The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

It's hard to believe that I first saw this series more than 50 years ago, when it aired on Sunday nights just before The Wonderful World of Disney. What I remember was a show that was adventurous, featured Mark Twain's characters Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher, and Huckleberry Finn, and used a mix of live action and animation to tell fun and exciting stories. I'm glad it's finally available on DVD, but "The Complete Series" set of three discs includes only the 20 episodes of the show, with no extras whatsoever, not even subtitles. A feature on the making of the show, or a remembrance piece with the cast and crew recalling their experiences, would have been nice.

Anyway, the show's setup is that Tom, Becky, and Huck get chased into a cave by the murderous Injun Joe, who escaped from jail and now wants revenge on the young protagonists for testifying against him in court. Joe menacingly yells "I'll find you, no matter where you go!" This is all explained in about a minute during the show's live-action intro, which is repeated at the beginning of every episode. Once in the cave, the kids get lost and emerge in an animated land, with the three actors being pretty much the only live-action elements and everything else they encounter, including all other characters, being fully animated. In each episode, they're in a different animated land with new challenges to face, and more often than not, the kids help someone and make new friends. Also in each episode, there's a main bad guy who has the animated face of Injun Joe. No explanation for this is offered. Tom, Becky and Huck's adventures take them through time and all over the world from South American mountains, to African jungles, to Middle Eastern deserts, to South Sea islands, to a valley of Neanderthal-like people, to ancient China, to Antarctica, the Pacific Northwest, and even an undersea Atlantis. In some episodes, they encounter characters and situations from literature, including Hercules, Lilliputians from Gulliver's Travels, and Don Quixote from Man of La Mancha. In others, they face thinly-veiled versions of Captain Nemo, Genghis Khan, and Captain Ahab. I like that there's a variety of stories, and probably my favorite episode is called "Hunting the Hunter" in which the kids encounter an island of talking animals where they are put on trial for being human. It has a pro-animal bent I wouldn't have expected in a kids' show from the 1960s. I also liked the episode "The Conquistador's Curse," which explores the characters' humanity, and it's one of two episodes where Tom and Huck face off against each other, at least temporarily.

The main cast, which includes Michael Shea as Huck, Kevin Schultz as Tom, and Lu Ann Haslem as Becky, are all good in their roles and seem to grow in confidence as the season progresses. Shea and Schultz both went on to a variety of television appearances throughout the 70s and into the 80s. Haslam, who is cute and spunky as Becky, doesn't seem to have continued acting after this series. The other cast member in every episode is Ted Cassidy, best known as Lurch from the Addams Family, and as Ruk in the Star Trek original series episode "What are Little Girls Made of." Things I find strange are that in the live-action portion, Cassidy never appears in the same frames as the kids, and you never see him mouth his dialogue on screen. The majority of his role is voicing the animated bad guys, and his deep voice makes him intimidating. I should mention that the show's theme song, which you hear at the beginning and end of every episode, is a bouncy and fun barbershop quartet number accompanied by banjo and trombone, and is different from anything else I can recall on television.

And now finally on to what I really wanted to talk about. The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn aired in 1968, exactly a year before Hanna Barbara studios debuted its much more successful series, Scooby Doo Where Are You, in 1969. While Huckleberry Finn doesn't revolve around kids solving mysteries, involves a cast of three companions rather than four, and doesn't feature a recurring animated animal companion, the two shows frequently sound and look and like each other. On my most recent rewatching, I noticed that a number of pieces of incidental and mood-setting music, which I know well from repeated viewings of Where are You, show up in New Adventures, or rather were in this series before Scooby Doo. Ted Nichols was the musical director for all of Scooby Doo, and for part of Huckleberry Finn. And speaking of sound, voice actor Don Messick, who was the voice of Scooby Doo until 2012, as well as scores of other well-known characters from Papa Smurf, to Astro from the Jetsons, to Droopy, and many others, also voiced animated characters in three Huckleberry Finn episodes, including the first episode.

While Huckleberry Finn varies its style to depict the different animated lands the protagonists visit, the two shows frequently have a similar look. If fact, one episode, called "Strange Experiment," in which the kids encounter a mad scientist with an assistant who resembles Frankenstein's Monster, has backgrounds and character designs that could have easily fit into Scooby Doo. It's worth noting that production design for both series was by Iwao Takamoto, who started as an apprentice under the tutelage of Disney's "Nine Old Men," and left Disney in 1961 for Hanna-Barbera where he had a hand in developing many well-known and beloved cartoon characters and was responsible for naming Scooby-Doo after Frank Sinatra's final phrase in "Strangers in the Night."

And the links to The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn aren't limited to Scooby Doo and animated shows. Hollingsworth Morse, who directed half of New Adventure's episodes, also directed a slew of well-known live-action shows including Emergency!, Lassie, Love, American Style, Adam-12, Marcus Welby, M.D., The Dukes of Hazzard, and The Fall Guy.

This TV show was a fascinating technological achievement for the '60's.The term "Virtual Sets" did not exist then as it does now but that is exactly what was created for Huck Finn,& all on a TV budget & weekly schedule besides! Nowadays virtual sets are done via computer generated imagery(CGI)& the results are phenomenal,but no such technology existed in 1968. Virtual sets could be created at that time by matte paintings(Star Trek)& also by placing live actors against miniature model sets(The Starlost). The other method was to have live actors in an animated environment as was done on Huck Finn. And they did it beautifully with this show. The quality of the animation itself was also very good,similar to Johnny Quest. It's truly an incredible accomplishment in addition to being a fun & entertaining TV show as I was growing up.

