The year is 1985. The sun is setting on the Roger Moore era of the James Bond franchise—though daylight savings seems to have pushed that dusk back a few more years.
After a cold open that sees Bond snowboarding to The Beach Boys’ “California Girls,” there’s little hope of this ever settling into a grounded tone. But once the killer, if lyrically nonsensical, Duran Duran theme kicks in, and Grace Jones makes her first electric appearance, it’s clear that A View to a Kill is going to be a memorable ride.
The film takes its title from a short story by Ian Fleming, published in the For Your Eyes Only collection in 1960. Originally titled From a View to a Kill, that brief tale sees Bond disguised as a dispatch rider while investigating the death of a messenger in France.
Yet the 1985 film bears little resemblance to its namesake. In director John Glen’s third Bond film, written by Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson, Bond (Roger Moore, in his seventh and final outing) is sent to recover a microchip from the body of 003 in Siberia. Realising its potential for espionage, Bond is led to Max Zorin (Christopher Walken), the head of hardware manufacturer Zorin Industries. When he discovers Zorin’s plan to trigger a massive earthquake and wipe out Silicon Valley’s competition, Bond must get past bodyguard May Day (Grace Jones), whose allegiance to Zorin shifts after she meets 007.
Wholly a product of its time, the earnestly film leans into the 1980s: fire trucks, snowboards, Eiffel Tower stunts, the latest technology (personal computers!), and a machine-gun-wielding Walken (a role reportedly offered to both David Bowie and Sting). If Moore began his tenure with the funky blaxploitation energy of Live and Let Die, he ended it with the glittery, synth-driven shoulder pads of the High ’80s.
May Day is arguably one of the most fascinating characters in Bond history, not least because of the casting of the incomparable Jones. Neither outright villain nor traditional henchwoman, and certainly no Bond girl in the usual sense (that role is left to Tanya Roberts), May Day subverts the formula entirely: physically dominant, compelling, and more interesting than Walken’s Zorin. Off camera, Jones famously anticipated Moore’s notorious on-set pranks by donning a black and white strap-on dildo during their love scene.
Yet there’s no escaping the simple fact that Moore, 58 at the time, was getting a little long in the tooth to play the suave secret agent. He was, on average, 25 to 30 years older than his romantic leads, and by the mid-80s, the cinematic landscape had shifted. Few gaps feel wider than the one between 1973, when Moore first took up the mantle, and the mid-1980s. By then, the blockbuster model had shifted, and entries like Moonraker were reacting to trends rather than setting them.
The next decade and a half would demand a new kind of Bond for a new kind of audience. A new era was dawning, one that would conclusively lay the Moore era to rest. And while his seven films are often mocked for being over-the-top, pun-laden, and downright silly, Moore nevertheless carved out a definitive version of the character, one distinct from Fleming’s, and endlessly entertaining in its own right. He may not have been the most convincing spy, but he was a movie star through and through—and he gave us some of the series’ most iconic lines.
After a decade of noble steeds, miraculous tails, and horse-themed life lessons, Disney’s 1963 entry The Horse Without a Head sounds like a blood-splattered change of pace. Spoiler: it isn’t.
By 1963, the studio had already taught group life lessons through horse riding (The Horsemasters), introduced us to The Horse with the Flying Tail, and even rescued horses from the Nazis (Miracle of the White Stallions).
Instead, you’ll be delighted to discover a quaint 1960s kids’ flick told with a thoroughly British sensibility—despite being set in France. And if there were any doubts about its influences, they even roped in Eric Rogers (of Carry On fame) for the score. Ooh err!
Set in the small industrial town of Louvigny, a group of working-class children share a battered, headless wooden hobby horse that they ride at speed through the streets. While it draws the ire of a few minor police officials, it mostly serves as their escape from the humdrummery of daily life and the grinding poverty that surrounds them.
When a local criminal gang uses the toy as a hiding place for stolen goods, the children find themselves caught up in a game of cat and mouse between the crooks and the cops—led by the investigating Inspector Sinet (Jean-Pierre Aumont).
This one never featured in my childhood, being a wee bit before my time, but it’s exactly the sort of thing that would have rocked my world. A proper child’s-own adventure, with a ragtag gang and their broken-wheeled horse tangled up in a heist. The film is so steeped in a certain era of children’s storytelling that you could close your eyes and know Leo McKern is playing a shiftless crook.
The Horse Without a Head is part of Walt Disney’s brief but curious foray into European productions, often created for television distribution. As in the early days of their live-action efforts in the UK, by the 1960s Disney’s anthology shows and theatrical features—such as Miracle of the White Stallions or The Three Lives of Thomasina—leaned on local crews and scenery. The result was a mix of cultural flavours we don’t always associate with the Disney brand.
It’s not just the setting that gives this a distinctly European feel, it’s a far cry from even Disney’s other continental films of the era. The scrappy run-ins between kids, crooks, and cops, and the emphasis on the importance of play (even amid poverty), make it a stark contrast to something like the simultaneously released Summer Magic. In short, it’s just charming.
The ‘magical’ reveal of a disused toy shop, the sheer chaos of a climax packed with fireworks and dogs—every little touch adds to the film’s innate cosiness. There’s no monetary reward at the end, no lashings of cream and scones, but dammit, if these kids didn’t deserve another adventure.
Originally made for American television, The Horse Without a Head aired as part of The Wonderful World of Color, which might explain why it flew under the radar for many, and even Disney+ hasn’t dusted it off for modern audiences. Thankfully, there are still plenty of copies floating around, making this ripe for rediscovery.
Or at least, that was the idea at the time. After expanding the Star Wars universe with The Phantom Menace and continuing it through Attack of the Clones three years later, George Lucas brought the twin sunsets down on his saga for good. On the occasion of the film’s 20th anniversary, we know that didn’t quite pan out.
