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Rating: 
Summary: Ray Harryhausen did not work on this movie.....
Review: ASIN# B000050SKHI gave this film 3 stars based on "the Film" because... -It was such a blatant band-wagon move after "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad". It's hard to watch without noticing parodies.
-The giants inexplicably all have goat's legs, just like the cyclops in SVOS!!
-Same director and lead actors as SVOS... in the SAME ROLES!!!
-Some scenes drag on, even action scenes! "let's show more monsters LONGER!!!" The witch scene on the ship NEVER ENDS!!
-A little magical helper, just like SVOS. He even makes the same bargain for his freedom!!
-Battle between giant and serpent, just like SVOS battle between Cycplops and Dragon.
-Editing is silly at times. Senes were obviously cut (gaunlet hall has arms cut off and blades broken but not a clue how it happened!) while others go on... and on... and on.....
-Acting is valiant considering the script!! This thing was obviously thrown together. I particularly enjoyed the high-school acting of Judy Meredith. Kind of like watching a car wreck... you just can't look away.
-The monsters are extremely crude in every aspect, from sculpting to animation. The funny thing is, the animation seams to get a little better as the film rolls along, like they created the sequences in script order.
-Jim Danforth (though I never see his name on the Credits?) needed to understudy under Harryhausen a bit longer. He had very little knowledge of human or animal physiology. This made his creatures look cartoonish and less believable. Do you like shiney monsters? To his credit, they definately have character.
-Despite all of this, it is a fun film. Just need to get over the SVOS "cloning". As a value priced DVD, I'd have to give it 5 stars. Here's why; -Picture quality is better than could ever be expected for this obscure film (at this price). Someone in Hong Kong must of had this on ice!!
-Ditto for sound quality. As good as could be expected for a featureless DVD. -Packaging is better than adequate. They actually Screened a nice image on the disk!
-NOT THE MUSICAL!!! Given all of this, I'd still recommend this DVD for Harryhausen Fans. It really puts his skills in perspective. It is also a whimsical and enjoyable movie in it's own right. I just could not get over the "Sinbad" thing!!
Rating: 
Summary: MATINEE MADNESS RETURNS
Review: God bless Kerwin Mathews. Not really all that great an actor, his dashing looks and his sincerity were the foundation for a series of wonderful "fantasy" films of the late 50s and early 60's: "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad," "Three Worlds of Gulliver," "Warrior Empress," and this little gem. Undoubtedly not as marvelous as Ray Harryhausen's stop motion animation, Howard Anderson's little creations are fun and imaginative, given the time this movie was made (1962). Torin Thatcher is appropriately hammy as Pendragon; Judi Meredith was ingenuishly funny as the princess, especially in her hammy witch sequences; Anna Lee was appropriately British as the betraying witch; and Walter Burke was delightful as the dwarfish aide to Pendragon. The dragon teeth soldiers are hilarious; everyone seems to be having fun and it can be said, they don't make movies like this anymore! Relax, have fun and a lot of laughs!
Rating:
Summary: The non-musical version is godawful
Review: I am a huge fan of the musical version of this film. It is so deliciously bad that it completely won me over... I found it completely captivating--I was horror-struck and yet completely fascinated by the songs--a curious concoction of faux-opera (think "kill the wabbit")--interspersed with the cornball melodrama. I have no idea why the musical version has fallen into disrepute... the humorless non-musical version will bore you to tears--it is no fun at all. Until they release the MOST EXCELLENT musical version of this film, do not buy this!
Rating: 
Summary: Poor Man's Harryhausen Film
Review: I don't mean to berate the great Jim Danforth, but this is an extremely low budget rip-off of The 7TH Voyage of Sinbad. The legend is that producer Edward Small turned down Harryhausen's pitch for 7th Voyage. Ray went to Columbia, and the finished product was a huge hit, making 12 mill in America alone in 1958!!
