Escape to Witch Mountain (1975)

Escape to Witch Mountain. (1975)

Sometimes we walk along life’s roads not knowing the impending doom that awaits us. Lucas Deranian was about to travel down the road of death until youngsters Tony and Tia come to warn him not to step into his limmo. For some reason he listens to these children and shortly after that, a car creams out of control and crashes into the place where he was going to be sitting.

His big thanks to the children is to adopt them and take them into his bosses home. His boss is a greedy power hungry man who wants to use the children’s powers to enhance his pocketbook. Mr. Deranian does his best to hunt down the children once they use their powers to escape their prison. This is his thanks to the children for having saved his life.

Despite how people react to our good deeds, does not change the fact that we should do good deeds. This is the great moral truth that this film address. Although Tony and Tia can do extrodanry things, the film focuses more on their plight as orphans then their ablity to talk to animals and to make things move by harmonica playing. These are fun aspects of the film but would mean nothing without the characters who exhbit these powers.

The kids who have these powers are normal kids. Sometimes they don’t always use their powers wisely and don’t hide them away from prying eyes. Tony uses his powers in the early stages of the film to fight a bully. If normal children had super-duper non-normal powers, they would most likely not have the restraint to restrain themselves from using it in normal everyday situations. This adds the first thing that stands out about ETWM, is the realistic depection of Tia and Tony as children with unnatural ablities. The film continues to travel along the film path at a good pace and uses characters and situations to tell the story and does not relay on special effects or wacky slapstick moments to carry the story.

The film is not flashy or IN YOUR FACE, but tells a science fiction story with ideas brimming in the glow of the interesting characters that are introduced to us in this story. It is therefore a worthwhile Disney film and a worthwhile Sci-Fi film to watch and enjoy.