Say what you want about the prequels — and I do, when asked and sometimes when not — but Revenge of the Sith delivers on much of the promise of that elongated setup. As Star Wars fans, we’d been tested over the previous decade, first asked to accept new digital additions to the original films, then to engage with a trilogy that felt stylistically very different.
The first 25 minutes of this chapter contain some of the most exciting and well-executed spectacles of sound and vision in the entire series. Lucas takes the frenetic energy of the Return of the Jedi space battle and infuses it with all the modern technology and “laser sword fights” (as he insists on calling them) he can muster. It’s a masterclass in digital effects and action storytelling.
And even with its longer running time (on release, the third-longest in the saga), Lucas gets the pacing just about right. There’s a lot of ground to cover — the downfall of Anakin and democracy, the end of the Jedi Order, the rise of the Empire, the birth of Luke and Leia — so the extra elements involving Dooku and Grievous might seem grievously superfluous. Yet somehow, even with that excess, they mostly work in Lucas’ grand visual storytelling.
In 2025, those political undercurrents feel even more pointed. The film’s depiction of a republic eroded from within — where emergency powers are granted in the name of security, dissent becomes treason, and troops are literally deployed to silence the opposition — resonates more sharply than it did two decades ago. It reflects the shift from Lucas’ optimism in the late 1970s to the more cynical political outlook of 2005, as the second term of George W. Bush began against the backdrop of the Patriot Act and the forever wars in the Persian Gulf.
There are moments here where you can almost pinpoint where Lucas went wrong with the trilogy. Take the heat-filled finale, for example. The visual spectacle of these titans of the Force clashing above an unrelenting magma flow should be enough. Yet Lucas fills the frame with constant motion — little robots collecting debris, background chaos — unable to leave the image well enough alone. We saw the same instinct in the Special Editions of the original trilogy. Contrast this with the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, arguably a direct sequel to this film, which features the most stripped-back lightsaber battle in the franchise.
Revenge of the Sith is still plagued by some of the same issues as Attack of the Clones: the unearned love story between Padmé and Anakin, the occasional cringe-worthy line, and that one very big “Nooooo!” at the end. Lucas stops short of delivering something for everyone, but perhaps that was never the point. He was making these films for himself.
And somehow, in doing so, he delivered the darkest chapter in the saga, with the horror of Order 66, the Jedi Temple massacre of the Younglings, the brutal birth of Darth Vader, the death of Padmé, and the shattering of the last remnants of the Republic. At least until the Disney+ era, it comes closest to being the Star Wars I loved as a kid, even if it took me a little longer to appreciate it.
The Sith Awakens
For Lucas, Revenge of the Sith brought his saga full circle in more ways than one. It not only incorporated ideas he’d been playing with since before 1977, but revived a title originally planned for what was once marketed as Revenge of the Jedi.
Here in 2025, Star Wars is something very different from the world Lucas left behind. As the last Star Wars film distributed by 20th Century Fox, it marked the end of an era. On October 30, 2012 — seven years after the release of Revenge of the Sith — Disney acquired Lucasfilm for over $4 billion. Since then, with a new trilogy beginning with The Force Awakens, Star Wars has become less an event and more a regular fixture, across both film and high-budget television.
Today, Revenge of the Sith is remembered not just on its own merits, but for what it came to represent. Just as the original trilogy defined fandom from 1977 to 1999, for a whole generation, the prequels were their Star Wars. As the galaxy expanded through The Clone Wars TV series, and as those fans and creators went on to shape new stories under Disney, Revenge of the Sith now stands as either the last gasp of the old guard, or the dawn of something new.
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To be honest, I feel a little chimp-baited. There’s a monkey right there on the poster. Yet instead of heralding the glorious start to Disney’s 1960s simian selection, we get a Cold War caper structured around random occurrences, with only a fleeting ape appearance.
Based on Robert Buckner’s 1960 novel Starfire, this is core Kennedy-era space race shenanigans. Tom Tryon trades his Texas John Slaughter six-shooter for a space suit when he accidentally agrees to a manned mission around the moon, but much of the film plays out as a (sort of) comedy of errors.
Moon Pilot marks one of Disney’s early forays into lighthearted sci-fi, a genre they’d first dabbled in with the wonderful The Absent-Minded Professor and would revisit more successfully with the Medfield College films (The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, Now You See Him, Now You Don’t). But while those films had a clear youth appeal, this one wobbles between kid-friendly antics and a looser, more adult-leaning satire.
That’s just one of the problems here. Once the setup is in place—complete with France’s Dany Saval as a presumed femme fatale spy, later revealed to be an alien love interest—the film immediately loses its premise in a series of loosely connected scenes. Audiences didn’t dig it either: despite Disney’s eye for technical detail (see TV’s Man in Space), this mistimed comedy failed to find an audience willing to laugh about the space race just yet. For context, this was released about six months before the Cuban Missile Crisis, when tensions were at an all-time high.
This was an odd misfire from the same studio that had so convincingly sold the future of space travel in the 1950s Tomorrowland television specials. Those programs, including Man in Space and Man and the Moon, had been meticulous in their science-factual approach, even employing the likes of aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun. They were part of a broader Cold War PR push, with Man in Space famous for screening at the White House for President Eisenhower. But where those were aspirational, and filled with Ward Kimball’s imaginative animation, Moon Pilot muddles its tone—less a celebration of space exploration, more a scattershot Cold War farce.
Still, there are solid performances at the heart of this. A moustachioed Brian Keith anticipates George C. Scott’s Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove (1964), chewing scenery with gusto as he bellows his way through dialogue. Edmond O’Brien’s bumbling McClosky—redubbed a Federal Security Officer after FBI objections—might have hit differently if the Feds had a sense of humour about it. (They didn’t).
