The Family 4 Pack (Frasier
The Lovable Lion/George/Mule Feathers/Zindy, The Swamp Boy/VCI DVD)
Picture: C
Sound: C Extras: D Films: C
When the media made smart programming for children that
kept the idea of growing up in mind instead of garbage to make us all feel like
children who should never grow up, feature films were are and outside of Disney
rarely did well. Four such projects have
been collected by VCI on their Family 4
Pack DVD set. Watchable and somewhat
dated, Disney was in decline at this time and TV killed the feature film market
for most kids’ films, but the following did get made:
Frasier The Lovable
Lion (1973) has a
talking title character in an attempt to do a more modern Mr. Ed type tale, but the makers were not able to do more with it
and any such attempt after My Mother The
Car (an all-time TV bomb that substituted a talking car (with a man’s dead
mother of all things) showed how dated and played out this concept was by
then. Michael Callan, Katherine Justice,
Marc Lawrence, Joe E. Ross and Malachi Throne star.
George (1972) is about the 250-lb St.
Bernard dog of the title becomes a wedding gift form a relative, but the
airline pilot husband is not amused at first.
Also child-friendly like the last film, but for much younger viewers.
Mule Feathers (1977) is narrated by the late,
great Don Knotts and tells the tale from his point of view as the mule, who is
used by a preacher to travel, but when gold gets in the way of The Word, you
know what might break loose. It does not
always work either, but it has a few good moments and co-stars Rory Calhoun.
Zindy, The Swamp Boy (1972) has a grandfather/grandson
go to the wild and only the younger one remains, so he has to become quickly
proficient in the ways of the wild. Not
bad.
The image on the various aspect ratios (all are 1.33 X 1,
save the 1.85 X 1 on Frazier) of
these films are from dated material and all have their flaws, detail limits and
color issues, while the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on all four also show their
age. There are no extras.
- Nicholas Sheffo
