My Favorite Fairy Tales Volume 4: The Wizard of Oz; The Magic Carpet; Alibaba and Forty Thieves

I e-mailed Robert V. Barron about this, and he doesn't even remember directing it (though he does remember being a story editor on Funky Fables/Sugar and Spice/Puppy Dog Tales), presumably because he was a mere nominal director in this anime production bought up by Haim Saban. In fact, the fifth video in the series is the piolot for what became _Saban's Adventures of the Little Mermaid_, his brilliant timing making the pre-existing animated series look like a quickie cash-in on the Disney version.

This film doesn't really cohere together. The film has three stories, and the first two are told at a frenetic pace, while the third, though the same length, feels properly paced. It also appears to be an older production, back when beady-eyed characters were more common in anime.

The first story is told in first person by a totally eighties Dorothy in an oversized red hat, whose dog Toto talks in Kansas, but never comes with her to Oz (where Toto was reluctant to speak in the books, _The Lost Princess of Oz_ excepted, and it took eight books for him to admit it). The Good Witch of the North is a hopping/floating hunchbacked old sprite who claims that the shoes of the killed belong to the killer by custom! The shoes are red boots that Dorothy (with a cheesy heart on her frock) wears without socks. She has an abrupt meeting with a Scarecrow, who looks like a rod puppt, albeit with his hands in an odd place. His had looks not unlike a witch's hat, leading to the first of the titular quotes, from the Tin Woodman. Although the theme of the story remains, that the three already have what they desire, the Tin Woodman is nearly as obnoxious as Larry Mann's Rusty in Tales of the Wizard of/Return to Oz, and half of his few lines are insults.

Dorothy then feels the need to recap the story (about three minuts in) before they arrive in the Emerald City, presumably because the frenetic pace makes the story too unclear. The Wizard appears as a wildly animated shadow, and his sequence, as welll as the Wicked Witch's are the more inspired parts of the film. The Wizard creates a door in the wall to take them to the Witch, who has several haunted hollow tree huts filled with fires which she uses her magic to turn into fireballs. We are now five minutes into the picture. Well, the Tin Woodman's remark comes from when the Scarecrow sees himself in a well, and would probably be a good title for a more analytical review of the film than I care to give at this time. The most peculiar thing about the film is that the witch can stretch indefinitely, and she makes a powerful image as she streaks through the air. Once the witch is defeated, the humbug Wizard rings a bell, and the room opens up to another location, where a tiny Glinda (unnamed) is perched on Dorothy's shoulder. While sometimes the pacing makes it feel as though this were cut from a longer production, scenes like this suggest otherwise.

The music is overloud and it often makes the dialogue and narration difficult to hear, whcih applies even more strongly to the second story, "The Magic Carpet," which is set in India and told by a narrator with an Indian accent. The titles of the first two stories are video-burned, and presumably the title originally appeared on the image of the carpet alone that opens (and closes) the story, to little good effect her. It tells of a maharaja who determines his successor by a contest, and his evil adviser insists that because the older brother, Safal, struck the flag, while the younger brother, Safal, shot one beyond what could be measured. And according to custom, JAfal is to be exiled. He eventually finds his arrow in a cave, and when he pulls it out, the floor gives way and he lands in the chamber of a magical princess. Jafal tries to return to his brother, despite the exile, and the adviser steals the carpet and tells Safal to ask him to hand it over, and when he can't, sends him on tasks the princess helps him accomplish. He makes the mistake of bringing her along for her to be abducted by the adviser, but together, they are able to defeat him. Despite the obviously shorter source material, the story is still told at the same frenetic pace as Wizard, which is adapted from a novel, not a folktale.

The third, Alibaba [sic] and Forty Thieves, is the same length, but told at the leisurely pace "The Magic Carpet" should have been told at. This one has a female narrator, who is unfortunately rather patronizing. The film includes several still paintings of action that are wuite effective, but a major plot hole in the slave girl's recognition of the lead thief, when she has only seen one of his lackeys, (whom he calls "hummus brain" when she has Xed every house).

Overall, this film has some visual interest, but it's not very good anime, and has a lot of technical problems.