Babes In Toyland (1961/Disney Blu-ray)/Christmas
with Danny Kaye (1963 – 66/Inception DVD)/The Dog Who Saved The Holidays (2012/Anchor Bay DVD)/Elf-Man (2012/Anchor Bay DVD)
Picture:
B-/C+/C+/C+ Sound: B-/C+/C+/C+ Extras: D/C/C-/C- Main Programs: C+/B-/C-/D
This next
set of holiday releases are an interesting mix of interesting and lame titles.
First we
have the third version of Babes In
Toyland we have covered to date.
This time, we get the 1961 Walt Disney live action version with Annette
Funicello as Mary Contrary featuring several of her Mouseketeer co-stars and
big names like Rat Bolger and Ed Wynn, but this is a Blu-ray. Mary is getting married, but Barnaby (Bolger)
intends to ruin this by kidnapping her!
Directed
by Jack Donohue, it is a mixed bag of decent production values, a colorful use
of dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor, Victor Herbert music and a fun
cast. However, the script is a little
weak and its attempts to compete with the 1939 MGM Wizard Of Oz throw off its potential. It also feels a bit restrictive at times and
is still worth a look, but does not make the most of 106 minutes. It is better than the 1997 animated version,
but I still like the Laurel & Hardy version better and you can read more
about that at this link Issued under its alternate title March Of The Wooden Soldiers:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10488/March+Of+The+Wooden+Soldiers+(a
Oddly,
this Disney Blu-ray has no extras, but there is an audience for it and it
should be available to a new audience.
Christmas with Danny Kaye offers two episodes of his
self-named variety show, plus a bonus clip.
The black and white 1963 show has Mary Tyler Moore and Nat King Cole,
while the 1966 full color show has Peggy Lee and Wayne Newton. Harvey Korman appears in skits in both, Paul
Mazursky was a writer on both shows and one skit with Korman also includes
Henry Beckman and Jamie Farr. It is a
nice release and one of the few Christmas 2012 titles that anyone should bother
with. A clip from Kaye’s 1965 holiday
show with him reading from A Christmas Carol is also included,
while the DVD case adds a paper pullout with an essay about the holiday and the
man by Kaye’s daughter Dena Kaye.
Cheers to
Inception Media for putting out a holiday disc that does not insult the
audience.
Now for
two that do…
The Dog Who Saved The Holidays (2012) is yet another talking dog
(at least they did not have the money to make his mouth digitally move his
mouth and Joey Lawrence is the voice!) with a bored Dean Cain, lost-looking
Michael Gross and Shelley Long also part of this lame exercise in fluff. Being cutesy and thinking you are “Christmassy”
does not make for a good show, especially at a long 87 minutes.
Wow is
this bad! A bad audio commentary track
with the makers is the only extra.
But Elf-Man (2012) is actually worse and
more senseless, with barely-known actors in a dumb tale of a midget holiday
superhero who just rises and is created in time for someone’s kidnapped father
to be rescued. This mess does not know
what it wants to be and simply has no idea if it is a holiday work, a superhero
spoof or what. Shockingly bad at 87
minutes, I cannot believe this one even got funded and it has no extras.
The 1080p
1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Toyland has some good shots, but it also has some noise, does not
always look as good as a dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor print should and
has more than a few faded, dated and softer-than expected shots. That makes it slightly disappointing, but it
is still the best-looking of the four releases here.
The 1.33
X 1 image on the Kaye shows are shot
on analog, professional NTSC videotape, but they look decent for their
age. They also look as good as the very
soft, anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 images on the Dog and Elf DVDs which
are new productions, shot badly and weakly on HD video. Likely some of it is the style of softness to
make it Christmas-like, but that fails badly in both cases.
The lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono mix on Toyland
is not perfect, but it has its moments of warmth and clarity, though yet again
needs some work. This is the highest I
have rated a problematic monophonic release its age in a while because at its
best, it does sound good and it still outdoes the same lossy Dolby Digital 2.0
Mono mix on the Kaye programs show
their age, but sound good and the weaker-than-expected lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes
on the Dog and Elf DVDs which are really simple stereo spread too thin.
- Nicholas Sheffo
