Jack and the Witch (1967)

Posted on Nov 06, 2002 under Fantasy, Kidvid |

Directed by Taiji Yabushita
Written by Shinichi Sekizawa and Shinsaku Takahisa
(kind of meaningless to give the original voice talent, as everything was re-recorded in English, for which I have no credits)

This review necessitates a complex backstory, including a whole string of credits and thank-yous.

For years now, I’ve been haunted by a memory of an animated feature I saw during the Christmas holidays one year in my early childhood — I remember the house we were living in, so it could not have been later than the year I was seven, and probably was earlier. All I could remember concretely was that there were pale little gnome-creatures in tunnels, and at one point the hero or heroes were thrown down a pit to a machine which would also transform them into gnome-creatures, while all the little puds chanted, “Into the machine! Into the machine!”

No memory of a title or anything; that would be far too easy, wouldn’t it?

“Hey! Does that thing take unleaded?”

Every once in a while, the obsession has siezed me, and I’ve given my quest the old college try — which usually meant posting the above on some cult film messageboard and pleading for an answer. Nada. No one even shared my memory, much less knew what it was I had seen. (Hell, even my own family drew a blank on it.)

It turns out that, earlier this year, I sent such a query to Greywizard, the proprietor of The Unknown Movies Page and a damned good movie answer man. Alas, I stumped him too. But he was kind enough to post our exchange on his letters page, inviting reader input.

Some weeks later, I got an e-mail from an Unknown Movies reader who remembered it. He remembered it! In fact, reading my query to Greywizard, he wondered if he himself had written it (until he got to my name at the bottom, naturally). No, he had no idea what it was we had both seen, but just the simple evidence that I hadn’t dreamed the whole thing had me singing for days.

Several more weeks passed, and my comrade-in-arms (and if I could find his e-mail in my archives, I’d tell you his name) got back in touch. He had been patrolling usenet, and someone had tentatively suggested to him that it was a Japanese-made feature called Jack and the Witch.

Now there was a lead I could follow. In short order, I found that Cool Stuff Videos, a long-time dealer in out-of-print movies and TV shows, had it in their inventory. Unfortunately, proprietor John Wells had never actually watched the movie, and so couldn’t tell me if my memories matched this particular movie.

But (are you getting bored of this story yet?), folks were still throwing out well-intentioned suggestions on the identity of the movie over on the B-Movie Message Board, run by the good souls at Stomp Tokyo (and, coincidentally, on the same website as Unknown Movies). I mentioned that I had a tentative lead in the form of the title, Jack and the Witch, and immediately the inestimable TelstarMan (yet another whose obscure movie skills are mighty — also known as Tim Lehnerer, he now writes the “Ask the Web Fu Master” column at Bad Movies Dot Net — yet another adjunct to Stomp Tokyo¹). He immediately directed me to an anime fan and cel-trading site, Anime-Cel.com, which had some production stills and other graphic material to peruse.

It looked good. It looked like it could be right. I couldn’t be sure — I had seen it on a ten-inch black-and-white TV, twenty-five years ago — but I was closer than I had ever been.

So I went back to Cool Stuff, plunked down my money, and waited for it to arrive.

I am now happy to announce that this shade from my childhood, one of the few memories I’ve actually carried forward from my preteen days, has been laid to rest. For Jack and the Witch is indeed the source of those vague images haunting the unused corners of my cranium. (Images which, I must say, are murky on the Cool Stuff dub; I’m guessing it came from the ill-preserved 16mm print which was reportedly discovered last year. Thus, all the supposed screenshots accompanying this review are actually lifted from Anime-Cel.com.)

And it’s something of an odd ride, which, since you’ll probably never ever have the chance to see it, I don’t feel bad about spoiling.

“WHEEEE!”

Our hero, naturally, is Jack, a seeming juvenile of indeterminate age (this is a Japanese cartoon, so his large head and eyes aren’t necessarily indicative of prepubescence, and the American voice used in the dub is strangely mature) who is apparently at least old enough to drive, because he does so in an old Model T. On the other hand, his best friends and fellow joyriders are Barnaby Bear, Squeaker Mouse, Phineas Fox, and a dog whose name I never did catch — so maybe using reality-based touchstones such as “legal driving age” may not be the best strategy.

