Pufnstuf

Pufnstuf
May 1970
Universal
Children's, Fantasy, Comedy, Musical
VHS
B-

A big-screen spin-off of the Saturday morning cult classic, this works fairly well on its own terms.  (The "H.R." of the series title is dropped for some reason.)  We get the set-up of Freddie the flute becoming magical and Jimmy's arrival on Living Island, as well as Witchiepoo's somewhat baffling coveting of Freddie.  I mean, seriously, his whiny voice annoyed me even as a child.  He doesn't do anything but talk (in that annoying voice).  OK, he's gold and covered in diamonds, but still.  This movie adds an extra Freudian dimension (or perhaps brings out what was subconscious on the show), when Witchiepoo dresses up as a miniskirted blonde who teaches Jimmy to boogaloo.  (Jack Wild was 17 playing 12 or 13.)

As a kid, I was more into all the crazy creatures-- a hippie tree!  Cling and Clang!  the winds with different accents!-- but this time I was more impressed by the "human" performers.  Wild brings sincerity and openness to his role; Jimmy doesn't roll his eyes like a teenager, no matter how cheesy and/or psychedelic things get.  The eye-rolling is left to Martha Raye, as the supremely irritated Boss Witch, a role added for the film, as was Mama Cass Elliot's Witch Hazel.  Cass performs easily the best song in the movie, "Different," which applies not only to the witches but to fat people, hippies, gays, and, well, Jimmy.  The early part of the movie (before Freddie's enchanted) shows how Jimmy is mocked for his accent.  He finds friends on Living Island, and his desire to return home is even more inexplicable than Dorothy's wish to leave Oz.  (There are a lot of parallels to the then three-decade-old classic children's fantasy movie, all of them deliberate according to Sid Krofft.)  Yes, he's being pursued by Witchiepoo, but Billie Hayes is a lot less threatening than Margaret Hamilton.  I like the little touches she adds to the role (they come across as improvised), and the only downside to the scenes at her castle (my favorite set) are that her incompetent hench-creatures get tedious after awhile.  (Although it's always nice to see Allan Melvin get work.)  No wonder Witchiepoo opens and closes the movie.  Oh, and kudos for product-placement of Universal's logo (representing Earth) right in the middle of a song.

Little person Buddy Douglas played a bellhop in The Graduate.  Another little person, Angelo Rossito (Seymore Spider and Clang), was Billy Barty's assistant in The Perils of Pauline.  Barty himself plays Googy Gopher and Orville Pelican.  Allison McKay (role unknown) was the cigarette girl in Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding!  Jane Dulo (Miss Flick) was in Did You Hear the One About the Traveling Salelady?   (Co-writers of this movie, Si Rose and John Fenton Murray, were respectively the producer and writer of that one.)  Johnny Silver (Dr. Blinky and Ludicrous Lion) was the Zipper Man in How Sweet It Is!