Menace on the Mountain (1970)

March 27, 2014April 27, 2019 ~ monsterhunter ~ Leave a comment

Menace On The Mountain (another two part Disney show from the 1970s taped together into a TV movie) is as toothless as one of the old coots that hung around town cowering before the villainous Poss Timmerlake.

The story of an ugly red headed kid (Jed) with big pouty lips who constantly whines about how his pa was last seen gutshot at some Civil War battle and that he wished he was man enough to take on this Poss dude, doesn’t generate much interest beyond the questionable thrill you get from watching Jed chase after his pet pig. Continue reading “Menace on the Mountain (1970)” →

Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959)

March 17, 2014February 25, 2019 ~ monsterhunter ~ Leave a comment

At the risk of having one of the wee folk put the come hither on me and replace my kids with changelings, I’m going to go ahead and declare that Darby O’Gill And The Little People was nothing so much as a lot of potato-breathed blarney that even an Irishman full of cheap stout could not have enjoyed. Continue reading “Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959)” →

In Search of the Castaways (1962)

February 25, 2014October 27, 2019 ~ monsterhunter ~ Leave a comment

Jules Verne plus Walt Disney equals really bad special effects and a disjointedly confusing story. Most of the blame surely rests with Disney since I doubt very much that Verne’s novel included an aged and slumming Maurice Chevalier sitting on a fake horse and singing about climbing mountains. Continue reading “In Search of the Castaways (1962)” →

The Strange Monster of Strawberry Cove (1971)

January 27, 2014February 21, 2015 ~ monsterhunter ~ 4 Comments

I suppose that when a TV show runs something like 35 years, you’re bound to run into some episodes that feel like they were just thrown on the air to fulfill whatever commitment the production company had to the network for original programming. Disneyland, after all, couldn’t exactly run Pinocchio, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or Pollyanna once a month. Sometimes you had to rely on that tried and true variation of kids getting mixed up in small time crime that could be resolved in two one hour long episodes. Continue reading “The Strange Monster of Strawberry Cove (1971)” →

The Wacky Zoo of Morgan City (1970)

January 21, 2014 ~ monsterhunter ~ Leave a comment

You can have Dr. Seuss’s If I Ran the Zoo with its totally made up monsters, exotic lands, and that praise-craving brat Gerald McGrew. If I ran a freaking zoo, I’d do it just like Mitch Collins (Hal Holbrook) did in Wacky Zoo of Morgan City with its run down and surely dangerous and inhumane cages, toothless lion that has low blood pressure and eats oatmeal, camel who can only eat a couple of carrots at a time due to digestive issues, and penguin who demands to swim in warm water. Continue reading “The Wacky Zoo of Morgan City (1970)” →

The Monkey’s Uncle (1965)

January 8, 2014October 27, 2019 ~ monsterhunter ~ Leave a comment

Once the movie actually starts (the opening credits take long enough that we have to hear every bit of that horrible, horrible song sung by co-star Annette Funicello with the Beach Boys inexplicably backing her up) director Robert Stevenson (Jane Eyre, The Gnome-Mobile) slavishly hews to the same structure as its predecessor, The Misadventures of Merlin Jones. That means there’s not so much an actual movie going on, but rather two more installments of the Merlin Jones TV show which never existed. Of course, when you’re dealing with a gizmo that lets you learn in your sleep and a flying machine you pedal yourself, this is a good thing. Continue reading “The Monkey’s Uncle (1965)” →

The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964)

December 29, 2013April 28, 2019 ~ monsterhunter ~ Leave a comment

If this movie let me down at all, it was that there simply weren’t enough misadventures detailed, though even the filmmakers would acknowledge this and immediately respond to American’s insatiable appetite for pointless experiments involving chimps and long-suffering girlfriends by serving up a sequel, The Monkey’s Uncle, only a year later.

There isn’t a story per se going on in this one – it’s more of an episodic slice of life affair, detailing a few days in the topsy-turvy life of Merlin Jones, a guy that spends his time driving around town with a helmet containing lots of wires and electrodes on his head. Continue reading “The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964)” →