THE WONDERFUL LAND OF OZ (1969)/JACK AND THE BEANSTALK (1970)
Director: Barry Mahon
Something Weird Video

Something Weird's last DVD double feature in 2002 is a real pip! I still can't believe the company took the chance of releasing a double-feature disc of crazed kiddie flicks! In the early to mid 1960s, New York City-based director Barry Mahon churned out film after film after film to grindhouse theatres. Never mind that most of them were uninspired pieces of garbage (and I mean that in a bad way). Like a rusty conveyor belt, he unleashed dozens of nudie-cuties that were almost identical to one another, and none of them too interesting except for NYC favorites Darlene Bennett, Rita Bennett, and Gigi Darlene appearing in the casts. He then moved on to more dime-a-dozen roughies and the lousy FANNY HILL series before relocating to Florida and lensing a number of off-the-wall kiddie flicks for his new production company Childhood Productions, which also released several dubbed features (PUSS N BOOTS, THE BIG BAD WOLF, etc.).

THE WONDERFUL LAND OF OZ stars Mahon's son Channy as Tip, a mischievous little ragamuffin who creates a pumpkinhead man to scare his stepmother Mombi (why anyone would marry Mombi is left unexplained). Before Mombi can turn Tip into a statue as punishment, he brings Jack the Pumpkinhead to life with Mombi's magic powder and the two set out to the Emerald City, ruled by the Scarecrow. En route, Tip encounters General Jinjur, a hot-to-trot but thoroughly obnoxious teenage girl in a high school band uniform who plans to conquer Emerald City with her all-teenage-girl army! Yikes! With the help of Jack the Pumpkinhead, the Wogglebug (don't ask), the Tin Man (who apparently doesn't need his oil can anymore), Glinda the Good Fairy, and a flying sofa, Tip manages to overthrow General Jinjur and a happy ending is found for all....except for one character who undergoes a magical sex change!!!! See it to believe it!

OZ can be seen as a painfully low-budget precursor to 1985's RETURN TO OZ, the modern cult classic that used almost all of the main characters seen here. Jack the Pumpkinhead, Mombi, Princess Ozma, and the flying sofa would all be recycled, albeit much more successfully, in the modern Disney film. OZ is never really boring, the viewer is too busy rubbing his eyes with disbelief to fall asleep! The costumes and sets are garishly awful, acting all-around ranges from wooden to over-the-top, and most importantly, you'll want to bust your TV in during every musical number! The songs feature ridiculous lyrics and tone-deaf singing, and it doesn't help that everyone starts singing at the drop of a hat. This may be Barry Mahon's most elaborate production, which doesn't mean much, but it compares well to other cheapie kiddie productions of the time. It's better-made than Herschell Gordon Lewis' kiddie pics from the same period, and could be on a par with similar features from Mexico and Germany.

JACK AND THE BEANSTALK is a tad stupider than OZ. To start with, the characters this time are 100% lamer, the songs even more moronic, and the special effects and production design resembling more of a cheap regional theater play than Mahon's previous kiddie outing. Mahon's Jack is a dangerously effeminate rascal, the perfect example of the type of chorus member on Broadway who schemes and backstabs to get better parts and holds up films like JACK AND THE BEANSTALK with pride on their resume. Yuck! The mother has a pseudo-Southern accent (sounding and looking like character actress Jessie Lee Fulton), the older daughter is a whiny brat who frets about getting married and eventually marries a Hispanic jerk who schemes to use the family's fortune for his own ends. The giant looks like, well, a giant, but his singing solos are embarrassing. And BEANSTALK has not one, but *two* Marcia Brady look-alikes!! You'll have trouble getting these songs out of your head: "Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman; Fee fi fo fo, he's right nearby I know!" A tad more memorable than OZ's score, but twice as grating! And the sing-a-long ending where everyone in the village barges into Jack's hut to sing the finale will leave you ripping at your eyes with rage!

