A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness.

When looking at the vast filmography of family Disney films there is undoubtedly a top tier. The likes of Mary Poppins, Frozen or Cinderella. These are the iconic movies that helped define Disney as a brand globally. The songs have entered the popular culture, while images from these films have been marketed so aggressively they probably have more widespread recognition that most trademarks.

Outside of the top tier, there is an awful lot of dross. Safe but forgettable family films that understandably never captured the public imagination. But there’s also a select few that have a lot going for them but which never quite made it. And perhaps the most striking example of this is Bedknobs And Broomsticks.

The positive list is just so long: it stars Angela Lansbury throwing all her considerable talents into the wonderful role of the eccentric witch, Miss Eglantine Price. Alongside her is David Tomlinson, sparkling his way through another redemption arc. It’s mix of animation and live action has a fabulous sense of scale and, most of all, there’s a storyline that ends with a load of Nazis getting punched.

And yet this film seems to have never made it into the big league. Probably because its a good example of a production failing to add up to the sum of its parts. The two hours running time seems to spread the good out too thinly, and in wanting to cram in the spectacle the plot becomes incredibly disjointed. The songs are pleasant enough, but even the best betray their origins as tunes dropped from Mary Poppins.

Plus apart from three pretty stilted child actors (although, to be fair, no more stilted that the child actors in Mary Poppins or pretty much any other Disney live-action film), the supporting cast is surprisingly old. I’m not entirely convinced that elderly army types spluttering at each other was how you were going to get ’70s kids into the cinema. And while Lansbury and Tomlinson are always watchable, they never quite gel with the chemistry their plotline requires.

There’s also unintentional hilarity for most UK watchers at all the references to the magic ‘knob’ that the story features. I say unintentional, but I refuse to believe that, with so many British performers, they didn’t know exactly that the script is full of childish innuendo.

Ultimately, there’s a weird laziness that seems to bedevil the project. And I can think of no better example of this than the story of the film’s restoration. In the mid-’90s, Disney found a collection of deleted scenes and decided to put them back into the film in time for a re-issue. Only there was a slight snag. The scenes lacked audio. Lansbury returned to dub her parts, but other cast members had retired from acting, died or, in the sad case of Tomlinson, were too ill to take part.

And so, new actors were brought in to dub those parts. And, well, they really don’t sound anything like the originals. To a comical degree. The children are amazingly even more wooden, and worst of all is the replacement for Tessie O’Shea as the elderly post mistress, Mrs Hobday.

In the original, she plays the role with a strong Welsh accent – seen here handing over the latest delivery to Lansbury, before forcing her to house three unconvincing Cockernee children.

In the restored scenes, and only in those scenes, she has, incredibly become very Scottish indeed. Like this one, which is even harder to get through with the incredibly-unlike-Tomlinson voice coming out of Tomlinson.

It’s such a comically bad example of the art of dubbing or synchronisation that you can’t help but think they weren’t bothered. Which is probably the attitude that means this film will remain outside the top tier of Disney films: an eccentric curio that the House of Mouse wasn’t quite determined enough with to make great.