TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE

I was just reading my quick post below about It Came From Outer Space, and realized I had a scene from this film in mind when I mentioned bad girl blonds... I don't think there was a platinum-haired young lady with "DOOMED" stamped on her forehead (to pay for her lusty thoughts, one presumes) in that film.

Instead, she appeared (briefly) in Teenagers From Outer Space, which was a fantastically entertaining 1950s "aliens from space" film we all enjoyed not long ago. (Yeah, we're on a bit of a '50s sci-fi kick here, but that happens!)

You'll understand my confusing the two movies, as both have a similar theme running through them that was rather atypical of the time: these aliens didn't choose our fair planet for conquering or blowing up, but rather as a temporary home for different purposes: in essence, for doing a little work under the hood in the former, and for growing food in the latter. Ok, more specifically, in Teenagers, they need to find an environment suitable for breeding the giant creatures on which they feed their human-like populace. The creatures are called Gargons, which coincidentally resemble very, very large lobsters, and make one's mouth water for a good portion of the film.

Teenagers is hilarious in many ways, and one of the most confounding quirks is that the actors portraying the "teens" look to be about 30 years old. Our hero, Derek, is the handsome young man -- er, teen -- alien who changes his mind about the whole plan, realizing it imperils Earth humans, and he's developed a bit of a crush on one of them, the perky Betty.

But other aliens don't share his view, and out come the laser guns, which can reduce a living, breathing body to a pile of bones (maybe this is more of a PG outing for younger viewers). There’s a fair amount of action, a moral message that ... um... not all teenagers are bad, and it’s just a whole lot of laughs.

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (G)

I nearly forgot to write this one up! I had another post ready to go and realized I’d somehow skipped over one of the finest ‘50s saucers-from-space flicks we’ve yet seen. Yikes.

Ok, since it’s been a while and I didn’t take notes, I’ll give you the briefest review possible: It Came From Outer Space has all we love about the genre, some really good acting, hilariously fun stereotypes (why are blonds always the bad girls?!), beautiful scenery (the southwest desert), and it’s got one heck of a moral theme running through it -- one about paranoia, ignorance-generated fear, and conformity. Excellent.

This was -- allegedly -- the biggest influence on Steven Spielberg when he made Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and it was originally released in 3-D. Occasionally you'll find it playing in art houses (such as our much-missed Castro Theater in SF where it played a couple of years ago). Based on a Ray Bradbury novel, you can pick out the professor from "Gilligan’s Island" if you’re one of us older and wiser people.

You'll find more KidsFlix recommendations along these lines in our sci-fi fantasy category.

Harold Lloyd Collections (G)

I wrote a while back about one of the greatest silent comedies, Safety Last! starring Harold Lloyd, and there are a number of collections that feature his work in short form. I'm revisiting Lloyd (and should mention Chaplin and Keaton in this breath, too) to remind you that short films may be a great way to get kids raised on color screens interested in these silent, black and white classics.

We recently rented The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection (Vol. 2) from Netflix, when my 9-year old nephew was visiting, and weren't sure it would hold his attention. Son K is accustomed by now to his parents pushing ... unusual ("to a kid," he says, in the same way he says, "No kid eats grilled peaches" -- or, insert most any non-pizza/burger food item here -- "You just think they do!") movie fare his way, but we weren't sure about his cousin.

To our delight, it worked. These things are so much fun, and so out of the ordinary for today's kids, I urge you again to consider these for family movie night. Again, try the shorts first for many of these classics; some run 20 minutes, some closer to an hour, but all may be easier for the first time out.

(See my post on Laurel and Hardy movies here.)

THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1948) (G)

There are so many film versions of the great Alexander Dumas story The Three Musketeers that it can be a challenge just to pick one! We had both the 1973 and this 1948 version on our list for a while, and the 1948 version ended up arriving first. We may keep the other in the queue, as it’s apparently a sillier, more comical version (it stars Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain and even Charlton Heston) that is a lot of fun, and quite different from the others.

The earliest Musketeers film is the 1921 Douglas Fairbanks version, a black and white silent vehicle that is no doubt glorious on its own terms. (The choreography is said to be quite stunning.) But the 1948 version caught my eye for a number of reasons, including Vincent Price starring as the evil Cardinal Richelieu and a young Gene Kelly as the earnest and dashing D'Artagnan who joins the Three Musketeers in interrupting Richelieu’s dastardly plot to overthrow the king.

Filmed in Technicolor, the visuals are very appealing for kids (and adults!), with gowns and jewels and the French countryside drenched in rich color. As I suspected, Kelly is superb as D’Artagnan, who is a bit green -- coming from a small country village to the big city of Paris -- but reliably cocky and self-assured, and rightly so; his sword skills are astonishing to all who unfortunately cross his path, and his footwork is magical. (You know, of course, that Gene Kelly is even better known for his dancing, in movies such as Singing in the Rain, right?)

