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Let’s get this out of the way first: despite containing five “films” (although one is only 25 minutes long and two others are under an hour), “Krazee Kidz Video Party” is not a box set. There’s no box. There’s no booklet. There are no meaningful special features: a few drive-in “snipes,” ads and intermission notices, serve as the sole extra, unless you consider the option to watch all the features end-to-end in “slumber party mode” a bonus. And—get this—all this content—301 minutes—is crammed onto one (1) disc. Forget 4K transfers: these VHS-y resolutions hover closer to the quarter-K level.
Needless to say, this collaborative release from Something Weird and American Genre Film Archives isn’t exactly Criterion Collection quality. That does not mean, however, that it is not recommended—highly recommended, in fact, to the right oddballs, many of whom are regular readers of this site. That is because of the quality (can that be the right word?) of the curiosities on display here. True to the title, it’s children’s entertainment at its most deranged: a treasure trove of the cynical subgenre that has come to be known as children’s grindhouse. Well, at least some of it is. The rest of it is just, well, kinda weird—with one legitimate exotic egg hidden inside this dime-store Easter basket.
That crackerjack isn’t the set’s first offering, 1957’s The Big Bad Wolf [Der Wolf und die sieben jungen Geißlein, AKA The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats], although this opener sports the highest uncanny valley quotient—which is really saying something in this collection. From the first time Mother Goat appears in her Satanist-adjacent horned mask as a talking crow demands the unseen narrator recite the names of her ritual sacrifices cute kids, you’ll wonder if you’ve stumbled into a badly deteriorated, repurposed Kenneth Anger short. Ultimately, this German movie (the dubbing was unobtrusive, thanks to the masks worn by 90% of the cast) is more of a live-action cartoon, of the kind Hanna-Barbera would have executed in a crisp 5 minutes, but stretched out to almost an hour’s running time. Still, there is something endearing about this material being played earnestly by adults in inarticulate fuzzy masks. The cast really commits to the bits: the wolf’s involuntary plummet in a wheelbarrow down a very slight incline, for example, goes hard. There are also a couple of memorable moments where the lupine-headed monster interacts with live actors, ruthlessly bullying a grocer and a flour merchant (who fights back with his trademark good). And it ends with a note of genuine horrifying folk surrealism straight from the Grimm Brothers’ source material: the wolf eats six of the seven kids, then, as he sleeps off his meal, the lone survivor slices open his belly (with scissors, but without anesthetic) to save his kin. Overall, it’s a highly watchable oddity, and a nice way to start your marathon of horror.
I’ll be the one to say it: Fun in Balloon Land‘s reputation as a so bad it’s weird movie is inflated. A boy falls asleep and then encounters some grotesque parade balloons from a second-rate Philadelphia inflatable novelty company while a kids’ choir sings annoying tuneless numbers, followed by more youngsters giving us an amateur ballet recital. Later, we see the balloons in action in their native environment as we watch a feeble Thanksgiving Day parade narrated by a woman with a heavy Philly accent. (Contrary to others’ impressions, she didn’t sound drunk to me: just untalented, unprepared, and unallowed to do second takes.) I found this alleged film a true 1-hour endurance test; the biggest WTF? question it raises is how in the world did Giant Balloon Parades, Inc. hope to monetize this slapdash monstrosity? I may be in the minority in regards to the movie’s weirdness, however, as my colleague called it “joyful madness” and dubbed it “unintentionally abstract.” I do look forward to taking my revenge on Giant Balloon Parade’s kidfomercial atrocity when I eventually see the movie-mocking specialists at Rifftrax puncture Balloon with some of their sharpest barbs.
After that painful nonsense, we deserve a palate refresher. Unfortunately, unaired TV pilot “Polly Pockets” only partly satisfies. The title character is a woman with a skirt of many pockets, from which she can produce mundane wonders like a cup of hot tea or an onion. Mostly, she produces cards announcing upcoming commercials. Polly is joined by bumbling, top-hatted comic-relief magician/inventor Andy, and together they engage in banter before introducing various cartoon segments and what must have been intended as an ongoing series of Polly’s adventures (the most interesting part of the pilot, as this installment sees Miss Pockets sentenced to a dungeon after invading the Castle of Gloom with her insufferable cheerfulness). The thing about “Polly Pockets” is—unlike most of the rest of the offerings here—it’s competent. Not good, mind you, but simply low-grade kiddie entertainment with decent production values. It’s more accomplished than a local TV children’s host gig of the era, but provided no real threat to contemporary giants like “Captain Kangaroo” or “Bozo the Clown.” You can see why it wasn’t picked up, but it’s not terrible. It barely fits in, thematically, with the rest of Krazee Kidz offerings, but at least it’s watchable
We’re in for more pain, however, with The Princess and the Magic Frog (1965) [AKA At the End of the Rainbow], an attempt to recreate a Disney fantasy-themed 1960s feature like Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959), Babes in Toyland (1961), or Mary Poppins (1964) on a grindhouse producer’s budget. (This thing has a real “made-in-Florida” feel to it, like the work of Herschell Gordon Lewis or Brad Grinter, despite being made in California.) It begins with young Matthew O’Brien playing hooky on St. Patrick’s Day, ominously confessing that he’s not afraid of being caught and getting a “whooping” because his folks are always “wailing the tar out of” him for some slight or other anyway. The boy then gets lost in the woods, encountering a leprechaun whom he tricks out of seven magic gold coins (which come with a catch). It’s hard to imagine a movie with a leprechaun, a knight errant, a genie, and evil wizard, a princess, a talking signpost, and so on being so darned unengaging, but one-time director Austin Green manages this feat. About the only thing in the film’s favor is the (adult) acting; veteran Clive Halliday brings a real comic dignity to his role as the title frog-turned-knight. At the end, after his fairy-tale adventures are concluded and Matthew is about to find his way out of the enchanted forest that’s so much more fun than his real life, he learns a tacked-on moral: his folks only whoop him because they truly love him. I suppose the fact that his magical friends treat him with genuine respect and kindness must mean that they have no real affection for him, and I also suspect the producers vastly overestimated kids’ tolerance for whoopings and pro-whooping propaganda. This is the most skippable entry on the disk. Rifftrax also heckled this one, to lesser acclaim than Fun in Balloon Land.
The soggy disappointment that is The Princess and the Magic Frog (1965) is soon forgiven, however, thanks to the true treasure on this disc, Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors (1963). I invite you to read the full write-up for details on this one, but it is a real-deal entertaining Soviet “Through the Looking Glass” variation with colorful (if cheap) costumes, expressionistic sets, and a sense of foreignness that only amplifies the strangeness of its fairy tale setting. The only downside is that the film really deserves a proper restoration so we can see its proto- (and proletarian) psychedelic visions in their original lavish color schemes. Given its substandard presentation, Kingdom might not be enough to justify buying the disc on its own—but if you consider the other full-length features as bonus material to a Crooked Mirrors feature, the choice is obvious to the kid in me.
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