Alan Smithee

This topic came to mind as I'm uploading an entire movie on YouTube for the first time, which I'll link here when it's complete- "Super Seal" from the mid-70s, which I saw at a "kiddie matinee" long ago and just found a tape of. It got me thinking about other low-budget movies from small-time distributors of the G-rated variety, rather than the exploitation stuff that usually gets discussed. Movies that aren't generally offensive and are geared towards kids, but are still very badly made and just plain cheap.

One that might fit this genre is "Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny" from 1972, it's become a bad-movie favorite among many, and it incorporates a bizarre movie version of "Thumbelina" in its entirety:
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rw2516

Couple that come to mind

Santa Claus(1959) Mexican
Puss n Boots

Saw them both in early 1960s at special Saturday kiddie matinee. Flat out freaky. Drop some acid before watching.

Alan Smithee

Super Seal is processing right now, it's 5AM so I gotta go to sleep but it says I can embed it now and it'll show up when it's ready:

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Adam Tyner

I stumbled upon Super Seal on a UHF station back in 1992 and had that "gonna be a green, grassy morning / a blue sky kind of a day" song lodged in my head for years and years and years. It took me a really long time to figure out what movie it was since that song was the only thing I could remember about it from my few minutes tuning in.

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Mentioned upthread, but:

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Alan Smithee

I've gotta see Pinocchio's Birthday Party now! Found out it was released by the defunct EastWest DVD company which was sold at 99 Cents Stores, but is now long gone and some joker on Amazon wants $39 for it.

I'd put the "Pufnstuf" movie in this category if it wasn't based on an already-established TV show and didn't have so many big names behind it- I first saw that shown on TV in the middle of the night from a faded 16mm print, and my mind was blown. The appeal of Super Seal that is kind of lost on the videotape I found is that in the theater, it was SO obvious that all the songs were studio-recorded and they were lip-synching. Even though the theater I saw it at had a crappy sound system, it sounded better than it does on the tape.

Mabuse

I remember a kids film about a boxing kangaroo and the kangaroo was a guy in a suit. Anyone remember title?

hasslein

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Ash Ketchum

I saw THE MAGIC VOYAGE OF SINBAD on a double bill with Sidney Poitier's Oscar-winning role in LILIES OF THE FIELD (1963). At the time I couldn't tell what kind of film it was. It wasn't Hollywood and it wasn't Italian. It wasn't till years later that I finally found out what this film was. Around 1975, I went to see a big-budget Russian fantasy film from 1952 called SADKO, by Alexander Ptushko, at an arthouse theater and when the scene comes where the hero holds up the shining fish of gold with its fake "rays" emanating out that I recognized it as MAGIC VOYAGE OF SINBAD. SADKO eventually came out on DVD and included an interview with the son of the Russian star of the film. And when the subject came up of the English-dubbed re-edit, which had been done by Francis Coppola working for Roger Corman, the Russian spat out Coppola's name and decried his "dirty work."

hasslein

HA! Very interesting. I never saw the film, just remember seeing the trailer as a kid, and knew there was something different about it... (and the word MAGIC seemed to be used a lot with this kind of presentation)

rbrown498

That was MATILDA from AIP, naturally. It came out in 1978.

Here's a TV spot:

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Alan Smithee

I've got Matilda on CED, need to actually watch it one of these days! One of those "worst movies ever" books had a chapter on it, saying that many theaters played this for several days without even ONE person showing up, but business at one theater picked up after they added a local reviewer's quote to the marquee: "One of the worst movies I've ever seen!"

Warner's "Born to be Wild" in the 90s seems to be the same sort of movie- it's about a kid who saves a gorilla from bad humans, but the gorilla is obviously a guy in a suit. I projected that when it was out, and watched it in an empty theater.

Ash Ketchum

They used to distribute a lot of live-action foreign children's movies dubbed in English as children's matinees. Someone named K. Gordon Murray (no relation to Murray the K) was responsible for a lot of these and they were usually Mexican (like the aforementioned SANTA CLAUS) or German, like SLEEPING BEAUTY (which, IIRC, is wall-to-wall narration to avoid the time and expense of dubbing) and the memorable SEVEN DWARFS TO THE RESCUE, which got heavy TV advertising sometime back in the early '70s, I believe.

I remember an American children's movie called SALTY about a seal, which played before DR. ZHIVAGO on a weekend afternoon. I remember a British version of BLACK BEAUTY starring Mark Lester (OLIVER!), which ran before a Harold Robbins double bill of THE CARPETBAGGERS and THE ADVENTURERS. And sometimes they'd dig out old Hollywood classics like THE SECRET GARDEN (1949), which ran before an AIP double bill of BARON BLOOD and THE THING WITH TWO HEADS. And the entire audience stayed for all three movies! A good time was had by all.

rw2516

Off topic. I'm reminded of the foreign children's films that used to air Saturdays on CBS. Hosted by Kukla, Fran and Ollie. Particularly the Japanese film Skinny and Fatty. Vaguely remember an Italian one about some kid riding riding his bike around Rome.

Ash Ketchum

SKINNY AND FATTY is on YouTube and someone linked to it on another thread here recently, I forget which one.

Quatermass

I remember that one. I never saw it, but I remember hearing there was some kind of promotional tie-in with McDonald's that went bad. Apparently there are several scenes in the movie where the Kangaroo goes to McDonald's.

That reminds me of Mac and Me, the shameless ripoff of ET which was sponsored by McDonald's and Sears.

DRG

It probably didn't help that the kangaroo suit looks like something out of horror movie, especially those demonic eyes.

Mabuse

Yeah, the thing looks scary as hell, yet it's supposed to be cute. And instead of getting a little person or a short gymnast or something they get a 6 foot tall adult and it's the worlds biggest kangaroo.

Alan Smithee

Mac and Me is a masterpiece of bad cinema- someone put it on YouTube in all its 16x9 glory (the DVD is only in 4x3):

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The special effects at 9:52 are the greatest ever committed to film.

Quatermass

Jennifer Aniston is allegedly in the McDonald's dance sequence that begins at 59:22

dhmac

Hey, don't blame her - she was young and needed the money!

rw2516

Ran across an old Something Weird Video trailer comp tape I had. Some others not mentioned
PINOCCHIO
PRINCE ANDTHE PAUPER
TOM THUMB
BRAVE LITTLE TAILOR
THE CLOWN AND THE KIDS
WONDERFUL WORLD OF OZ