually re-hits the streets as a vulture guard, while Little John disguises himself as the Sheriff (now, those disguises actually make some sense) and proceed to bust not only Friar Tuck out of prison, but the entire population of Nottingham!

Seems that they had all been locked up after they couldn’t meet their ever increasing tax burden. I think that was the least Robin could do, since it was always his smart-aleck doings that embarrassed the Prince and the Sheriff into raising taxes.

Perhaps realizing the reekiness of this movie, Disney then wrapped things up really fast and the next thing you know Robin and Marion are married and all the bad guys are breaking rocks in their prison stripes, King Richard having returned to reclaim his throne.

This was a very trying time for the people of England, but more so for the people of home video who paid more than a farthing to sit through this.

A rotten script that never developed Robin beyond a fox in a green hat and that relegated Marion to about two scenes, while spending entirely too much time with the big lummox Baloo the Bear, I mean Little John, completely scuttled this version of Robin Hood.

The script also presented us with a story that felt like episodes of a continuing series (can you imagine the horror?) with Robin Hood constantly outsmarting the bad guys followed by the bad guys taking it out on the townspeople.

Almost completely absent was Robin and his Merry Men kicking it in the forest. Where were the scenes showing us why Robin inspired loyalty? Why he was a great leader and a lovable rogue? Why Marion loved him? And where was Will Scarlet? I love that guy!

You know, it’s been about a billion years since Errol Flynn owned the role of Robin Hood back in the Triassic Era, but no one has ever come close to capturing the essence of what the story demands of the character: he needs to be dangerous and tough enough to live on the run and tempt the wrath of the British military, but likeable enough to be a folk hero that regular folks don’t fear.

I think Disney should just give up on trying to make a kid-friendly Robin Hood movie, mainly because Flynn’s version still fills the bill. There’s plenty of action, color and funny moments and it never gets too heavy or slow so that kids will get bored.

In contrast, this DVD probably isn’t even safe to have in your home because one of the “bonus features” involves a sing-along with that “Oo-de-lally” and there’s always a chance that your kid will accidentally activate it and well, remember, punch a pillow or a wall, but never punch a child.

© 2010 MonsterHunter

J.D. was of course the country hick who pined away for the girl next door, Willadean. Though he would no doubt chalk up his inability to even get a whiff of Willadean to the unfair competition provided by the city slicker who just moved into the neighborhood, an impartial observer would surely have no choice, but to lay the blame squarely at J.D.’s watermelon-stained feet.

J.D. and his younger brother Freddy maintain a super cool bachelor pad tree house they use to spy on Willadean, her dad’s melon patch, and the new kid (Harley) from the city they immediately tag as a sissy, probably because of his fancy shirt and tie and over-moussed hair.

As all us real American folk from the Heartland are prone to do whenever we see a wimpy kid from the city, J.D. & Freddy set about giving him a good old-fashioned country welcome. By pummeling him with rocks and dirt clods!

They all become fast friends though once J.D. sees that Harley has a horse. And while J.D. is always eager to scheme against Harley in an effort to secure the affections of Willadean, he doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of “paybacks are a bitch.”

Thus we are treated to the scene of Harley hitting his horse in a sensitive spot while J.D. is riding it causing the horse to throw J.D. in a bunch of mud while Harley, Freddy and Willadean laugh uncontrollably!

But like all great clueless virgins everywhere, J.D. has that never say die attitude that is usually quite misplaced. The remainder of the film details the two cunning plans J.D. has to win over Willadean while simultaneously destroying any chance Harley has with her. Proving that the trickery he fell for with the horse was no aberration, J.D.’s plans are notable for one thing: backfiring badly.

His first plan is clearly the stupider of the two (mainly because no sane person could ever believe the second plan even qualified as a plan at all) and involved Willadean’s father and his gigantic seed melon.

A seed melon is apparently a large watermelon that is grown for the purpose of harvesting all the seeds so that you can grow a whole field of freakishly large melons the next summer. It’s guarded day and night by Willadean’s dad, so J.D. figures that if they can steal it, Willadean will be impressed. Because nothing impresses a girl like ruining her father’s livelihood.

J.D. though eager to look awesome in Willadean’s eyes, is not so keen to actually do any hard work or take any risk on her behalf.

He goads Harley into stealing the melon, but shockingly the theft goes horribly wrong when the next morning arrives and Willadean’s father goes into a psychotic rage in front of everyone when he sees the melon is missing. He screams, stomps melons, kicks melons and even bashes them with his rifle before his fury is spent.

Harley proves that big city kids are no good at pulling off big time heists when his conscience and good upbringing get the better of him and he owns up to what he did to Willadean’s dad. He even produces all the seeds from the melon in an attempt to make amends. Willadean is impressed by his courage so the crafty J.D. devises a final stunt to become Willadean’s favorite.