It’s also hard to pinpoint who this was made for. The chimp seems to be there for the kids, but the soft spy plot, love story, and digs at Beatnik culture scattershot across early ’60s touchstones. (Keep an eye out for a young Sally Field in her film debut during the Beatnik lineup). The whole thing culminates—sans additional chimp cameos, I should add—with a Sherman Brothers-penned duet about The Seven Moons of Beta Lyrae being made for loving.
The only reason I can’t quite call this the strangest thing to come out of Disney in 1962 is that the behind-the-scenes special, made for Disney’s television anthology series The Wonderful World of Color, is even weirder. A clearly not-on-set Walt Disney introduces the episode and takes us “behind the scenes” to Stage 2, where Tryon naps on a sofa while Keith, Edmond O’Brien, and one of the “astro-chimps” play poker. This sequence lingers a little too long, ironically giving us more monkey-related content than the feature film itself. (A promo spot doubles down on this, highlighting the “space-happy astro-chimp” as a major selling point—effectively chimp-baiting an entire nation).
The antics continue as Tryon and “the young French girl we brought over from Paris,” Dany Saval, bicker in character. Saval leans heavily into the flighty, ditzy archetype before delivering a lesser version of the aforementioned song.
Unlike Disney’s zanier sci-fi comedies, Moon Pilot drifted into deep space, rarely resurfacing outside Disney completist circles. It didn’t get a high-profile re-release, and its absence from Disney+ suggests even the company has left it floating in the void. While this rocket may not have launched to the Moon, it might just function well enough as a time capsule of whatever Disney had lying around the office the day it was sealed.
Released in cinemas in 1950, Disney’s classic fairytale remains an enduring icon of the studio and its era, still casting its spell 75 years later.
If Disney today has the reputation of being a princess factory, this certainly wasn’t in the original plan.
By 1950, Disney hadn’t released a non-package animated feature film since Bambi (1942). The monumental success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was 23 years—and an animators’ strike and a world war—behind them. Millions of dollars in debt, the studio teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. Could a return to fairy tales be the ticket to get Disney back on track?
We know now that it very much did. “If Snow White is the first lady of animation,” wrote the editors of a 2005 Special Edition ‘making of’ book, “Cinderella is surely the crown princess.” While every culture has a version of this tale, Walt’s inspiration was Charles Perrault’s 17th century story. It wasn’t the first time Disney had attempted this either, including the 1922 Laugh-O-Gram version through the various aborted attempts in the 1930s and 1940s.
By the bibbity-bobbidi-book
The work of 750 artists, 1,500 colours, and over one million drawings—all under the direction of Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, and Clyde Geronimi—CINDERELLA is an animated masterpiece in every sense of the word. What struck me on a recent rewatch was how compact the storytelling is. In only 74 minutes, we get the whole familiar story: the stepmother and stepsisters, the Prince, the Fairy Godmother, the Ball and the glass slipper. Serving as a counterpoint is the little war between the mice, Lucifer the cat and the other animals. It shouldn’t necessarily all work together, but part of the magic is that it just does.
From the moment the film opens, the artistry is unmistakable. Marc Davis and Eric Larson’s naturalistic animation of Cinderella—based on live-action footage of Helene Stanley—stands in stark contrast to the exaggerated human caricatures of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949), the film that immediately preceded it. It culminates in one of Walt Disney’s favorite pieces of animation: Marc Davis’ breathtaking sequence of Cinderella’s transformation into her ballgown, made even more magical by George Rowley’s individually animated sparkles. (The Ink and Paint department later had to painstakingly paint every single one of them, frame by frame).
Other highlights include Ward Kimball’s wildly expressive work on Lucifer, particularly during the ‘cup game’ sequences. Milt Kahl imbues the Fairy Godmother with warmth and charm, making her memorable despite only appearing in a handful of scenes. Frank Thomas crafts an absolute icon in the Evil Stepmother, conveying more menace through a single raised eyebrow or curled lip than some films manage in their entire runtimes. Meanwhile, Ollie Johnston’s broad caricatures of the stepsisters make them just as unforgettable.
If these approaches seem stylistically varied, it’s the ‘story first’ philosophy that ultimately unifies them. Take, for example, the ‘key’ sequence in the film’s climactic moments. Story animator Wolfgang Reitherman devised the idea: while the stepsisters attempt to try on the glass slipper downstairs, the mice desperately struggle to carry a key up the stairs—past the ever-menacing Lucifer—to free Cinderella. The tension is palpable. As legendary animator Andreas Deja later put it, “It’s like a Hitchcock film.”
Then there’s the music. For the first time, Disney turned to Tin Pan Alley—the legendary New York songwriting hub—for a major project. Mack David, Jerry Livingston, and Al Hoffman not only understood how to craft a “story song” that drove the narrative but also knew how to write hits.
The results are certified bangers. Apart from the main title, the film features just five songs, each a standout. A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes, the quintessential “I wish” number, almost instantly became a signature tune for the studio. The jaunty Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo, with its nonsense lyrics and lively animation, is simply iconic. So This Is Love closes the affair on a high note—a waltz practically designed for weddings.
In addition to earning an Oscar nomination for Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo, these songs were the first published under the newly formed Walt Disney Music Company. Cinderella went on to win the Golden Bear for Best Music Film at the inaugural Berlin International Film Festival in 1951, cementing its international reputation.
In 2023, Disney released a 4K restoration of Cinderella—one of the key inspirations for my return to physical media. Restoration director Kevin Schaeffer, along with the legendary Eric Goldberg and others, not only brought out the fine details in the print—including the film’s phenomenal use of light and shadow—but also restored the original colours. As it turns out, we’ve been looking at the wrong ones for decades.