The writing sparkles and jabs, it’s fast moving and witty. If your kids aren’t totally absorbed by the film in the first 15 minutes or so, when an acrobatic swashbuckling scene unfolds with all kinds of smart visual jokes neatly woven in, I would be surprised.

If that happens, then get them the animated, Disney version, and save this one for your own date night. (PS: Note that the G-rating is my own, and it may in fact be more of a PG movie as far as younger kids go ... it's officially labeled NR, meaning Not Rated.)

WINCHESTER '73 (PG)

In 1876, the rare and coveted ’73 Winchester rifle was the “gun that won the west,” and when our hero Jimmy Stewart -- er, I mean Lin McAdam --wins one in a shooting contest (one of many great scenes in this classic western), you know there’s trouble ahead.

The gun is stolen, and what follows is a series of tense standoffs and misadventures between McAdam and a dirty, rotten character named Dutch Henry. Son K points out: “Like most westerns, you got your good guy, your bad guy, a tough girl,” (Shelley Winters) “... attacking Indians, some gun fights and fast horse riding.”

Yeah, that about sums it up. But it’s superbly acted, tightly directed (by Anthony Mann, who also directed El Cid, Spartacus, and The Fall of the Roman Empire, among many others), and the story goes easy on the depictions of boozing and hard livin’ women. (Winters does play a former “dance hall” girl, but there aren’t any scenes too racy or difficult to explain to the kiddies regarding her past.)

Of course, there’s some violence. People get killed, and some of the villains are oustanding examples of the dark side of humanity.

Just put on your best Jon Lovitz impression, and remind the kids, “It’s just ... acting!”

(Oh, a warning: do not read the summary on Netflix! They have a huge spoiler in their brief description of the film. Also, have fun finding a young Rock Hudson and a young Tony Curtis in the movie. One plays an Indian chief. Hilarious. )

- Scene during a night ride, Lin and his partner, High-Spade Frankie Wilson, know they’re surrounded by Indians on the war path:

Lin McAdam: Yeah, I hear 'em.
High-Spade Frankie Wilson: I told you night riding wasn't smart.
Lin McAdam: I guess you did.
High-Spade Frankie Wilson: Now we're smack in the middle of 'em.
Lin McAdam: I guess you're right again.
High-Spade Frankie Wilson: Being right ain't gonna do us any good. What do we do now?
Lin McAdam: Well, keep riding.
High-Spade Frankie Wilson: With injuns all around us?
Lin McAdam: Maybe you'd feel better if we stopped?
High-Spade Frankie Wilson: Ah... no.
Lin McAdam: Well, then maybe we better just keep riding...

MARX BROTHERS' DUCK SOUP (G)

Well, we didn't exactly have a Marx Brothers fest this weekend (as predicted earlier), but we did make a second attempt to charm son K with a Marx Brothers classic. I can't say it was a successful endeavor.

A few years ago, we tried Night at the Opera, but it was clear that K was too young to keep pace with the speedy dialogue and definitely too young to understand the humor. So, at age 12, we figured we'd try again; this is, after all, a kid who has grown up seeing black and white films of all kinds, and has a fairly mature sense of humor.

This time out, we tried Duck Soup ... but with pretty much the same results. Duck Soup is barely over an hour long, so not a huge time investment. Groucho is appointed leader of the country of Freedonia, and his brand of absurdist governing is hilarious at the same time it feels slightly dated and sexist. But his bluntly chauvinistic character is part of the charm (isn't it?) and so you don't really tsk tsk so much as you rather guiltily chuckle along to the gags. 

But of course, most of this inarguably adult humor is lost on kids.  

Unless you are dying to get a Marx Brothers fix yourself, and want to test your own kids' capacity for staccato one-liners and double entendres with phrases they may not be familiar with, I'd say these films are probably better saved for later.    

NANOOK OF THE NORTH (G)

Filmmaker Robert Flaherty spent some years traveling the far points of the earth -- mining, mapping, and exploring -- and took up an interest in film while on an expedition for Sir William Mackenzie's Canadian railroad. Original footage capturing Inuit life in the harsh Hudson Bay regions in Canada were destroyed in a fire upon Flaherty’s return home, but only after enjoying a wildly enthusiastic response from those who saw it. He returned to the far north with the sole purpose of filming in mind -- Nanook of the North is widely considered the first documentary film made, and Flaherty is considered a progenitor of “ethnographic film.”

This is a short, silent (black and white, need we say it?) movie that even your bounciest of kids may be able to sit through, as one scene after another is a jaw-dropping delight. Witnessing the patience and stealth needed to ice fish, to kill a monstrous, blubbery walrus, or to carefully construct an air-tight igloo (the window remodel scene was just the most awesome thing!), is mind boggling, and what’s better than visuals that happen to be fascinating and educational at the same time?

Husband D and I were so glad we saw this, even though we had to wrangle an increasingly impatient, pre-teen K into sitting through it. But we marveled over scenes, wondering how much was staged, and how much was natural.


