The Borrowers (1973)/The New Adventures of Heidi (1978)

  When I was home on vacation, I saw The Secret World of Arietty, which is the most modern (so far) take on the classic English children's novel The Borrowers and which I apparently forgot to review.  This version is a made-for-TV movie from 1973.  Rob got it as a free double feature disc and gave it to me because he knows I'll watch anything once.

Pod Clock (Eddie Albert), his wife Homily (Tammy Grimes), and their fourteen-year-old daughter Arietty (Karen Pearson) are Borrowers living under the kitchen floor of an English manor.  The manor is owned by a bed-ridden old woman (Judith Anderson) who believes Pod is a hallucination she has after too much Madeira.  But when her nephew (Dennis Larson) arrives to recuperate, Pod is frightened.  Human boys are the most destructive force Borrowers have ever had to deal with, and the family begins to make plans to emigrate.  Arietty is seen by The Boy while she is borrowing and, instead of being afraid, makes friends.  However, the cook (Beatrice Straight) becomes suspicious when even more things go missing than usual and hires a local boy to let his ferret loose under the floorboards.

This is pretty much no reason at all to watch this movie now that there are more modern ones available.  The effects are really shoddy and no one can decide if they are keeping an American accent or a British one.  The only thing of note here for children of the 80's is Tammy Grimes, who voiced Molly Grue in The Last Unicorn.  

  This movie was a trainwreck.  Unlike the former, which is based on an actual book, this abomination just took an established property, Heidi, and decided to make it "modern".  And then made it a musical.

Heidi (Katy Kurtzman) lives in the Alps with her Grandfather (Burl Ives) in a time machine, apparently, since they have remained unchanged from 1880 to 1978.  Except now, Grandfather's eyes are failing.  He decides to send Heidi to live with cousins in Lucerne but then she meets a lonely little girl named Elizabeth (Sherrie Wills) whose father (John Gavin) is a hotel tycoon.  Elizabeth convinces the cousins that Heidi should come stay with her like Swiss Orphan Annie after Grandfather disappears on the mountain.  From there it becomes more about Elizabeth trying to get her father to notice her again instead of being a workaholic.  Also, for some reason, they go to New York City for Christmas.

This movie made no sense, the musical numbers were awful, and there is zero reason to watch it.  This one at least had some named actors like Burl Ives (Frosty the Snowman) and John Gavin, legit movie star who was in Psycho, Spartacus, and even Thoroughly Modern Millie.  And, in case you've ever wondered what happened to Pete from Pete's Dragon, (Sean Marshall), he moved to Switzerland to be a goatherd.