Give a bad boy enough rope, and he'll soon make a jackass of himself
INT. THE RED LOBSTER INN - NIGHT TIME
J. Worthington "Honest John" Foulfellow: Now, coachman... what's your proposition?
The Coachman: Well... how would you blokes like to make some real money?
[dumps a bag of coins on the table]
Honest John: Well! And who do we have to... [draws a finger across his throat]
The Coachman: No, no. Nothing like that. You see, I'm collecting stupid little boys.
Honest John: Stupid little boys?
The Coachman: You know, the disobedient ones who want to play hooky from school.
Honest John: Yes.
The Coachman: And I takes 'em to Pleasure Island.
Honest John: [nods in agreement] Ah, Pleasure Island. [suddenly shocked] Pleasure Island?! But the law! Suppose they...
The Coachman: No, no. There's no risk. They never come back... AS BOYS!
Sky Movies doesn't half play some shite but every now and then you can catch something you missed first time around or even a gem from one's youth. Last month, I reported that I managed to catch an afternoon screening of 1992's Freddie as F.R.O.7 and was a bit disappointed that it turned out to be substantially more made of fail and tits than I had remembered it to be. Last night, however, I got to relive another part of my childhood when I watched 1987's Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night.
The film wasn't made by Disney and alters most of the characters' names to avoid copyright issues (e.g. Jiminy Cricket is changed to Gee Willikers and as compensation is voiced by Don Knotts). Most of it is pretty sub par, but then I was admittedly only watching for the climax of the film, in which Pinocchio is taken on board the ship of the Emperor of the Night, an evil shapeshifting necromancer interested in reducing Pinocchio to puppethood so that he may perform in the Emperor's dark carnival for all eternity. The Emperor himself (wonderfully voiced by James Earl Jones) makes a fantastic villain and the final sequence in which he offers Pinocchio fame, fortune and the girl he loves was-I thought-slightly reminiscent of the temptation of Christ in the desert (although I don't think we want to push the Pinocchio-as-Jesus line of enquiry too far) just instead of lots of sand and rocks, there are strobe lights and free absinthe.
A few weeks ago, I rewatched the original 1940 Disney feature film largely because I wanted to see if the Pleasure Island Metamorphosis sequence was as disturbing as I remember (and it was). As a child, both of the two Pinocchio films were part of the large corpus of fiction I was exposed to in which a young and virtuous protagonist on a journey would be taken in by the apparent kindness of fraudulent malevolents and led into their traps. I think this fellow should have the final word:
"A key difference which marks Pinocchio as different from other Disney fare is a distinct lack of punishment for its villains. In most Disney tales, the villains, if not killed outright, as is the case with the Wicked Witch in Snow White or Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, are at least stripped of their power and humiliated in some way, for example Medusa in The Rescuers and Captain Hook in Peter Pan. Pinocchio's villains, in contrast, simply disappear when their function in the story is completed. Honest John and Gideon, for example, are never seen after they send Pinocchio on his way to Pleasure Island, and Stromboli, while deprived of his "little wooden gold mine", is allowed to disappear into the night with no prospect of retribution for his crimes. Likewise, the fate of the other boys turned into donkeys at Pleasure Island is never resolved. Indeed, one can assume that, unlike Pinocchio, these victims will never return to their families or to their human form, and that the sinister operations of Pleasure Island will continue."
The original novel's only £5.59 from Amazon. I may have to look into that.
J. Worthington "Honest John" Foulfellow: Now, coachman... what's your proposition?
The Coachman: Well... how would you blokes like to make some real money?
[dumps a bag of coins on the table]
Honest John: Well! And who do we have to... [draws a finger across his throat]
The Coachman: No, no. Nothing like that. You see, I'm collecting stupid little boys.
Honest John: Stupid little boys?
The Coachman: You know, the disobedient ones who want to play hooky from school.
Honest John: Yes.
The Coachman: And I takes 'em to Pleasure Island.
Honest John: [nods in agreement] Ah, Pleasure Island. [suddenly shocked] Pleasure Island?! But the law! Suppose they...
The Coachman: No, no. There's no risk. They never come back... AS BOYS!
Sky Movies doesn't half play some shite but every now and then you can catch something you missed first time around or even a gem from one's youth. Last month, I reported that I managed to catch an afternoon screening of 1992's Freddie as F.R.O.7 and was a bit disappointed that it turned out to be substantially more made of fail and tits than I had remembered it to be. Last night, however, I got to relive another part of my childhood when I watched 1987's Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night.
The film wasn't made by Disney and alters most of the characters' names to avoid copyright issues (e.g. Jiminy Cricket is changed to Gee Willikers and as compensation is voiced by Don Knotts). Most of it is pretty sub par, but then I was admittedly only watching for the climax of the film, in which Pinocchio is taken on board the ship of the Emperor of the Night, an evil shapeshifting necromancer interested in reducing Pinocchio to puppethood so that he may perform in the Emperor's dark carnival for all eternity. The Emperor himself (wonderfully voiced by James Earl Jones) makes a fantastic villain and the final sequence in which he offers Pinocchio fame, fortune and the girl he loves was-I thought-slightly reminiscent of the temptation of Christ in the desert (although I don't think we want to push the Pinocchio-as-Jesus line of enquiry too far) just instead of lots of sand and rocks, there are strobe lights and free absinthe.
A few weeks ago, I rewatched the original 1940 Disney feature film largely because I wanted to see if the Pleasure Island Metamorphosis sequence was as disturbing as I remember (and it was). As a child, both of the two Pinocchio films were part of the large corpus of fiction I was exposed to in which a young and virtuous protagonist on a journey would be taken in by the apparent kindness of fraudulent malevolents and led into their traps. I think this fellow should have the final word:
"A key difference which marks Pinocchio as different from other Disney fare is a distinct lack of punishment for its villains. In most Disney tales, the villains, if not killed outright, as is the case with the Wicked Witch in Snow White or Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, are at least stripped of their power and humiliated in some way, for example Medusa in The Rescuers and Captain Hook in Peter Pan. Pinocchio's villains, in contrast, simply disappear when their function in the story is completed. Honest John and Gideon, for example, are never seen after they send Pinocchio on his way to Pleasure Island, and Stromboli, while deprived of his "little wooden gold mine", is allowed to disappear into the night with no prospect of retribution for his crimes. Likewise, the fate of the other boys turned into donkeys at Pleasure Island is never resolved. Indeed, one can assume that, unlike Pinocchio, these victims will never return to their families or to their human form, and that the sinister operations of Pleasure Island will continue."
The original novel's only £5.59 from Amazon. I may have to look into that.