Earlier this week I talked about how making a kids TV show into a horror movie was just wrong, and that was official from Warner Brothers. Then again, we’ve seen how they treat kids TV over there these days. Not surprising, given how little Hollywood cares about kids these days and even less about kids spending quality time with their parents. Just look at Disney these days. Childhood innocence is looked down upon as they try to make kids into little adults. It irks me to no end.
Kids TV is not relegated to a handful of networks while “family” programming looks a lot like grown up shows that kids can safely watch at best. However, back in the 1970s ABC had The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie, a collection of shorter films (maybe an hour) that kids and parents could enjoy together. In 1972 we had a better adventure for the Banana Splits with Banana Splits In Hocus Pocus Park. With live-action segments filmed in Kings Island, one of many amusement parks the show would use to have Fleegle, Drooper, Bingo, and Snorky run around and goofing around over the years, most of the show takes place in animation. I’m pretty sure that’s a first as usually the costumed characters would just host the other cartoons, adventure and comedy alike. Sadly this was not our chance to finally meet their rivals, the Sour Grapes Bunch, and no preteen go-go dancing messengers either.
Instead, our crazy quartet journey to a magic forest via billboard. An evil witch wants to kidnap little Suzi and make her a witch. I don’t know why she’s perfect. The story isn’t about Suzy learning to not be a mean kid or anything. It’s just an excuse for the Splits and a pair of wacky wizards to have shenanigans trying to rescue her.
You may notice a couple of times the voices seem off. Howard Morris, who voices Hocus and Pocus, gets swapped out for Don Messick a couple of times for some reason while Morris had to give a few lines to Bingo. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t even born when this came out. There are also some pretty obvious animation errors. This is not going to be a deep story. That’s not what the series was about, although another movie from 2008, where the horror movie got their costumes, had the Splits trying to reclaim their fame…only to fail and have to learn to live with it. According to the Ideas Wiki (don’t know what it’s doing there), fans weren’t happy with that message and I have no reason to look at that anymore than I do the Five Nights At Freddy’s ripoff…which another wiki claims WAS an early Freddy’s movie script. Nope, for all it’s faults, THIS is the only Banana Splits movie that treats the show and the Splits themselves properly. Enjoy.
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