He’s going to make Harley spend one hour in a haunted house that he’s rigged up with all sorts of scary tricks. And he also makes Willadean go up to the second story of the house and back in order to allow her to join his club. Yup, definitely still a virgin.

J.D. gets hosed again when Freddy and Willadean catch on to his game and warn Harley which allows Harley to turn the tables on him. But just as another idiotic plan of his is looking like its going in the opposite direction of Pantytown, the kids discover a bunch of money in the house!

And they discover a tramp with a Chihuahua also in the house! And the tramp used to be millionaire! And none of it had anything to do with anything! At least it wasn’t actively ruining J.D.’s chances with Willadean. Like everything J.D. did!

Surprisingly fun and entertaining, For the Love of Willadean is highlighted by Sammy the Way-Out Seal stars Michael McGreevey as J.D. and Billy Mummy as Freddy.

J.D.’s desperation to please Willadean is portrayed in amusing fashion as he constantly shifts his views to mirror hers while Freddy hilariously complains and disagrees with all the stupid stuff J.D. gets him involved with because of J.D.’s infatuation with Willadean.

The suspenseful watermelon theft is worth a viewing all by itself! It’s like watching The Great Escape in a vegetable garden!

© 2010 MonsterHunter

What if I told you that instead of a mystery, we had a case of stolen jewels? And if I said that while we couldn’t rent Dracula’s castle for this movie, we got a lighthouse sitting atop a rocky cliff?

And if instead of the terror of Dracula himself, we had the terror of not only Clu Gulager’s crazy silver mane of hair, but also Johnny Whitaker’s three-story high red perm? And when I tell you that Watson is a dog who steals stuff, you’ll immediately realize that we’re watching a very special two-part episode of That 70s Disney!

That 70s Disney was all about obscure made-for-TV adventures with such chubby-inducing names as Bayou Boy, The Ghost of Cypress Swamp and Strange Monster Of Strawberry Cove. A few of these have been available on home video, but for the most part That 70s Disney remains an untapped treasure trove and fans must be content to get by solely on their fuzzy memories of the shows from their original airings.

The Mystery in Dracula’s Castle initially focuses on Alfie Booth’s (Whitaker) irritating obsession with making a terrible movie about Dracula. His little brother, Leonard, and his mom (Polaroid commercial hottie Mariette Hartley) are spending the summer at the beach so that mom can work on her book.

Though Alfie is peeved that he has to leave his best friend back in the city, once he’s at the beach getting mixed up with jewel thieves, a klepto dog, and a nubile teenage babysitter, you can damn sure bet that once summer is over, he’s counting the days until the next summer and the onset of puberty!

It’s Alfie’s pathetic attempts at being a budding Roger Corman that bring him to the lighthouse that is serving as the hideout for a pair of crooks who are holding a necklace worth $100,000.

Alfie demonstrates a low budget filmmaker’s opportunistic, if not entirely artistic, eye by declaring that the lighthouse would be the perfect location for Dracula’s castle. (You can’t help but feel though that there’s just something about a structure whose purpose is to house a mammoth light in a room of glass that doesn’t seem like it would have the proper atmosphere for a vampire. Clu Gulager and his ugly partner? Yes. A skulking Bela Lugosi? Not so much.)

Clu is not too amused that these brats are shooting their summer blockbuster inside his lair and does what any self-respecting criminal would do in That 70s Disney – he drives them back to their mom and complains about their lack of supervision!

This leads to the best development in the movie, the hiring of the sheriff’s teenage daughter, Jean, to babysit the boys for the rest of the summer. Alfie is a bit irritated by this as he feels this could put a crimp in his directing chores, but is quickly sold on it once it becomes apparent that Jean has no problem slipping into a bathing suit for a location shoot at the lighthouse of all places!

The movie switches focus from Alfie to his brother once Watson manages to steal the necklace from the original thieves! Leonard develops a disturbing obsession with the necklace and refuses to trade it with the local jeweler/fence for a ring that Alfie wants to use in his film.

The pouty looks whenever anyone suggests he part with it and his insistence on wearing the woman’s necklace while shooting his remaining scenes as Dracula suggest it may be a good idea for Mariette to hire a babysitter for her dresses, too.

The suspense and drama only ratchet up when during filming at the lighthouse, Clu’s partner manages to replace Leonard’s precious necklace with a fake and then “accidentally” drops it over the edge of the rocky cliff the lighthouse sits on. Leonard has such a fixation on this hideous piece of junk that he risks his life by scuttling down the cliff to get it back!

Realizing it’s a fake, Leonard launches an investigation into who could have stolen the real necklace and it culminates on the night of the premiere of Alfie’s criminally underrated film, Dracula And The Sheriff’s Daughter!

