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20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

“Gooooot a whale of a tale to tell you lads, a whale of a tale or two-oo…” Kirk ‘snails’ Douglas steals the show – just – against heavy opposition from James Mason, Paul Lukas and Herbert Lom in this Disney version of Verne’s classic from the days when the words ‘Disney version’ meant something quite good and weren’t a prelude to nausea. So much to see here; the attack on the ships, the dinner, the penal colony, the giant squid, Ocalina Fagiolina…the list goes on.

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. Matt Patton

    February 12, 2010 at 10:19 pm

    The ONLY good Disney live-action film I saw as a kid back in the 1970’s. And it was made in 1954. 70’s Disney films mostly meant fatal doses of Jodie Foster and Johnny Whittaker, which is a terrible thing to do to an innocent child. By the way, am I the only person who thought that Foster was one of the creepiest child actors ever?

    • Palimpsest

      October 3, 2023 at 10:58 pm

      You’re not alone as Jodie Foster’s on screen appearances always made me feel uneasy. What made this worse was my next door neighbours American relatives eldest daughter looked, sounded, and acted very much like Foster in Freaky Friday; it makes me shiver just thinking about this. Rumours that she came third in the New York State’s 1978 Jodie Foster look-a-like competition couldn’t be substantiated.

  2. Richard Davies

    August 8, 2010 at 4:35 pm

    Going by Freaky Friday, Bugsy Malone & Taxi Driver I can see where you’re coming from.

  3. Sidney Balmoral James

    October 3, 2023 at 11:03 am

    Oof – just spotted a blunder here – its Peter Lorre, not Herbert Lom, but I can see how the mistake occurred, as Lom plays Nemo in Mysterious Island. This film was still being shown in primetime slots in the 80s, which was pretty unusual in those days (1950s seemed like the dark ages in 1980s, but nowadays when people say ‘thirty years ago’, they don’t think of the 90s. Who thinks of Jurassic Park as an old film?

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