The second in our series of kids movies that weirdly never quite made the grade…
Ferngulley: The Last Rainforest
If there’s a film on this list you’re likely to remember, it’s this one, as it didn’t perform too dreadfully. Whilst it’s no masterpiece, it’s still kind of underrated. It tells the story of fairies living peacefully in the rainforest, whose harmonious existence is suddenly interrupted by a logging corporation systematically tearing up the whole place. One of the ne’er-do-well tree-haters is radical 90s everyman Zak, who is accidentally shrunk to fairy size and learns to love the forest, be at one with nature and so on…
Robin “not so funny since I stopped taking all that cocaine” Williams provides the voice of Batty, the inventively named bat whose echo-location is scrambled thanks to evil animal experimentation. Indeed, the film takes an amazingly aggressive stance against animal testing and deforestation. At one point we see, in silhouette, a crazy scientist mutilating some small furry creature before spinning round and screaming, “get me another one! Get me another ANIMAL!”)
Extraordinary.
12 Comments
I actually kinda liked this, even though I was waaaaay too old to be watching it, but I thought the animation was a bit twee, given we were dealing with diabolical vivisectionists-ripe for a rob zombie animated remake I say!
you’re never too old. Also i just remembered the bit where they surf on leaves, that was pretty neat. Not every human shrunk to fairy size can surf on a falling leaf.
Why were all ‘cool’ people in 90 movies called Zak?
WHY?
90s that is.
because it’s a tubular name.
square.
oooh that’s an ugly smiley… sorry
I liked that one where Burt Reynolds did the voice of a dog. And there was another one where Vincent Price was a rat or something.
And let’s not forget Kurt ‘Cap’n Bob’ Russell’s performance as whatever he was in that film he did the voice for in the ’80s (’90s*).
*’70s?
was it the fox and the hound? that sounds about right…burt should do an animated series of Cop n a half.
It could be, Interceptor. I think Mickey Rooney was in it. Y’know? That old bloke who keeps cropping up in stuff to prove he’s not dead yet.
how old is Rooney anyway? Do all good Rooney’s go to Heaven? Incidentally, have you noticed how the two most famous Rooneys – Mickey and Wayne -both resemble a potato with a child’s drawing of a face on the front?
Napoleon the vincent price thing you’re thinking of is basil the great mouse detective. Watch the best scene from it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW1-akAUh3U
In this scene Price’s character – the evil professor Rattigan – is playing on the gramophone because he recorded a song for Basil to listen to as he dies. (Because he is great)
Interestingly the folks at Disney don’t acknowledge the film’s existence – I got into a bit of an argument with an employee at Downtown Disney, Florida because she had no merch i could buy from the film and had never heard of it.
That is strange-but it shores up a long running theory I have regarding the final episode of the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series…- Basil was a great film!