Small probably kicked himself a few times, and decided to make an exact duplicate of the film at MGM. He hired the same director (Nathan Juran) and same stars (Kerwin Mathews and Torin Thatcher).Unfortunately, the animation models were not of the quality of Sinbad, and the stop motion is rushed (Small had a very tight budget. The result is a fun film for kids, but fantasy film fanatics do not regard this as a classic. Jack (Mathews) must rescue a possessed Princess from an evil sorcerer who wants to take over the Kingdom.
Columbia actually sued Small for ripping off Sinbad, and the film remained in limbo for many years. In the late 80's, MGM turned the movie into a musical!!!!!! They dubbed over dialogue and made it look like the characters are singing! This version was shown on the Disney channel for a few years, and it is a sight to behold. In the mid ninties, MGM restored the film for a VHS release, and now the "widescreen" DVD. There is some controversy regarding the films original aspect ratio (see stopmotionanimation.com).
Kids will enjoy, but stop motion fans regard this film as a footnote in history.
Rating:
Summary: We have failed master, we have failed.
Review: I grew up and loved the musical version of this film as shown on the disney channel. I was disappointed to learn that only the dry and humorless version has been released on dvd. The masters at GoodTimes DVD made a crippling mistake and failed miserably by not making this version the musical version. This version of the movie is not worth the mere $4.95 that it costs here. The layer that the music adds is priceless...I watched the musical version of the movie with my girlfriend, and it was like falling in love all over again. You don't get that feeling from the original version. I'm planning on doing my own transfer of the musical version from VHS to DVD (for personal uses only, sorry guys, you're just going to have to wait until they come out with the musical version. I bet you're jealous.) I'm also going to add a special feature that will allow me to loop the songs over and over again, and I'll be singing "a spectacle" until the wee hours of the morning. Non-musical version=1 star. Musical-version=5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Family fantasy with scary creatures
Review: Jack The Giant Killer is a great family fantasy movie. I've never seen the musical version, but it sounds like a hideous botch-up, and I can't believe people are disappointed because this DVD is of the original version and not some re-hash that had nothing to do with the production's original intention.
I think the film is excellent just the way it is. It's the tale of a simple farmer (Jack) who gets caught up in an evil wizard's plans to abduct a beautiful princess to be his bride. I've heard it said that the musical version was created to tone down some of the film's more frightening moments, and I can see why younger childeren could get nightmares after watching some sequences. There are several such scenes. Early on in the film, the princess is having a party and one of her birthday gifts is a miniature dancing jester in a musical box. Creepy enough to watch as it is, this ugly thing comes alive after dark and grows into a hideous giant demon. In another scene, ghostly flying witches descend on a ship to try and seize the princess, who is being smuggled away to a secret location to protect her. This sequence, involving some very freaky apparitions, genuinely frightened me as a child, especially the moment when the ghost in the guise of a skeleton in a wedding dress surprised the princess in a small dark cabin. Eek!
The animated monsters are of variable quality, ranging from the enlarged music box demon (the best) to the sea serpent that appears near the end (the worst). Maybe the money started to run out towards the end of the film! But the plot is engaging and never dull, mostly involving Jacks battle with the hammy but evil King Pendragon who has designs on the princess and is sending all these monsters to kidnap her, but also involving sub-plots such as the part where the princess is turned evil by a spell from Pendragon and almost double-crosses Jack - until the spell is broken.
All in all, tremendous fun. Yes it does look a bit dated now, and a lot of kids aren't going to be enthralled this easily any more, but it can still give an hour and a half's worth of solid entertainment.