“Her hair [is] dusty blonde,” Goldberg told Polygon, “and her dress is silver. And over the years, we’ve seen her hair look the color of Cheez Whiz. We’ve seen her dress be bright blue. We’ve seen all sorts of stuff.”
This restoration wasn’t just about returning to the source material—it was about preserving the film as it was meant to be seen. The legendary Mary Blair, one of Walt’s favourite artists and designers, created extensive concept art for the film, her striking use of colour shaping its visual identity. Long muted by various home video transfers, her vibrant palette is now finally restored to its full glory, allowing modern audiences to experience the film as its creators intended.
Dreams really do come true
When CINDERELLA premiered in cinemas in 1950, it transformed the fortunes of the Walt Disney Company. A box office hit, it earned three Academy Award nominations—for its score, sound recording, and the song Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo. With his mojo back, Walt Disney forged ahead into new territory, expanding into television, live-action cinema, and the creation of Disneyland.
More immediately, it sparked an animated revival, paving the way for Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, and Sleeping Beauty—all released before the decade’s end. “Cinderella saved the day,” animator Frank Thomas once said. “We had our audience back and were back in the feature business.”
Through sequels and remakes, the original film’s legacy is literally built into the foundations of Disney history. Its castle, immortalized as the centrepiece of the Magic Kingdom, has been replicated around the world and now graces the studio’s ident at the start of every film.
I remember when Star Trek Generations hit cinemas. I bought everything—the book, posters, collectible cards, the lot. The film came out just a few years after the franchise’s 25th anniversary, right at the height of my fandom. That younger self would have rated it five stars easily, maybe even six.
But as the years have passed, my fandom has persisted while my critical lens has sharpened. Or arguably grown more cynical. Having rewatched The Next Generation (TNG), Deep Space Nine (DS9), Voyager and Enterprise fairly recently, it’s easier to see the spectrum of what Trek can offer. And Generations is good Trek, though the series has shown us it can be great.
The film’s plot centres around the mysterious Nexus, a moving space-time rift. It was believed to have killed Captain Kirk (William Shatner) aboard the Enterprise-B in 2293 while rescuing refugees from its deadly pull. Yet, almost eight decades later, the Enterprise-D discovers that the Nexus offers those who enter it a surreal paradise where their deepest desires are eternally realised, untouched by the outside world. As refugee Tolian Soran (Malcolm McDowell) relentlessly seeks to return to the Nexus, Jean-Luc Picard and Captain Kirk’s paths cross, and two legends must face both personal and universal stakes to save the galaxy.
A friend recently called Generations “underrated,” and I have to agree. For all its flaws, it’s the best of the “odd-numbered” Trek films by a long shot and truly feels like TNG expanded—visually, emotionally, and logistically. The sets are stunning and meticulously detailed, and the cinematography finally places TNG on a larger-than-life scale.
A prime example is the return of the TNG crew, who had wrapped their final season on television only six months prior. Beginning with Worf’s promotion in a holodeck simulation of an old sailing ship, the film’s $35 million budget is immediately on display. This scale continues through a thrilling space battle with a Klingon Bird of Prey, the massive energy phenomenon of the Nexus, and, ultimately, the Enterprise’s saucer crash-landing onto a planet’s surface.
However, in its attempt to appeal to a broader audience, the film stumbles in places. Like the Nexus itself, Generations surrounds us with comforting things—familiar faces, Klingons, space battles, a Holodeck sequence, and Data’s iconic “Oh shit…”—but the essence of Trek feels just out of reach. As striking as Data’s moment was (and tame now, thanks to Discovery and Picard), some of the humour feels forced, almost poking fun at the characters rather than celebrating them. Data’s emotional subplot, while memorable, feels tacked on, undermining the nuance of his seven-season journey.
Picard, on the other hand, gets to explore his own emotional development. The concept of family repeatedly arises throughout the series, as does the notion of “what ifs.” Much like the sublime Hugo Award-winning Season 5 episode The Inner Light, Picard sees what life would be like if he had had a family and children. His emotional journey is partially fueled by the recent loss of his brother Robert and young nephew René in a fire, leaving him as the last of the Picards.
And of course, there’s the long-awaited meeting between Kirk and Picard. The Nexus presents this as a meeting of two explorers at different stages in their careers, both contemplating life regrets. It’s a goldmine of potential emotion, but the interaction never quite lands. The scenes feel more like a horseback compromise between eras than an organic meeting. In hindsight, it would have only taken a few more scenes to develop Kirk’s journey further, instead of the retrospectively cheap shot of killing off a legend. (In fact, I still found the journey between Data and his cat Spot more emotional).
Nevertheless, the Nexus as a means of examining life choices, morality, and legacy is precisely what Star Trek—and certainly TNG—is all about. Think about the sixth season episode Tapestry, where the immortal being Q (John de Lancie) allows Picard to revisit a pivotal moment in his life and watch the ripple effects. In that episode, Picard declares he would rather die as Captain than live a life of safety and mediocrity. Here, the Nexus offers a similar opportunity for characters to reconsider their paths, but its exploration feels somewhat underdeveloped in the film’s broader context.
TNG’s potential on the big screen came into full focus just a few years later with First Contact, arguably the finest of the TNG films, and then with Insurrection, which feels like a feature-length episode in the best sense. Nemesis, of course, did its own thing. But there’s still something about Generations that resonates with me. Even now, part of me is still that teenager seeing it for the first time in the cinema, wide-eyed at the scale and familiar faces. And he wouldn’t care about these quibbles—he’s just thrilled to be along for the ride.
Engage.
Star Trek Generations was released in the United states on was released in the United States on 18 November 1994. The Internet tells me that we didn’t see the film in Australia until 30 March 1995 — by which stage I’d already devoured the novelisation several times.Elements of this review originally appeared in a Letterboxd review in June 2020 — probably following a lockdown TNG binge.
By the 1950s, the Western had swaggered its way to the top of American cinema, riding high since the dawn of the silver screen. Disney, never one to miss a trailblazing opportunity, saddled up and delivered nearly 30 productions across film and TV, carving its own niche into the genre’s storied landscape.
Disney wasn’t just jumping on the Western wagon train either. From their animated shorts to live-action features and first forays into television, the Western was baked into the DNA of their output.
By 1954, when Disney introduced the idea of his eponymous theme park to audiences, the Western-themed Frontierland became a cornerstone of both the Disneyland TV show and the park itself, which opened the following year. Disney didn’t just dabble in the genre—they made it their own.
Animated beginnings: rabbits on the range
Disney’s earliest animated offerings were often groundbreaking experiments with the form, yet they weren’t created in a bubble. They reflected popular culture as much as they created it and Westerns had been part of film culture from the beginning. From early animated antics to more genre-specific works, Disney gradually embraced the Western, blending folklore, humour, and frontier ideals along the way.
Disney’s earliest animated offerings were groundbreaking experiments with form, yet they reflected popular culture as much as they shaped it. Westerns had been part of film since the beginning, and Disney gradually embraced the genre, blending folklore, humour, and frontier ideals.
Early Western motifs appeared in the Alice Comedies and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit shorts—like Alice’s Wild West Show (1924) and Sagebrush Sadie (1928)—where the frontier served as a playground for slapstick. Mickey Mouse followed suit with The Cactus Kid (1930) and Two-Gun Mickey (1934), laying the groundwork for Disney’s later embrace of Western folklore.
Two Gun Goofy (1952)
By the mid-1940s, Disney leaned more heavily into the genre with Goofy’s Californy ’Er Bust and Pluto’s The Legend of Coyote Rock. The Pecos Bill sequence in Melody Time (1948) completed the ’40s formula for capturing the fun, mythical side of the Old West.
Later shorts, like Pests of the West (1950) and Two Gun Goofy (1952), took cues from Warner Bros., ramping up the cartoonish chaos. The final act of Two Gun Goofy feels like Bugs Bunny might be lurking just offscreen, orchestrating the chaos. One of my favourites is The Lone Chipmunks (1954), where Chip and Dale face off against outlaw Pete. It’s wonderfully silly: at one point, Pete accidentally uses Dale as a gun, who lets out an appropriately squeaky ‘bang’.
With layout styling by Xavier Atencio, later famed for Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion rides, the UPA-style A Cowboy Needs a Horse (1956) is visually striking, featuring mid-century modern designs and vivid, impressionistic backgrounds by Ralph Hulett and Al Dempster. Paired with cowboy docudrama Cow Dog (1956) and Secrets of Life on release, the film revolves around a catchy song that still sticks days later. However, the stereotypical depiction of First Nations peoples, though featuring dynamic visuals, detracts from the otherwise charming and beautifully crafted animation.
Fess Parker as Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier
Kings of the wild frontier: Davy Crockett and the small screen
Disney’s Davy Crockett (played by newcomer Fess Parker) was a legitimate cultural phenomenon. Between the coonskin caps and other merchandise—not to mention the wildly popular theme song—the Crockett Craze generated over $300 million in sales during its first year. (That’s about $3.5 billion in today’s money—from just three TV episodes.) Even Back to the Future couldn’t resist: when Marty McFly heads back to 1955, both the song and the cap turn up on screen. The success completely caught Disney by surprise.
In many ways, the studio spent the rest of the decade trying to recapture this lightning in a bottle. Crockett himself starred in five episodes of the Disneyland anthology show, and two compilation features followed. The six-part Saga of Andy Burnett was very much made in the Crockett mould, with Jeff York (who played Mike Fink in the Crockett episodes) returning. While Zorro was not strictly a “Western,” its frontier setting of Spanish California and swashbuckling hero (played by Guy Williams) became iconic.
Combined with the The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca serial, starring Robert Loggia as the true-life gunslinger turned lawyer and politician, we can now acknowledge that Disney created two iconic Hispanic screen action heroes in the late 1950s. A similar approach was taken with the more expansive Texas John Slaughter chronicles, based on the real-life Texas Ranger. It may not be Disney’s most memorable western, but it’s a solid entry with standout moments, especially in the Sandoval two-parter featuring Beverly Garland’s Amanda Barko.
Even the daily episodes of the more kid-centric Mickey Mouse Club (1955-1959) reflected the popularity of the Western trend. Talent Round-up Day on Fridays saw the Mouseketeers dressed in cowboy outfits, with a cartoon Mickey in Western garb a prominent part of the logos. Serials story Corky and White Shadow put a young girl in the centre of a Western tale, while the more successful Spin and Marty gave audiences a modern take as the title characters spend their summers at the Triple R Ranch.
The success of Disney’s Westerns on television cemented their role in helping shape mid-century American ideas about the West, particularly through serialised storytelling that kept audiences hooked week to week.
Cowboys and cultural clashes on the big screen
Disney’s 1950s big-screen Westerns often featured plenty of horse-bound action. From Stormy, The Thoroughbred (1954) to the small-scale The Littlest Outlaw (1955), Disney used documentary techniques to shape these narrative stories—what we might call slice-of-life docudramas today.
Disney didn’t just entertain; their Westerns offered a family-friendly, packaged version of frontier life, often highlighting historical figures whose stories reflected themes of exploration, heroism, and morality. The Great Locomotive Chase (1956) captures this with an almost aggressively centrist retelling of Andrews’ Raiders and Hunter’s Confederate conductor—likely a reason it remains less heralded among Disney’s 1950s output (though Walt’s own love of trains is evident throughout).
These adventures didn’t ignore First Nations perspectives, although portrayals often leaned on cultural stereotypes of the time. Peter Pan (1953) remains one of Disney’s beloved films of the era, yet its song “What Makes the Red Man Red” and Ward Kimball’s caricatured Chief have aged poorly. Westward Ho, The Wagons! (1956) similarly attempts authenticity, with the Disneyland behind-the-scenes episode Along the Oregon Trail detailing Sioux consultations for language accuracy. Still, the film ends anticlimactically, caught in a last-minute crisis and a literal white saviour narrative.
More considered attempts came with Tonka and The Light in the Forest (both 1958). Tonka follows White Bull, a young Teton Sioux played by Italian-American Sal Mineo, highlighting era-specific casting biases. The film acknowledges traditional practices and even portrays General Custer as a villain, though it ultimately leaves conflicts unresolved. The Light in the Forest delves into Disney’s 1950s fascination with Americana and identity through True Son (James MacArthur), a young man torn between his Indigenous roots and colonial assimilation. While it nods to racism, its simplistic portrayal of assimilation undermines a fuller respect for First Nations cultures.
The evolving frontier
As the Western genre waned in popularity, Disney adapted, reinventing it with humour and lighthearted charm to keep its appeal for family audiences.
In 1959, a very serious Leslie Nielsen took on Revolutionary War figure The Swamp Fox in multi-part Walt Disney Presents stories on TV, demonstrating Disney’s knack for creating Western-adjacent tales rooted in American folklore and history. You could even argue that Old Yeller (1957), with its post-Civil War setting, forms part of this continuum.
Westernland Shootin’ Gallery in Tokyo Disneyland
Perhaps the most tangible legacy of Disney’s Western era is found in the Frontierlands of Disney Parks around the world. The original in California, along with its sibling in Orlando, stands as a tribute to this cinematic era. In Paris, Thunder Mesa offers a unique backstory, created by the fictional Henry Ravenswood to support the mining town surrounding Big Thunder Mountain. Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s Grizzly Gulch takes inspiration from a Northern California mining town.
However, Tokyo Disneyland—almost 6,000 miles from the American frontier—might showcase the clearest tribute to this era. Their version, simply called Westernland, is a near mirror of the Magic Kingdom’s Frontierland, tipping its hat to Disney’s lasting vision of the Old West.
Do you expect us to watch, Goldfinger? We have been for six decades now.
For a film that opens with James Bond wearing a fake seagull on his head, it’s hard to imagine a more iconic outing for 007.
In fact, there’s a good chance this is one of the first films that comes to mind when you think of Bond. Whether it’s the titular villain with his laser, the array of gadgets, or the iconic ‘Bond Girl’ Pussy Galore, this is the film where all the pieces of the character truly fall into place.
Now, 60 years after the release of the third instalment in the Eon Productions series, we can reflect with the weight of 24 other Bond films for comparison. Does it still have the Midas touch or the spider’s touch? We beckon you to enter this web of sin.
Originally published in 1959, the novel reflects the prevailing attitudes towards sexuality and race of its time. Yet, with its three distinct acts and a cinematic finale, Fleming crafted one of the most movie-ready stories in the Bond series. In fact, as Fleming was still alive during the release of the first few films, the influences of Eon Productions certainly were evident on Fleming’s work by Thunderball–a production saga best left for another day.
Richard Maibaum and Paul Dehn’s screenplay follows the basics of the book. Following the discovery of a gold-painted body, Bond (Sean Connery) investigates the wealthy and ruthless Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe), who is plotting to destabilise the global economy by contaminating the U.S. gold supply at Fort Knox. He teams up with the deadly personal pilot Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) to foil Goldfinger’s plan.
Setting the model
Following the cold open, we’re treated to one of the most sensational musical themes of all time—a song comedian Greg Proops once quipped that Shirley Bassey doesn’t just sing, but attacks (“Gold-FIN-GAH!”). This marked the start of a long tradition of acclaimed Bond title songs. With its striking combination of silhouettes, shimmering gold bodies, and superimposed imagery, the sequence has been endlessly parodied, imitated, but rarely equaled.
Compared with the first two films, both remarkable in their own way, it’s all here: a classic car, the Aston Martin DB5, which has become synonymous with Bond. There’s an imitable henchman in Oddjob (Olympic weightlifter Harold Sakata). There is, of course, a complicated torture device ripe for monologuing – an actual laser that required some lengthy special effects wizardry to pull off.
Pussy Galore’s sexuality has sparked endless critical discussion. While Fleming’s novels are far more blatant in their regressive views on homosexuality—dismissing characters as “unhappy sexual misfits”—the film leans on innuendo and wink-and-nudge references. Regardless of the medium, the idea that Galore ‘turns’ for Bond—with a single, non-consensual kiss, no less—is nothing more than a crude reinforcement of his supposed irresistible heterosexual dominance, reflecting the shallow machismo that defines much of the era’s Bond fantasies.
Another staple that makes its appearance in the gripping finale is the bomb and countdown routine. After an impressively staged assault on Fort Knox and Bond’s showdown with Oddjob, a ticking clock signals that a bomb is about to detonate. US troops arrive just in the nick of time, rescuing our hero with a dramatic ‘007’ seconds remaining on the clock.
Life after Goldfinger
Although Fleming died prior to the film’s release, James Bond did return. He returned another 22 times with five different actors in the role. Nancy Sinatra through Billie Elish have featured on the titles, scoring hits and accolades along the way. Yet it wasn’t until the soft reboot of the Daniel Craig era that the series broke out of the mould formed with GOLDFINGER.
