Movie Details
| Title: | Magic Christmas Tree | |
| Director: | Richard C. Parish | |
| Year: | 1965 | |
| Genre: | Child Empowerment | |
| Times Seen: | 2 | |
| Last Seen: | 12.19.07 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 12.19.07 | Weird Wednesday | Heading home for the holidays tomorrow but I had to come out for one last WW of the year to see this again. Again I felt very sorry for any kids forced to watch this while their parents went bowling or to martini lunches or whatever they did in the mid-60s. I think the movie has 7 scenes total and a good 3 of those are meaningless and tacked on. The highlight for me is probably still the dad starting the mower and mowing the lawn (have to mention the starting because I think it took him longer to do that than to actually cut the grass)/mom talking on the phone about casseroles and whatnot/turtle eating clovers scene. It's so tense! What's gonna happen next! I DON'T KNOW! It seemed longer this time. Like I remember the people chasing after their vehicles but I don't remember so much of it. But what's funny about that is that I also remembered the giant but thought there was much more of him! I guess your mind plays crazy tricks on you when you're exposed to something this great. So I loved it. It was a great final WW experience of the year for me. I really hope they play it every christmas. |
| 12.20.06 | Weird Wednesday | whew. Magic Christmas Tree. I imagine that a whole generation of psychoanalysts have this movie and this movie alone to thank for their continued livelihood. That this is a kids movie and parents probablyforced their kids to see it while they went off shopping or adulterating, leaving scores of impressionable sponge-like minds to absorb what goes on in this film... well I guess they don't have war crime equivalents for parenthood but those that've seen this movie would agree that maybe they should. After 20 seconds of color credits the movie switches to black and white. Normally you'd just accept that as something intentional but this film is so shoddily cobbled together I really thought maybe the movie would randomly switch back and forth based on what film stock they could afford that day. A group of kids are talking about what they're going to do for Halloween and one of them decides to be brave and sneak up to the local witch's house. As it happens, the old hag is trying to get her cat (named Lucifer) down from a tree so she grabs ahold of the boy and forces him to climb. He falls and hits his head and from there the movie takes off. I don't really want to give everything away... but just picking my favorite parts are tough because pretty much every scene has something great about it. For instance, there's this ridiculously long montage that intercuts the kid's mom talking on the phone with the kid's dad trying to mow the lawn with the kid's pet turtle (named Ichabod (that he keeps in a drawer)) eating grass. Seriously. for a movie that's only anh hour long there are some amazingly long sequences here. And it's just so messed up. The giant... Santa... the pie-faced fireman... the husky kid... it's just SO MESSED UP. I can't even go on. This is perhaps the most poorly put-together film I've ever seen. It rivals the crap I did with my friends when I was in middle school with my dad's video camera. It's a mess of unsynched ADR, mis-framed angles, split continuity, and bad editing. If this was one of my childhood favorites I think I might have to commit myself. Oh, I don't know where they found the guy who played the kid's dad but he's a gem. |