I’m not going to spoil it by telling them that, according to Wikipedia, much of it was staged (some forgivably and necessarily, considering the restraints of filmmaking equipment at the time). Flaherty also wanted to show the historical, traditional ways of life in the far north, so, for example, although the Inuit at the time were using firearms for hunting they put them aside for the film. Nanook’s wife was not really his wife, but an actress.

Harder to take, according to Wikipedia (however, a “citation needed” notation appears next to this tidbit), is that Flaherty may have put Nanook and others in jeopardy all in the name of a few good shots. The worst of it is a detail credited on Wikipedia to Melanie McGrath's book, The Long Exile: A Tale of Inuit Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic: Flaherty reportedly had an affair with the woman playing Nanook’s wife, and fathered a son that he never owned up to.

There is absolutely no mention of this on IMDB, so perhaps Wikipedia’s claims and sources are incorrect. I like to think that’s possible.

All that aside, this film was one of the first 25 films to be selected in 1989 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Forgiving the manipulation Flaherty may have felt necessary at the time to get his point across, one can certainly applaud the Film Registry’s effort, and enjoy this film simply for its purpose and spirit, and the truths that lie in it, even if they are perhaps slightly distorted. Flaherty had real foresight and vision; he also had an abundance of resourcefulness and creativity, and he possessed an admirable adventurousness, to say the least.


(There is a 1994 film depicting Flaherty’s making of Nanook, called Kabloonak [it means, “stranger], and one reviewer on IMDB calls it “A work of Existential art.” It might be worth checking out.)

Weekly Classic Kids' Movie

I haven’t yet done a Kids’ Classic of the Week that was a thumbs down. Until now.

Listen, Where the Red Fern Grows (1974) might have been a fine novel, and perhaps a fine movie back in 1974, but I just can’t recommend it in 2009.

The story of a boy and his “coon hounds” takes place in 1930’s Ozark Mountains in Oklahoma. I will say this: I know it’s unfair to say it feels like an extended Waltons special, but it does (I’d rather watch The Waltons, a wonderful TV series, again), and I couldn’t shake it. (It doesn’t help that Beverly Garland, the mom, kept reminding me of Michael Learned’s Mother Walton).

Beyond squirming (me, not son K, who walked in and out of the movie three times) through scenes such as chopping down huge, beautiful trees just to catch a raccoon (really? is that what they did?), or a mountain lion vs. dog fight (that was real, staged for the cameras), the movie felt flat, slow (sloooow) and incredibly dated. Some of these things just don’t hold up well. You can’t argue.

Long stretches of the kid running through beautiful Ozark mountains and meadows, with Andy Williams crooning in the background (yes, Andy Williams; I know some of you don’t even know who he is. I’ll wait while you run over to Wikipedia), and lingering close-ups of a perennially troubled mom take up about half the film, with “coon hunts” and unpleasant, bullying kids taking up another half. There you have it, pretty much.

I won’t talk about the boom mic being seen in shots, or the surprise violence (a kid gets killed, the aforementioned animal brawl, mean boys, sad as heck ending), or the plentiful God talk (pretty much every bit of drama is explained away by God’s intent). I’ll just say, you could do better in the classic kids’ movie department.

I think a lot of these old “family” films really just don’t hold up. Take a look at this trailer for The Yearling (1946), which I had on my list to check out. I think I’ll leave it to you to research this one. Let me know what you think.




If you’re really in the mood for an old classic this weekend, try National Velvet (1944, Liz Taylor, Mickey Rooney). I know the ending is pretty sad, so if you want to wait for me to review it, and tell you just how tragic it might be, I’ll do it soon. It’s on my “instant view” Netflix list; it's a film I've always wanted to see.

This Week's Classic Kids' Movie

“Mandy Patinkin and Andre the Giant star in this oddball fairy tale ...”

Ok, you have to admit, there’s just something weird about that sentence. I started to open with it then stopped short, thinking, gee, that kind of says it all. Doesn’t it?

Okay, I’ll answer: yes. It’s an oddball pairing, in an oddball fairy tale, one that has certainly earned its “classic” status.

Rob Reiner’s offbeat 1987 comedy (the ‘80s were his best years: Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, When Harry Met Sally are all classics!) is a humorous, (mostly) family friendly fable, and the cast is stellar: it includes Billy Crystal, Robin Wright Penn, Christopher Guest, Peter Falk and Wallace Shawn. In another director’s hands, The Princess Bride could easily have become too soft, too sweet, too predictable. But in Reiner’s capable paws, we get clever kids’ fare (bad guys, sword fights, pirates, a pretty princess and a brave prince, fairy tale critters), carefully spiced with Reiner’s own brand of adult, caustic humor.

A great combo, no?

Come on, plenty of you out there who don’t even have kids have seen it. Some claim it’s a great date movie, too.

So if you need a little grown-up cinema fix, but it’s family night, this is a classic you can count on for all age groups.

(Er, almost all age groups; caveat about the PG rating: there are scenes like the prince threatening to cut off a man’s feet, hands, eyes, etc., with his fancy swordplay; it’s a rather graphic bit of scriptwriting. There is also a scene or two involving a “torture machine,” a semi-bloody attack by a giant rodent, sword stabbings, and a comment on the princess’s “perfect breasts.” So keep that in mind for your own kids. It might be best for ages nine or ten and up.)

