Reviews

In 1973 I was thumbing through the TV guide and the name Cilla Black jumped out at me from the page since her little-known 1968 song "Step Inside Love" was one of my top favorite songs of all time, and in America she was a little-known singer, so I was astonished to see any mention of her at all by the '70s. Therefore when this movie came on TV that week I recorded part of it on cassette tape, and was rewarded by capturing there another appealing, catchy song of hers--"Work is a 4-Letter Word"--played in full at the end of this movie, a song I hadn't even known existed at that time. I had not yet been able to obtain any recording of "Step Inside Love" yet, much less this film's theme song, and had never seen what Cilla Black looked like, either, so this movie was of high interest to me then.

As for the film itself, even though I was glad to have seen it and recorded it in audio, I was somewhat disappointed in the typical '60s stupid style of humor. Decades later, when the '60s had receded even more into the past and had become a revered period of history, and after I had obtained copies of the two Cilla Black songs mentioned and had obtained photos of her as well, I began to wonder if my original impression of this film from my youth had been accurate for my modern tastes, so I wanted to see the film again, but it wasn't available anywhere. Then in 2018 someone posted a copy on YouTube so I got to see it again for the first time in 45 years.

Honestly, I actually disliked the film the second time. The main character Val came across strongly as a lying, deceitful, self-centered punk, too strongly reminiscent of Alex in "A Clockwork Orange" (1971) for my taste, who here marries only to get a job at a place where he can grow mushrooms, and then constantly deceives his newlywed bride on their wedding night so he can check his mushrooms, and only then admits he's homeless and that they must spend the night in a bathroom at their workplace. With today's pervasive homelessness and chronically lying street people everywhere, most of whom are equally obsessed with getting stoned and resort to violence as a first resort to any type of conflict, that entire scenario hits too close to home. In the ensuing chaos of the film's climax, set in the steamy plant, people slip and fall from oil, get stuck in metal tubes, and get violent with each other, but it's all supposed to be alright and humorous because they are stoned from the mushrooms growing there. All this somewhat creeped me out.

In my opinion the only worthwhile parts of this film are Cilla Black, her theme song of the movie the end, and the now-very-applicable comments relating to artificial intelligence and machines replacing people. If you want to see some humorous stoner movies, see "Pineapple Express" (2008) or "Space Tripping" (2017) instead.

A parting piece of trivia: Cilla ended up getting a nose job because she didn't like the way she looked in this movie after it was released. I think she has always looked cute, but try to convince a movie star of that.

All those reviewers who disliked this film are largely correct: this film is largely geared toward boys, it's unrealistic, the science isn't sound, the acting might be considered weak, some effects are weak, and so on. But I still love it. So what are all those reviewers missing?

Well, it turns out there is a lot more to a film than just plot, acting, effects, soundtrack, and realism. Here's what negative reviewers are missing: This film accurately depicts a Utopian lifestyle of sorts, even in today's world. It fires the imagination. Imagine going on a round-the-world tour aboard a glass-ported submarine with elite scientists, an elite engineer, a beautiful blonde lady, being the first to explore new parts of the underwater world, playing chess (and winning!) against a state-of-the-art computer, going on a high-tech treasure hunt, working with state-of-the-art equipment, saving lives around the world due to your efforts, interacting with sea animals (via dolphin communication), and incidentally having adventures along the way. I can't think of *any* other underwater film, old or new, that realistically captures this feel of the ideal of living underwater as this film does. ("The Core" (2003) comes close to capturing the same cozy feeling of a state-of-the-art ship manned by elite scientists, but that was underground, not underwater.)

Films like this offer a visionary ideal for living, especially in this modern age where some people really believe that hedonism and materialism are the ultimate good, and that intellectualism and science are to be ridiculed and avoided since being "cool" is antithetical to intellectualism. The film also has some decent humor, and a nice, realistic mix of sexism and promotion of women's equality.

There are numerous other likable things in this film. The underwater scenery is beautiful, Shirley Eaton is beautiful, the equipment is cool, the inclusion of a chess game is terrific, the capturing of the daily submarine routine (planting sensors, playing chess) is great, and the constant presence of science provides an intellectual atmosphere.

Also, each the characters is likable in his/her own way. I especially liked Hank Stahl, whose mature insights into the ugly side of human nature are standard nowadays, and he is about the only character who is not foolishly chasing after Maggie the entire time. Also, although I'll admit it's puerile, I loved the guinea pigs, even though they were probably included just for humor and for young viewers. I even bought some guinea pigs as pets for the first time in my life as a result of re-watching this film as an adult!

There are a number of coincidences throughout that were probably accidental, but are either charming or humorous, depending on your taste in '60s movies and television: (1) a brief, repetitious, 2-note, Jaws-like musical theme in one underwater scene of the Hydronaut; (2) an UNCLE communicator-like 2-tone beeping from an alarm that goes off while David McCallum (Illya!) is in the scene; (3) a spherical sub streaming yellow dye, reminiscent of James Bond in the final underwater fight sequence in "Thunderball"; (4) a helicopter rescue of floating survivors at the end, reminiscent of the rescues at the end of "Thunderball" and "You Only Live Twice"; (5) entering into a briefing room where a monotone-voiced narrator is speaking, reminiscent of Number 1's briefing in "Thunderball."

Some other delights for '60s fans are: (1) footage of the J. Neville McArthur Engineering Building at the University of Miami, with its charming, white waves facade; (2) Lloyd Bridges incessantly leaping into the water to try to be a hero at every opportunity, usually without enough air or without proper equipment, "Sea Hunt" style.