This was a highly innovative show at the time it was released. This was one of the first shows to mix live action and animation and it will always be one of my favorites. Too bad it is not shown anymore. Someone should write to the Cartoon Network and demand that this be shown. This is definitely a lost classic of animation.

I watched this on and off as a kid...I was too young to catch it in first run, but then it aired in reruns for a long time but trying to find it could be tricky as sometimes it was in a morning cartoon block, sometimes on Saturday mornings, and sometimes not at all. Later, as an adult, I told friends about this show and they didn't believe me...but now there's proof as it's on DVD!

Tom, Huck, and Becky are chased by Injun Joe into a cave that suddenly turns into animated backgrounds. They flee Joe through the cave (I guess it's meant to be a sort of inter-dimensional portal...) and they end up wandering through different locations and time periods, always encountering adventures with villains who look and talk just like Injun Joe.

The unique thing was that the three heroes were live-action actors against an animated background and interacting with animated characters. And for its time, it was very well-done. The animated portions were very much standard Hanna-Barbera of the late 60s.

The stories ranged from the comical to the adventurous to the downright sinister. Settings ranged from ancient Greece to Spain (where they meet Don Quixote) to China to India to a Gothic swamp to a generic medieval Europe to a valley inhabited by cave men. (No explanation is given as to why they shift time periods and location so easily; as I kid I wanted to know!) Injun Joe always showed up, as a robber captain or a Nemoesque mad scientist or a wicked king or even an evil sorcerer. (He never recognized the kids, but he was always their enemy. Again, no explanation.) Sometimes they riffed on classic literature; plots are cribbed from Don Quixote, Moby Dick, Greek mythology, and others. One episode, "The Ancient Valley," is a clear, wry commentary on the arms race, and another, "The Conquistador's Curse," is a commentary on greed with Injun Joe barely appearing at all.

In its time it was popular with kids and teens, and the young stars had their 15 minutes of fame, but actual ratings were so-so and a second season never produced.

Watching it today, it's still fun, making me remember snowy Saturday mornings watching this and dreaming of the sort of flamboyant, pulpy adventure it depicted. To modern eyes, it's sometimes primitive but still impressive, and on occasion the depiction of minorities is less than enlightened by modern standards, but nearly every group is depicted as having its good and bad, so there's that much, at least.

So, maybe not dazzling, but good if you're nostalgic like I am. I'm so happy it's now available on DVD!

This was at the time,one innovative series that featured both live action and animated and to make it special,it took the characters of Mark Twain's classic,"Huckleberry Finn",which consisted of Tom Sawyer,Huck Finn,and Becky Thatcher to strange and exotic places where they visited any land,time in history and it was always they were facing constant danger at every turn in which they would encounter some menacing villain or in other aspects creatures from other places. In other words they went each week for one animated world to the next where in some of the episodes,they would face some kind of predicament in which the show always ended in a cliffhanger until next week,where the conclusion of the story was to be continued.

"The New Adventures of Huck Finn",premiered on NBC-TV in September of 1968 and it ended in September of 1969. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions. The show lasted one season,producing 20 episodes,which when NBC canceled the series in 1969,repeats were aired on different days,until the 1970's where some of the episodes were in syndication for the half-hour version of "The Banana Splits".

"The New Adventures Of Huck Finn",was a brilliant premise that came on Sunday evenings at the 7:00 hour where when it first premiered in September of 1968,it went up against some very tough competition which featured the shows,"Lassie","Gentle Ben",and at the same time the science-fiction adventure series,"Land Of The Giants". It was followed on Sunday nights by "The Wonderful World Of Disney",and not to mention "The Ed Sullivan Show". This was a excellent and highly innovative concept for Hanna-Barbera,which was in fact the first series produced by the company,and one of the first shows to blend in live action with animation. Also,this was a first for the studio,especially in prime-time and it was something that Hanna-Barbera did,and this was two years after one of the most highly successful animated series in prime-time history,and the longest-running,"The Flintstones",which ran for six years in prime-time television.

Speaking of this series by the way,I saw some of the episodes as a child and it blew me away with the non-stop action mixed in with some of breathtaking adventure and high-flying animation that kept it's viewers hooked,and me too. When I found out that the network that aired it,NBC-TV canceled the series,a lot of its audience was devastated,and this may have to do with the show's demise,which was at the time quite expensive to create as well as produced. It should have been given the chance to succeed,and it could however have worked very well with if the network decided to moved the series to Saturday Mornings. But they didn't. Speaking of the main villain,no better actor at the time was more menacing and more evil than Ted Cassidy who gave the show its juice and he was simply magnificent. Ted Cassidy,by the way,was a more sinister actor in some of the roles he played,and that was a role that was far better than the one he had opposite,"The Addams Family". See some of the episodes and you'll know why. As he chased our young friends from one animated world to the next,you'll never know what to expect since in some of the animated villains they faced really looked just like Injun Joe!!!.....As for Tom Sawyer(Kevin Schultz),Becky Thatcher(Lu Ann Haslam),and Huck Finn(Micheal Shea),they always were faced with the constant peril and sudden danger everywhere they went. Some of the episodes were directed by the best in the business and it consisted of Hollingsworth Morse,Ezra Stone,Virgil W. Vogel,and in some segments by William Hanna and Joesph Barbera. One of the best episodes of that series is called "The Eye Of Doogerah",and it is something to see!!!

Too bad that this series is never shown anymore. Recently,Cartoon Network's sister station Boomerang has resurrected some for the episodes after being out of action or for one point,missing for decades. They showed these episodes in its entirely during the network's programming of Boomeraction,which consisted some of the greatest Hanna-Barbera action/adventure animated cartoons anywhere!!! Not to be missed!