It was a night to remember as the jewel thieves, the sheriff and his daughter (thoughtfully dressed to the nines in hotpants and go go boots), mom and Alfie all watch his movie while Leonard and Watson sneak back to the lighthouse to rescue his necklace.

Things come to an explosive finale as all the kids somehow manage to get themselves captured and locked in the lighthouse! You’ll barely be able to breathe when the fireworks they were using to attack the thieves accidentally light up all the dynamite also in the lighthouse!

The Mystery in Dracula’s Castle hits all the right notes for this sort of thing and there’s even plenty of dog thrills for all the goobers that like to see dogs get chased by incompetent humans.

Fans of model lighthouses getting blown sky high are well served as are aficionados of safecrackers almost getting blown up while trying to open a safe. Simply the very best title of any That 70s Disney episode of the 1973 season.

© 2010 MonsterHunter

You’ve got Elsa Lanchester who plays the nosy landlady that doesn’t like dogs. Thirty some odd years prior to this, she was the Bride in Bride Of Frankenstein. Dwayne Hickman, who is best remembered as Dobie Gillis and the younger brother of Daryl Hickman, is the star. There’s also Mary Ann Mobley who was Miss America once upon a time!

There’s even a guy in this movie that was in McHale’s Navy! Are you salivating yet?

The first thing you notice when the feature begins is this astoundingly un-catchy theme song that goes on and on and on, describing what a thief this dog Barabbas was. I couldn’t make out half the lyrics to this one because some guys were doing a bad impression of the Beach Boys while a woman’s high pitched voice caterwauled, apparently indifferent to whatever the guys were trying to accomplish.

To its credit, the song managed to set up the fact that this dog is a kleptomaniac since it played during a montage of him stealing lunches, golf balls, gloves and sexy panties (okay, I made that last one up, but you know that’s what the dog was really after) while all the townspeople rose up against him and finally forced the owner to ship his thieving ass back to the pound.

En route to the dog pound, Barabbas (named after the thief in the Bible) runs his big jailbreak play and bolts for the airfield just outside of town.

He hitches a ride with mild mannered traffic reporter Jack Crandall and foam-mouthed hilarity ensues!

Watch as Barabbas tries to crash the helicopter! Squeal with delight as Barabbas sneaks a donut from Jack’s lunch! Piss your pants with laughter as Barabbas tries to choke out Jack with the microphone cord!

As you might have guessed, Jack and Barabbas become instant celebrities. The station manager tells Jack that he and Barabbas are partners, so Jack goes to the pound and grudgingly adopts Barabbas, but not before being informed that Barabbas has been adopted and returned eight times before!

Now, just adopting a delinquent dog isn’t the only problem that Jack faces. He happens lives in an apartment building where dogs are strictly prohibited because the old landlady’s cat is allergic to them. You know what this means, don’t you? A really huge box that gets put over top of Barabbas as Jack attempts to smuggle him in like a pack of cancer sticks into the county jail!

So with Barabbas in this box and riding the elevator up with the landlady and Jack’s new neighbor, Miss America, the dog starts whining and Jack has to play it off like he was yawning.

This is just about as close as My Dog, the Thief gets to comedy. You’re not going to actually laugh, but if there was a moment in the movie where you theoretically might have thought about laughing, this one would probably be that time. But it really isn’t funny.

During one of their traffic reports, Barabbas lets on that he needs to take a whiz. So Jack sets the copter down in the boondocks and Barabbas runs off to do his business.

This is when the bumbling jewel thieves that everyone in the audience knew had to be in a movie like this finally make their appearance. They’ve stolen the Cosgrove necklace and are en route to their leader to turn it over to him. Suddenly a tire blows out and they end up right smack dab where Barabbas was going to drain the lizard!

The necklace is in a lunch pail and Barabbas snatches it and hightails it into the weeds. He returns to the copter and Jack and he take off, with Jack none the wiser as to Barabbas’ latest felony theft.

The standard kidnap and ransom demand follow as the thieves try to recover the necklace. Jack is lured to some out of the way place where he gets held at gunpoint and is made to fly the copter to where Barabbas last had the lunch pail.

This is pretty shoddy, even by late sixties live-action Disney standards. That should be obvious from the odd collection of ex-movie stars, child actors, and beauty queens, but it’s all run through the bland Disney machine so that there isn’t even anything remotely campy or kitschy about it.

Hickman isn’t particularly memorable like Dean Jones or even Tommy Kirk. He stands around looking a bit constipated most of the time and is forced to make dog noises once in awhile to cover up for Barabbas. (Though I think it’s obvious those dog noises are dubbed in, so he’s really just pretending to make dog noises. Does that make it better or worse?)

There’s nothing surprising about this one and it’s merely a particularly anemic version of the “wacky animal and stupid criminal” movies the Disney company seemed to have a fetish for during this time period.

© 2010 MonsterHunter