The chess match alone deserves some comment. You could view the inclusion of chess in the film only as an appeal to young adolescent males, but then you would be overlooking the Conshelf II underwater habitat of 1966 as depicted in National Geographic magazine, which had one well-known photo of two men playing chess next to a porthole with fish swimming outside. That photo, in turn, probably inspired the scene from the EPCOT ride Horizons that had two men playing chess beside a porthole in a futuristic underwater habitat. And that's not to mention the HAL-Bowman chess game aboard the spaceship Discovery One in the film "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968). There is something about chess that is a good match with futuristic living quarters. Maybe it's the heavy intellectual component in both the game and the design of any such habitat, or maybe it's the contrast of ancient with futuristic (or should we say "hypermodern"?). Also, inclusion of the computer chess program in the film was an interesting, realistic, and historically significant. Even today online chess players on Yahoo often get caught cheating when they resort to their home chess computers for suggested moves, which is against the rules, so that twist in the plot was ahead of its time. Also, it wasn't until the 1980s that chess programs became strong enough that they could reliably beat most human players, therefore when Hank Stahl won the chess match even when Dr. Volker used a computer against him, that was realistic and ahead of its time.

The late '60s, despite its problems, was beginning to approach an ideal that was captured extremely well in this film. Everything from the pervasive white color of equipment (such as in the sub interior, ships, and helicopters) that gave a sense of cleanliness, to the orchestral score, to the constant scientific background (which was also prevalent throughout Disneyland in that era), to a simultaneous acknowledgment of women's strengths and weaknesses, gave a sense of progress, community, and balance of the physical, emotional, and intellectual. It shows us a paragon of human society that is realistically achievable. Acting skill or realism of the non-decompression scenes is irrelevant to this bigger vision.

I first learned of this film in the 1980s while looking through hundreds of random movie stills for sale in a movie memorabilia store in Hollywood. One of those stills was of a young lady with a cute Hayley Mills type face, a lady labeled as Marion Michael, squatting down in her jungle outfit while performing a dance, her long blonde hair covering her breasts. "She's gorgeous!," I thought, "Who is she?" I later looked up the movie title mentioned on the still, along with her name, and tried to obtain the movie but it simply wasn't available back then. (I did find a few more stills of her and of this movie, however.) It wasn't until 2014 that I was finally able to see the movie on YouTube, and I wasn't disappointed.

The movie left me with a good feeling, the same kind of homey jungle feeling I used to get as a kid when seeing Tarzan family movies from the '30s, and I thought about the movie the rest of the day. Admittedly it's clearly a B movie with a predictable, trite plot, and shallow, stereotypical characters, but the combination of several elements made it work well, in my opinion: a beautiful young lady in scanty clothing, pretty (California) jungle scenery, cool jungle drums, wildlife footage, a '50s style family movie feeling, amusing character foibles, downplayed violence, and a happy ending. There is a lot of atmosphere: a treehouse, a toucan, a cute lion cub, tikis, natives attacking with blowguns, several topless black tribal women with jiggling breasts as they beat on drums or dance, some fragments of spoken Swahili, etc. It has the look and feel of Adventureland in Disneyland, with jungle tents, a bicycle-powered generator for a Morse code radio, British pith helmets, rifles with scopes, palm-thatched native huts adorned with antlers, etc. I think it would be a great film for boys who are Tarzan fans if only parents weren't so prudish about breasts. Kudos to Germany for being less prudish than Americans regarding the human body, then and now: Marion Michael must've been only 16 or 17 when this was filmed.

Some minor oddball weaknesses... The footage was oddly sped up in some places, especially to make it look as if Liane could climb a tree faster. (Old Tarzan films did the same thing, however.) Liane's treehouse is in a disappointingly barren tree with all its limbs cut off. The cranes-alligator-snake scene sequence was used in both the beginning and end, in absolutely identical footage (would it have been that difficult to at least show those same animals a few seconds later?). Toucans such as the toco toucan shown perched in the tree near the beginning aren't found on the African continent, only in tropical America. The pronunciations of Liane, Jacqueline, and Vodos/Wodos shifted constantly throughout the film.

Some miscellaneous observations... Liane still looks great in shorts, abbreviated blouse, and swimsuit while living in civilization. It's clear by the plant species--pampas grass, Washingtonia palms, Canary Island Date Palms--that most of the jungle scenes were shot outdoors in some Southern California studio set, but I felt that added to the feel rather than detracted from it, since California vegetation is denser and more picturesque than African veldt vegetation, and it captured the feel of those great old Hollywood jungle sets of the 1930s. Most likely the native tribe (described as Vodos/Wodos) with its dances, drums, and food preparation wasn't authentic, but if not, it certainly looked very authentic to me. Nowadays it looks funny to see men and women lighting up stinky cigarettes right next to each other during romantic scenes, but this was made in the 1950s, and we've matured a lot since then, except that some of us men still prefer "pretty little bubbleheads," all the same!

If you liked this film, films with a similar character you should check out are: "Sheena" (1984), "Tarzan and His Mate" (1934), "Little Indian, Big City" (1994), "Jungle 2 Jungle" (1997).

I'm a huge fan of the original book series so I was very enthusiastic about seeing this movie, which I finally saw in the form of an English-dubbed version online. Even as a kid in the 1960s I fervently wished these books would be made into movies, and I finally got my wish, though I had to wait over four decades to that to happen. To summarize my impressions of this movie, I thought it was fairly good, but throughout I kept wondering when specific scenes and events would happen, but they never did, although some of the details were quite accurate. The plot is so different from the original book's plot that it was difficult for me to enjoy the story. After all, a plot is the essence of any story, so to alter the entire foundation of a very popular book is to invite failure, which in fact seems to be what resulted, since the filmmakers didn't even recoup their investment yet, from what I read, and old fans are generally coming away disappointed.

Some of the more memorable events for me in the original book were the skull talking to the boys in the cave, the boy Chris Markos being trapped in an underwater cave by a freak accident, finding gold doubloons hidden in a blow hole, Jupiter catching a cold, Pete waking up and not recognizing right away where he was, crowds of treasure hunters flocking to the island, and Tom and Chris and the Ballingers fighting at the end over the various frames to cover up an old hold-up. None of that existed in the film.

