Take nostalgic trip to 'Witch Mountain' with Special Edition DVDs

It's easy to see why the Walt Disney production "Escape to Witch Mountain" made an impression on the young children who encountered it in movie theaters in 1975.

The movie offered a potent but mostly unthreatening and generally polite power-trip fantasy for boys and girls alike via the cleancut persons of Ike Eisenmann and Kim Richards as Tony and Tia, brother-and-sister orphans who possess seemingly supernatural abilities and are, in fact, exiled representatives of a superior race and society (like Clark Kent or Harry Potter).

Not only can these kids levitate, move objects with their minds and communicate with animals (including a circus bear, a black cat named Winky and a horse named Thunderhead), their real family is special, too: Human (in appearance) extraterrestrials. In other words, awesomeness is a birthright. This is a compelling idea for kids, who may feel they haven't lived long enough to develop identities of their own, and may wonder why the grownups who take care of them aren't more "cool."

To coincide with today's release of the new sequel/remake "Race to Witch Mountain" (which gives cameo roles to Richards and Eisenmann), Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment this week re-issued "Escape to Witch Mountain" and its sequel, "Return from Witch Mountain" (1978), as "Special Edition" DVDs.

Grown-ups (like me) who hadn't seen these fairly well-regarded and popular movies until now may be surprised to discover that despite the guiding hand of director John Hough (coming to Disney from the scary "The Legend of Hell House" and the violent "Dirty Mary Crazy Larry"), the films suffer from the assembly-line "Disneyfication" that made the studio's product increasingly irrelevant (and TV-like) after Walt Disney's death in 1966.

Still, the movies should appeal to children, as well as to adults on a nostalgia trip. (Kim Richards -- already a TV veteran by the time of the "Witch Mountain" films -- was an innocent first crush for many guys who grew up during that era, including Memphis filmmaker Craig Brewer, who cast Richards as Christina Ricci's slatternly mother in "Black Snake Moan.")

Based on a 1968 novel by Alexander Key, "Escape to Witch Mountain" finds Tony and Tia traveling to mysterious "Witch Mountain" in search of the secret of their origin after the deaths of their foster parents. They are aided by a widower (Eddie Albert) in a Winnebago, who helps them elude not one but two-count-'em-two bald bad guys (Ray Milland and Donald Pleasence), eager to exploit the kids' powers for personal gain.

In "Return from Witch Mountain," Tony and Tia are menaced by Bette Davis as a sinister society woman and Christopher Lee as a dapper but mad scientist who hopes to use the now-teenaged siblings to become "the most powerful man in the world." (Shades of Lee as Fu Manchu!)

While Tony is struggling to escape the scientist's robotic control, Tia is hanging out with "the Earthquake Gang," a Scooby Doo-meets-Bowery Boys collection of four young would-be tough guys named Rocky, Muscles, Dazzler and Crusher (played by a bespectacled actor billed only as "Poindexter"). Also getting in on the action is Alfred the goat, who gives the movie's most impressive performance when he clops along a series of car roofs like a 1970s action hero -- a notion emphasized by Lalo Schifrin's typically jazzy score, filled with cues that would be appropriate for one of the composer's "Dirty Harry" or Charles Bronson films.

Commentators on the DVD's behind-the-scenes featurettes frequently claim Disney had the best pre-Lucas special effects department in Hollywood, but honestly, you can't tell it from the "Witch Mountain" films. Many of the effects are simple piano wire tricks (look, a floating gun!), and even these aren't directed for maximum impact.

In one scene, the kids bring the marionettes in their room to life by making the puppets dance on their strings without human operators. Occasionally, Hough shows the control bar floating in the air above the dolls, but many of the shots are close-ups -- and there is nothing amazing about a close-up of a dancing marionette.

Each DVD includes a commentary track, a classic Disney cartoon, a "making of" documentary and other bonus features.

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