Le nuove avventure di Huck Finn

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.

Cartoon Network apparently has this episode in its extensive Hanna-Barbera library. They just showed an episode of "The New Adventures Of Huck Finn" on their Saturday morning program "Boomerang". The episode was entitled "The Eye Of Doogerah".

Unfortunately, the Boomerang program just shows random episodes of old Saturday morning cartoons, but at least this rather unique (if not odd) program has been preserved for now.

There are things that you look back at in your life and you get a warm, fuzzy feeling about. This show inspired the child that I was to go outside and play make-belief with the other children. My imagination ignited by the myriad of possibilities that could exist in this realm. You pick up a stick, and it's a sword. Pick up a garbage can lid and it's a shield. The animation mixed with live action...although probably pretty hokey by today's standards...was a treat in that it linked the limit of realism with the limitlessness of imagination. It's been...25 years since I last seen it...and of all the things in my life to feel warm and fuzzy about of which there are definitely a few...I count how I felt about watching this show to be among them. So, yeah, for nostalgic sake, I would make the decision to watch it in a heart beat if someone digs it up and puts it on the air again.

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!

I absolutely loved this series when I was 11; it aired Sunday evenings, and I never missed watching it. I don't think they made more than a dozen or so episodes of it, and I was devastated when it was canceled. It was never given the chance it should have had. Ted Cassidy played Injun Joe, and a more menacing villain it would have been hard to find; he was great in the role. As he chased Tom, Huck and Becky from one animated world to the next, it pulled me farther into their predicament and I couldn't wait for the next episode. They always ended in a cliffhanger.

This is a series that will probably never be shown again, and I wonder if any episodes are even still in existence. It would be nice if TVLand would air them, even just in odd places, so we could at least see them again. It was a novel concept ahead of it's time.