Channel Awesome
You must be this “high” in order to watch this movie.
Tagged with: 1961 babes in toyland channel awesome disney disneycember doug walker movies
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The 1934 Hal Roach version featuring Laurel and Hardy blows the Disney movie out of the water. Put Laurel and Hardy in anything and they’re going to be funny. Plus the fake-looking trees in the Disney film are no match for the OMFG WHATTHEHELLARETHOSETHINGS!! “Bogeymen” who kidnap and terrorize children in the Roach version. There’s also more of a sense that you’ve entered a fully-formed fantasy world in the older movie, with women and children living in shoes and anthropomorphic pigs playing key roles. You may not know the name “Henry Brandon”, but he specialized in over-the-top villain roles in the late silent and early talkie eras, and he plays a pitch-perfect Barnaby. There’s nothing funny about him; he’s just scary and menacing as all hell, and when it turns out that he COMMANDS the bogeymen, the whole thing comes together. Even the wooden soldiers are much more effective because, due to a screwup by Stan (who makes toys for SANTA CLAUS – yes, Santa is in the Roach movie), he orders 100 6-foot soldiers instead of 600 1-foot soldiers, so they don’t have to go through the nonsense of shrinking the main characters. The Roach film isn’t perfect — the music sucks just like it does in the Disney version –but it’s exponentially better than the Disney film. Sorry.