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THE GENERAL (G)

Back in 1862, during the Civil War, Union Army raiders stole a locomotive named The General, running between Atlanta, GA and Chattanooga, TN, in order to disrupt service and do damage to the track, covered bridges and telegraph wires. The hijacked train was pursued not only by other locomotives, but also by handcar, and on foot. While the event did not exactly go according to plan, and several raiders were executed as spies, other raiders escaped their imprisonment and later -- back in Union territory -- received the very first Medals of Honor ever bestowed.

This exciting story has been told at least twice on film. One is in Disney’s The Great Locomotive Chase (1956), featuring Fess Parker (Daniel Boone!) as the conductor of the hijacked locomotive, determined to stop the Unionists. It gets good marks on both Netflix and IMDB, so check it out.

The Disney version is likely more a retelling of the story, where the Buster Keaton version, The General (1927), is more a feast for the eyes with fantastic stunt work and comedic genius (in silent film fashion) filling the screen.

In The General, Keaton plays a southern engineer (turned down by Confederate recruitment officers when they realize his value as a skilled engineer), aghast to learn his beloved Annabelle is on the hijacked train. He thus embarks on a chaotic adventure to recover the train and his love, and uncovers a dastardly plot against the Confederates along the way. Can he save Annabelle? Regain The General? Can he get word to the south about the impending attack?

It’s a fantastic story, and full of Keaton magic. As with Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, there are many worthy films in this artist’s cannon, but we strongly recommend this as a starting point for Keaton. Kids are thrilled with the visuals, especially if you take the time to explain they are all quite real, no computer trickery, and that Keaton actually put his life on the line for some of these shots.

Here is a great little snippet from a documentary (courtesy of YouTube) about Keaton and the making of The General. The narrator reports, during one especially harrowing scene: “The camera man had orders to keep shooting until Keaton either yelled CUT, or was killed.”

This Week's Classic Kids' Movie

Ok, when was the last time you thought about the original "Lassie" television series? You haven't, right?

I'm not always digging up semi-obscure or offbeat movies for kids, sometimes I'm just digging up the true classics, and "Lassie" is one of them. Netflix has a special anniversary collection featuring 24 episodes of the 1954 television series, and I'm not going to say I've seen all of them recently (ok, any of them), nor that I remember it, for God's sake (of course I don't! How old do you think I am?), but I will say this: If, when son K was five or six years old and I was OD'ing on Barney or Disney and had thought of "Lassie," I would have run off to the video store in a flash.

You can't get more wholesome than Lassie. "Little House on the Prairie" and "The Waltons" are right up there at the top of the classic, family fare television show list, but those series sometimes dealt with some fairly serious themes and might skew to a slightly older group of kids (say, nine and up). "Lassie," on the other hand, works for younger kids, and employs straightforward tales of integrity, courage and honesty to cook up a little bit of drama.

Give it a try. You might get all verklempt for the old days when things seemed a heck of a lot simpler. Those knotted muscles in your neck and shoulders might actually melt away. You might actually enjoy it.

(There are two "Lassie" movies from 2005 and 1994, but both have clear PG ratings. There are also "Lassie" films from 1944 and 1945 [one with Elizabeth Taylor!], that have G ratings.)

GODZILLA! (and other Japanese Monsters)

It’s funny, but the 1950s/'60s Godzilla franchise is a huge part of our lives here, and yet I haven’t written about it until now! It might be because I found it daunting in its hugeness, but that was before I actually gave it more than two minutes of thought. Once I did that, I realized the best thing to do is tell you why we love ‘em and how far you can go with this genre. (The short answer to that last part is: to about 1972.)

Again, I must mention that my husband is a huge fan of monster and horror films in many guises (the more low budget and unknown, the better), but these in particular have always struck a chord with him, and he once dreamed of having a kid who loves them as he does. And gee, his dream has come true (not without a little work!). K’s idea of a good time with dad is watching Godzilla vs. the Seamonster. I’m sure this will change sooner than we want to admit.

The Godzilla films and their many spinoffs begin, of course, with the original Godzilla (1954), from which all the others came. The key thing about these movies (for inquiring parents) is that they are for the most part, pretty innocuous, with crude special effects and monsters that are kind of lovable in their primitive renderings. (In one film, Godzilla does a little victory dance after battle with one of his nemisises, and the moves are now a staple in our house. It’s crazy cute.) When you’re dealing with younger kids, it certainly helps to see the strings attached to flying gigantic moths, or to point out that Godzilla is really just a guy in a rubber suit (ok, only go there if you really need to).

Another positive is consistency. There are consistent themes throughout that look pretty much like this:

- The movies are dubbed, clumsily, in English
- Cites will be stomped on and crushed
- There will be fire
- The armies of the world are incredibly inaccurate when it comes to big guns and missiles
- Godzilla is usually a good guy
- There will be scenes of panic and running in the streets
- Surprisingly, there is often a smart, attractive woman helping the scientist/army guy/genius figure out what to do

These things can be counted on in the genre.

