MAGIC IN THE MIRROR
USA. 1996. Director - Ted Nicolaou, Screenplay - Ken Carter Jr & Frank Dietz, Producers - Kevin Hyman & Vlad Paunescu, Photography - Adolfo Bartoli, Music - Richard Kozinski, Visual Effects Supervisor - MacKenzie Waggaman, Digital Visual Effects - OCS, Freeze Frame & Pixel Magic (Supervisor - Ray McIntyre Jr), Creature Effects - Mark Rappaport, Production Design - Cristian Niculescu, Art Direction - Viorel Ghenea. Production Company - Bibi Productions. Jamie Renee Smith (Mary Margaret Dennis), Saxon Trainor (Sylvia Dennis/Queen Hysop), David Brooks (Gilbert Dennis), Godfrey James (Melilot), Kevin Wixted (Tansy), Eileen T'Kaye (Dragora), Ion Haiduc (Admiral Dabble), Cristian Motriuc (Swanson/Dr Francis Schmott), Ileana Sandulescu (Bella), Daniela Marzavan (Donna)
Plot: Young parentally neglected Mary Margaret Dennis discovers some magical berries which open up a doorway to another world through her late aunt's mirror. But there, as she tries to find some more berries to get back home, she is sought by the crazed duck queen Dragora who has discovered a taste for tea made out of humans dunked in hot water and desires to find a way through the mirror in order to plunder the people world.
Although it is not produced under either the Full Moon or Moonbeam banners, this is another of Charles Band and director Ted Nicolau's low-budget fantasy films. Every now and again Band and Nicolaou manage to pull something quite unique and unexpected out of the hat - they did with `Dragonworld' - and do so here again. One sat down to watch `Magic in the Mirror' with no real expectations - after all the majority of the Band/Moonbeam children's films like `Pet Shop' and the `Prehysteria!' films are utter dross. But in no time at all the film manages to take one completely by surprise and one suddenly wonders exactly what sort of drug-induced hallucination they are in the midst of. It is quite a bewildering, head-spinning experience, not unakin to sitting down to watch something like `Pufnstuf' for the first time. Nicolaou creates a unique secondary world fabulation filled with journeys through magical mirrors and tyrannical duck queens threatening to dip young girls into giant boiling teapots to serve up as a rare delicacy. There are moments of bizarrely surreal imagery - armies of flying mallards ("I love the smell of duck gas in the morning," comments the duck general); a whole field of doors leading to magical mirrors; gardens of planted people. For once the usual Band low-budget does not show through too much and the duck costumes are surprisingly lavish and effective. The result is a unique fantasy which succesfully ventures into that rare arena of surreal fabulism that so few children's films get right - lone examples being `Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' and `Pufnstuf'.
Copyright 1998 Richard Scheib
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