The Argon Quest

Yes, here in Canada it was a weekly tv series on Sunday evenings entitled "Blizzard Island". It was interesting enough to keep me watching until the final episode. I couldn't believe how short the run was though. As I recall it was written or produced by Andrew Cochrane. The host of "Switchback" at that time.

My Wife insisted on watching this movie this evening, as its something from her childhood, its cute for an extremely short film and surprisingly well put together,

My biggest complaint is one of the supporting puppets introduced early on, (Named Rog I think) i literally cant understand a word he is saying to the main characters throughout almost the entire film, I can pick up maybe an entire one word per sentence from him if I am lucky, up until a certain point and its like they changed his voice actor from that point on, The titular giant argon was a nice surprise too near the end of the film,

I picked up the 90 minute tape while garage sale shopping today. It looked like a decent kids film, so I grabbed it. Well, to make it short, it could have been much better. I know they were probably on a tight budget, but it would have payed off in the end if they bothered to get child actors that could actually act. Both of them act like their reading off of cue cards, and show no emotion whatsoever.

Other then that, a neat story for a kid's film, despite low production values. We are supposed to believe that Blizzard Island is dying, but everything on the island is very green. It looks like that they used a home camera to film this, and the puppets are no Muppets.

Rent it, barrow it, check it out, but don't buy it.

This movie was culled from the Eastern-Canadian/CBC produced TV series "Blizzard Island". I met puppeteer Terry Angus at a local convention a few years ago and congratulated him on his Henson-like puppets and quality production values. And it should look like a Henson production since he worked on several JHP programs, including "Fraggle Rock". I think the original run of this show was about 12 episodes. A great effort!