Both films have been digitally remastered from incredibly rare prints. Oz's negative has gone missing, but the transfer is quite nice. Colors are well balanced, despite a fair amount of grain and some dark spots. BEANSTALK looks considerably better, the transfer having been taken from the original negative. The mono audio track doesn't pack any punches, and you'll have to crank the volume to hear dialogue, then drop it back down again when the ridiculous tunes begin!

Those viewers who regularly purchase Something Weird's sex-n-violence DVDs will notice the difference in this one right off the bat: the lengthy SWV promo reel that prefaces each DVD has been omitted in favor of a simple SWV logo with music. From this opening, you can rest assured this is one you can share with the kiddies, for better or worse.... Consider this 2002's answer to 2001's MONSTERS CRASH THE PAJAMA PARTY disc: the Something Weird disc to pop into the DVD player that the entire family can enjoy with no fear of being offended.

SWV has compiled one of the largest trailer collections of their recent discs, overflowing with foreign oddities and plenty of long-lost curios that would be worth digging up. Two trailers appear for WONDERFUL LAND OF OZ ("So many thrills you'll be OZIFIED!"), but none for JACK AND THE BEANSTALK (hmm....). TOM THUMB is a Mexican classic with Cesareo Quezadas (also in SANTA CLAUS) as the title character, who encounters a multi-colored giant who is whisked above the ground by wires as he pretends to run! Pretty neat special effects, including a giant hand a la ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN. A double feature preview for SNOW WHITE AND ROSE RED coupled with THE BIG BAD WOLF spotlights two German films. A dwarf is always shown in fast motion and there's a pretty hilarious bear costume in ROSE RED, and BIG BAD WOLF's wolf costume puts the one in the LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD films to shame. The entire cast (including a family of goat kids) performs in giant animal costumes! THE GOLDEN GOOSE is another German film ("more fun than a barrel of monkeys!") with a shoemaker wooing a princess. The goose takes a backseat to the irritating singing and dancing. LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD and LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD MEETS THE MONSTERS are two of a Mexican series starring Maria Gracia. The former is a laugh riot, with inept songs, borderline pedophiliac affection for Little Red, and Stinky the Skunk and the Wicked Wolf in mangy costumes! Unfortunately the trailer doesn't highlight Little Red's singing, which is dubbed by an adult female opera singer! THE MONSTERS includes Mr. Hurricane (who creates storms with his breath!), the Robot, Carrothead (resembling a pinhead from FREAKS!), the Siamese Twins, and Frankenstein, and the evil queen of Snow White is copied right down to her costume! Don't mistake Stinky the Skunk, the Big Bad Wolf, and the Friendly Red-Headed Ogre as villains, apparently they've turned over new leaves since TOM THUMB and RED RIDING HOOD. And Cesareo Quezadas appears as Tom Thumb! PUSS N BOOTS is another German flick with a ridiculous theme song performed by the human-sized prancing cat himself! Not to be confused with the Mexican movie of the same name, whose trailer is also on this disc; that one looks mildly more interesting and doesn't have that stupid singing cat! Puss does have multiple swordfights, though. THE NEVER NEVER PRINCESS is a German movie I've been searching for years to find! It tells the tale of a princess tricked by a goosegirl into switching identities and she ends paying for it dearly. Her only friend is a disembodied horse's head that hangs over an archway in the village. It has no IMDB entry. THE BRAVE LITTLE TAILOR is a German production that doesn't seem to have much to recommend it, except perhaps two garish giants and an unbelievable wild boar and raging unicorn!! Yeah, I'd watch it. THE CLOWN AND THE KIDS stars Emmett Kelly, "the world's greatest clown", in this modern updating of "The Pied Piper." Jacques Demy's version looks more interesting, except his version probably doesn't have an army of kids attacking the adults sent to retrieve them! PINOCCHIO seems to be a German adaptation of the Collodi tale. The villain is named Stromboli (!), children sprout donkey ears when they're lazy, and Pinocchio is an actual friggin' puppet!! Wonder what ever happened to this film? THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER is an American flick packed with stupid songs and the pauper is played by a dead ringer for the queen who played Jack in BEANSTALK! THE SECRET OF MAGIC ISLAND is a nice surprise: the entire cast are made up of animals! An evil cat plays an organ!! Baby birds are in a choir!! Ducks fly in hot air balloons!! Dogs ride amusement park rides!! A space age monkey tries to capture the animals to take back to his home planet?!?!?! Does any print of this film exist? I must, MUST see it!! SLEEPING BEAUTY is another German wonder with some really gorgeous sets and costumes. Interestingly enough, the majority of these films have relatively high production values and seem to have been lavish projects for all involved. It's a shame their badly dubbed and butchered U.S. versions may be the only ones available in this country. The twisted kiddie flick genre is not an immensely popular one, unfortunately, and lavish treatment will likely not be given to the films presented here.

