"Shame, Shame, Know Your Name"

Yesterday I wrote about "The Invisible Kid". The same evening I watched that, I also watched "Rumpelstiltskin". This, I should say, was a low-budget effort by the Golan-Globus producing team to make a series of fairy tale movies for Cannon, a cheap movie company. I love most movies they make, many of which star an elderly Charles Bronson. This one didn't, but it's still not bad. That is to say, it's watchably terrible.

In the title role, they have Billy Barty, which isn't the worst move you could make. He's fair in the role, although Warwick Davis probably would have been better. Relating the story is probably not necessary. If you really don't know how the story of Rumpelstiltskin plays out, you'd just better look it up and then come back here. I'll say this much for the movie: it tells the story fairly accurately as far as I can recall. It's been a while for me.

It's a cheap movie, so the kingdom is depicted very modestly. We do get exterior shots of a castle, one hovel the girl lives in, a throne room and a dungeon, etc. Probably the fanciest thing we see, other than the king's costume, is the prince's hair. It's a pretty classic Prince Valiant-style cut. The gold Rumpelstiltskin spins does not shine nearly as well. His pet bird is pretty good, though. I could have stood a lot more of that, I'll say.

We get more Billy Barty, of course. Maybe he'd be better if he had better dialogue. I'll tell you, I probably haven't often heard lamer rhymes than the ones his dialogue is almost entirely made of. Other characters do better with their songs, the most memorable of which is an ode to greed by the king. The king and the queen are probably the film's best characters. The girl's father isn't bad either. All around, they did a fair job with so little money. As a boy, I probably would have been dumb enough to enjoy it as it is. Maybe you will be too. That is to say, maybe you're "a child at heart".