In the book plot, a film was being made on the island, and the boys were invited there by Alfred Hitchcock to be filmed while scuba diving, but in the movie, an amusement park was being built on the island, and the boys were there by invitation by Mr. Crenshaw, Pete's father. In the movie the setting was changed from the southeast coast ("Atlantic Bay") of the USA to South Africa, and the Greek boy Chris was replaced by an African girl Chris. There were no underwater scenes at all, to my disappointment. The movie climax involved a hang gliding chase where Victor Hugenay uncharacteristically tries to kill the boys chasing him. African racial issues were also fairly prominent in the movie, such as it being dangerous for white boys to enter a black township, which was a little too much realism that killed the innocent and charming character of the book series, for my taste.

However, I believe the filmmakers expertly meshed the different world of the 1960s with the world of the 2000s by not introducing too much high tech equipment, they kept foul language toned down to innocent levels, and they thankfully avoided any flatulence humor. They also kept the essential sense of adventure intact with the presence of a large uninhabited island that contained caves, both of which are guaranteed to fire any boy's imagination. The youthful romance was kept innocent, as well.

The details that were kept fairly accurate were the Jones Salvage Yard and the secret gate to headquarters and headquarters itself (though it contained a modern plastic chair), the Investigators' business card (though it contained the acronym "T3I" that wasn't in the book), Jupiter's pensive gesture (though that consisted of fingers under his mouth instead of pinching his lip), all of which were delightful to see. The film character of Jupiter was appropriately cool-headed, formal, and intellectual to be convincing to me, though not chubby as in the book. The ages of the boys in the film seemed a little young to me, but still quite convincing since if they were any closer to puberty they would have had a different view of the world, likely a different set of interests, and people in general would react to them differently.

Miscellaneous observations... The romantic angle was interesting since such an angle was never present in any of the books. Even boys of ten would be starting to become interested in girls, so that was realistic enough for my taste, even if not true to the books. As others noted, the theme music had a James Bond theme sound due to its half-step melodic sections, which I thought fit well since it related to action and investigation without being too much of a ripoff of Bond film music. The references to presumably upcoming adventures (a stuttering parrot in the salvage yard, Jupiter calculating jelly bean volumes, and Jupiter mentioning a haunted castle) were all delightful. I'm a little disappointed that whiz kid Jupiter would erroneously assume that Gamba was the entity being confined to Miss Wilbur's room, a risky assumption I detected right away. The itching powder gun was very cool but unrealistic in several ways. At least the plot's twists and deceptions of the characters were true to Robert Arthur's style, which was true to the style of the old books.

I'm enough of a fan to keep watching upcoming Three Investigator movies, no matter how bad they become, but sadly, after four decades, I *still* find myself wanting to see the books converted to film *accurately*, not like this.

Something about the style of this movie totally grated on my sense of taste right from the start. The misleading movie poster showed a wooden pirate ship, but what the audience gets is a modern cruise ship full of very overweight, aged tourists: a slight difference there (sarcasm intended), and no chance for any eye candy. Both the pet lizard and pet pelican of the girl squawked like parrots, which was ridiculous and was of course just done by a human voice faking a parrot to make it even worse.

The story was totally predictable: woman writer overcomes her agoraphobia and rescues the little girl in distress, single father becomes enamored with the lady at the end, there is the obligatory collection of animals and one fart joke for the child audience, the father finds exactly the plankton he has been looking for, the pouty little girl has a change of heart and helps out the lady at the end, and so on.

It looked as if the story was intended to be humorous, but it wasn't, especially the treadmill scene, which by unfortunate coincidence was the same gag used in an animated trailer before this movie began, which destroyed the novelty. The acting was horribly unrealistic everywhere: the overly enthusiastic kid, the overly wonderful father, the overly phobic writer. The intro and ending scenes with the cheap cardboard cutouts with CGI scenery were ugly, weird, and perplexing: that all comes across as a money-saving device, looking like the filmmakers were too cheap to film a real woman on a real boat to tell the background history.

Too much of the film was so far-fetched: that through all the girl's falls her pet lizard would never get squashed, that nobody would wonder how lizards could fly fifty feet through the air to land on the beach, how a volcano could start erupting but then conveniently stop in time for the family get-together at the end, why an antenna underwater would be accompanied by gurgling audio sounds, why the sailor father would not realize a storm was hitting as soon as it started to rain, why they wouldn't have storm shutters on their house, that a woman in modern times would be swallowed by a whale, that a pelican could carry an entire loaded tool belt for miles across the ocean, and so on. The CGI turtle underwater looked fake, as did the three CGI circling sharks. The excessive political correctness (most people won't notice where this occurred, and I'm not going to enlighten you) was appalling to me, as well. And what's with the girl eating a plate of live worms? An island like that would have plentiful fish within easy reach, so that intentional gross-out meal was ridiculously unrealistic, especially that the worms were uncooked and still squirming. And why didn't the filmmakers take the trouble to do a ghostly fade-out of the presence of the adventurer who kept talking to the author in her imagination, instead of having him swim off in order to get him out of the scene? That seemed to show additional laziness or cheapness on the filmmakers' part. I was annoyed with this film from the very start: I kept wondering why I wasn't enjoying it and I kept telling myself it had to get better or more interesting, but it never did.

What makes this all so surprising is that all the backgrounds and themes should have been great: the wonderful setting on a tropical island, a paradisiacal hideaway on the island, the oceanographer mother and father, the perfect childhood with several exotic pets and no school, pirates, nice decor with coral and hanging shells, and so on. To take such an appealing foundation and still ruin the movie takes some real skill. Awful!

