the audience applauded

Memorable, crazy movie

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

This TV show was a fascinating technological achievement for the '60's.The term "Virtual Sets" did not exist then as it does now but that is exactly what was created for Huck Finn,& all on a TV budget & weekly schedule besides! Nowadays virtual sets are done via computer generated imagery(CGI)& the results are phenomenal,but no such technology existed in 1968. Virtual sets could be created at that time by matte paintings(Star Trek)& also by placing live actors against miniature model sets(The Starlost). The other method was to have live actors in an animated environment as was done on Huck Finn. And they did it beautifully with this show. The quality of the animation itself was also very good,similar to Johnny Quest. It's truly an incredible accomplishment in addition to being a fun & entertaining TV show as I was growing up.

Yes, I remember this, too. I was only five. I have the vaguest memories: one of our heroes squeezing under a door into a closet, only to find a giant animated slave eating out of a bowl, which he throws at them, narrowly missing. I also vaguely recall some episode where either Huck or Tom is sentenced to death by being hurled off a high tower, and they quickly manufacture a scarecrow and drop it to the ground instead, making off just in time.No, they certainly don't make television like this any more. I remember the excitement; I remember the contrast of the flesh-and-blood heroes and heroine against the animated villains and scenes; and I remember the aforementioned plot snippets; but everything else is gone, filed somewhere in my brain where I can no longer access it these thirty-seven years later. Too bad.

This was at the time,one innovative series that featured both live action and animated and to make it special,it took the characters of Mark Twain's classic,"Huckleberry Finn",which consisted of Tom Sawyer,Huck Finn,and Becky Thatcher to strange and exotic places where they visited any land,time in history and it was always they were facing constant danger at every turn in which they would encounter some menacing villain or in other aspects creatures from other places. In other words they went each week for one animated world to the next where in some of the episodes,they would face some kind of predicament in which the show always ended in a cliffhanger until next week,where the conclusion of the story was to be continued."The New Adventures of Huck Finn",premiered on NBC-TV in September of 1968 and it ended in September of 1969. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions. The show lasted one season,producing 20 episodes,which when NBC canceled the series in 1969,repeats were aired on different days,until the 1970's where some of the episodes were in syndication for the half-hour version of "The Banana Splits"."The New Adventures Of Huck Finn",was a brilliant premise that came on Sunday evenings at the 7:00 hour where when it first premiered in September of 1968,it went up against some very tough competition which featured the shows,"Lassie","Gentle Ben",and at the same time the science-fiction adventure series,"Land Of The Giants". It was followed on Sunday nights by "The Wonderful World Of Disney",and not to mention "The Ed Sullivan Show". This was a excellent and highly innovative concept for Hanna-Barbera,which was in fact the first series produced by the company,and one of the first shows to blend in live action with animation. Also,this was a first for the studio,especially in prime-time and it was something that Hanna-Barbera did,and this was two years after one of the most highly successful animated series in prime-time history,and the longest-running,"The Flintstones",which ran for six years in prime-time television.Speaking of this series by the way,I saw some of the episodes as a child and it blew me away with the non-stop action mixed in with some of breathtaking adventure and high-flying animation that kept it's viewers hooked,and me too. When I found out that the network that aired it,NBC-TV canceled the series,a lot of its audience was devastated,and this may have to do with the show's demise,which was at the time quite expensive to create as well as produced. It should have been given the chance to succeed,and it could however have worked very well with if the network decided to moved the series to Saturday Mornings. But they didn't. Speaking of the main villain,no better actor at the time was more menacing and more evil than Ted Cassidy who gave the show its juice and he was simply magnificent. Ted Cassidy,by the way,was a more sinister actor in some of the roles he played,and that was a role that was far better than the one he had opposite,"The Addams Family". See some of the episodes and you'll know why. As he chased our young friends from one animated world to the next,you'll never know what to expect since in some of the animated villains they faced really looked just like Injun Joe!!!.....As for Tom Sawyer(Kevin Schultz),Becky Thatcher(Lu Ann Haslam),and Huck Finn(Micheal Shea),they always were faced with the constant peril and sudden danger everywhere they went. Some of the episodes were directed by the best in the business and it consisted of Hollingsworth Morse,Ezra Stone,Virgil W. Vogel,and in some segments by William Hanna and Joesph Barbera. One of the best episodes of that series is called "The Eye Of Doogerah",and it is something to see!!!Too bad that this series is never shown anymore. Recently,Cartoon Network's sister station Boomerang has resurrected some for the episodes after being out of action or for one point,missing for decades. They showed these episodes in its entirely during the network's programming of Boomeraction,which consisted some of the greatest Hanna-Barbera action/adventure animated cartoons anywhere!!! Not to be missed!

I do remember this show coming on around supper time on Sunday nights. It was really unique in it's mix of live action and animation and I thought it was a great format for youngsters (I was nine at the time). It was easy to identify with the "trio" of stars and the animated back-drop enabled them to visit any land or time in history and encounter any type of villain (of course all the villain's looked suspiciously like Injun Joe!)...... One would think that this live action/animation format would have become more popular but I heard that it was quite expensive to create at the time (without computers) and this may have had a lot to do with the show's early demise. When a syndicated half-hour version of the "Banana Splits" aired in the late 70's, it periodically featured episodes of this particular Huck Finn show.