Into the Archive: Olden Moldies

 

The Mystery in Dracula’s Castle, by Vic Crume. ”Based on the exciting television movie from Walt Disney Productions, screenplay by Sue Milburn.” (Scholastic, 1973) Illustrated by stills from the movie.

“Single mother Marsha Booth is a book writer with a deadline... and two rambunctious young sons. The boys are not happy at the thought of spending the summer at their rented seaside cottage because it means leaving their best friend, Morgan, in the city for a sleepy little beach town where nothing ever happens. Alfie, the eldest, is a budding filmmaker who decides to make use of the local lighthouse as "Dracula's Castle" with little brother Leonard in the lead role. They are accompanied by their babysitter, teenager Jean (who is the sheriff's daughter) and their new sidekick, a mutt named "Watson". But, unbeknownst to them, two local thieves Keith and Noah are hiding the prized Daumier diamond necklace that they stole in the lighthouse (it is valued at $100,000!) and don't fancy a group of nosy kids hanging around. Will Alfie & Co. find themselves in over their heads and will the truth really be found in the celluloid?” – Disney Wiki.

I don’t think I ever actually read this book all the way through; perhaps I never even saw all of the TV movie. But we had the book, probably because it was cheap. I confess I may not even read it now. But we had it, and the nostalgia is strong on me as I approach my birthday, even nostalgia for things I never had much of an attachment to: but they were there. I told my brother that looking at it now in retrospect it seems like a cross between Sigmund and the Sea Monsters and Jaws (only a few years apart), for Johnny Whitaker and Scott Kolden (Johnny’s brother in both Mystery and Sigmund), and the seaside setting. Vic Crume did many 'novelizations' for Disney. Here is the link to the show; I’m probably going to count this as my Wideo Wednesday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYillO41ZKU

 Escape to Witch Mountain, by Alexander Key (Second Edition 1975, An Archway Paperback from Pocket Books) Illustrations by Leon B. Wisdom, Jr.

The book on which Disney’s 1975 film (which had a sequel, Return to Witch Mountain 1978, Beyond Witch Mountain 1982, and a remake by the same name in 1995 and a remake in 2009 as Race to Witch Mountain) was based on. It was everywhere that year, quite a sensation on the kid circuit, but I never connected it with Alexander Key, who had written Sprockets: A Little Robot Boy. As I’ve said before, I had very little awareness of authors at the time, concentrated as I was on heroes and adventures. This book was everywhere, but I never actually read it. I suppose the primary reason I bought it and will read it now is because of renewed familiarity with the works of Alexander Key, with a minor secondary reason of nostalgia.

The 1975 movie had Eddie Albert, Ray Milland, and Donald Pleasance as the ‘big’ names, and with Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann as the (spoilers!) psychic alien kids. Denver Pyle, professional uncle, was their ‘uncle,’ and Reta Shaw, professional stern and haughty lady, as Mrs. Grindley.

Return to Witch Mountain, the sequel, had Bette Davis and Christopher Lee as the villains. Return was also novelized by Key from another’s script and story.

This 1968 book has some differences from the Disney movie. “Tony and Tia are orphaned teenagers who have paranormal abilities. Tony possesses the ability of telekinesis, which he can access most readily through playing music, particularly his harmonica. Tia's strengths include the ability to unlock any door by touch and communication with animals. Both siblings can communicate via ultrasonic speech audible only to each other, but Tia cannot speak normally and is regarded as strange because of this. It is later revealed that Tia is not unusual in this respect, but Tony is; few of their kind have the ability to speak out loud. After their foster guardian, Mrs. Malone, dies, they are placed by social services in a juvenile detention home under grim, unwholesome conditions, where Tia befriends a black cat, Winkie.

Both have suppressed memories of their past, but discover a clue in an old road map hidden along with a cache of money in Tia's "star box", a leather purse-like box with a double-star design on it. In a chance encounter with a nun who is an art teacher, the nun reveals that she once received a letter on stationery with an identical design. The writer, a Blue Ridge Mountains resident with "a name like Caroway, or Garroway, or Hideaway" sought information on students who had "unusual aptitudes". When a man named Lucas Deranian, claiming to be the brother of their deceased father, shows up at the detention center to take custody of them, they instinctively know he is not their uncle and has ulterior motives. However, when they attempt to reach the nun, they find that she has died.

With the assistance of an inner-city Roman Catholic priest, Father O'Day, the pair run away, following the map's route leading towards the Blue Ridge Mountains. As their memories begin to return, they realize that they are actually of extraterrestrial origin, their people having come to Earth because their own planet was drifting towards one of its two suns. Their flying saucer was shot down over Hungary, resulting in the deaths of all but Tony, Tia, and Uncle Bené – a non-relative, but one of their own people, who rescued the children from Soviet captivity. The book ties this event to the Hungarian Uprising in 1956.

Through a series of hardships, Tony and Tia find their way to their own people, who adopted the name Castaway. When the teenagers' would-be captor, Deranian (whom O'Day earlier in the novel had likened to the devil), attempts to interrogate Father O'Day, the priest speaks to the effect that God is capable of creating many worlds and many peoples; that there are "mysteries far beyond [Deranian's] narrow dreaming". – Wikipedia.

This snip of the title is what I can link to on YouTube; the rest is behind a pay wall. But just looking at it you can see the psychic psychedelic style of such in-search-of, ‘high weirdness’ offerings of the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZRWsLhgWzE