Review by tavm

After years of reading about this movie in the book, "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time" and seeing it listed in the fancast.com row of movies available for viewing there, I finally decided to watch this having just found out about this movie's animation director Yasuji Mori on the Cartoon Brew site and his connection to current art-house favorite, animator Hayao Miyazaki. My overall view is, while it's not one of the worst movies I've ever seen, it is-at least in the English-dubbed, edited by American International version-a bit abrupt concerning scene changes not to mention those of characterization as well. And many of the songs are simply adequate though Lex Baxter's score is a nice alternative to whatever the original Japanese music was like. There's one funny scene I liked when the title character was playing drums in the cannibal's stomach and there's plenty of other entertaining instrumental sequences. It's also fun picking which voice is Jonathan Winters', Arnold Stang's, or Sterling Holloway's. And Frankie Avalon isn't too bad as the initially arrogant title character. And the final sequences are well done. But the whole thing was just uneven concerning pacing. Still, Alakazam the Great is worth a look for any animation buff out there.