(1972)
Overall: GOOD
For their Halloween installment in the Festival of Family Classics anthology series that aired throughout a late 1972-early 1973 season, Rankin/Bass produced Jack O'Lantern which takes the Irish tradition of caving up vegetables and turns it into a kid-friendly tale of a helpful Leprechaun who rids a well-meaning farmer, his children, and their talking livestock of a pesky witch and her effeminate warlock husband. Such a narrative route was likely taken in that instead adapting the Irish legend of Stingy Jack, (a drunkard who makes a deal with Satan and ends up roaming the earth as an animated pumpkin), would have been too macabre for the kid-targeted audience of such a program. Even with the cackling villainess flying around on her broomstick while threatening children and commanding a legion of demons to do her bidding, this is still tame stuff that is not likely to deliver the chills for anyone watching. What it lacks in ghoulish atmosphere or even half-baked chuckles though is forgivable for its charming voice cast and whimsical be it simple, fable-esque storytelling.
(1972)
Overall: GOOD
A lighthearted companion piece to 1967's Mad Monster Party?, Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr.'s Mad Mad Mad Monsters is not as enduring as its predecessor, yet it delivers the ghoulish nyuck nyucks just fine. Released in late September of 1972 as part of The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie series, sadly Rankin and Bass' excellently stylized stop-motion animation is replaced by the tradition variety which is akin the CBS's Groovie Goolies cartoon that aired for a single season the following year, perhaps purposely so. Once again Baron von Frankenstein, (here changed to Henry instead of Boris as Mr. Karloff was replaced by Bob McFadden in the voice department), finds an excuse to gather the usual monster suspects together for a bash, this time as he marries off his hulking Creation to the Bride. Impressionist extraordinaire Allen Swift returns to handle every male monster in the lot, including but not limited to Count Dracula, Claude the Invisible Man, Igor, and Ron Chaney the Werewolf, with Rhoda Mann stepping in taking the female roles, including Nagatha the Invisible Woman whose nagging banter with her husband is the highlight of the entire affair. Most of the jokes are groan-worthy and/or fit for a three year old, but it is still hard for monster kids young and old not to fall for such campy charm.
(1982)
Overall: MEH
One of the final theatrically released films from Rankin/Bass and yet another collaboration between them and the Japanese animation studio Topcraft, The Last Unicorn brings Peter S. Beagle's fantasy novel of the same name to well-crafted life. Realism is purposely skewed in order to give each character and creature on screen a unique design which fits the mystical setting full of wizards, harpies, dragons, talking skeletons, blazing fire bulls, and of course forest-dwelling unicorns who in this particular story have been banished to the sea by Christopher Lee's distraught King Haggard. Besides Lee whose voice is the most instantly recognizable, the cast is full of heavy hitters such as Mia Farrow in the title role, Alan Arkin as the second-rate magician with a heart of gold, Angela Lansbury as a wicked crone, Jeff Bridges as the heroic Prince, and Robert Klein as a singing butterfly. Though Beagle penned the screenplay and remained faithful to his own source material, the story regularly meanders with most of the characters endlessly repeating themselves and speaking in either platitudes or riddles. Also the soundtrack composed by Jimmy Webb and performed by America is lousy and because of this, the fact that several songs are stacked on top of each other in the running time becomes a problem, though Farrow, Bridges, and Klein prove to have adequate, unique enough singing voices for what the material calls for.
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