Based on the novel by Jack Bickham, this was the first movie to team up Don Knotts and Tim Conway, who grew up in Morgantown, West Virginia and Willoughby, Ohio respectively, and became beloved for their goofy comedic skills. In fact, Conway was the sidekick to Cleveland’s original Ghoulardi — Eric Anderson, later the voice of ABC and father of Paul Thomas — and would even come back home to appear on Hoolihan and Big Chuck and Big Chuck and Lil’ John.

Gamber Russell Donovan (Bill Bixby) has agreed to sign for some valuables from an old associate named John Whintle. Turns out they’re three orphans named Bobby, Clovis and Celia Bradley, a bunch of kids who destroy so much that they make Donovan poor. Soon, he’s nearly robbed by Knotts and Conway, who have left their gang after accidentally shooting Slim Pickens in the leg. Hijinks ensure involving a gold mine and bandits.

Only Knotts and Conway would come back for The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again, along with Harry Morgan who plays a different character. Disney also made a TV movie called Tales of the Apple Dumpling Gang, which had John Bennett Perry in Bixby’s part, Ed Begley Jr. instead of  Conway and Arte Johnson in the Knotts role. They also made a six episode TV series, Gun Shy, with Barry Van Dyke in the Bixby part.

When Meg and her mother Beth visit a yard sale, the little girl finds a stuffed bear that just may help with her separation anxiety. Soon, she’s dragging the bear everywhere she goes and will only talk to  — and through — the stuffed animal while hoarding supplies for it. What if — and I’m just spitballing here — that bear has a parasitic bug creature inside it? Well, welcome to The Nest, which is one of the weirdest and goofiest — in a good way — films I’ve seen this year.

Beth and Jack have been having some dark days, what with her drug addiction and the financial damage it has done to their marriage. Now living in the home of a recently deceased family member, they try and start all over but are only growing further apart. Now, not only is Meg overly attracted to her bear, but their family friend Marisa (Dee Wallace!) and Jack are overly attached to Meg, creating this strange circle of weirdness, all while the painkillers Beth needs to get past a brutal fall down the steps give her nightmarish visions of parasitic creatures that are using her family for sustenance.

So yeah — if you watch one movie about an otherwordly bug that lives inside a teddy bear named Ricky that possesses a young girl and makes her drug-addicted mother doubt reality — actually there’s no other movie like that. The last scene of this made me laugh at its utter audacity and I consider that a triumph.

The Nest will be available exclusively at Redbox from July 6-20 before it comes out on demand from 4DigitalMedia. You can learn more at the official site.

Mike (Marcin Paluch) and Carrie (Tracy Willet) Bonner have just been married and move into a secluded forest home. Of course, it takes but a few weeks until the other people who live in the area start to upset Carrie, which leads her to believe that their new hometown is filled with the supernatural. Mike blows it all off, but you know, if a house tells you to get out, you should get out.

Animosity was originally filmed in 2012 as a thesis project at the School of Visual Arts with professor Roy Frumkes (Street Trash) acting as the film’s executive producer. It faded away until Brendan Steere, the movie’s director, had a hit with Velocipastor.

I was surprised that this is a film closer to Let’s Scare Jessica to Death — credit for that theory goes to Jim Morazzini on Voices from the Balcony — than the goofball gross-out action that Steere has become known for. Despite some audio issues and being too dark to see in places — hey, it had a $14,000 budget — there’s enough in this to warrant a serious watch for any horror lover.

We interviewed Brendan Steere in August 2019 on the eve of the release of Velocipastor. Animosity makes its debut on digital streaming platforms on July 20 via Wild Eye Releasing. You can learn more on the official Facebook page.