In any case, while out on a fast ride through the unpaved countryside, they get buzzed by a small helicopter, piloted by a young witch-girl with white hair and powder-blue skin, named Allegra (no allergy jokes, please). They get into a race, which ends when Jack ends up in the river (wa, wa, wa, waaah). Then Allegra offers Jack a ride in the chopper, and Squeaker stows away — on the helicopter’s broomstick tail. Is that ominous? Yes it is.

And it gets worse, as their aerial ride takes them over mountains, through clouds, and into a very definitely EE-vil place, all craggy cliffs and thunderheads. Perched on a promontory is a crumbling castle, from which a tall, commanding witch of similar coloration — Auriana — is observing through her crystal ball, cackling that she’ll soon have another young boy to turn into an evil harpy. (”Harpy”? Odd word to use in the translation. And no purpose is given for her little collection of harpies, aside from capering around the castle and generally being mischievous.)

Jack and Squeaker are unceremoniously dumped off the chopper and down a shaft; at the bottom, Squeaker discovers a mirror which shows him the “harpied” version of himself, complete with EE-vil bat ears. And then the mirror sucks him through, despite Jack’s best efforts. (And some slumbering part of my brain awakens and says, “Hey! I remember this part too!”) And then, from a huge ampitheatrical pit, Squeaker is sucked into — The Machine. The machine that turns boys and girls (and mice, obviously) into harpies like the little urchins capering around the upper edge of the pit.

Jack, after a chase, manages to get away on a harpy motorcycle (made to look like a skeletal skull, spine, and rib cage — interesting take on magical technology ’round here), and runs into his three other animal friends, bringing the Model T to find him. (In other words, I really shouldn’t read too much into the fact that Jack can drive.) But since he’s being pursued by aerial harpies, Jack runs another direction to lead them away from his friends. The animals run afoul of “Harvey Harpy,” and end up getting so badly tangled in Harvey’s rope that they drag him home with them. (And then comes a surreal little musical number as Harvey dances with the animals back at the house. Let’s skip over that.)

But by the time that Jack gets home, Allegra’s also there, and in the ensuing scuffle, she gets knocked cold. He gently takes her and places her on the couch until she comes around, much to the consternation of the animals; I guess he sees a little something behind that “bad girl” demeanor. Too bad she doesn’t return the affection; when she regains consciousness, she punches him and runs out to escape.

‘Shrooms. Well. That explains a lot, actually.

Jack and his friends then decide to invade the castle to rescue Squeaker, using the steam from the Model T’s smokestack (what, is this where suspension of disbelief breaks down for you?) to propel them over the wall. Allegra immediately encounters them again and puts on an act of being friendly and willing to help them find their friend in return for their kindness to her. (Sleeping portion of brain: “Yup, I remembered that part.”) But their path leads them up a staircase whose steps suddenly start disappearing from either end, and they fall into a garden…

…And this is where things get weird. Not that any of the rest of this has been more than a flight of whimsy, but here’s where psychedelia starts in.

Because the garden they’ve fallen into (which bears no resemblanc to the dark and gloomy castle) is populated by huge mantis-like bugs, who calmly have a discussion of how they should prepare Jack and friends for eating. Eventually they settle on “Barbeque!,” a mantra which is repeated by everything they encounter as they make a dash for escape. This includes giant dandelions whose puff seeds each have a toothy mouth on the bottom, evil butterflies, and armies of armed mushrooms of various sizes and varieties. And what I’ve just described takes about ten minutes to actually play out; it’s like the Dumbo “Pink Elephant” sequence without the singing.

Eventually, once our trip to the dark side of the animator’s brain is done, we end up back at the pit, where Jack is thrown in and the giant sucker is turned on. He desperately holds on to one of the teeth of the mouth-shaped entrance while far above, the harpies all chant (you guessed it), “Into the machine! Into the machine!”

But Barnaby the Bear has a brainstorm; atop the castle is a giant windmill, and he suddenly realizes that the power for the Machine comes from it — so he scuttles outside to sabotage it. With the unwitting help of Harvey (who’s actually trying to pull Barnaby off the windmill’s arm), the power shuts down; harpies pour into the pit to do Jack in, Barnaby gets pulled of the windmill, and the Machine sucks a ton of harpies in and explodes from the overload. (No harpies were killed or injured in the filming of this movie.)

“Dragon snot! Watch out!”