We must also acknowledge the problematic aspects of a film turning 60, ones that occasionally serve as a barrier to modern enjoyment even if they became part of Bond’s foundations for decades to come. GOLDFINGER sets the standard for the ‘Bond Girl’ as a hypersexualised figure, defined more by looks than agency. While Blackman’s Pussy Galore is more independent, her role still ultimately revolves around serving Bond—both in his mission and romantically.
Still, from The Simpsons to Austin Powers and beyond, GOLDFINGER helped cement Bond’s image as the suave, gadget-wielding spy with innuendo-laden witticisms that are entirely inappropriate for the workplace. If you’re not at least humming Bassey’s iconic performance right now, your heart is cold. Plus, if Bond’s terry towelling cloth playsuit isn’t on every Halloween wishlist, then there’s no justice in the world.
Need more of a James Bond fix? Be sure to check out my 007 Case Files, a column where I read all of the James Bond books and short stories, encompassing Ian Fleming and beyond.
Disney’s JOHNNY TREMAIN (1957) is a film that embodies the often conflicting values of 1950s Americana and the revolutionary spirit of 1776.
Having not been raised on tales of the Revolutionary War and the like, my reference points have largely been the musical Hamilton and that comment Bart Simpson made about a potential alternate title for Esther Forbes’s 1943 novel, Johnny Tremain. That 1993 episode, Whacking Day, is a satire of the kind of mythologising that’s so present in this 1950s Disney film.
For those unfamiliar with the source material, this film doesn’t provide extensive background information. It opens in 1773, just after Great Britain passed the Tea Act. This legislation granted the British East India Company a monopoly on tea sales in the American colonies, undermining local merchants and asserting British control over colonial trade.
During this time, Johnny Tremain (played by Hal Stalmaster) is apprenticed to a silversmith. As his master Lapham refuses to do small jobs, Tremain is forced to work beyond his abilities and is severely injured as a result.
Unable to secure regular work, Tremain falls in with the Sons of Liberty, an underground organisation with the aim of advancing the interests of the original thirteen Colonies. As a message runner, Tremain becomes involved in key moments in pre-Revolution history, including the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride and the first engagements of the American Revolution.
Cold revolution
Disney’s JOHNNY TREMAIN sits at a curious junction, one where more overt Americana and faith-based ideals are taking on more prominence in films like So Dear to My Heart (1948), Westward Ho, The Wagons (1956) and even in documentaries Antarctica: Operation Deep Freeze and Lapland. This was, after all, only a year after “In God We Trust” became the official motto of the United States. During the Cold War, it was a way to contrast the religious values of the United States with the atheistic ideology of the Soviet Union.
Yet the 1776 ‘revolutionary spirit’ is conversely about rejecting the pillars of the old world. There’s an early scene in the film where Tremain and his friends break the Sabbath to do some metal work. For this, Tremain is immediately ‘punished’ with a life-altered injury (As Bart reductively says, “They should call this book Johnny Deformed.“). The rest of the narrative is essentially about Tremain’s redemption, achieved by embracing collective principals over individual profit.
Which perhaps is what makes Tremain so rigid a watching experience today. It’s positively steeped in the values of an era, while being nostalgic about the ideals of another. You could almost apply that observation to Disney of the 1950s more generally, for what is Disneyland if not a mid-century rose-coloured vision of the way America ‘used to’ and ‘might’ be? An excellent cast of people like Jeff York, Luana Patten, Sebastian Cabot and a very young Richard Beymer (West Side Story, Twin Peaks) talk almost entirely in speechifying phrases, robbing them of the chance to show any individual charm.
Patten (Song of the South, Fun and Fancy Free, Melody Time, So Dear to My Heart), York (The Great Locomotive Chase, Davy Crockett) and Cabot (Westward Ho, The Wagons and beyond) were all part of Disney’s growing rep company, yet Tremain himself is played by relative newcomer Hal Stalmaster. The young actor was brother of legendary casting director Lynn Stalmaster (according to D23’s Jim Fanning), and it’s unusual that one of the Mousketeers or Mickey Mouse Club serial stars weren’t cast instead.
On a technical level, despite being originally shot for a two-part Disneyland anthology episode (but later released theatrically), Charles P. Boyle maintains his usual high standard of Technicolor photography, with the skirmishes and battles slickly captured. Like the megahit Davy Crockett series, Walt understood that filming in color would not only allow for theatrical re-releases but also ensure the film’s longevity. However, even with a series of songs (including the catchy ‘The Liberty Tree’), the second half of the film feels somewhat repetitive, even within its brief 80-minute runtime. It all concludes with a big ol’ painting of Boston burning, accompanied by a heavy dose of metaphors about fire and freedom.
A story that never ends
Curiously, Disney had planned to spin this out into a Liberty Street section of Disneyland shortly after the release of the film. The televised The Liberty Story even showed the plans for it to millions of viewers. Yet that didn’t eventuate in the California park. It eventually morphed into Liberty Square in Walt Disney World in the 1970s – a few years before the bicentenary of the events depicted here.
The other legacy is, of course, director Robert Stevenson. Following a short hiatus, this film marked the veteran screenwriter and director’s first film with Disney. You may not guess it from the the final product, but it was a relationship that would last with the studio for 20 years — and almost as many films. Stevenson followed this with the traumatic Old Yeller the same year, and added Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959), The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), Mary Poppins (1964), The Love Bug (1968) and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) to his filmography in the years that followed. It’s no wonder Disney posthumously named him a Legend in 2002.
JOHNNY TREMAIN may not be one of Disney’s more memorable classics, but it played a crucial role in solidifying the studio’s interest in promoting a specific brand of Americana. This theme continued with productions like The Swamp Fox, where Stalmaster appeared alongside Leslie Nielsen as Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion. Today, this focus on American heritage is still evident, particularly in EPCOT, where the message has been distilled into three simple words: “The American Adventure” — now with the added charm of merchandise, Muppets and a touch of commercial flair.