Seriously, of all the Disney live action I’ve watched over two weeks, this is my favorite. It’s a solid mystery story that has a cat to keep kids interested, but never panders or plays down to its audience. Dean Jones is pretty solid as FBI Agent Zeke Kelso, Hayley Mills is wonderful as Patricia “Patti” Randall and Dorothy Provine as her sister Ingrid and Roddy McDowall as would-be suitor Gregory Benson are both perfect. Put them up against Neville Brand and Frank Gorshin as the duo who have kidnapped a woman* yet who are outwitted by a feline and you have a great movie.

Its writing crew was recognized for their work. Mildred Gordon, Gordon Gordon (the Gordons wrote the original book, Undercover Cat) and Bill Walsh, were nominated by the Writers Guild of America for Best Written American Comedy and the movie was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture.

The real star is DC** — Darn Cat — a rare movie cat who acts exactly like a real cat. He’s pretty much rude and even dangerous to everyone outside his owners Patti and Ingrid. Plus, William Demarest made me laugh out loud every single moment he was on screen, which is the hallmark of a comedic actor.

One of the Seal Point Siamese cats in this film also appears in The Incredible Journey. Let’s hear it for movie animals who appeared in more than one role!

Also — I have a weakness for fake beatniks in kid movies. Witness Canoe, played here by Tom Lowell. He’s everything plus!

*Grayson Hall, Dr. Julia Hoffman from Dark Shadows!

**In France, he is known as P.V., which comes from the French translation Petit Voyou, or little delinquent.

Based on the first two books in The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, this movie had been in production since 1973 — twelve years! — before it got released by a Disney that wasn’t looking to play it safe. Actual production may not have started until 1980, but man — talk about a movie that was long in the making.

Another reason why the movie took so long to get to theaters was because of a horrific test screening of the rough cut inside Disney’s private theater in Burbank, California. The “cauldron born” sequence was so intense that most of the children in the theater literally ran out, which led to new Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg ordering them to be cut. When producer Joe Hale objected, Katzenberg got an edit suite and did it himself. Hale went to Disney CEO Michael Eisner and put a stop to that, but the new edits causes a seven month delay and you can still see noticable   jumps in what was removed.

The release of the film was a major loss for Walt Disney Studios and put the future of the animation department in jeopardy, giving The Black Cauldron the nickname “the film that almost killed Disney.” I guess that means that we’ll never see the other three novels in The Chronicles of Prydain huh?

Katezenberg would later say that the film lacked “the humor, pathos, and the fantasy which had been so strong in Lloyd Alexander’s work. The story had been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and it was heartbreaking to see such wonderful material wasted.” As for the author, he claimed, “First, I have to say, there is no resemblance between the movie and the book. Having said that, the movie in itself, purely as a movie, I found to be very enjoyable. I had fun watching it. What I would hope is that anyone who sees the movie would certainly enjoy it, but I’d also hope that they’d actually read the book.”

Look — it’s a movie with John Hurt’s voice of a gigantic Satanic Horned King, as well as voiceovers by John Huston as the narrator and John Byner as the heroic Gurgi. Of course I’m going to be inclined to like this, even if it came nowhere near my small town in 1985 and wasn’t released on video for more than a decade.

The film is all about the adventures of Taran who has dreams of becoming a famous warrior. A sorceror named Dallben worries that the Horned King will use his psychic pig — yes really — Hen Wen — double yes really — to locate the Black Cauldron, an occult tool that can create an invicible army of the dead. Why was this made? Who would have such a use for it? And why wasn’t it destroyed?

Well, we wouldn’t have a movie otherwise.

I had to step away from our live Disney week and make an exception for this film. I’d never seen it and it was high time I changed that.

It’s kind of amazing that after 2.5 million total drawings, 400 gallons of paint, 15,000 pencils, 300 erasers, 400 paint brushes, 1,165 different hues and colors and over 34 miles of film stock — according to Disney News Magazine Summer 1985 — that Disney buried this movie.

The legend of this movie has moved on past its failure. There’s a rumor that Legend of Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto based a lot of that game on this movie, which makes a lot of sense.