Tower of terror movie ride11/18/2023 ![]() Unfortunately, the Haunted Mansion that we got is far from the film we deserved. Without Eisner’s initiative, The Haunted Mansionprobably would still be stuck in development hell (like Guillermo del Toro’s remake, first announced in 2010). At various points, it has taken the form of a Disney Channel Original Movie (or DCOM), Halloween special and, finally, a live-action theatrical film. But really this seems like an oddity lost to time that is exactly where it belongs.ĭisney had tried to make something out of The Haunted Mansion, one of the last theme park attractions that Walt Disney was personally involved in (it opened several years after his death in 1969), for a while. Others … are not.) The movie was warmly reviewed upon its initial release, with critics wondering why it wasn’t more enthusiastically marketed or shown. (Some of the songs, like the creepy “Secret of Survival,” sung by the Weasels, are strange and memorable, like something out of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. But this is a relatively small portion of the actual film, which is at turns both charming and exceptionally annoying, with a truly abhorrent aesthetic and sub-BBC special production values. Toad’s automobile obsession and much of Disney’s marketing for the movie (on home video anyway) focused on this element to draw more direct parallels between the movie and the attraction. Toad and is merely smeared with green paint.) ( Terry Jones, who also wrote and directed the movie, plays Mr. Like the original attraction, the movie is based on the turn-of-the-century novel by Kenneth Grahame, and the cast is comprised of the remaining members of Monty Python (minus Terry Gilliam, who was too busy filming 12 Monkeys to participate) in little-to-no make-up, even though they’re all playing anthropomorphic animal characters. Toad’s Wild Ride and even packaged it with other based-on-theme-park-attraction titles like The Haunted Mansion and The Country Bears (I should know, I bought the little box set). When they finally released it on VHS (and later DVD) they changed it to Mr. ![]() But Disney didn’t do much to market or even distribute it really it only played in a handful of theaters for a few weeks. Toad’s Wild Ride was first released stateside in 1997 it was under its original, British title – The Wind in the Willows. We should just be thankful that Country Bears didn’t kill the based-on-a-theme-park-attraction initiative before we got Pirates of the Caribbean. ![]() ![]() What is fascinating is that director Peter Hastings never directed another feature film but he did direct the pre-show film for Mission: SPACE, starring Gary Sinise, which was based in part on another movie on our list. But the overall aesthetic is so unappealing and the direction so slack that it’s hard to have much fun, even in a bizarro wtf-is-happening early-2000s time capsule way. There are, surely, things to enjoy in Country Bears, including a genuinely gonzo performance by Walken and impressive audio-animatronic characters courtesy of the Jim Henson Creature Shop which would have been even more impressive if they had drawn more heavily on the original Marc Davis designs. But the execution is so slack, with several uninspired musical numbers (with everyone from Brian Setzer and Elton John) and only a tenuous connection to the original, thoroughly entertaining attraction (originally planned for Walt’s canceled Mineral King ski resort, it wound up an inaugural attraction at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom), including a passing mention of the bears characters there (mercifully, Big Al is represented in the movie). In order to save their venue, they team up with a young bear (voiced by Haley Joel Osment) and go on a cross-country road trip to collect the other members of the band. The concept behind Country Bears is pretty good – the movie images the Country Bears as a popular hillbilly rock band who went their separate ways and now their old home base/music hall is being earmarked for demolition by an unscrupulous banker (amazingly played by Christopher Walken). To tell you how little the Disney Company cared about The Country Bears movie (and how little it believed in its own unparalleled synergistic marketing abilities), the Country Bear Jamboree attraction in Disneyland closed a few months before the movie opened.
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