At Last! The Best of the Rankin/Bass "Animagics"
Aesthetically, the best Rankin/Bass "Animagic" flick of them all. Well worth watching, if for no other reason, just too see the fantastic in-the-round MAD MAGAZINE-like caricatures of the entire array of classic monsters. Those of us who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s fondly remember seeing this classic on TV a few times around Halloween. And now, thanks to the cool folks at Anchor Bay, we can nostalgically relive that childhood experience over and over again--in more vivid color and with crisper images than ever before, as the DVD was digitally remastered (for the first time ever for home video) from a rare original 35mm print!
Unlike their other Christmas and Easter productions, this one-and-only Halloween flick from the Rankin/Bass team is not overly saccharin or maudlin. Not only did MAD MAGAZINE's Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis have their hands in the writing and the visual artistry, but the master of macabre himself, Boris Karloff, voiced the animated puppet version of...
A Halloween Blast from the Past
I was thrilled to come across this newly repackaged DVD version of "Mad Monster Party" - thank you, Anchor Bay!
Like other reviewers, MMP was a staple of my early TV viewing years. KTTV in Los Angeles used to show this program every year, around Columbus Day (I think), and it quickly became a holiday tradition. Then, and now, I don't think MMP ever got the respect it richly deserved. It dropped from the airwaves sometime in the late 60's.
This newly re-mastered DVD has captured the film in all it's colorful richness. The sound is what you'd expect, (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), but on my home theater it still looked and sounded great. And there were a few more surprises.
For example, I was surprised to find that the film is 95 minutes long - I guess it's a product of looking back through 30+ years, but I hadn't realized that this was intended to be a full featured theatrical release, competing with Disney's total dominance of the youth and family film...
Groovy retro puppet monster classic is better than ever!
Not too long ago, this lost Rankin/Bass puppet-animated feature film was virtually forgotten about under the pile of other holiday classics - including "RUDOLPH", "FROSTY" and "SANTA CLAUS" - from the same creators. Now, thanks to verification from Rick Goldschmidt (and his wonderful books about R/B) that this film really did exist and wasn't just a childhood dream, "MAD MONSTER PARTY" has acheived cult status with its own website, a CD soundtrack, several airings during the past couple Halloween seasons and is finally released in this gorgeous collector's DVD.
When Dr. Baron Von Frankenstein decides to retire from his long career as the head of the "Worldwide Organization of Monsters", he invites all of his creations - Frankenstein, The Mummy, Count Dracula, The Invisible Man, The Werewolf and many others - for one final bash to announce that his successor will be his long-lost nephew, a nerdy boy named Felix Flankin. This does not sit well with the monsters, who each covet the...
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