Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Celebrity Toons: Nanny & the Professor and the Phantom of the Circus (1973)

Here's a rarity from the ABC Saturday Superstar Movie.



The cast of Nanny & the Professor reunited for "The Phantom of the Circus", in which Professor Everett (Richard Long), Phoebe (Juliet Mills), and the kids not only take in a circus performance, but solve a mystery at the same time, with the help of Uncle Skylark, a Sherlock Holmes lookalike (Bernard Fox, Bewitched).

Presented for your perusal. I hadn't seen this previously, so I won't rate it.


2 comments:

magicdog said...

This being the first time I've seen this since I was in single digits, I have to say, this is awful!

The animation is horrid and the story a little too silly. The pacing however is the biggest problem of all! Much of the time I was bored waiting for something to happen.

Still it was nice to hear all the original actors from the series again - although David Doremus sounds like puberty hit his voice pretty hard! If this pilot had continued into a series, they probably would have had to recast Hal.

What was also strange was the way Phoebe's magic was portrayed; it was characterized not unlike Samantha from Bewitched or Sabrina in which it was shown as more overt. The live action series kept it rather subtle and mysterious - almost like the next action was as likely to have been a coincidence.

HB seemed to have some obsession with circuses at this time - not only for this movie but also the regular series, "Devlin" and "Tabitha, Adam & The Clown Family" (Which I saw not too long ago on Sugar Town's channel.

hobbyfan said...

This was not a Hanna-Barbera production. Fred Calvert was hired by Fox & ABC to do the animation for this one. Calvert's stock dropped after Sally Sargent. He also did Emergency +4 and Muhammad Ali's show, and was never heard from again after the latter bombed.