You have to respect this movie. It may be "just a dumb kid's movie" but it's the #1 most frequently requested film title in online movie forums, requested by people who remember the story but can't remember the title. Therefore what follows is a much-needed, detailed plot description, since I haven't been able to find such a description anywhere else on the Internet.

A typical 2-story house is shown in suburbia. 7-year-old Bridget narrates about suspecting something is going on since she and her 11-year-old brother Andrew are getting presents from their parents for no apparent reason. Bridget's present is a stuffed penguin that she immediately names Sweet William. Bridget describes her relatives: Aunt Ruth, a bossy nurse taking care of grandmother, Grams the hugging grandmother who makes dolls out of socks, and her brother Andrew, who's into electronics and is grumpy. Grams accidentally hangs up on the lieutenant-governor, which indicates she's getting in the way while living with the family. The two children eat breakfast while the adults discuss moving Grams to a retirement home. Bridget makes an awful-looking pancake sandwich containing cereal, eggs, bacon, strawberries, and syrup, as Andrew looks on incredulously. The two kids then discuss Grams, and Andrew says bluntly that Grams is being "put out to pasture." Bridget talks with Grams in the attic, has a play tea party with Sweet William in her bedroom, then a living doll unexpectedly pops out of her bedroom closet mirror.

Bridget and the living doll become acquainted. The curly-haired living female doll is named Huggins and lives in Huggaland. Bridget gives Huggins a baseball cap from Andrew's room. Huggins hides under some laundry when Bridget's mother comes by, then the mother throws the laundry into the washing machine with Huggins in it. Bridget rescues Huggins and dries her off with a hair drier. They discuss the problem with Grams getting old and having to move away, Huggins says Bridget could talk to the bookworm in Huggaland about it, since he knows everything. They step through the mirror to visit Huggaland, but one of Bridget's tennis shoes becomes lodged in the mirror.

Rather than walk around with one shoe, Bridget goes without shoes in Huggaland. They immediately meet Hugsy, a curly-haired living boy doll in Huggaland. Huggins gives Hugsy the baseball cap. They also meet Tickles, Bubbles, Impkins, and Tweaker, and all the dolls sing a song while sitting on a bridge. Hugsy takes Bridget and Huggins in his hugwagon to see the bookworm, who lives atop a stack of giant books. The bookworm consults "the old encyclopedia" and finds that old age can be cured by eating the fruit of the "youngberry tree." However, only one such tree exists, and it's in the country of Shrugs, ruled by the mad queen of quartz. The only way to travel to Shrugs is to jump down a deep hole that is located inside a nearby giant book.

Bridget and the two dolls gulp three times, jump down the hole, and tumble out. Soon they walk down a sideways sidewalk, hear the sea of glass breaking, and fall off the sidewalk when the sideways gravity ends. They encounter "the hairy behemoth," which looks like a mastodon, has four tusks, and breathes fire out its trunk. But Hugsy boldly goes over and hugs the behemoth, who thereby turns into a baby elephant whose name is Hodgepodge. Hodgepodge had been under a spell by the queen, and owes Hugsy a favor, so they all ride on Hodgepodge's back to the castle. They enter the castle, are surrounded by troll-like beings, the queen (Queen Admira) comes, and Bridget asks for a few youngberries. The queen refuses, then eats one for herself, and brags about her own youthful good looks while looking in a hand mirror. Hodgepodge faints when the queen says he should be "digested." The queen is upset when Bridget mentions that wicked witches should have warts, so the queen freezes Bridget and orders the three others to be taken to the dungeon. But the queen carelessly leaves the key to the youngberry tree's dome by the lock to the dome-lifting apparatus.

Hodgepodge wakes up in the dungeon and uses his "noodle" (trunk) to pull the jail's door down, thereby freeing himself and the two dolls with him. They find Bridget standing petrified, the dolls hug her, which causes Bridget to be revived. Before they flee, Bridget finds the left-behind key to the youngberry tree dome, lifts the dome off, and they pick some glowing youngberries and put them in a jar. The queen catches them, but the queen's arm is trapped under the descending dome while reaching for the key that Bridget left on the ground. The queen suddenly turns very old since she is deprived of the youth-giving berries, and appears to die. Soon Bridget steps back through the mirror into her bedroom but trips on the bottom of the mirror, spilling the berries onto her floor, and the berries quickly vanish into smoke, one by one. Her mother calls for her and Andrew to say goodbye to Grams, who is leaving for a retirement home. Andrew drops his usual grumpy, standoffish facade and hugs Grams, telling her he loves her and that he doesn't want her to go away. Their father is moved, and decides to keep Grams there after all, and everybody hugs and cries, including Aunt Ruthie, who had been the main person pressuring Grams to move out.

Andrew asks Bridget for his St. Louis Cardinals cap, Bridget starts to explain how she gave it to Huggins of Huggaland, but Andrew doesn't want to listen to what he believes are her fantasy stories, so he turns around to look for it in her bedroom. One of the dolls secretly hands the cap back through the mirror to Bridget, Bridget puts the cap on Andrew's head, Andrew is mystified, and leaves her bedroom without saying anything. Bridget cheerfully waves at the mirror.

This film starts out very promising and had me laughing right away with its long chain reaction sequence of disasters. Carlo, in an unperturbed Tom Hanks manner, stops at a beautiful overlook on the California coast, watches a lady painter lose her temper at her easel, who then flings her painting off the cliff in disgust. Carlo then attempts to take a drink from a defective water fountain that shoots a powerful stream of water at his face. Then the lady drives off, but her fender hooks his VW Bug's bumper, causing his car to roll downhill. Then follows a series of humorous and futile attempts by Carlo to stop his car from rolling, the car finally goes over the cliff, crashes in front of both the lady and an oncoming bus, followed by Carlo rolling down the hill after it. During the ensuing argument with Laura, who is arguing vehemently in Italian, she lights a cigarette that ignites the spilled gasoline, causing Carlo's car to blow up. Carlo's clothes then catch on fire and he has to strip in public while a not-so-helpful bystander pours a bucket of water on his head instead of on his burning pants.

