<$BlogRSDURL$>


Sunday, May 15, 2005

Marco Polo Junior Versus the Red Dragon by Eric Porter 

While I'm being a bit nostalgic, I've been searching for some obscure animated films that I vaguely remember, but no-one else seems to :).

  • La Musetta (1962) - may have inspired Disney's The Aristocats. Whatever, at least it's readily available on DVD, under the title Gay Purr-ee.

  • Hugo the Hippo (1976) - fairly dark and imaginative children's film made in Hungary, but voiced for the US market by the Osmonds and various fine actors. The sharks were scary and the people even scarier! There was apparently a VHS NTSC release which may have been edited.

    • And the really tough ones to find, made here in Australia!

  • Grendel, Grendel, Grendel (1980) made by Alex Stitt, from the novel by John Gardner and superbly voiced by Peter Ustinov. This was a significant film at the time and quite well-known, and did get a VHS release oveseas, but it's currently unavailable in any form.*

    • And most interesting of all:

  • Marco Polo Junior Versus the Red Dragon (1972) made by Eric Porter, who was Australia's answer to Walt Disney. Maybe I saw this at an impressionable age, but it really amazed me at the time!

    It's been remade in the US recently as Marco Polo: Return to Xanadu, but what disturbs me is that there appears to be no mention of Porter's original film (or of Australia) even though the characters and situations appear to me to be identical (see character sheet below)! The original Australian version was released on VHS in some countries (though now completely deleted), so a comparison might prove interesting - this bears further investigation, particularly of the credits on the recent version.**


    • (*The Grendel picture is the cover to the newly released soundtrack CD from 1M1 records - ** The Marco Polo images are an original 1972 film poster available from the eBayer dealer, John Reid, and a 2002 animation still character sheet from Lobitos Creek Ranch animation).

    Labels: , ,


    // posted by Ian T. @ 6:46 pm (49) comments

    This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?