| credits containing: burgess meredith years: 1890-2010 |
1.Winter of the Witch (1969,USA,Short 24mins) rare good:YesYES - Childrens, Fantasy/Sci-Fi • friendly witch cooks magic pancakes for family: A little boy named Nicky and his mother move to a small town and buy a run down old house very inexpensively. But the reason why it was cheap is because it is haunted by a 300 year old witch. The witch likes the dust and cobwebs, so the mother tells her to live in the attic while they clean up the rest of the house. The witch is depressed because the modern world is such a scary place that people don't want the fun of being scared by witches anymore, so she agrees and retreats to the attic to listen to her old Victrola record operas and read newspapers. When the little boy finds out that the witch feels unwanted, he asks her to be their cook. The witch excitedly agrees and reverses an old recipe to invent blueberry Happiness Pancakes, which make colored dots dance before your eyes and are guaranteed to cheer even the most unhappy people. The family opens a pancake parlor in the house and people come from miles around. Nicky and the witch become friends, gathering blueberries together, and the witch confides that when her pancakes have made the world happy again, then she will go back to scaring people. • classic psychedelia not just for kids: Yes this strange and charming short does exist, as many have wondered who vaguely recollect seeing it in elementary schools and on PBS in the 1970's. Based on a classic children's story called the "Old Black Witch", the film is a little better than amateur in production, and worked well enough for Parents' Magazine distribution. Adults will get the suggestion of LSD for the era, but the pleasure is no more guilty than Puff the Magic Dragon. I would have loved this as a child, and children think about befriending monsters and altered states quite naturally (at least I did). The witch is stereotypical, with broom and black pointy hat and cauldron, but the open-ended meaning of her purpose in life is most intriguing. She says old witches do not die, they just fade away, losing their magic until they can no longer fly. But then the pancake mission gives her a new lease on life. Can it be that scary archetypes are not meant to be enemies, but guardians of secrets and emotional experiences that the ancients knew to enjoy, and modern society loses at its greater peril? I'd rather fear trickster witches than people with guns, that’s for sure. Dir./writer Gerald Herman, writers Harry Devlin, Wende Devlin (book), stars Roger Morgan (Nicky), Hermione Gingold (Witch), Anna Strasberg (Mother), Burgess Meredith (Narrator) - Themes: Altered States, Contact, Higher Friends, Innocence, Myth/Religion, Powers of Spirit, Relationships www.MysticalMoveGuide.com - All Original Writings Copyright © Carl J. Schroeder, All Rights Reserved. Images Are The Copyright Property Of The Respective Owners/Studios And Were Obtained Through Public Channels And Are Not Intended to Infringe On Any Copyrights