Alice Through the Looking Glass

Originally broadcast in 1966, this made-for-TV musical adaptation of Lewis Carroll's 1872 Through the Looking Glass puts familiar Carroll characters in a Wizard of Oz template. Alice (Judi Rolin, a young woman with a big voice and an impressive delivery) steps through the mirror and follows the blue road on a quest to defeat the Jabberwock (Jack Palance in a black devil bat costume), who terrorizes the kings and queens of the land. Alice meets all sorts of colorful characters along the way, including fairy-tale witches, Humpty Dumpty (Jimmy Durante), and Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Tom and Dick Smothers), who sing her “The Backwards Alphabet.” Directed by Alan Handley and shot on video on theatrical-looking studio sets with a celebrity cast, forgettable songs, and a canned laugh track, the production comes off like a summer stock show with showbiz veterans shamelessly hamming it up to try to energize an otherwise stagey, blandly silly effort. Nanette Fabray, Ricardo Montalban, Agnes Moorehead, and Robert Coote costar as members of the royal families, with Roy Castle as Lester the Jester (a character I don't remember from any of Carroll's works). One of the many adaptations of the Alice novels being released to coincide with the arrival of Tim Burton's big screen Alice in Wonderland, this one has little to recommend it beyond the star power. The video quality is slightly fuzzy with periodic streaks of instability and interference, but the color is fine. DVD extras include a pair of interviews with co-producer Bob Wynn. Not a necessary purchase. (S. Axmaker)