So you always know, pretty much, what you’re going to get with one of these movies. Even the offshoot films, like All Monsters Attack!, follow the same basic formula, and have the same lovably cheesy quality (D would strongly disapprove of the word “cheesy” here).

You know your kids better than anybody, so using this basic knowledge about the films’ content, you should be pretty well armed to decide if these are appropriate for your seven- or nine-year old. (For the record, I believe K started watching these with us at about age seven.)

Now, the caveat is that you don’t want to go too far into the ‘70s, and certainly not into the ‘80s.

(Wait, let me clarify: you can wander, at your own risk, of course, but we did a couple of times, and just FYI, we regretted it at least once. Things tend to get dicier in terms of language, innuendo and, later, in more intense violence.)

Here is a list of films that worked well in our household (yeah, we’ve seen all of these!):

Gojira, or Godzilla (1954) Japanese version, without Raymond Burr
Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956) American edit, with Raymond Burr (many say the original is the better film)
Return of Godzilla or Godzilla’s Counterattack (1955)
King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)
Godzilla vs. Mothra (1964)
Godzilla vs. Monster Zero ( (1965)
Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster (1966)
Godzilla’s Revenge (1969)
Son of Godzilla (1967)
Godzilla vs. Smog Monster (1972)

SPINOFFS:
Rodan (1956)
Gamera Return of the Giant Monsters (1966)
Gamera vs. Monster X (1967)
All Monsters Attack (1969)


Ok, that's a lot to chew on, for now. I have a feeling there are some other Japanese monster movies I've missed, so I'll consult D and see if we have some gaps to fill in.

There are a couple of titles here that the guys have watched twice now, so believe me when I say they have a huge fun factor built in.

Happy Godzilla-ing!

DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK (PG)

This 1939 Technicolor classic, starring a very handsome Henry Fonda and a gutsy Claudette Colbert, is a wonderful historical epic (directed by the great John Ford) that will help you and the kids while away a wintry Sunday afternoon. A story of Colonial struggle in the 1700s, your kids will absorb a bit of history, spiced up with a wagonful of nail-biting adventure.

The Revolutionary War was brewing, and the British were luring American Indians to their side, using them to fight a young, upstart America trying to get on its feet. Colbert's character, Lana, comes from a family of comfort and privilege in the city, and marrying Gilbert (Fonda) means moving with him to the wilds of upstate New York, to his small, log cabin outpost. Surviving a rocky transition, she eventually takes to the task with gusto, and after the first tragic run-in with the natives leaves them homeless, she rolls up her sleeves and is ever more determined.

She's a spunky one.

The next hour and a half quite vividly conveys the pain and horror of war in all its shadings. There are British/Indian raids, torched homes and crops, amputations and unpleasant deaths, miscarried babies, and all kinds of other unhappy events.

But, the American spirit triumphs!

(And of course, this being a 1939 movie, the drama is no more intense than that in, say, Gone With The Wind, so you know what I’m talking about. You’ve seen Gone With The Wind, right?)

There is one scene that’s a little tough: when our colonists are under siege, they send a man out under cover of night to seek help from the nearest outpost. After fortifying himself with a few swigs of something or other, he sets off, only to be paraded later in front of us, tied to a haywagon that the Indian warriors intend to torch. It’s a pretty horrific idea for kids, no doubt. They don’t burn him alive, but he’s saved from a long and painful death with a short and merciful one.

That said, there is plenty in this film for kids about courage and strength and determination, about loyalty and integrity. And of course, it’s very entertaining and makes for a great afternoon of movie watching.

(Note: this is available as an Instant View on Netflix until February 28!)

PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (PG)

If you haven't seen this cult classic, you've surely heard of it: Plan 9 From Outer Space is often branded the Worst Movie Ever Made. It’s a hilarious spectacle of cheap sets, visual incongruities, bad writing, acting and editing, and... oh, bad directing, of course!

Everything about it is bad.

But it’s so darn fun! It had been years since I’d seen this, and we recently watched with K, who really has been fulfilling his dad’s dream of Saturday nights being classic monster movie nights. I guess we’re really lucky K loves all this sci-fi and ‘50s horror (such as it was); it’s just what husband D had planned for him.

Basically, the story is about some (very human) aliens who come to earth to raise the dead in order to, um, tell living Earthlings that they (the aliens) exist. Or something. So you’ve got hubcaps as flying saucers, cardboard crypts and gravestones, plenty of fog, Vampira (and her disturbingly small waist), Bella Lugosi playing Bella Lagosi, zombies, dumb cops, hysterical women, and a few macho men. And more!

I was surprised to find the film was, at its core, clearly an anti-bomb, anti-war statement. I didn’t remember that from seeing it 20 years ago. The aliens are afraid, now that they’ve seen we have the A-bomb and the H-bomb, that we will discover the next mega-powerful technology (gee, the name escapes me) which will obliterate the sun; they already have the technology, but don’t trust us “small brained Earthlings” with the knowledge, and are certain we’ll destroy more than ourselves. They’re here, really to save the galaxy from our stupidity.

