Willy McBean and His Magic Machine
Willy McBean and His Magic Machine
| 23 June 1965 (USA)
Willy McBean and His Magic Machine Trailers

Little Willy McBean joins up with a Mexican monkey named Pablo to travel back in time and stop the evil Prof. von Rotten from changing history.

Reviews
adamthedarklordanubis

My friends and I decided to watch this based on the ridiculous title and one still image which we found hilarious, and it didn't disappoint. From the very beginning the film was entertainingly terrible as the picture juddered from side to side in vertigo inducing spasms, and we knew we were onto a winner. The animation itself is hysterically bad as the characters slide and jerk around the screen with little regard for the mechanics of motion and occasionally lose body parts for a few seconds, The voice acting is both entirely serviceable and sublimely awful as the character's stereotypical accents wander hilariously around the globe. The plot revolves around a spectacularly unconvincing villain and his insane plan to become the most important man who ever lived by travelling back in time and taking credit for all of humanity's greatest achievements and discoveries. The only thing standing in the way of his ridiculous plan is an astoundingly racist depiction of a talking monkey named Pablo, who in no small way resembles a black-face minstrel, and his dim witted human side kick Willy. It's like a sexist version of Adventure Time. Together they steal the plans for the mad professor's "magic" time machine, motivated only by Willy's desire not to have to relearn his history homework, and Pablo's never ending quest to get laid. Along the way they encounter a series of some of history's more notable figures who fill time with a selection of laughably bad and occasionally racist musical numbers featuring even more terrible animation in the form of physically improbable dance routines. Easily the most entertaining characters are Buffalo Bill Cody and his grammar Nazi sidekick Sitting Bull with his tenuous grasp of personal pronouns, the weak and weedy King Arthur of Camelot and his fantastically camp Knights of the Round Table, the sexy and alluring Morgana le Fay, the moronic caveman Ned who is a borderline horrifying gestalt of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble, a version of Christopher Columbus who looks like Luigi from Super Mario Bros and his dubious New York Italian accent, and an outrageously effeminate dragon who somehow manages to terrorise Camelot despite being more campy than all of the contestants of RuPaul's Drag Race combined. We loved every moment of this gargantuan dumpster fire of a movie and there was hardly a scene that did not have us crying with laughter at how bad it was. Despite its many, many, wonderful flaws the story is actually quite good and the characters are endearingly likeable. Given a decent budget and a competent team of film makers this could have the potential to be a fun filled adventure in the same vein as Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure or Back to the Future. I highly recommend grabbing a couple of friends and a couple of drinks and sitting down to glorify in the utter ridiculousness of this bizarrely enjoyable film.

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Joseph Brando

From Rankin/Bass, the creators of holiday staples such as "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" & "Mad Monster Party", comes yet another gem filmed in their trademark "Animagic" stop-motion animation process. This movie, which was made at the same time as "Rudolph" was not a made-for-TV special, but a full-length feature released in theaters.It concerns a young boy, Willy, who learns of the Mad Professor Rasputin Van Rotton's plans to go back into time so that he can take credit for different feats and inventions (such as the discovery of America, invention of fire, etc...) by beating the real heroes to the punch. I guess he felt that building the world's first time machine would not provide enough stature! Anyway, with the help of a stereotypical Spanish monkey, Pablo, who takes great pride in announcing the fact that he is "one great lateen luvur" (that's "latin lover" in Spanish monkey talk), Willy builds his own "Magic Machine" and travels through the ages to foil the Mad Professor's plans just in the nick of time.Packed with dinosaurs, mad professors, the wild west, cavemen, knights, pirates, Indians, cowboys and many other such subjects, this is sure to delight any young boy (well.... maybe any young boy from the 50's) but may be a bit tedious for adults if they are not a fan of stop-motion animation. But if you were a young boy in the 50's AND are a stop-motion fan then this movie with its retro-puppet-appeal will rock your world!!! It rocked mine!!

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