Sabrina la Bruja Adolescente

Watching this cartoon as a child almost made me delirious!Its over use of extremely bright colors,especially pink,loud cartoonish noises,and characters with annoying and repetitive sounding voices was enough to give me headaches.I DO NOT recommend parents to show this to their children,unless you want to make them sick!I can't believe this became a popular prime time TV show,based on stuff like this!

Premiering on the day before "The Archies" on September 13,1969,the spin-off to one of the most successful animated Saturday Morning shows ever produced,"Sabrina,The Teenage Witch",cast a potent spell for CBS,not only her intended juvenile audience,but over the rival networks as well. Utilizing the prime-time practice of integrating,promoting, and spinning off new characters from a hit show,the head of daytime programming over at CBS,Fred Silverman carefully planned the debut of the sixteen-year-old sorceress on "The Archies". Introduced in 1969-1970 on "The Archie Comedy Hour",Sabrina was an apprentice wonder-worker who struggled to concealed her magical powers in order just to be a member of the Riverdale High School gang. The perky teenager was patterned after the winsome witch from the hit Emmy winning ABC-TV Comedy Series,"Bewitched",played by Elizabeth Montgomery,and was targeted to headline her own Saturday Morning cartoon show during the hiatus of the show. To be more informative,"Sabrina,The Teenage Witch" will be the only character out of "The Archies" to make the jump from animation to live-action with a series based on the characters which starred Melissa Joan Hart,a show that ran on ABC and The WB for several seasons by the way.

Getting back to the animated cartoon series which was executive produced by Lou Scheimer and Norm Prescott under the company Filmation Productions and directed by Hal Sutherland and Rudy Larriva and Bill Reed. Only 49 episodes were made of the series and it ran on CBS from September 11,1971 until August 31,1974. Then the series made the transition over to NBC where it ran from September 10,1977 until the last episode of the series(it repeats)on January 28,1978. In the hour long comedy-variety format,Sabrina appeared with the Riverdale regulars, Archie,Reggie,Jughead,Betty,Veronica,Moose,their shaggy companion,Hot Dog,a Latino character and a African-American character,in two of the four eleven-minute cartoons. In some of her comedies,the young sorceress was supported by a pair of spell-casting aunts,Hilda and Zelda,a warlock cousin,Ambrose,and a cat named Salem(voice by Mel Blanc) that could also summon up an uncanny trick or two. Several of the cartoons were very psychedelic but little on the fun side. Sabrina also appeared as a member of the bubblegum rock group,The Archies,which presented a big-beat dance tune and dance-of-the-week between segments.

In 1970-1971,two episodes were coupled with "The Groovie Ghoulies", a new series featured a group of merry monsters which consisted of a hippie looking Wolfman character,a Frankenstein character,and a psychedelic Dracula character who were also musicians with a bubblegum type sound as well. These were tied together with vignettes in a new format titled "Sabrina And The Groovie Ghoulies". In new comedies made for the 1971-1972 season,the teenage sorceress starred in her own half-hour show for more than three years,one of the most successful Saturday Morning series ever,which was under "The Archies" title. Under the title of "The Archies" this was the highest-rated children's programming in its premiere season,receiving a 54 percent audience share. The 1973-1974 season would be fatal. Sabrina spelled a death knell for its highly touted educational competition as well and other shows,which clobbered it in the ratings. The 1973-1974 season,Sabrina had competition against "The Curiosity Shop",which was on ABC,and NBC's "Take A Giant Step"....also to boot other programs as well would send it downhill too...The animated series "Star Trek" on NBC and the animated series "The Jackson Five",which was on ABC would prove fatal for Sabrina as well. It ended its association with CBS in August of 1974.

When the series moved to NBC,it tried to bolster its sagging 1977-1978 ratings with thirteen repeated episodes,intitally titled "The New Archie Sabrina Hour",and two months later with the teenager renamed "Superwitch" but the spell was long broken and when the series ended it association with NBC on January 28,1978 it left the air without a whisper never to be heard from again.

I watched it growing up and there was nothing wrong with it then or now. Sabrina is a good witch living with her two Aunts Hilda and Zelda. She goes to Riverdale High and is friends with Archie and the gang. Sabrina uses her magick to help her friends. She tries to be an average teenager even though she is a witch. Kids need to watch to learn about friendship. As for the sounds and bright lights there are other things on TV far worse. Have you seen the cartoons now? So full of violence? Kids should watch this than being hooked on video games. They are sitting there mindlessly blowing stuff up. The music on those hurt my eyes and the loud noises. Ever been to a video arcade? Wow! Enough to send you into a migraine.

I finally came across this one! I was happy to find the whole series on the archive website. I never knew that Sabrina herself was a character in the Archies series until sometime in 2016! This cartoon, unlike all the other Sabrina adaptations (from the sitcom to the 90s cartoon to the Satanic witch version on Netflix...yes, I love them all!)....I am not familiar with it at all. When I played the first episode and I heard that theme song, I went, "ummm what the *bleep* was that?!!" I was not expecting a theme song to a 1960s show about a cute female witch to sound so out of place. Why does it sound very honky-tonk Huckleberry Hound country-like?? This is the late 60s; you would think they would go with an obvious 60s bubblegum pop tune like the Archies did (but with a female singer this time and with some sparkly sound effects thrown in the song). Or perhaps even more effective than a bubblegum theme song would have been a baroque pop or psychedelic pop theme song. It would fit the witchy vibe a-lot more. In the late 60s the medieval aesthetic was prominent especially in music. Most of the musicians who were influenced by the medieval period had a mystical feel to their music; some of them were fueled by drugs, while others were just enamored with the medieval Europe aesthetics and lore.