After the great opening sequence, however, the film became a little odd. It was humorous, but the humor then had a hard edge to it, something like the style in "Up the Creek" (1984), especially when Carlo is forced to sleep on the beach by a nasty paramour, then suffers a realistic clunk in the head by a surfboard while swimming the next morning. Then the film gets kind of artsy, with slow motion and freeze frame scenes of Malibu in her swimsuit, jumping on a trampoline. It seems to want to turn into a teen beach party type flick then, with lots of scenes of surfers, swimsuits, bodybuilders, and The Byrds playing live, but doesn't quite go in that direction, either. Then it moves back into more hard-edged comedy with Carlo working as a swimming pool salesman, then there seems to be a tacked-on episode at the end with Carlo's house starting to slide down a hill during a rainstorm. When the house finally rolls and slides all the way down to the beach, the film then ends!

Yes, the film is odd, but I like it! Although the fundamental problem was probably a poorly planned story, the high quality production caused this problem to manifest itself as a unique style, with hard-edged humor, a mixture of genres, a mixture of cultures, and an overall odd story structure. Technically the details are quite good (other than the slightly weak sliding house effects at the end). The photography is good (other than some grainy and mismatched footage of a little girl surfer), the Southern California coastal scenery is beautiful, the music is lively and good, and the '60s style interior decor is wonderfully retro to behold: tikis, a peacock chair, modern art paintings, an interesting bed with a chain net, wood-paneled offices, and so on.

Watch this film if you like the styles and atmosphere of the late '60s, avoid it if you're looking for a clear-cut comedy, clear-cut beach party flick, or clear-cut artsy film.

I rented a videocassette of this movie on a whim since I'd never seen or heard of it before, and the title and video box made it seem like it was an underwater adventure of some sort, which would have been interesting to me. The colorful illustrations on the box show a lady swimming underwater with a diving mask on, a seaplane on fire, and both the front and rear covers show sharks underwater. The reality is there isn't a single underwater scene in the entire movie, no sharks whatsoever (not even a single fin), no seaplanes (on fire or otherwise), and no diving masks. Therefore both the title and box artwork are extremely misleading.

Not only were the plot and theme not what I was led to believe, but I found the entire movie to be disappointing. The style of the photography, the sound quality, the swelling horn music at transitions, the limited sets, the unconvincing props, the hasty romance, and the unrealistic acting all scream "made for television." The only thing this movie really has going for it, other than some marginal swimsuit scenes, is a quick series of twists at the end, which I won't fully disclose here.

The movie starts with a man at a dock being pursued by other men for an undisclosed reason, and he retreats via a boat to a sparsely populated island, intending for his pursuers to lose interest and to lose track of him over a period of time. While wasting his time away drinking and playing chess against himself in a cozy seaside home on the island, a woman clad in a bikini knocks at his door in a rain storm, seeking shelter. She claims to frequently swim to the island to sunbathe in the nude, and that the sudden storm caught her by surprise. They have an affair (very discrete scenes there) and soon they supposedly fall in love with each other after she visits him a few times. Via a newspaper article she sees his photo as implicated in a murder, but she isn't particularly bothered by it. She asks him about it, finds out he's a hit-man, but rather than be frightened off, she suggests he kill her rich husband who lives on the island so that she can gain a huge inheritance. He agrees to go through with it, then the twists start hitting. Along the way he suffers some (unrealistically depicted) hallucinations, submits to (unprofessional) panic, that panic exacerbates his problems, then a series of unexpected incidents occur rapidly, and the ending comes just as unexpectedly.

For the most part I thought the film lacked excitement, interest, scenery, realism, and most anything else that might have saved it from TV-style mediocrity. And that's not even considering the misleading promotion of the film via its title and box cover. In summary, I found this film to be very mediocre and disappointing in every way, made worse by its misleading promotion.

(band) = musical scene of Alan Price's pop-rock band

PART A: (band) The film opens with an old black-and-white film of a coffee picker who is caught stealing coffee beans, found guilty, and for punishment has both his hands chopped off with a machete. This illustrates justice in the past, in preparation to show justice in the future. Then the story switches to the near future. From a noisy machine room, workers for the Imperial Coffee company are called into a salesperson meeting, whereupon speaker Mrs. Rowe tells them the value of smiling. One of the company's salesmen, named Oswald, has mysteriously disappeared, and Michael is chosen to be his replacement. (band) While traveling alone on his first sales trip in his new position, Michael comes across a car accident where the police act suspiciously and threaten Michael with charging him for causing the accident if he doesn't leave and keep quiet. Michael arrives at the Sutherland House Private Hotel, goes through Oswald's old belongings, and meets an elderly gentleman resident named Monty. Michael goes on a sales trip the next day, and is immediately invited to a businessman's party where the mixed audience watches a stag film and a live sex act (done in underclothes) on stage. That night upon arriving back at his hotel room, Michael is interrupted from a sexual encounter by a phone call from his company saying he is now also responsible for business in Scotland, and has to drive 200 miles to make a 10 a.m. meeting the next morning. Michael gets lost en route, uses a pair of binoculars to see the government property where the road ends, government vehicles immediately appear, abduct him, and electrically torture him into signing a confession of presumably being a spy. During the interrogation, an alarm goes off, the facility suffers what seems to be a nuclear accident, everyone flees, Michael runs up a forested hill as explosions go off behind him, and the entire area is burned of vegetation. It starts to rain, and Michael finds his way to a church while a service is going on. He wakes up from among the pews, hungry, tries to take food from the altar, but is stopped by a church woman, who instead nurses him from her breast. Children show him the way, he finds a busy motorway and attempts to get a ride, the first motorist who stops tells Michael he can make some easy money by volunteering for medical experiments at the Millar Research Clinic. He volunteers, is sedated, but fails to fall asleep, overhears a conversation about sterilizing him, attempts to leave, comes across a patient in another room who has been turned into a half-sheep, he flees, is pursued by guards with dogs, but eludes them on bicycle. However, his bicycle is nearly hit by a van with traveling musicians, but he isn't hurt, and he gets a ride with them. Patricia, a lady with the band, falls in love him en route to London.

