Willy McBean and His Magic Machine

From Rankin/Bass, the creators of holiday staples such as "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" & "Mad Monster Party", comes yet another gem filmed in their trademark "Animagic" stop-motion animation process. This movie, which was made at the same time as "Rudolph" was not a made-for-TV special, but a full-length feature released in theaters.

It concerns a young boy, Willy, who learns of the Mad Professor Rasputin Van Rotton's plans to go back into time so that he can take credit for different feats and inventions (such as the discovery of America, invention of fire, etc...) by beating the real heroes to the punch. I guess he felt that building the world's first time machine would not provide enough stature! Anyway, with the help of a stereotypical Spanish monkey, Pablo, who takes great pride in announcing the fact that he is "one great lateen luvur" (that's "latin lover" in Spanish monkey talk), Willy builds his own "Magic Machine" and travels through the ages to foil the Mad Professor's plans just in the nick of time.

Packed with dinosaurs, mad professors, the wild west, cavemen, knights, pirates, Indians, cowboys and many other such subjects, this is sure to delight any young boy (well.... maybe any young boy from the 50's) but may be a bit tedious for adults if they are not a fan of stop-motion animation. But if you were a young boy in the 50's AND are a stop-motion fan then this movie with its retro-puppet-appeal will rock your world!!! It rocked mine!!