Rating:
Summary: "Special Place of Honor"
Review: MGM/UA/s PREVIOUS release (VHS and Laser Disc) of "Jack the Giant Killer" was, in fact,the ORIGINAL NON-MUSICAL version (thank god), even though the box described it as "Complete with musical songs..". If the current version IS the musical, AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS;...it is trash! However, if it is the original NON-musical version, then buy and enjoy it! Yes, producer Edward Small deliberately imitated Harryhausens' "7th Voyage of Sinbad" (which Small had actually turned down in the mid-50's; when "Sinbad" went on to reap huge profits, Small was kicking himself and thus set out to produce his "own" version). Yes, the animation isn't as polished as Harryhausen's......yes, the production values were not as high... But "Jack" is still something that Harryhausen films could never be....ENGAGING on a human level...fresh, quick-moving, genuinely enchanting. The crude animation, in a way, adds to the charm of the film, which manages to capture the essential fantasy, fairy-tale world in a way which Harryhausen's humorless, heavy-handed approach could not. Kerwin Matthews is, as always, sincere and engaging, Torin Thatcher is more controlled than in "Sinbad", Dayton Lummis is a cool King Mark, Barry Kelley is a hoot as Sigurd the Viking. Don Beddoe...always a fine, understated actor, here performs wonders of subtlety and telling characterization while stuck inside a giant prop bottle. Even Robert Gist, who portrayed "Hal" (Jack Buchanan's side-kick) in "The Band Waqon" turns up briefly as the ill-fated ship's captain. And, of course, my FAVORITE character actor of all time...the underrated, forgotten WAlter Burke plays Garna, Pendragon's henchman, in his usual skilled way (Anyone ever seen him in the episode of "Ben Casey" called "The Men Who Raised Rabbits?"-he's superb). Only Anna Lee's "witch" scene is embarrasingly bad, as is the bulk of Judy Meredith's Princess Elaine (she was Frank Sinatra's main squeeze at the time the principal photography was done (Summer, 1960). Yes....the music of Paul Sawtell is no match for Herrmann's "7th Voyage" score, but it is rousing, tuneful and, in the case of the mechanical doll dance, absolutely enchanting. The final harpy scene (designed and animated by Jim Danforth) is first-rate, the Wah Chang-designed giants are bizarre and fantastic, the witches, who due to complications during filming were never realized on screen as the designers intended, are still cool in a child-like, imaginative way (a "Fish" witch?..a "Bunny" witch?...a mini-Godzilla witch with a harp-like mouth that emits a gale-force wind....? ). And those rockin', swaying' KNights of the Dragon's Teeth, always my favorite sequence and, as director Nathan Juran said, a scene which "didn't contain one dollar's worth of special effects" (!)....just stop & start the camera, explode some powder, march in those Knights, and add Sawtell's mechanized music....voila! .....another simple, exciting fantasy sequence that keeps the film bubbling along. Yeah, I know it ain't Citizen Kane.....but "Jack The Giant Killer" gets my "Special Place of Honor" award; I saw it on its first release when I was 11, and it became the final, yet most endearing example of cinematic magic (next to "The Wizard of OZ")that I was ever to experience as a child.
Rating: 
Summary: Generally sharp DVD
Review: The DVD is free of blemishes and is quite colorful; however, some images are pale, no doubt due to the aging of the original materials. This is especially apparent in composite shots where the models look bright but the backgrounds don't. Probably the best this film is going to look.
Rating:
Summary: Sadly this is not the horrifically wonderful Musical version
Review: The obviously over-dubbed musical numbers which elevate this film into a comedy classic are sadly missing from this DVD version. The insipid acting, asinine dialogue, goofy clay monsters, even the appearence of a chipanzee. All this hilarious comic potential seems wasted without the "positive" and "inspirational" musical numbers. I mean come on people, "We have failed master, we have failed" it's a freaking classic! Wake up!
Looks like it's back to that worn VHS copy of the musical version I taped off T.V. (musical version = five stars)
Rating: 
Summary: GREAT SPECIAL EFFECTS FOR THE TIME PERIOD
Review: This is a great little film with stop motion animation (pre-CGI) that deals with magic, sorcerers, fearless heros with viking and a leprechaun. A favorite of mine as a kid with great performances by the "7th Voyage of Sinbad" cast, this movie is a family film that can be enjoyed by all ages.
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