lazarillo This is movie is based on a novel by Angela Carter made soon after the renown British author had collaborated with Neil Jordan on the cult horror/fantasy film "The Company of Wolves". This movie does not benefit from the directorial talent of someone like Neil Jordan, but it is still a pretty interesting film about a privileged adolescent girl who becomes orphaned and has to move with her younger siblings to the dreary London home of her tyrannical toy-maker/puppeteer uncle, his mute wife, and the wife's wild Irish brothers, one of whom she develops an attraction to.Angela Carter basically writes fairy tales for adolescents, but not really fairy tales in the present-day sense. Today "fairy tales" are associated with Disney and Pixar and other saccharine kiddie films. You could also consider comic-book movies and "Star Wars" reboots to be "fairy tales" for older children and teens, Hollywood rom-coms as "fairy tales" for adult women, and perhaps even porno movies could be thought of as "fairy tales" for male adults. All of these are alike in that they're ALL really escapist fantasy. But Carter's fairy tales mine the older, more literary fairy tale tradition of the Grimm Brother or Hans Christian Anderson and have a darker, more disturbing and much less escapist tone to them (and certainly more literary gravitas). But Carter also adds an element of more overt coming-of-age female sexuality. The fifteen-year-old heroine here (played by a twenty-something Caroline Milmoe) is first seen admiring her own full-frontal nakedness in a full-length mirror before trying on her mother's wedding dress. Later when her uncle tries to turn into a living puppet in one of his bizarre puppet shows, he--perhaps not coincidentally--has her play "Leda" a wood nymph who in Greek mythology who is raped by the god Zeus in the form of a swan. And there is an intimation (made much more clear in the book) that he actually wants his young brother-in-law to deflower his orphaned niece in order to degrade her.Not that this movie is in any way graphic or that it ever entirely leaves the realm of fairy tale and metaphor. There have been plenty of "adult" fairy tale movies (ACTUAL porn adaptations of things like Cinderella or Snow White) over the years, but that is not anything that has ever interested Carter. Her work is probably closest to the tradition of "magical realism" that is popular in certain kinds of literature, but is very difficult to translate into cinema. But even so, she brings a more adolescent, more female perspective that is uniquely all her own.The main problem with this movie is it simply can't compare with the book (and it is certainly less successful in that respect than "Company of Wolves"), but I still think it compares pretty well to most movies.

sheepfarmer-2 When I was 10 years old (in 1986) the school i attended at the time performed parts of the audio sound track. We were in the award winning school choir of Saint Elizabeths Primary School in South Manchester.In the summer we always used to perform in the RNCM (Royal Northern College of Music) in some competition i no longer remember the name of. After the event we were asked to contribute vocals to the music score of an up and coming film produced by Granada TV.I remember the day coming and ten or so of the top choir singers, of which i was one (pre my voice breaking), went down to the studios in Manchester City Centre on a coach, with our now long since deceased teacher John Dennision. (a great man!) We spent what i remember to be a very tiring and very very long day repeating the same bars over and over again in a studio. These were then to be cut and arranged into sounding like a very large group of children singing the track.I remember then being very excited about the film being released only then to be told the school had found out it is an adult theme film and we were not allowed to see it.Further to this the school was outraged at the children's choir being used in a film of this theme and demanded that our school be completely uncredited from the film and it was kind of never mentioned again.I did watch it in 1988 but don't really remember the story. However I can still remember some of the bars we sang! I'd love to see it again. Not only to see it as a film but to hear the music again. (there are 3 VHS copies on amazon.co.uk for £39.99, which is a bit steep) I'll keep looking....

sarah-gallogly I saw this film when I was very young and it was shown on British TV. It made a huge impression on with its fairytale story and blackly humorous touches. Years went by and I hadnt thought of the film until I wanted to see the comments for it on IMDb.com. I managed to get a DVD copy It was even more brilliant than I remembered.Melanie is orphaned when her parents die on holiday and is left to take her younger brother and sister to live with her strange uncle who has not had contact with the family. Her uncle owns a toyshop which is filled with wonderful toys and disturbing life like puppets. She also meets the rest of the family in his mute wife and her brothers. Her uncle puts on surreal plays with the puppets and makes Melanie take part. She develops a relationship with Finn who is her aunts brother and discovers the incestuous secret in the family.I love this film because it is so quirky and deals with the subjects of growing up and relationships in such an interesting way. The dialogue works and the actors are all well cast, especially Melanie and her aunt. Tom Bell brings the right amount of creepiness as the uncle. The sets are all fab and really give a sense of a post war Britain (you will know what I mean when you see the bathroom!) Great film and I wish they would put this out on general release as I had a tough time trying to get a copy.

sporaceous Like "blackriverfalls" in Leeds, England, I, too, have been in search of a copy of The Magic Toyshop for the past 15 years. The movie, back in 1987, had a run in a tiny, now-defunct art-house cinema just off the University of California campus in Berkeley. I remember the movie receiving glowing reviews in the local free alternative presses.The Magic Toyshop has left an indelible impression in my brain. Yes, the story is bizarre, disturbing, perverse, and sexually discomfiting; but that is the nature of Angela Carter's artistry. Her's is a world in which mythology, fairy tale, and childhood innocence meld and clash with the sometimes magical, sometimes perversely ugly reality of adult consciousness. The Magic Toyshop encapsulates the violence inherent in the confrontation of the adults' and children's worlds into a succinct cinematic package. Scene upon surrealistic scene vividly and lushly convey the romantic dreaminess of childhood and the tight rigidity of contrived adulthood.A few years after its brief visit to the Bay Area, The Magic Toyshop was in rotation on the Bravo arts cable channel. I managed to make a VHS recording of The Magic Toyshop. The quality is poor, but luckily this was recorded before Bravo had to fall to running commercials, so my copy of the movie has no breaks. I hope I still have my VHS copy, because it seems that, despite the death of Angela Carter and the continued interest in her literary work, the movie The Magic Toyshop may exist as ephemerally as the memory of a persons's first cherished toy.