There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, you run into the best people in the moist unlikely places…
Return From Witch Mountain (1978)
Distributed by: Buena Vista Distribution
Directed by: John Hough
Those times were not as bad as we thought they were.
Yes, the Roman Empire fell, but not when Rome was sacked; it was only the western half that was conquered, with the successors in Constantinople calling themselves “Rome” until 1453. All the talk about the Dark Ages tends to ignore how bright a center of learning Aachen had become when Charlemagne became Holy Roman Emperor. And any fan of the folk, surf, or Motown can put to bed claims that American pop music in between Elvis going into the army and the Beatles going on The Ed Sullivan Show was a vast wasteland.
Likewise, there’s a general assumption that Walt Disney Productions was in a creative slump from the time Walt himself passed away in 1966, to when Michael Eisner became CEO in 1984. People tend to cite this slump by noting the lackluster quality of the animated movies the studio made its reputation upon. The fact that the animation department lost 75% of its personnel during that time, including the very public resignation of Don Bluth to form his own company, likely colors opinions about that period.
On the other hand, the rest of the picture looks much brighter. Disney still turned profits during this period, opened new theme parks and resorts in Orlando and Tokyo, and had an active slate of live action films that may not have taken the world by storm, but did keep the wolves from the door.
One of which being Escape to Witch Mountain:
Based on the book by Alexander Key, the 1975 film was the story of two orphans, Tia (Kim Richards) and Tony (Ike Eisenmann) with telekinetic and telepathic abilities who find their way back to their surviving family, aliens from another world who came here when their home was dying.
Unlike other aliens coming to Earth, though, this group looked for somewhere quiet on our world to hole up and not bother the neighbors.
The film was a modest success for Disney, and picked up some decent reviews among the critics. Had Walt still been alive, that would have been considered a complete story and sat as a standalone film, as Walt Disney did not believe in making sequels.
(Insert Disney tent pole strategy joke here…)
But, in 1978, Walt was gone, and Disney needed product, so-o-o-o…
The film opens in a similar way Escape ended; instead of their flying saucer going away from human eyes, their craft comes into view over the Los Angeles area, parking down at the 50-yard line at the Rose Bowl.
We watch as Tia and Tony emerge with their Uncle Bene (Denver Pyle, who took them away at the end of the last film) who wishes the kids a lot of fun as they start their vacation among us. It’s hard to imagine why the kids would actually want to come back among Earth people, considering what they faced three years earlier; perhaps their people have their own version of Rumspringa, but ANY-ways…
Waiting for them is their cab, driven by Eddie (Richard Bakalyan) who has instructions as to where to drop off the kids. He runs out of gas half way there, though, and leaves his passengers (two minors, mind you) alone in the car while he walks back to get a few gallons.
The neighborhood the kids are stranded in is pretty deserted and a little dicey, which is the perfect place for an illicit experiment. It’s here we find Dr. Victor Gannon (Christopher Lee), accompanied by his benefactor/partner/hanger-on Letha Wedge (Bette Davis) and her nephew Sickle (Anthony James), getting ready to test Gannon’s invention.
His gizmo is an implant that makes a person do whatever Victor commands them to do. Sickle is the test subject here, as he’s declared his acrophobia before Victor sends him to climb the fire escape of the building across the street. He sends Letha’s nephew up to the roof, where he tests how well the phobia has been suppressed, pushing his subject into danger as he does:
Sickle doesn’t die, because, Disney. In fact, Tony gets a precognitive flash about the disaster, and comes on the scene just in time to stop his fall by levitating him to the ground. Victor and Letha are impressed and grateful to Tony, and they make a donation to the charity of Tony’s choice knock out Tony and bring him to the lab. Victor sees right away that there’s no future in making poor Sickle his slave, when he’s got a powerful psionic alien he can boss around. (This seems unlikely as he’s not human, which means his physiognomy isn’t remotely close to human for the gizmo to work, but ANY-ways…)
Deserted by both her brother and her cab driver, Tia gets out and starts looking for her brother (whose link with her is severed by Victor’s device). She runs instead into the youngest, cutest street gang to terrorize walk Los Angeles, the Earthquakes. She puts her lot in with Dazzler (Christian Juttner), Muscles (Brad Savage), Crusher (Poindexter Youthers), and Rocky (Jeffrey Jacquet), a bunch of kids who claim to be the baddest of the bad in their (remarkably clean-looking) neighborhood.
About the only thing that puts terror into their little hearts is Mr. “Yo-yo” Yokomoto (Jack Soo, in his last theatrical role). A truant officer for the Los Angeles school system, he spends the film being put upon, both by the kids who get away from him and his unappreciative bosses. He’s the only complication the gang has to deal with, as Tia takes them up on their hospitality and stays with them in their clubhouse deserted crash pad. Which is okay for a young woman to go off into a bad neighborhood with four members of a street gang without worries, because, Disney.
While Tia gets to know the boys she’s with, Victor and Letha get to know Tony a little better by running him through a few paces. Letha, looking for a big score now, uses Tony to knock over the museum where there’s a few million dollars of gold on display. This goes badly, as Letha and Sickle don’t realize just how heavy gold is as the loot crushes their station wagon.
Victor shows up to reclaim Tony and extricate the Wedges, while Tia and the Earthquake Gang convince Yo-yo to drive them to the scene to save Tia’s brother, at which point a car chase ensues:
Everyone walks away from this horrific damage, because, Disney. Ultimately, Tia is able to find Tony, but Victor gets the jump on her and places her in suspended animation. He goes through all the trouble (let alone is able to know how to put an alien in a coma) as opposed to doing her in like the normal Christopher Lee villain would, because, Disney. And you can probably guess where this is going to wind up by the end, because, Disney.
And yes, there’s a lot here that makes this hard to sit through, because, (yes), Disney. The script by Malcolm Marmorstein feels more like an outline than a finished work. At times, it feels like someone just said on the lot, “What if we do a flipped version of The Lost Saucer, with the aliens stuck on Earth?”, and then had the pages thrown together on set at the last minute. Considering the general state of the art for shows and films made with young audiences in mind then, though, it’s really no worse than anything Sid and Marty Kroft sold to television.
Even if the script was lacking, the two stars of the pic made very good use of what they were handed. Yes, the stars; both Lee and Davis got top billing over Richards and Eisenmann, probably to entice both of the veterans to work on the film. Davis would note in interviews that the main reason she took the role was to make a film her grandchildren could go to, while Lee claimed he jumped because it was a chance to work with Davis.
As both stars got along fabulously during the shoot and the crew found them a pleasure to work with, this infuses the film with a spirit of fun that would have otherwise been absent. Not only did the two legends show up, they made the most of the opportunity. Every scene either of them are in, the film pops to life, and when both of them work off of each other, this rises above many of the other live action films Disney came out with during this period.
If for no other reason, and there really aren’t that many other reasons, watching the film for Lee and Davis makes it worth seeking out. Okay, maybe there are a few other reasons: There’s Hough’s maintaining the level of work he’d done directing Escape that gives this an internal continuity that makes the two films a decent double feature to sit through. And yes, there’s the fact that the Richards and Eisenmann’s approaches to their characters behave in a way that makes sense in regards to what may have taken place since last we saw them three years ago in the last film. And there’s Soo gamely giving his best even as he battled esophageal cancer during the shoot.
Considering how happy the set was, the film we got certainly provides an example of the best of Disney’s live action output back then. And as we watch Lee and Davis on screen working off each other, those times don’t seem to be as bad as we thought they were…
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