• Directed by Peter Manoogian
• Written by Peter Fedorenko and Keith Estrada
• Starring
  • Trevor O’Brien
  • Ashley Lyn Cafagna
  • Joey Simmrin
  • David Jeremiah
  • Marla Cotovsky
• Produced by Mark Headley and Vlad Paunescu
• Executive produced by Peter Locke and Donald Kushner (and Charles Band, uncredited)

I usually try to start these reviews with some sort of revealing witticism. (And on rare occasions, I succeed.) But another crank-em-out shot-in-Romania kidvid from the Kushner-Locke sausage factory doesn’t really inspired me to great insights.

We meet our protagonist Billy Bright (Trever O’Brien, younger brother of Austin O’Brien from the first Pre-Hysteria! movie) in a (soooo Eastern European) mansion, getting his rubdown from a cute masseuse (which is as close as we get to raising the specter of adolescent sexuality in these movies) before his butler ushers him into the cavernous dining hall for lunch with his fit, jogging grandmother.

“And now, for a good old American breakfast. Such as would be eaten in American. Where, of course, we are. (Think we’re fooling anybody?)”

Alas, the foregoing was a dream, and the reality makes a good drinking game if you’re familiar with these movies:

Billy’s parents are both dead (drink!); he lives with his kindly but sickly Granny (Danna Hansen) who needs a new heart (drink!). His days are dominated by the bully Leon (Joey Simmrin), who forces Billy to do his homework for him (mega-drink!), although Leon can’t stand up to Billy’s platonic galpal Hannah (Ashley Lyn Cafagna) (drink!).

“You better not mess with me! I saw The Karate Kid five times!”

You know, I was a pretty smart kid in elementary and junior high schools. I read instead of playing sports; I blew the curve on all the tests. I suffered socially for that, but I was never once coerced by a bully to do his homework. In other words, the reality I knew doesn’t match up to what 99% of the protagonists in these Kushner-Locke kidvids experience. On the other hand, I also wasn’t either a partial or full orphan, and I didn’t live in a suburban neighborhood that looked suspiciously like Bucharest.

After a day of disappointments — his creaky old bike practically falls apart, his lunch money is stolen, Leon fibs that it was Billy who copied Leon’s homework (and the teacher believes it!) — the final trial is that Billy is pushed by Leon to enter the “witch house,” the decrepit mansion that all the kids tell stories about, to retrieve something so Leon can prove to his friends that he went inside. Once inside, along with a moving stone cat and a disappearing hourglass, Billy encounters the witch, Madame Latimer (Shannon Welles), who likes to dress like Malificent and stand in spooky lighting. She commends Billy for his bravery in entering her house, though, and grants him one wish. On the spot, Billy grasps at something Granny said at breakfast — “Someday, you’ll be like King Midas, and everything will work out for you” — and asks to be like King Midas. Zap!

“Thanks to some wise investing in my youth, I can spend my retirement exactly how I want to: sitting in my easy chair, scaring the bejeezus out of neighborhood kids.”

Billy first discovers that, yes, the powers are real the next morning when he accidentally turns his pet hamster to gold. This, like all of the transformations to follow, is accomplished by an orange digital glow which crawls across the transforming object or entity, followed by the substitution of either an unconvincing prop, or that same object spraypainted gold. (This latter technique, we find, really doesn’t work on textured, porous objects like hats, bathrobes, or leatherbound books, all of which end up looking brown and muddy.)

Soon enough, he’s showing Leon and Hannah his newfound abilities, which prompts Leon — now his best bud — to form a get-rich-quick scheme that involves the owners of the local scuzzy pawnshop, Willy (David Jeremiah) and Cora (Marla Cotovsky). These two, greedy to get their hands on more gold, become both the antagonists and the comic relief for the rest of the movie. Notably among these Kushner-Locke flicks, the comic relief players are actual English-speaking actors, not local Romanian talent dubbed later on. Believe me, it really makes a difference when the part is supposed to be comedic.

“You’re so goldarned pretty, sometimes I forget we’re related!”

If the pawnbrokers replace Leon as the major antagonists for the rest of the movie, it’s only fair that Leon is moved into a different role. When Leon goes back to the witch house to see if he can get the Midas Touch for himself, Mrs. Latimer refuses and instead magically gives him manners; for the rest of the movie his hair is combed, he uses “please” and “thank you” to a fault, and he tsk-tsks the illegality of climbing a fence or breaking into the pawnshop.

Oh, yeah. Why do they have to break into the pawnshop? Because Willy and Cora have stolen Grannie, whom Billy accidentally turned into gold!!! In competent hands, this is the moment which could actually have started the hearts of pre-teen audience members a-quivering. Fortunately, the perfunctory and muted emotional responses to dear old Grannie’s plight keep the occasion from being too traumatic. That, and the fact that golden Grannie looks like a spraypainted department store mannequin.

“Um… We’re going to fix this in post, right?”

It’s probably the slightest of the “kid gets mystical powers/friends/pets” films cranked out at Castel Film during that era, not because of any major missteps, but because it avoids the real heart of the Midas myth. Billy wishes for the Midas touch for the best of reasons, and his motives are never compromised during the course of the movie; he never leans to greed or forgets the things in life that really matter or any of the other themes that one expects when the cautionary tale of King Midas is invoked. Instead, he’s just some kid who’s ambushed by the witch and has to play cat-and-mouse with the evil pawnbrokers and find a way to undo all the damage that came, about simply because he didn’t think of “I wish for a new bike” quick enough.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 0
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 2
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0