But that comes at the end, and before that, it’s all belly laughs and root beer through the nose. As cheesy as it is, though, I’ll say that for younger kids who’ve not ever seen a zombie or dark, creepy graveyard scenes, or heard women screaming as if they’ve ... seen a zombie, it could be a bit scary. (For the younger ones.) Ok? I dunno if that means 8-year olds in your house, or 10-year olds. You know ‘em best.

If your kids are younger, just get this for yourselves one night, and make it a double feature: watch the 1994 Tim Burton film, Ed Wood, starring a fantastic Johnny Depp as Wood, who not only enthusiastically made awful films, but wore women’s underthings as he did it. (Martin Landau is stellar as Lugosi.) Then go on to Plan 9, you’ll appreciate it more.

(Note: This double feature calls for double martinis.)

PADDLE TO THE SEA/RED BALLOON (G)

Here’s another sweet, short, G-rated movie for the young’uns. Paddle to the Sea was recently re-released by Janus films, along with two other kids’ classics, The Red Balloon and White Mane. For some reason, Paddle to the Sea is not available via Netflix, but the other two films are available as a package. If you’ve never seen The Red Balloon, well, you must have grown up in a cave (or maybe Peoria). I think I saw it in grade school at least twice, and maybe again in junior high. It’s a magical, mostly silent film, about a boy and his balloon, set in Paris. It’s completely enchanting, and although a good part of the plot involves other boys bullying him about the balloon, by today’s standards it’s pretty mild stuff.

I haven’t seen White Mane, but reviews on both Netflix and IMDB warn parents of fairly graphic violence (animal cruelty) that won’t sit well with some. You’ll have to figure this one out on your own, unless I get to it first.

Paddle to the Sea is available at our locally owned video store, which is an amazing place for several reasons, but finding this gem on their shelves (with a “recommended by staff!” tag on it) says it all. They rock.

Since you may not find it at your own local purveyor, I’ll point you to buying it at Amazon or some such other outlet, and highly recommend you bundle it with Linnea in Monet’s Garden; what a great gift it would be for a five-or six- or seven-year old (or their parents).

Paddle to the Sea was first released in 1966, a short film from the National Film Board of Canada adapted from the1941 book by the same name. It tells the tale of a young boy in the Canadian woods who spends his winter evenings carving and painting a little canoe, with a stoic Native American Indian sitting upright inside. He decides the best way for this little vessel to live its life is to actually be set out on an adventure, and so he launches it in a nearby stream where it then travels through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River, onto the Atlantic Ocean.

The boy painted “Put me back in the water” on the bottom of the boat, so whenever it was discovered by a human, it was put back where it was found, and so continued its journey. There are treacherous waterfalls, big ships, pollution, wildlife, toddlers with sticks and other perilous hurdles for the little wooden Indian and his canoe to overcome.

It’s less than a half hour long, and has that lovely, quietly languid feel shared by many films made for younger kids back in the day. Nothing hurried about it, nothing to get excited or anxious about, just a sweet little adventure unfolding before our eyes.

“Who knows how far you’ll go?”

LAUREL AND HARDY (G)

So, how about starting your new year off with a resolution to get more of the true classics for your kids to watch when it’s couch potato time? Here’s a good place to start: Laurel and Hardy.

There is so much to say about their movies that the best thing I can do is just advise you to grab one and go -- your kids will love it! These films have the physicality and charm of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, but their naivety and bumbling lack of sophistication is especially appealing to kids.

I’ll list a few here that we’ve seen and tell you we’ve loved them all. K remembers The Music Box as being silent, but it’s not. It just was so well done, with very little dialogue, that his brain has simply filed it as a silent movie. It's brilliant! (Note: purists will say that pre-1940, Hal Roach L&H films are the best, that when the duo moved to Fox Films, all was lost. Great Guns and Bullfighters are the best of the later lot, and are quite entertaining, but other than those, stick to earlier works and especially the collections that have lots of shorts on them.)

Way Out West - Laurel and Hardy to the rescue of a young lady about to be ripped off by unsavory land grabbers

Flying Deuces - Our boys join the Foreign Legion

March of the Wooden Soldiers (aka Babes in Toyland) - A fantastic journey through Storybook Land

The Music Box - one of many shorts, where our fearless friends attempt to move a piano into a house that sits atop a long flight of stairs

Busy Bodies (short) - Mayhem in a lumber yard (contains some rather rough slapstick, hilarious and yet not very nice at the same time...)

The Bullfighters - It’s as if nobody warned Stan and Ollie that amateur bullfighting was not a good idea!

Blockheads - Oliver reads about his old war pal Stanley walking the trenches 20 years after WWI has ended, somehow not knowing the war is over. Ollie to the rescue!