Overall, the theme tune might have gone in both of these musical directions. What a wasted opportunity. So who was the buffoon who decided to give poor Sabrina that awful theme song to her own show? Was the Huckleberry Hound singer blackmailing the crew of this cartoon or the animation studio to get him to sing that song...or else he does something?!! Or was it just pure nepotism?! Poor Sabrina and my poor ears.

I am not a huge fan of the voice acting. I maybe saw the original Archies cartoon when I was very young, and I don't really remember it. I'm aware that's what their voices sounded like in the Archies cartoon. Still I'm going to be critical of the (young male) voices. I know these are prominent voice actors. But the male voice acting for the teenage boys were rubbish and ear grating. They are too cringe and very goofy-sounding for me. The older men sound good. But Archie, Harvey, Jughead and their peers sound awful. I wish they'd hired young voice actors who were in their late teens or early 20s for those roles.

But Jane Webb as Sabrina is a keeper. I love Sabrina's voice! The female voices (Webb does a majority of them!) were a lot better than the male voices. Webb, as Sabrina, reminded me of one of my favorite voice actors, Tress MacNeille! I never knew Veronica was Southern?! & I was expecting her to have a much deeper voice. Every time Veronica talked I couldn't help but laugh. I thought they redid the show in the late 70s because this cartoon has a few alternate titles, so I was wrong, which is a pity. Some episodes of the show are cute, and the others are just blah and forgettable. This is a cartoon I could've skipped. I guess it's now time for me to start reading the vtg comics!

Jane Webb does a beautiful job as the voice of the protagonist Sabrina here, who is written ALMOST PERFECTLY, which is quite surprising for a Saturday morning cartoon. They pulled off the feat of making her magical/otherworldly but also very relatable and down-to-earth at the same time. The Melissa Joan Hart version of the character became utterly insufferable from the 4th season of the live-action sitcom onwards, and THIS SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON version of the character could have taught her a number of things about REAL MORAL FIBRE and maturity (because yes, the Melissa Joan Hart version become increasingly immature and immoral as time went on).

Jane Webb also BRILLIANTLY VOICES almost EVERY SINGLE FEMALE character on this show - a feat which is practically unequalled. The lady was an absolute genius, and I can't believe she is practically forgotten today. The rest of the voice cast is also brilliant - with a special shout-out to John Erwin, who would go on to become famous as He-Man/Prince Adam. Here he is Reggie Mantle, portrayed as an utterly three-dimensional human character, despite all the ludicrous and zany antics he gets entangled in, because John Erwin is so amazing. Despite the arrogance and condescension that characterize Reggie, you can't help but love him here!

I think it was a stroke of genius not to have a recurring, standard villain/rival for Sabrina in the form of a "mean cheerleader" or some other female nemesis - but rather, Reggie was depicted in the DEEPLY COMPLEX manner of a FRENEMY. This is something a lot of children would have done well to learn from.......how someone could be a friend on the one hand, or at least be a part of your friends group/social circle, while still sometimes being out to "expose" you if they believe you have a secret. It wasn't BLACK OR WHITE on this show, and that was brilliant.

Another reviewer said the series was witless and lacked imagination, but I must disagree. The moral ambiguities and endless grey shades of magic/witchcraft are openly displayed here - with some characters like Aunt Hilda and Miss Della the Head Witch going out of their way to HURT people with magic sometimes, and yet those characters are not presented as EVIL or as VILLAINS........rather, the motif of witchcraft and all its implications are used here to teach children that some people, even some adults who are in positions of familial responsibility and great authority (people that you're expected to look up to) can use their powers for less-than-noble aims. Again, there are almost never any clear-cut villains on the show, and so children are presented with a much more TRUE-TO-LIFE (ironically, despite all the magic and wackiness) depiction of moral complexities than the straightforward, simplistic and much more ubiquitous "good vs evil" formula that Disney cartoons had long since established.

Not all the episodes and stories are created equal of course, and some are quite hard to watch because some of them are more overtly infantile (like a number of the Groovy Ghoulies episodes), while the "high school" episodes can also be hit or miss depending on the degree of juvenility the writers decide to employ, but taken as a whole, this is a UNIQUE and VERY MEMORABLE series. They do a terrific job of setting up a very specific world - a mood - a MISE-EN-SCENE if you will - which honestly transcends the standard Saturday morning cartoon formula. This is all the more impressive considering the Sabrina show was an off-shoot of the already existing Archies series.

Sometimes you feel like you are watching a cartoon version of the 1963 BYE BYE BIRDIE film musical with Ann-Margaret - and I mean that in a VERY POSITIVE WAY - while on some occasions, they manage to evoke the entertainingly creepy/spooky ambience of the B-list horror and thriller films from the 1960s and early 1970s that have become cult classics. And there are PLENTY of legitimately witty, laugh-out-loud funny moments that transcend age.

You cannot watch this with any degree of cynicism, and like I said some of the episodes are real doozies, but I am very very glad I own the collection on DVD to pop into my player and watch whenever I need to get a nostalgic cartoon kick (nostalgic in the sense that it evokes a distinct bygone time period SO PERFECTLY that I feel like I own a little time capsule). It ISN'T just a generic Saturday morning cartoon, although some of the Groovy Ghoulies episodes do weigh it down in that direction, and if you don't want to get the DVD you can watch this for free on YouTube as well. I just like having the DVD set because I like owning a tangible, hard copy that is its own collector's item. :)