PART B: (band) The next morning Michael finds out that Patricia's father is the wealthy tycoon Mr. Burgess, and Michael is eager to make contact in order to further his own career. Michael disregards Patricia's warning, he quickly launches a fraudulent scheme to meet Mr. Burgess that day, while he's waiting at Mr. Burgess' office, Mr. Burgess fires an employee with 15 years at the company, the employee commits suicide by jumping from the office window, and takes another employee with him. Michael becomes Mr. Burgess' aide, they attend a meeting about investing in the country of Zingara, but Mr. Burgess is worried about the country's stability due to rebel activity. He and Colonel Steiger make an agreement that the British government's chemical weapon called PL-45, or "honey" for short, will be sent to Zingara to spread gruesome death to the rebels hiding in the miles of jungle territory. The next day there is another meeting of the investors and Zingara leaders, but the meeting is interrupted the British government's "Fraud Squad." Mr. Burgess tells Michael to trust him, and tells Michael to hide the papers in his pocket while holding a briefcase full of gold bars. One of the military men from Michael's earlier encounters joins the Fraud Squad, recognizes Michael, Michael is arrested, beaten by police en route to the jail, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to five years in prison. The judge, after sentencing Michael, walks into a private room, strips down to his underwear and is whipped S&M style by a woman of the court. (band) Upon being released from prison, Michael comes across a Christian street gathering, he generously donates money to them, is immediately pick-pocketed, then people start mysteriously hurrying by with a ladder. It turns out a woman named Mrs. Richards in a nearby apartment building is about to kill herself. Michael climbs outside her window, attempting to dissuade her by reading poems and philosophy from a book he obtained from a prison warden. However, he falls from the wall as a pipe gives way, and wakes up at night with a policeman shining a light in his face. (band) The policeman tells Michael he is trespassing, and to "piss off." It's still nighttime when Michael volunteers to serve free soup to the homeless street people of the city. There he meets Patricia as one of the street people. When Michael attempts to preach to the crowd, they become angry, stone him, and roll a barrel down a hill at him. Michael survives, and during the daytime comes across a man handing out fliers to audition to be a movie star. Michael auditions, is selected and photographed, but the director has great difficulty in getting Michael to smile, in a reminder of the earlier scene of the company's motivational speech about smiling. (band) Michael manages to smile with great difficulty, and the film ends with all the characters from the film dancing together to Alan Price's band as balloons fall.

This film grabbed me right from its start, where a sweet-looking teen-aged girl is shown visiting a grave alone, then Elton John's powerful song "Friends" starts playing while she's shown walking alone through the streets of Paris, carrying a suitcase, naively unaware of the car theft and prostitution going on around her. The entire film is a beautiful, dreamy, romantic collection of scenes of young love, holding hands, living in the country, wild horses running around freely, fields of wildflowers, sunsets, toasts of wine, evenings by the fireside, having fun, and general innocence, all set to romantic music by Elton John. It's magical.

Somehow I missed seeing this film when I was growing up. I'm sure it would have left a strong impression on me if I had seen it then. I remember the radio advertisement for the movie in 1971, talking about how it was a special movie with music by Elton John, and with the chorus of the theme song "Friends" playing in the ad ("Makin' friends for the world to see..."), but I never heard anything else about it in those days, and never got to see it until I rented it 35 years later from a video store. By then it had been edited, censored, and all kinds of unhappy people with angry political agendas were using all kinds of ugly words to describe the film. What can I say? The world has gone insane since then.

The story is that a 14-year-old girl is forced to move in with her cousin in Paris after both her parents die. (It was their grave she was visiting in the opening scene.) One day while visiting the zoo alone she meets a 15-year-old boy, they hit it off, and agree to meet the next day. The next day while riding together the boy accidentally drives his car into a lake in a freakish solo car accident. It was his father's car, he can't bear to go back home to face his father's wrath, so the two teenagers begin living in the French countryside together, with the mutual background that they both hated their lives at home. They settle into an unoccupied cottage, the boy takes odd jobs to support themselves, their supposed friendship turns into romance, the girl becomes pregnant, and they successfully have a baby at home. All the while the boy's father has the police attempting to locate his missing son. On the 1-year anniversary of the couple's flight together, the police finally locate the boy's employer by an in-person inquiry, and are told they can see the boy the next morning when he comes to work. The next morning the boy is shown leaving his cottage to go to work, saying a sweet farewell to his girlfriend/wife, and happily doing cartwheels as the scene freezes on his girlfriend waving goodbye. At least that's how the video version I saw ends. It's an unexpected though well-timed ending, presumably depicting the last moments of bliss before the boy is taken back to his parents' home and his happy life with his wife and baby is shattered.

As beautiful as the story and images are, the plot is awfully unrealistic and highly contrived. I think it's better just to enjoy the movie as a young person's dream-come-true fantasy and to go no further in analysis, because all logic and believability quickly fall apart when the story is examined in more depth. Why would a fully furnished and stocked cottage be left unattended with the door unlocked and unvisited for a full year? What did they plan to do when the owners returned? Why would a girl trust a car thief enough to get pregnant from him? Didn't they think it was unethical to use other people's homes and food? How could they ever hope to get needed dental care or other emergency medical attention while living outside of society? How could the boy have a car accident on a country road with no collision and no other cars around? Where are there places anywhere near civilization where wild horses run free? How is it that a teenage male would not have sex as the primary thing on his mind when he picks up a girl at a zoo? (The Elton John song lyrics just don't fit.) Why would they take off clothes when sleeping outside at night when it's about to get cold? And so on. The scenes of wild horses are contrived to appeal to girls, as is the unrealistic theme of "friendship before romance," and all the back-washing and tickling scenes with their predictable outcomes, the running through flower fields towards each other, the haze filters, the scenes shot through wildflowers in the foreground, the baby ducks, and so on. It works, but it's definitely contrived.