Walt Disney catches a wave of nostalgia, blending live action and animation with his love of small town America — literally laying the tracks for Disneyland in the process.
Best known for being ‘the one with the black sheep,’ SO DEAR TO MY HEART (1948) follows the animated/live action hybrid model of Song of the South (1946) – along with Walt Disney’s regular child cast members Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten – but thankfully without the racist overtones.
The film’s nostalgia for small town America is borne of a post-war desire for gentle throwbacks. It’s also a movie that indicated what was dear to Walt’s past and future heart, drawing on his own childhood while planting the seeds for his obsessions over the next decade.
So dear to Walt’s heart
Based on the 1943 Sterling North book Midnight and Jeremiah, but set in Indiana in 1903, this isn’t far from the Marceline, Missouri that Walt and his brother Roy grew up in at the start of the century. If you visit a Disney theme park today, you can see the strength of these fond memories in Main Street, USA.
The film itself is about the young Jeremiah (Bobby Driscoll) who dreams of owning a champion horse, but his fate and interests are turned by the birth of a black lamb. Despite the lack of demand for black wool, and his granny’s protestations, Jeremiah becomes determined to foster the lamb to its own state fair victory.
Walt and screenwriter Edwin Justus Mayer started work on SO DEAR TO MY HEART as early as 1945, with location scouting in Indiana happening around this time. After meticulously recreating what they saw a little closer to home in California’s San Joaquin Valley, production began the spring of 1946 and would continue for well over two years. Crew and cast worked in temperatures in excess of 100°F (or 37°C) — often in full period costume. Walt left the filming in the hands of director Harold Schuster following his work on My Friend Flicka (1943), but would later take a more active role in post-production.
For the most part, the end product is a straight live action film punctuated by some animated interstitials. It’s handsomely shot on those lovingly detailed sets by cinematographer Winston C. Hoch, who had previously worked as a DP on the Technicolor sequences of The Reluctant Dragon and later won back-to-back Oscars for Victor Fleming’s Joan of Arc (1948) and John Ford’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949). So, we’re talking about peak Hoch here. You only need to look at some of those sunrise scenes later in the film as evidence. (Hoch also shot Darby O’Gill and the Little People for Disney as well).
Owls and Scottish spiders
If you ever get a chance to look at the Lost and Found featurette on the UK DVD from about a decade ago, you’ll discover that Disney was as meticulous about set design as he was on animation. Artist and designer Mary Blair’s exacting concept art was crafted into Grundy’s store, for example. There’s a whole-ass merry-go-round built just for background detail! We’re starting to understand why this film was in production for two-and-a-half years. (Fun fact: the train depot seen in the film wound up in animator Ward Kimball’s house and was later purchased by Pixar co-founder John Lasseter).
Still, when you think about Disney of this era, you may still think of animation. Unlike the animated sequences in Song of the South, which were complete and almost self-contained cartoons, here it’s a semi-didactic scrapbook that serves as a series of linking segments. If anything, these sequences now seem tacked on, but remain engaging pieces. Hosted by the animated Wise Old Owl — a design that seems to have set cartoon owl design in place for over 80 years — we get songs like ‘It’s Whatcha Do With Whatcha Got’ and ‘Stick-to-it-ivity.’ The latter has some of the more innovative animation in it: Christopher Columbus fights a fire-breathing sea creature while Robert the Bruce watches the struggles of an animated Scottish spider. Is it a bit weird? Yes, delightfully so.
It’s moments like this that balance out the more saccharine nostalgia of the back half, especially granny’s often contradictory lessons in theology. At one point, she convinces Jeremiah that their god is punishing him for his vanity – a harsh morality lesson for a small boy! Strangely enough, the animated sequences weren’t in the original plan for SO DEAR TO MY HEART. It was distributor RKO who felt that a film released under the ‘Disney’ banner created certain audience expectations — and so a compromise of sorts was reached and the animated segments were figments of Jeremiah’s imagination.
In his biography of Disney, Neal Gabler concludes that SO DEAR TO MY HEART was “on its face a kitschy, syrupy, unimaginative” film, adding it was “essentially a greeting card.” Yet the reviews at the time were favourable, with the New York Herald Tribune hailing it as having “a gracious and engaging formula for blending real drama with the pictorial imagination of an animated cartoon.”
All aboard
If SO DEAR TO MY HEART feels like a footnote in modern Disney history, perhaps it was all about timing. Leonard Maltin (in The Disney Films) argues that its simple story was a hard sell, and it arrived at the tail end of a nostalgic wave filled with films like Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and State Fair (1945). One wonders if its small town message would fit in seamlessly today with the Hallmark oeuvre, or the low-stakes drama of the Disney Channel and now Disney+ originals.
These days, the film’s minor status is also partly due to its lack of availability on physical media for the last decade or so. Nor is it on their flagship streaming platform, despite not seeming to need any of the content advisories Disney has recently created. (At the time of writing, it is available in restored HD on iTunes/Apple TV).
Yet the legacy of this film is evident in Disney’s filmography. Only two years later, the studio would have a bigger success with the wholly live action Treasure Island (1950). The elaborate sets for SO DEAR TO MY HEART reportedly began Disney’s obsession with miniatures, which in turn led to him building his own backyard train set. As Disney fans know, these were the seeds that grew into a little park called Disneyland. That is another story for another day.
References
Gabler, N. (2007). Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. Vintage.
Kothenschulte, D. (2021). The Walt Disney Film Archives: The Animated Movies 1921-1968. Taschen.
“Lost and Found” (2003). In So Dear to My Heart [DVD]. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment.
