Escape To Witch Mountain

1975 Was a diverse year for Walt Disney Productions. The theme park division started the year by declaring it had completed “phase 1” of Walt Disney World with the opening of Space Mountain, and was preparing to go whole-hog into making a go of Walt’s E.P.C.O.T. project. Meanwhile, the film studio continued to disseminate a slow-but-steady stream of releases which fit comfortably within it's family-friendly ethos, including a pair of wacky comedies in February (the Kurt Russell-starring The Strongest Man in the World) and July (The Apple Dumpling Gang, with Don Knotts and Tim Conway.) Between these two releases (on March 21, to be exact,) the studio premiered a somewhat more serious feature, Escape to Witch Mountain. Based on the 1968 science-fiction novel by Alexander H. Key, the film could, in retrospect, be seen as something of a harbinger of the somber turn Disney’s film slate would take at the close of the decade. But it's confused tone and disappointing lack of suspense points at a film studio that's not quite ready to shake it’s past just yet.

But I be done seen 'bout everything when I see a Winnebago fly...

The film tells the story of siblings Tony and Tia (Ike Eisenmann and Kim Richards, respectively,) foster children who possess psychic and telekinetic powers. Soon after arriving at a new orphanage following the deaths of their adoptive parents, they come to the attention of Lucas Deranian (Donald Pleasence, always at his best when playing creeps,) henchman for villainous billionaire Aristotle Bolt (Ray Milland.) Bolt, who’s obsessed with the occult (just like Hitler in Raiders of the Lost Ark … sorry, that’s neither here nor there,) has Deranian pose as a long-lost relative in order to adopt the children into his luxurious household. There the siblings are gifted their own enormous bedrooms, over-stuffed with toys and other luxuries - and discretely monitored by surveillance equipment. After realizing that Bolt plans to utilize their powers for his own nefarious ends, Tony and Tia make their escape. Following a hidden map they discover inscribed on Tia’s treasured “star case” (and clues provided by her earliest, fragmented memories,) the pair head for the mysterious Witch Mountain while avoiding Deranian and his goons. Along the way, they are helped by Winnebago-driving retiree Jason O’Day (Green Acres’ Eddie Albert) who comes to feel protective of the siblings, having never raised children of his own. But what is the truth behind Tony and Tia’s mysterious origins, and what fate awaits them when they finally make it to Witch Mountain?

Spoilers: they’re aliens.

Because aliens...

Yes, it’s a “twist” that you pretty much see coming from a mile away and, like many other “revelations” in the film, is tossed out almost arbitrarily in the middle of a random conversation. Escape to Witch Mountain seems to have been written expressly for creating expectations and then deflating them. Less than six minutes into the movie, the kids are already brazenly using their telekinetic powers to dispatch a bully at the orphanage (played by gingernut Dermott Downs,) squandering any attempt to mystify the characters in any meaningful way.

Talk to the glove...

Likewise, the film’s opening titles - a brilliantly realized montage of the kid’s silhouettes fleeing animated attack dogs (copied from 1942's Bambi, FYI) - promises dangerous chases and tense drama. Apprehension builds early in the film, as Tia and Tony receive psychic impressions of vicious dogs barking; they know they’ll soon encounter these beasts, and will have to run for their lives. However, when the ballyhooed chase scene finally arrives (as the children take flight from Bolt’s estate,) Tia uses her powers to calm the angry dogs before sicking them on their human pursuers - and that’s it! The whole encounter is over in less than a minute!

This looks like a Dio album cover to me...

Even the film’s title works toward this goal. Besides the fact that we never hear the name of the titular mountain until over an hour into the film, one assumes that the children’s abilities will cause them to be branded as witches. And while this does happen, it’s not until the film is nearly over - and this accusation comes, incredibly, not from the kids at the orphanage who witness their powers, but from a group of spooked rednecks who hear of their powers second-hand.

All my rowdy friends are comin' over tonight!

