Star Wars, Marvel, Pirates of the Caribbean. All of these Disney franchises are well known and loved after decades of rotation, but there is much more to the House of the Mouse than what appears on your main Disney + menu. The year before Star Wars hit theaters, Disney came up with its own sci-fi story, which spawned a franchise spanning four decades.
Bewitched Mountain has all the hallmarks of a 1970s Disney movie. Cherub child actors, dastardly villains, and questionable hairstyles. What sets it apart is the genre. Behind the appearance of a road trip movie, it’s actually a sci-fi relic that follows two young aliens seeking to find the rest of their species.
Cherub child actors, dastardly villains and questionable hairstyles. What sets it apart is the genre. Behind the appearance of a road trip movie, it’s actually a sci-fi relic that follows two young aliens seeking to find the rest of their species.
Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann play Tia and Tony Malone, orphans with supernatural powers and hazy memories. After Tia uses her telepathic powers to save a man in town, millionaire Aristotle Bolt learns of the children and “adopts” them, claiming to be a long lost uncle. The rest of the plot is simple: the Malones escape and find a grumpy old widower to help them find “Witch Mountain”, where they will reunite with their people.
Between the cheesy 1970s action and the family heart of Disney, it’s no wonder that a sequel, Return of Witch Mountain, quickly sprung up. Everything in the first film is amplified in the second: there are gangs, mind control, plutonium and a goat. But above all, the villains are played by legendary actors Bette Davis and Christopher Lee, who devour the set in every scene.
After Return of Witch Mountain, there were a few TV sequels that unfortunately aren’t available on Disney +, and the franchise has been faded from collective memory for decades.
Until in 2009, a “remake” of The bewitched mountain is published under the title Race to Witch Mountain. In reality, this is less of a remake than a sequel. What do you do when you want to revive a franchise and take it to the next level? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is called in, who is on the verge of becoming an actor more than a wrestler.
He plays Jack Bruno, a Las Vegas cab driver tasked with taking two overpowered teenagers to Witch Mountain while avoiding government agents who seek to dissect and study them. He is joined by Carla Gugino as Dr. Alex Friedman, an astrophysicist who seeks to prove the existence of life in space. It’s a forgotten gem of early 2000s adventure films, like Fast and the Furious mixed in with ET
Each of these three films takes the same basic concept and develops it in a way purely indicative of its time, first by simplicity, then by chaos, and finally by the regular formula of science adventure films- fiction that we have come to know and love.
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It might not be Star Wars, but it is without a doubt a triple film that deserves to replace yet another replay of the original trilogy.
The bewitched mountain 1975 (Escape to Witch Mountain), Visitors from another world 1978 (Return from Witch Mountain) et The bewitched mountain 2009 (Race to Witch Mountains) now available to stream on Disney +.
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