I feel I must post a discouraging word about one film, A Haunting We Will Go (1942, one of the post-Hal Roach films). We rented it around Halloween, hoping to have a fun Halloween movie to tell you about, but this is a rather tedious exercise in senseless plot-convoluting and rather un-funny scriptwriting. And it doesn’t even fit in with the Halloween spirit, when you get down to it. A real miss, so don’t bother seeking it out.

I know I’m missing some other short films we’ve enjoyed here, but you’ll have fun exploring on your own.

RETURN OF THE PINK PANTHER (PG)

This is a long and spotty franchise, beginning with 1963’s original Pink Panther, starring the inimitable Peter Sellers. There are quite a number of Pink Panther films, but be sure to do your homework: some don’t star Peter Sellers (and I’m not talking about Steve Martin. Q: Did you even know there was a Pink Panter movie with Alan Arkin as Inspector Clouseau? A: 1968’s Inspector Clouseau.)

I hope I’m not bursting any bubbles here, but I can’t recommend the original for family viewing -- only because it was so slow, the first 30 minutes filled with interminable conversations and scenes setting up a very, very convoluted plot which lost all three of us in no time, and had K complaining and bouncing around the room (granted he was nine or ten at the time, but we felt his pain) -- but I do recommend one of the later titles, albeit with slight reservations.

The fourth PP movie, The Return of the Pink Panther, from 1975, is great fun, and starts off with not only clever, animated credits, but once the credits end and the movie begins, we are thrust right into the action, with a stealthy, well-disguised diamond thief breaking into a museum in a fictional middle eastern country (filmed in Morocco) to steal the Pink Panther diamond. It’s a clever, well-paced scene that pulls you right in, and very soon you’re guffawing at the ridiculous mishaps and bad luck that are the very essence of Paris’ Inspector Clouseau. He’s called upon to catch the thief -- much to the dismay of many who have worked with him and know the havoc he can wreak. (After obliviously wrecking a hotel with his incompetence and endearing buffoonery, he sniffs haughtily, "I must leave. Zis hotel is deteriorating rapidly.")

It’s physical humor, not terribly sophisticated -- pratfalls, knowing looks and Clouseau’s baffling pronunciation of words continually draw laughs -- and the story is blessedly easier to follow than the original movie.

Recommended, but: for kids with the attention spans of gnats, there’s a slight sag in the middle. The PG rating is likely due to a couple of things: there is a scene of Clouseau ogling a lovely lady as she unknowingly disrobes to step into a sauna -- you don’t see anything but it’s a slightly uncomfortable moment for parents; the debonair Sir Charles, a professional but retired (or is he?) jewel thief breaks the fingers (one at a time, in different scenes) of a slippery, untrustworthy snitch. It’s not done in a gruesome or graphic way, but it’s just ... mean, darn it. There is also some language of the times that rankles: Clouseau continually refers to his Asian butler/martial arts sparring partner as having “yellow skin," or as "a yellow skin."

I hope to get around to some of the other PP films eventually, and confess we just watched this one recently since K howls at the previews for the upcoming Steve Martin film. I wanted him to have some background appreciation for the character before seeing a contemporary take on these classic films. Return of the Pink Panther was a hit at our house.

Steve Martin. Hmmm. Well, I can think of worse people to riff on such classic films ...

Here's a rather long trailer, and a Steve Martin trailer after it:

ZULU (PG)

1964's Zulu stands up today as one of the finest wartime stories told on film.

It chronicles the true story of the British Army's historic 1879 stand at Rorke's Drift in South Africa during the Anglo-Zulu War. At a remote hospital/supply station 140 soldiers discover that they will soon be descended upon by 4000 Zulu warriors. 1,500 British soldiers had recently been massacred by Zulu forces at a nearby station, so the idea of a brigade charging to the rescue did not seem likely.

While it's a colorful spectacle set in an exotic locale -- always irresistible -- it's also an epic story of men finding what they are made of ... of reaching deep down and finding strength they didn't know they had; it's about discipline, heroism, cowardism and conflict. The film keens with suspense as the Zulu march closer and two young lieutenants fight each other to map out a winning battle plan.

Rather than building a war movie on sheer blood and guts, British director Cy Endfield built it on tension, good storytelling and realistic characters. Of course, the film has a level of violence (it's war!), but it lacks the kind of graphic gore you see so much today in both film and video games. It's also surprisingly lacking in the harsh language department.... you pretty much expect guys in the trenches to cuss! Maybe it was a British thing. These soldiers are, for the most part, darn gentlemanly as they fight for their lives.

Without being a spoiler, I'll just say the ending is one of the more distinct war-story endings seen in film. Zulu is a must-see classic. It stars a young Michael Caine (his first starring role), has brief narration by Richard Burton, and won a British Film Award for Best Art Direction.

(Parental Duty Note: there is an early scene of a Zulu wedding taking place, and bare-chested women are naturally part of the landscape.)

Interesting footnotes, courtesy Internet Movie Database:

- Because the Zulus who were playing the extras in the film had never seen a movie, one of the actors, Stanley Baker, held an outdoor screening of a Gene Autry movie for them so they would have an idea of what movies were all about.