Jack and crew get away, but Ariauna has them in one of those “going round in circles” loops while she deals with Allegra, who’s failed her twice; in punishment, she teleports her to the Ice Caves, to stay there forever. (Okay, maybe it’s just the fact that the memories buried in my head predate most rational thought on my part, but I actually found Allegra’s protestations and pleadings while she’s poofed away to be kind of moving. So sue me.)

When Jack and his furry buddies make it back (because, when going around in circles, you end up where you started from), all of the animals get picked off by monsters in the dark, leaving Jack alone to bump into Harvey and get the full story of how Allegra was banished. And shucks, just because Jack’s still carrying a torch for Allegra, he ventures into the Ice Caves with nothing but a big-ass wrench from the Model T as a weapon.

Now, here’s another one of those parts that I didn’t know I remembered until I saw it: Allegra, shivering in the Ice Caves, alone and hopeless, giving up and quietly lying down to freeze to death. And I think that, although this wasn’t the scene that I consciously remembered, it may very well have had the emotional impact that allowed other bits of it to stick around in my head. I suspect that even to my little prepubescent mind, that powerful myth of the “fallen woman in need of redemption and rescue” managed to get a grip on my male psyche. (And since this gets us immediately into a discussion of nature vs. nurture in regards to gender behavior, I may just let this one lie and move on.)

So Ariauna watches through her crystal ball, with the three non-harpied animals stuck up to their necks in bottles in front of her as a captive audience. Then Jack manages to bust his way through to Allegra, and then Allegra revives the almost frozen Jack by holding him. (Another moment of surprising emotional impact: the simply joyful renditions of “We’re alive!”) so Ariauna takes a trip into the Ice Caves to finish the job right, summoning an ice dragon and watery ghosts and and undersea volcanic explosion that becomes a lava T-rex. In other words, by rights Jack and Ariauna should be screwed…

…Except, back in the lair, harpified Squeaker can’t resist messing with his former friends, standing in front of the crystal ball so they can’t see. And in the process of tomfoolery, he manages to knock the ball of the table. Crack. Suddenly the bottles holding the good animals all vanish, the ice dragon fades, and Ariauna is transformed from a statuesque, severe woman into a goblinish little hag, which Jack proceeds to wail on.

Ariauna’s final escape route is a self-inflating hot-air balloon, and as an added present she leaves a timebomb behind, hidden in a chest. But as she lifts off, Harvey tries to anchor her back down, and what does he use as an anchor? The chest. So Ariauna tries desperately to disengage the chest from her ship in mid-air, and ends up crashing into a tower of the castle and exploding.

The spell is thus broken on all of the harpies, turning them back into the boys and girls (and mouse) they once were. Allegra (who, truth be told, was pretty cute as harpies go), becomes a radiant little blonde girl. (Once more, from that portion of my brain: “I remember that.”) And Jack drives them all away in his Model T. The end.

“Which should I trim first — the fingernails or the toenails?”

It’s pretty surreal as a children’s piece, and that’s not even counting the bug/dandelion/mushroom trip. Certainly the whole thing takes place in an unreal neverneverland, not just the witch’s castle; I mean, Jack apparently lives alone with four talking animals. In fact, the whole story is so divorced from any baseline normality — anything to say “This is reality, and this is the crap that happens to interrupt it” — that the whole thing takes on a very dream-like atmosphere. (Which is probably why, more than once, I feared that I dreamed the whole memory.) The artwork, as well, contributes to the otherworldly quality — it’s realm full of crags and points and gracefully sharp edges. And because this was made before true anime style was really solidified, the character designs don’t fit right into that established artistic tradition.

The biggest plus for me is that I could see exactly why it held my interest, and stayed in my head, for twenty-five years. And it still intrigues me and holds my interest today for the same reasons. I watched it with my five-year-old, who barely moved the entire time and didn’t complain about the crummy print quality; maybe it will put a hook in his frontal lobe like it did to me. The beginning of a Shumate family tradition? Maybe.

Addendum (1/13/03): It appears that Jack and the Witch will be hitting DVD in the very near future. The good news (I mean, even better): It’ll be coming from a Japanese print with far superior picture quality to the Cool Stuff version (no slight to Cool Stuff, as the alternative to their copy at the time was no copy). The bad news is that it’ll be the Japanese language track, with no mention of subtitles. You can check it out here.

Addendum #2 (4/04/03): It appears that the DVD is now available. One reader watched the DVD while playing the English-dubbed Cool Stuff tape, for the full effect.