I realize that as far as film restoration priorities go, THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN is probably 10 to the power 4 on that list but I still have hopes of seeing it again looking the way it did when it was first broadcast on TV back in 1957 while I’m still around to appreciate it. PIED PIPER was one of the very first made-for-TV movies and the first one to be made in color even though television pictures were still in black & white. Unlike PLAYHOUSE 90 or THE HALLMARK HALL OF FAME presentations, this was shot on film, not performed live and captured on videotape which gave it a superior broadcast quality.
The film proved to be very popular and was shown on NBC around Thanksgiving until the mid-1960s then it disappeared from the airwaves. It made quite the impression on a 5 year old and although today I can see the low budget special effects for what they are, I can still appreciate them for what they meant to me at the time. In time the film slipped into the public domain which is why there are so many bad copies of it out there (including You Tube). This DVD-R is one of the better ones and the cover reproduces the theatrical poster of 1966 but the use of a high quality print (hopefully one exists) for a DVD master would be greatly appreciated.
The movie is loosely based on Robert Browning’s poem of the same name. All of the dialogue is in rhyme and a lot of the poem is actually quoted. The town of Hamelin looks like a soundstage set of the period but the costumes are colorful and the characters are larger than life as befits what is essentially a children’s musical. In fact it’s the music that everyone remembers as all of it comes from Edvard Grieg and most of it from his PEER GYNT suites. The ridding of the town of rats to “In the Hall of the Mountain King” is something that no kid will fail to be impressed by if they are young enough.
I showed it to my kids when they were roughly my age when I first saw it and they “ooohed and ahhhed” and asked to see it again, a luxury I didn’t have in the late 1950s. Van Johnson is a striking Pied Piper (with a human alter ego Truson) while Claude Rains is the perfect crooked politician as the Mayor. Among the town councilmen is Spike Jones regular Doodles Weaver (Sigourney’s uncle) and guest stars Jim Backus and Kay Starr (a popular female vocalist of the time) get to have their moments to shine. Although it’s a relic from a bygone era (complete with happy ending), it doesn’t deserve the public domain oblivion into which it’s fallen.
The Capsule Critic 