- Because of the apartheid laws in South Africa at the time, none of the actors who portrayed the Zulu warriors were allowed to attend the premiere of the movie.

- Because of those same apartheid laws, the Zulu extras could not be paid equivalent rates to their white counterparts. To get around this, director Endfield gifted all of the animals bought for this film (particularly cows) to the tribes - a gift far more valuable to them than the money that had been denied them.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (G)

Ok, let’s make it clear right off that I have nothing against the 2008 version of Journey to the Center of the Earth, starring Brendan Fraser, who does a reasonable job of playing a likeable and somewhat hapless (doesn’t Fraser always play hapless?) professor who strikes out on an adventure to you–know-where. In fact, I was pretty impressed, not with the effects (which look fairly cheesy sometimes, especially the rafting scene; the visuals brought me back to the original 1959 film adaptation, in the best way possible... I was grinning ear to ear!), but with the success of an adventurous, fun movie made with zero barroom cussing or thinly veiled sexual humor, zero grotesque imagery or overstated peril, and it worked not only for kids, but for the adult in tow. Why doesn’t Hollywood make more of these movies? I’m thinking the film did well enough to signal that more PG-rated fare along these lines is in high demand. Am I wrong?

Good on ya, Hollywood. Now get back to work making more of these.

(Note: we didn’t see it in 3-D, either, because we live in a culturally bereft hollow in the deep woods of Maine [uh, ok, sorry, you know that’s not true; but our theater was unable for some reason to provide us with the 3-D buzz, unfortunately], and we still had a mining car-load of thrills and laughs.)

About a year before I took K to see this contemporary interpretation, we had a movie night and watched the original, 1959 version at home. I think the details were sketchy in K’s memory. When I asked him to compare the two he couldn’t really do it. But he did enjoy the original – I’m guessing he had just turned 10, but might have been 9 at the time – and this movie is further proof of the ability kids today have to get into these older films, even without fancy CGI trickery or 3-D. Don’t think they won’t like ‘em. I’m here to tell you otherwise.

The original, starring James Mason once again (he starred in our other Jules Verne adventure below, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) as our intrepid professor turned explorer, and a fairly hunky-looking, occasionally shirtless Pat Boone, was mind-blowingly inventive in depicting the trip to the center of the earth. The descent of our hero and his gang, via a volcano in Iceland, was filmed on location in the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, lending a fairly realistic feel to the whole endeavor; the scenery and sets are nothing to scoff at. (I believe there were three Oscar nominations in the “art” and “effects” categories.) The dinosaurs (lizards with fins glued on!) rock, and other stars like the traitorous villain, the seriously weird plant life, and the spectacle of an inner sea are enough to keep the imagination engaged for a good long time.

Both Journey and 20,000 are real classics that every kid should see. No doubt they inspired movies like the Indiana Jones franchise (there’s even a white-knuckled runaway boulder scene in Journey, just like there was in Raiders of the Lost Ark), and your kids will appreciate learning a bit of film history – someday.

20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (G)

Captain Nemo: The natives over there are cannibals. They eat liars with the same enthusiasm as they eat honest men.

Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was a very successful (and Academy Award winning) Disney film in the 1950s, and today it’s still exciting, thought provoking and beautiful to look at. Even though there is a giant attacking squid, cannibals, sharks and – gasp! – fisticuffs, it’s pretty safe to say most kids, toughened up by today’s much more realistic and intense filmmaking styles, won’t be bothered by much in this futuristic, sci-fi adventure ... most will probably love it! Starring James Mason (as the tragic, despotic Captain Nemo), Kirk Douglas, and Peter Lorre, 20,000 Leagues won Oscars for Special Effects and Art Direction and stands as a truly classic film.

Set in the late 1800’s (which is when Verne wrote it, of course), the story is full of fantastic, far-reaching possibility (including the idea of atomic energy), and it examines how how those among us might deal with the kind of “progress” that leads more to our own self-destruction than to building a better world. (Verne seemed a bit of a Victorian activist, come to think of it!) Verne’s anti-hero, the cultured and erudite Captain Nemo, sees a world heading toward doom, war and more war, and – not terribly far from today’s eco-terrorists – he begins a crusade of his own to stop the madness. Unfortunately, the latter gets a hold of him first.


One major star of the film is the beautifully imaginative submarine-vessel that Nemo creates and uses in his crusade, the Nautilus. (The U.S. Navy named its first atomic sub, launched in 1954, the Nautilus. Several previous Navy vessels had bore the name as well, but it’s thought there is a tacit nod to the novel in naming the first atomic powered sub the Nautilus, on the heels of the film’s release.) The vessel is a technological wonder, filled with art and music and high culture ... even though it’s a killing machine. The other star is the giant squid that attacks the vessel and crew in one memorable scene, an extraordinary accomplishment in special effects at the time. It’s really a great scene, and many people who haven’t seen the film in years recall that moment more than any other.

You might need two bowls of popcorn for this one.






Next: Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth