THE 5000 FINGERS OF DR. T (1953)

 One of the weirdest kids movies ever! Especially as far as 50s kids movies go. This one really stands out. The plot basically concerns a kid whose dad is dead and his widowed mom insists on him taking piano lessons to learn some discipline. From there it veers off into a nightmarish landscape where our protagonist dreams of his fascistic piano-teacher, the titular Dr. Terwilliker, who has built this gargantuan piano and enslaved busloads of children to play it for him. There's also a plumber who serves as a substitute father-figure, a bunch of songs and dancing(yes, this technically is a musical but unlike most musicals it does not make me want to vomit due to lameness). The strangest and most memorable scene, to me, is a song about the different levels of torture-dungeons sung by a muscular, hooded, executioner-creep with demonic eyeballs who appears to be covered with bronze skin as he takes our hero down to his cell on what appears to be the lowest level of Dante's Inferno.
 Dr. Seuss wrote this thing, including the tunes, and you can really tell with some of the far-out characters that appear. I'm not sure how successful this was when it was originally released but it's too bad the wacky Doctor didn't do more stuff like this, but I guess the world needed that Green Eggs book. Check it out if you're into the old-timey bizarre stuff. AKA DR. SEUSS' 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T


DR. T around the world!:

THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION (1985)

 This Canadian kid's movie seems to be pretty popular with nerds who worship the 1980's. Why that is I'm not exactly sure. I certainly don't recall it being a big deal back in the 80's, in fact I don't think I ever even heard of it back then.
 The plot deals with this kid who gets so scared that his hair falls out. Then a couple of homeless ghosts give him this recipe for dome goop that will make hair grow(i.e. the titular "peanut butter solution"). Unfortunately it grows like crazy! There's also an evil French(French-Canadian?) art-teacher who kidnaps kids and keeps them as slaves which is a bit creepy. There's also our main character's Asian(Asian-Canadian?) friend who rubs some of the peanut butter hair solution on his balls which is pretty risque for a children's film. It's all pretty stupid but what else would you expect? The worst thing about this is the music by Celine Dion who might be one of my least favorite singers ever!
 I wouldn't recommend actually watching this to anyone but perhaps if you're an 80's nut or Canadian or if you did watch this when you were a kid in the 80's  it will give you some sorta thrill.

CHALLENGE TO WHITE FANG (1974)

 This is the second of the Lucio Fulci-directed White Fang films. This one features Franco Nero in the main role and Donald(DR. BUTCHER, M.D.) O'Brien shows up in a small part. Naturally the real star is White Fang who according to this film hates people who cheat at poker. Apparently these were pretty popular movies in Italy at the time cuz they made a bunch of them. The weirdest thing is that these are kid's films featuring a little boy and a dog but they also contain lots of violence. This one has an old guy who loses his legs and then gets burnt alive, a couple of Indians who gets massacred for their sled and other various killings. Also our titular dog hero suffers through some eye-violence thanks to some asshole killer bird(this, of course, being something Fulci would become famous for later on in his career thanks to ZOMBIE). I'm pretty sure this is not something you would see in any modern-day Disney movies.
  The other thing about these movies is that they love throwing them on spaghetti-western box-sets even though they're not really westerns but I guess as long as you thrown in at least one barroom brawl it narrowly qualifies. AKA THE RETURN OF WHITE FANG

SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS (1964)

 While Christmas movies, children's films and musicals are some of the worst things ever created by the human race this one here at least has the decency to be full of kitsch value, bizarre elements and it appears to have been filmed by maniacs who tried to throw everything into the film that a kid of the early 60's could want(besides maybe some monsters which would have been fantastic).  Of course you get the titular Martians who are just idiots with their skin painted green wearing stupid hats with antennas on them, a possibly insane Santa Claus who laughs uncontrollably at nothing, a guy in a ragtag polar-bear suit and a guy in a shitbox robot suit who both terrorize some annoying little kids.  There's also a bumbling Martian who acts like Gilligan and Pia Zadora(who would go on to get very naked in NC-17 rated films when she got older) as a little Martian girl.  While this film is extremely stupid with dumb sci-fi elements it's at least stupidly mildly amusing and not even close to the worst when you dig into the holiday crap that's out there. I also appreciate that they kept the music part down to just one awesomely obnoxious song about Santy Claus that should have become a seasonal classic.




                                                           This inspired a comic-book:

                                                 
                                          and my favorite punk band of all time:

WHITE FANG AND THE HUNTER (1975)

  I assume these 70's White Fang movies were meant as children's films at the time which is kinda odd now since they're filled with violence and this one has a bunch of shots of wolves being gunned down and an alcoholic character.  I can't imagine this would be considered acceptable viewing for the coddled youth of today but the 70's were wilder, freer days.  I've seen the Lucio Fulci-directed entry in this series and remember nothing at all about it except I think a guy wrestles a bear in it, either that or I had a cool dream after watching it.  This one is directed by an even crappier Italian director, Mr. Alfonso Brescia, who would go on to make a slew of really awful STAR WARS-rip-offs in the later 70's like WAR OF THE ROBOTS etc. 
 In this not so epic tale of a fur-trapper(who looks a bit like Johnny 'Wadd" Holmes) and his pet wolf you get an annoying little blond-haired boy with a pet dog named panty-waist(at least I think that's what his name was though it coulda just been the horrible dub-job), an old fat hairy wino who somehow gets himself a love interest(these scenes might make you ill), the theme from JAWS shows up a couple of times and there's lots of snowy scenes with wolves(dogs?) being made to attack people.  Also there are some shoot-outs and stuff blows up once in a while.  While this is part of a spaghetti-western set I own I'm not sure I would classify it as a western at all(maybe a Pacific-Northwestern?) but there is a barroom brawl so I guess you could vaguely describe it as that. 
  A film watchable by true bad-film appreciators only. AKA LONE HUNTER OF THE WILD NORTH