Now, subversion of expectations in fiction isn’t itself a problem; on the contrary, thwarting audience’s preconceptions prevents artistic stagnation and fosters creativity (and the resulting viewer indignation - aka fanboys shitting themselves - can be quite amusing to witness <ahem Last Jedi ahem> ... but I digress.) However, the resulting narrative needs to be strong enough to support such subversion, and unfortunately this isn’t the case in Escape to Witch Mountain. As it stands, the resulting story hinges on (a) the mystery surrounding Tia’s fragmented memories and (b) the relationship between the children and Jason O’Day. The unraveling of Tia’s memory, unfortunately, comes completely at random, without any impetus within the narrative. As they go about their adventure, Tia seems to be on a pre-set schedule to remember a little more every ten minutes or so, whether they’re on the run or sitting and eating breakfast. When she finally gets around to the “big reveal” about their interstellar origins, it comes across more like someone remembering the lines to a school play they were once in, rather than a life-changing moment of clarity.

Not-so-total recall...

Additionally, the storyline about Tia and Tony bonding with Eddie Albert’s curmudgeon widower is never allowed time to develop properly. This is a shame, since neither the children nor Albert as actors are at fault; both Eisenmann and Richards are quite good, and this kind of “big-hearted grump” is right up Albert’s alley. In this case it’s purely a scripting problem, as the O’Day character isn’t introduced until halfway through the film - and it’s nearly another ten minutes until he discovers the young stowaways hiding in his Winnebago. The film’s pacing quickly suffers, since the story suddenly pivots into another kind of film and has to start itself over to accommodate another main character. What’s really needed is a bit of story re-arrangement, paired with judicious cross-cutting to show us Albert’s character before the children encounter him. As it is, the film instead overloads it’s second half with incident, with each plotline (the children’s origin, the pursuit by Bolt and Deranian, and the bonding with O’Day to name the major ones) given short shrift by the time the climax rolls around.

Kids! I can see the "Now Entering Hooterville" sign!

This actually points to another issue I have with Escape to Witch Mountain: it’s uncertain tone. The filmmakers never seem to be able to decide exactly what kind of a film they’re trying to make (a complaint I’ve previously lodged against 1993’s A Far Off Place.) From the beginning, Tony and Tia’s powers are portrayed as somewhat more uncanny than wondrous, with the slightest undercurrent of threat to their telekinesis. Admittedly, this may be more an issue with the direction than the script itself, as requiring Tony to play a harmonica to focus his powers certainly undercuts any sort of menace. Director John Hough, who’d directed a handful of Hammer horror films (and would be better suited directing The Watcher in the Woods for Disney five years later,) seems ready to instill an undercurrent of gothic horror to the proceedings despite the script’s push toward family comedy. This tightrope walk between whimsy and creepiness is most clearly visible during a scene in which, under the hidden-camera leer of Bolt, Tony brings a playroom full of marionettes to life in order to cheer up his sister. Despite Tia laughing and dancing along (all while Richards deftly avoids a number of just-visible fishing lines,) one senses a slight uneasiness, with lingering close-ups of the dead-eyed puppets clashing with the light-hearted music playing against it. By the end of the film, one almost senses Hough expressing himself through the villains who, after enduring a “wacky chase” scene involving helicopters turning upside-down and O’Day’s Winnebago taking flight, wave off the whole affair with a dismissive “Bah!”

Look out! Wacky fun! A-hyuk hyuk hyuk!! Oh, fun!

Escape to Witch Mountain exists in an odd sort of limbo within Disney’s live-action canon, simultaneously treasured and written-off. The film spawned two sequels: the Hough-directed Return From Witch Mountain (1978) and 1982’s made-for-TV Beyond Witch Mountain, as well as two remakes (a 1995 TV movie and 2009’s Race To Witch Mountain, which replaced weathered old Eddie Albert with modern day Adonis Dwayne Johnson,) and was one of a handful of live-action features that were granted high-profile video releases through the ‘80s and ‘90s. However, like most of Disney’s non-animated output that isn't Mary Poppins, the film seems to have been swept under the rug in recent years. I wouldn't say this is a bad film, but like many other productions Disney put out around this time, it could’ve been better. The ideas for a more memorable film - whether it would've ended up as a suspenseful gothic spine-tingler or a warm family-friendly comedy - are all here; but in 1975 Disney was still a studio dealing with it’s past and uncertain about it’s future. Walt Disney had been dead only nine years, and the film studio (headed by Walt’s son-in-law, Ron Miller) still wasn’t ready to go too far out of it’s warm and fuzzy comfort zone just yet. While Escape to Witch Mountain feels like a precursor to the studio’s “dark turn” in the early 1980s, the tension between Disney’s legacy and what it would eventually become unfortunately end up nearly tearing this film apart.