The Magic Toyshop

The Magic Toyshop is a rich and by turns sensual and disturbing adaptation of the Angela Carter book, to which the film stays particularly true.

At the heart of the story is the young Melanie, who after her parents die tragically is sent to stay with her Uncle Philip, Aunt Margaret and her cousins Francie and Finn. Aunt Margaret is mute, and Uncle Philip is a control freak who stages plays with life size puppets and when not doing so treats his family as little more than an extension of his marrionette collection. Through a series of strange and often surreal events the perverse dynamics of this family begin to reveal themselves to Melanie.

SO WHY CAN'T WE WATCH THIS FILM?

Since it was screened on BBC1 back in 1988 it has never been repeated, or released on video or any other format, anywhere. I know this because I've been trying to hunt down a copy for over a decade, it is not only unavailable but seemingly unheard of to the point where I've sometimes wondered if the film was never really made and I dreamed the whole thing. I can understand some of its themes being considered contraversial, such as Uncle Philip's symbolic molestation of Melanie with the swan puppet, or his need to assert his dominance over Aunt Margaret by making her wear a silver collar, but suppressing films that bring these themes out into the open is only reinforcing the old taboos.

I guess we can only hope that it gets some kind of release, somewhere, sometime in the future...

The best thing about this movie is the soundtrack.. It is just epic.

The movie itself has a great setting and great feeling as well. It is difficult to categorize and I would say it is a fantasy; yet it is not a very comfortable movie and has nudity and adult situations. At times the cruelty and sad situations almost make it a horror film. At the same time it doesn't necessarily feel like a horror film either.

The protagonist is a young girl around 16 who, because of the death of her parents, goes to her uncles home with her siblings. Her uncle is a toy-maker and a cruel man. The movie has some strange relationships and abuses going on. We notice all of this is happening while we are showered with fantastic, dreamy images and scenes including puppet shows, dances, animal costumes in gardens etc.

Caroline Milmoe who plays the main character is very lovely and does a great job. The different dresses she wears are kind of reminiscent of ballerina/ wedding dresses and add to the feel.

I very much recommend getting your hands on this movie if you are a fan of fantasy films or even horror movies like Argento's Suspiria or The Shining.

Like "blackriverfalls" in Leeds, England, I, too, have been in search of a copy of The Magic Toyshop for the past 15 years. The movie, back in 1987, had a run in a tiny, now-defunct art-house cinema just off the University of California campus in Berkeley. I remember the movie receiving glowing reviews in the local free alternative presses.

The Magic Toyshop has left an indelible impression in my brain. Yes, the story is bizarre, disturbing, perverse, and sexually discomfiting; but that is the nature of Angela Carter's artistry. Her's is a world in which mythology, fairy tale, and childhood innocence meld and clash with the sometimes magical, sometimes perversely ugly reality of adult consciousness. The Magic Toyshop encapsulates the violence inherent in the confrontation of the adults' and children's worlds into a succinct cinematic package. Scene upon surrealistic scene vividly and lushly convey the romantic dreaminess of childhood and the tight rigidity of contrived adulthood.

A few years after its brief visit to the Bay Area, The Magic Toyshop was in rotation on the Bravo arts cable channel. I managed to make a VHS recording of The Magic Toyshop. The quality is poor, but luckily this was recorded before Bravo had to fall to running commercials, so my copy of the movie has no breaks. I hope I still have my VHS copy, because it seems that, despite the death of Angela Carter and the continued interest in her literary work, the movie The Magic Toyshop may exist as ephemerally as the memory of a persons's first cherished toy.

Other users here at IMDb seem to have a hard time locating this film, leading to talk of it having been suppressed. The reason The Magic Toyshop has become (unfairly) obscure is simply because it was screened on British television before having any major theatrical release. Technically it's a TV movie, made by the Granada network (not the BBC), and it has suffered the same fate as many British television movies of the 70's and 80's. Thankfully this film was released by Palace video in the UK - I located a copy and have now archived mine to DVD.

Caroline Milmoe was not underage when the film was made - she was 23 years old, playing a 15 year old. It is true that the nude scenes present a minor through a grown woman, and that is one of the central themes of the film - the sexual element itself is disturbingly grim.

The whole film has a unworldly sheen and inhabits magical realism long before it became fashionably known as such. Watch the camera track the parrot's gaze to get an idea of the sheer level of invention and ingenuity. And Milmoe really knows how to torment those braids...

This is one of the best films of the 1980's, and certainly the best film I have ever seen about childhood's end. I don't mind it being obscure because that lends it cult status, but I feel unhappy for the cast, particularly Caroline Milmoe, as this film is the top of their art and that deserves a wider audience.

Brilliant.

In an odd coincidence, I also saw this film at what I am sure is the same out-of-the-way cinema in Berkeley, CA in 1987 or 1988 that was mentioned above. (It was in North Berkeley I believe on Euclid Avenue just off of Hearst St. and round the corner from LaVal's pizza.)

I have been looking for this film ever since and also had the thought that perhaps I had imagined seeing it and it never really existed. Well, not really. But it did appear to completely disappear from the face of the earth after that.

I just loved the puppet sequences and creepiness of Tom Bell and his toyshop. I remember when one of the children accidentally broke a pull toy the deliciously weird way he spoke directly to the toy, "We'll have to get you a new leg, will we?" I also like the oddly positive form of the tag question ("will we?") and wondered if that came from a particular English dialect.

It's funny how much good press her other film The Company of Wolves got compared with this one (I didn't like it that much.) But I'd be quite surprised if this turns out to be an act of censorship. I think it's more likely the lack of an interested distributor that is holding it back.

As someone mentioned above they actually got a copy of this in the U.S. I hope that means I can find one, too. Good luck to everyone else.