Still, this is a movie about youth and freedom, and that ideal hasn't changed since the 1970s. Young people today are still treated as belongings or as lost pets to be recovered by the police instead of treated as mature human beings who have the same needs of romantic love and freedom as does the adult world, and the ability to be responsible when given that freedom. Therefore the message is universal. It's clear why a sequel wouldn't work: this story is about a magical, year-long reprieve from the real world. Such a situation could never have been extended indefinitely, assuming that it could even happen in the first place, and a story about real life afterward would lack the magical appeal of such an unreal state of existence. I really hope that no teenagers took the film seriously enough to try such a foolish stunt. But I hope equally well that teenagers who were impressed by this film in the '70s learned something from it, and have since then made attempts to make such a magical world a more attainable reality for others, instead of perpetuating society's various hatreds and repressions, especially on their own children.

I watch this film every few years, and it has a powerful effect on me every time I watch it.

I personally experienced the summer of 1970 as a very young male teen in a manner very similar manner as shown in this movie, riding around with my girlfriend on a bike to some creeks and waterfalls, and that was one of the happiest years of my life. The songs popular that summer were almost exactly the ones played in this movie (with a few anachronistic exceptions), the Vietnam War was on everybody's minds as shown, and girls and guys really acted as they did in the movie.

It's interesting that there are almost no movies that are similar to this one in that they show girl friendship with a positive mood and a retro setting with many oldies like this. Since this film has a strong, almost cult-like following, that should be a hint to filmmakers that there is an important, undeveloped niche for successful movies along the lines of "Now and Then." Coming-of-age movies are always popular, anyway, and I'd much rather see those than comic book movies, video game movies, and mindless remakes of movies that were already marginal in the '60s and '70s.

The oldies in this film are great, and they are exactly what girls listened to and liked back then. My girlfriend back then liked the humorous lyrics about honeymoon night in "Band of Gold," and even my mother used to dance to that song on a single back then. The fact that modern generations of girls still like these songs is sort of reassuring, since clearly those songs have successfully spanned three generations of female favor. "Hitchin' a Ride" was another popular and lively song that everybody liked back then, both male and female (especially my girlfriend back then), as was "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" (which also appeared the 1998 movie "You've Got Mail").

There are some bad anachronisms, though, which really spoil the effect for people very familiar with summer 1970. "Respect Yourself" didn't come out until October 1971, "Knock Three Times" didn't come out until November 1970, "I'll Be There" didn't come out until September 1970, and "Midnight Rider" didn't come out until October 1972. Since so much of the effect of this movie comes from its oldies, such carelessness in its selection of oldies is inexcusable. When you're growing up rapidly during adolescence, each year is very different in nature, so to mix 1970 songs with 1971 and 1972 songs is a glaring error. All they had to do to ensure accuracy was merely look at a list! Some extremely suitable songs from summer 1970 they could have included instead would be "My Baby Loves Lovin'," "Mississippi Queen," "Mississippi" (cheerful though somewhat obscure, by John Phillips), "Hey Mister Sun" (very positive!), "Save the Country" (very positive!), "Tighter, Tighter," "Get Ready," "Cinnamon Girl," "Mamma Told Me," "Gimme Dat Ding" (my girlfriend liked that upbeat humorous one back then), "For You Blue," and for a very heavy, powerful effect: "Song of Joy" by Miguel Rios. Actually my favorite song in the film might be the ending song "Now and Then," presumably made just for this movie. That's a very powerful modern song to end a movie full of already powerful music. The movie's soundtrack album is great, though there is some very nice incidental piano music in the movie that wasn't included on the soundtrack album, unfortunately, along with a few other songs.

A few more comments about anachronisms... It's very unlikely a girl in 1970 would be listening to "Daydream Believer" by The Monkees, a song from October 1967, because The Monkees quickly fell out of favor in a major way by early 1968. Even girls who absolutely loved them for their first two years almost universally wrote them off as childish and out of style by then. The rest of the public hated them even more! "Sugar Sugar" (July 1969) wasn't quite as hated in 1970, but that was also getting a little old by then. Also, sex education was prevalent and fairly sophisticated by the late '60s, and was taught in elementary school, so any scene of a 12-year-old girl being taught exclusively by her mother at home on critical sex topics is totally unrealistic. That sort of backwards sex education was common in the 1950s, I believe, but not in the 1960s-1970s.

To be more critical of this movie, the plot was not very memorable to me. Each time I see it, I find I've forgotten major parts of the plot, like the storm drain part, the cemetery part, or the childbirth part. That suggests that those parts of the movie don't fit very well, and/or that the movie is a conglomerate of unrelated incidents. That wouldn't be so bad if the incidents were realistic, but I didn't find the storm drain part very realistic. (What girl would climb into a storm drain late at night in a rain storm, for example? And in the worst case she could just hang onto the bars until she could float out.) Likewise, I didn't think the modern day part fit particularly well, either, and didn't add much to the story, relative to the amount of distraction and interruption it incurred.

Overall, though, I definitely like this film, due to the oldies, the treehouse, the summery feeling, the feeling of friendship and learning and exploration, the sense of permanent friendship (so rare in real life), the enthusiasm, and overall positive feeling. The world could really use some more positive films like this one.

"Magic Boy" is one of the earliest films I remember seeing as a child. I saw it with my sister around 1960 at a special showing in a now-gone San Diego theater in the Pacific Beach area. The title, basic story, and theme melody were very memorable to both of us, and many years later we could still recall fragments of the movie.