The short subjects will appease all those who have a little bit of a kid in them. That includes me! "Kiddieland" would be terminally boring if it didn't provide a nostalgic glimpse at a 1960s amusement park. Two children walk the grounds and experience the rides of an amusement park. No dialogue, just great calliope music. The remaining shorts are all animated cartoons that appeared on SWV's CLASSIC CARTOON RARITIES VOLS 3-4. Russian cartoons procured for a syndicated kids show that was abandoned, these very rare shorts sure ain't not the Looney Tunes, but are imaginative and entertaining regardless. "The Two Magicians" seems to be a Russian cartoon (love these!) about a young boy who encounters an evil magician who jumps from a storybook into real life! The magician displays his magic powers, while the little boy uses modern technology to wow his adversary. "The Trouble Shooter" tells the tale of a mini robot who helps little children fix their toys. In one case, he fights a talking frog to get back a little girl's toy boat! "Woody in Fool's Land" doesn't use the name 'Pinocchio', but the main character 'Woody' is a caricature of the famous literary character. He crosses a bridge into a village populated by backwards animals and bizarre goings-on.

The largest extra is the 32-minute featurette THE MAGIC LAND OF MOTHER GOOSE, a condensed version of H.G. Lewis' most baffling film, and better yet, with no SWV watermark and split into chapters! In what is essentially a filmed play (the entire feature takes place on a stage with one surrounding), King Cole emerges from Mother Goose's nursery rhymes book and encounters Merlin the Magician ("I come from everywhere and I came on a whisp of smoke...."), Raggedy Ann, and "all our friends from Fantasy Land", consisting of a bunch of people in stupid animal and jester costumes. Merlin performs some stupid tricks, King Cole matches a homely princess up with her prince charming, the characters dance to "Once Upon a Dream" (I'm sure Disney had no knowledge of the song being illegally lifted!), and the best thing about the film: an evil witch who turns everything red and berates every character in the style of Margaret Hamilton ("I see everybody is happy! And I hate happy! I hate everybody!"). As much fun as this sounds, I find it hard to recommend viewing this abomination. It reminded me of "The Christmas That Almost Wasn't But Then Was" from an episode of "The Simpsons" in terms of technical and aesthetic stupidity ("That elf has been singing for two hours!").

Don't neglect to see the Gallery of Kiddie Matinee Klassicks! Packed with stills, ad mats, advertisements, articles, pressbooks, and actual matinee ticket stubs, all set to tunes from WONDERFUL LAND OF OZ, this is one of the best galleries I've seen on a SWV disc in a long time! Two Kiddie Easter Eggs appear on the extras menus. The Kiddie Stuff main menu holds an advertisement for an all-cartoon marathon at a local theater and hunting in the Trailers Menu will find an advertisement proclaiming "Free Comic Book with Each Ticket Every Saturday and Sunday Matinee!".

At least Mahon's kiddie flicks aren't as terrible as his earlier New York features, but they're pretty close. Still, I'm glad Something Weird has decided to dig into their childrens' cinema with such a well-done DVD. Here's hoping they see fit to release more of their acquisitions, including JIMMY THE BOY WONDER, the LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD films, TOM THUMB, RUMPELSTILTSKIN, and the countless other films they hold in their library. 2002 has ended with a bang for this company, and even the sickest of perverts who frequent SWV's merchandise should track this one down, if not for curiosity's sake, to appease the child within themselves. (Casey Scott)

 

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