By far the most memorable characteristic of this movie for both of us was its extraordinarily long length. IMDb indicates this film is 83 minutes long, which is about the length of the version shown on the TCM channel in recent years, but the original version we saw was *much* longer than that, almost certainly 3-4 hours long. Obviously such a long film is poorly suited to children and their typically short attention spans. After a while the excessive length became ridiculous: the catchy theme melody with lyrics "Magic Boy, Magic Boy" sung by ladies in harmony would start to play at the end of each battle, it would seem like the end of the movie, we would prepare to leave the theater, then another part of the story would start anew. This pattern happened several times in succession until eventually we just wanted the movie to end. My sister remembers a battle with a dragon, which I don't remember and which isn't in the 83-minute version.

As an adult re-watching this movie, my main impressions were that it wasn't particularly appealing, and it was even a bit weird. There is a strangely long scene early in the movie where the friendly animals are eating at a dinner table outside, with annoyingly cute music playing, and weird dubbed adult male voices for the animal sounds, but very little is going on despite the long length of this scene. This strange dinner scene is immediately followed by another strange series of incidents where a cloud of angry bees shift their attack from the bear who was disturbing their hive to an innocent fawn, then the fleeing fawn is snatched up by a hawk (as if a hawk could lift a deer!), then the deer is inexplicably dropped into a lake instead of being carried to the hawk's nest. Then the fawn is immediately attacked by a large toothy salamander in the lake that looks more like a crocodile (as if a salamander would eat a deer!), but this attack is prolonged as if the salamander is merely playing with the fawn, and all the while weird warbling sounds are played, with no dialog or cries for help for a long time. It kept seeming like there were important things that were missing, like calls for help, or Sasuke running to the rescue, or something more important happening at the dinner table. This film definitely doesn't flow as smoothly and evenly as one has come to expect from animated Disney films

Other pointless acts of violence occur throughout the film, such as where traveling bandits attack and burn down an entire town, then kidnap a little girl and threaten to push her over a cliff. Likewise, the evil witch is constantly attacking people. There is no blood, however, despite many warriors being shown cut down in battle by katana swords. Also annoying are the lyrics sung by a man (Danny Valentino) in the theme song at both the beginning and end, which are annoyingly puerile, like "'cause he was good" and an interjected "Boo!" when describing the witch.

Some positive things I can say about the film are that it has a definite oriental cultural feel to it, there are a lot of animals for the kids, there is a lot of action, nice scenery, the magic/invisibility aspects will appeal to kids, and the film's novelty makes it memorable. At least some of the writing in Sasuke's parting note is authentic Japanese script, and there are traditional Japanese-Chinese attributes like the story being of epic length, there are steep mountains with narrow mountain trails and wooden footbridges over deep chasms reminiscent of Chinese paintings, carried buckets of water, katana swords, a Japanese castle, a wooden board gong, bamboo chimes, male warriors with their hair tied into pony tails, kimonos, wood block pillows, and so on. There are valuable lessons about perseverance and hard work, but the unrealistic aspects dealing with magic, invisibility, levitation, and telekinesis partly negate those bits of educational value.

Overall, I'd say the main value of this film is entertainment for children. Adults who are interested in animation, especially the history of Japanese animation, will find this to be a historically valuable data point, but I can't imagine many adults could stand the annoying theme songs and music, the weird animal voice dubs, and the story's lapses in logic and realism.

This is one of the earliest films I can remember seeing as a young child. I saw it in a theater when it was first released in 1961. In fact, the only part I remember from my first viewing, even after seeing it again as an adult, is the cool laser-like weapon shooting at the fleeing ships at the end. I loved that part when I was young. As a result, this film will always have sentimental value to me.

Therefore I still enjoy watching this film every few years. However, I am also simultaneously very disappointed in the special effects and moderately disappointed in the story. Atlantis, of course, is a classic story, which is why Disney chose it for an animated movie, so it's very much a shame that such a classic story wasn't given better treatment than this.

The worst effect is probably the laser-like weapon, where the beam is shown as a fake-looking superimposed red streak of color leading to and surrounding the target each time it fires, usually followed by an out-of-position scene of the destroyed target. The ray's effect isn't even consistent. In one case it melts an urn, in another case it blows up a fishing boat, and in another case it turns a man into a skeleton. So is it is heat ray, a coherent light ray, an anti-matter beam, or what? The half-man half-animal effects were also weak, with obvious masks. And the lava flow just looks like muddy red water, which it probably is. Also, the hypnotism scene was unconvincing and scientifically unsound.

Some of the effects are very good, however. I love the scene where the submarine surfaces in the background behind Demetrios and Antillia while they are chatting, oblivious to the sub as it spots them, circles back, and begins following them. The laser demonstration that melts a small urn was likewise very well done. The priest's wisdom about the effects of decadence, isolationism, warmongering, the good vs. bad sides of technology, and ignoring nature's warning signs will always be applicable, and this gives some nice depth to the plot.

For my taste there is a little too much focus on the cruel, sordid side of Atlantis instead of on the beautiful side that has always fired people's imaginations. They could have shown inspiring views of classical architecture, treasure rooms, exotic pets like peacocks or giraffes, hot air balloons, master artists and musicians, clever modern conveniences, and more, but instead they emphasized gladiator battles, audience drunkenness, whipped slaves, a pig, a vicious wildcat, and the turning of men into half-beasts. These depressing scenes, on top of Antillia's despicable personality, are then followed by horrific scenes of Atlantis' cataclysmic destruction. Obviously you're not going to come away from this movie feeling inspired with beautiful imagery in your head, so that aspect is a significant drawback to the film as a whole.

This is a movie fully deserving of a modern remake, but there's no hurry. Atlantis is a classic theme that won't get old no matter how many remakes are done about it, and no matter when they're made.