Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)

★ 7.0 1h 57m IMDb

Three children evacuated from London during World War II are forced to stay with an eccentric spinster. The children's initial fears disappear when they find out she is in fact a trainee witch.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

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Cast

Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury as Miss Price Died 2022 · London, England, UK Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury DBE (October 16, 1925 – October 11, 2022) was a British-American actress and singer who has appeared in theater, television, and film roles. Her career was spanned almost e...
David Tomlinson
David Tomlinson as Emelius Died 2000 · Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire, England, UK From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. David Cecil MacAlister Tomlinson (7 May 1917 – 24 June 2000) was an English film actor. He is primarily remembered for his roles as authority figure George Bank...
Roddy McDowall
Roddy McDowall as Mr. Jelk Died 1998 · London, England, UK Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall (17 September 1928 – 3 October 1998) was an English-American actor, director, and photographer. He is best known for portraying Cornelius and Caesar in the origin...
Sam Jaffe
Sam Jaffe as Bookman Died 1984 · New York City, New York, U.S. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.   Sam Jaffe (March 10, 1891 – March 24, 1984) was an American actor, teacher, musician and engineer. In 1951, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Su...
John Ericson
John Ericson as Col. Heller Died 2020 · Düsseldorf, Germany John Ericson (sometimes Erickson; born Joachim Alexander Ottokar Meibes; September 25, 1926 - May 3, 2020) was a German-American actor and film and television star. He trained at the American Academy...
Bruce Forsyth
Bruce Forsyth as Swinburne Died 2017 · Edmonton, Middlesex, England, UK Sir Bruce Joseph Forsyth-Johnson CBE was an English presenter and entertainer whose career spanned more than 70 years. Forsyth came to national attention from the mid-1950s through the ITV series Sund...

Audience Reviews

Gimly 8/10 Mar 18, 2018
When I was younger, I used to spend a lot of my life alone in a studio with one of those tiny little 15cm TVs you wouldn't be caught dead with nowadays, plugged in to a VCR player, and exactly three movies on VHS. One of those three movies (the best of those three) was _Bedknobs and Broomsticks_. I watched it multiple times a day, every day, for months at a time. A period piece musical that saw orphans and their witch-friend get an army of sentient suits of armour to fight the Nazis... Is it any bloody wonder I turned out the way I did?

Great movie though. Wouldn't kill me to see a remake with modern technology. So long as it kept the vibe and setting of the original.

_Final rating:★★★★ - Very strong appeal. A personal favourite._
CinemaSerf 7/10 Nov 26, 2022
It's very much in the vein of "Mary Poppins" (1964) this, with a very similar style of live-action and animated sequences used to tell a slightly more menacing story. When three siblings arrive in a rural English village, evacuated from London during the Blitz of WWII, they are placed with the rather eccentric and definitely unwilling "Miss Price" (Angela Lansbury). Things start to look up for all concerned though when the kids discover that she is a trainee witch, and when they meet "Emelius" (David Tomlinson) they embark on some adventures using their magical bed as their vehicle in the search for the missing part of a substitutiary locomotion spell that might just thwart the Nazis. As with "Poppins", the music and lyrics come from the Sherman twins and "Beautiful Briny" and "Portobello Road" are probably the two best from their not so catchy soundtrack this time. Lansbury and Tomlinson work well together with the former on good form as the ostensibly prim and proper, but actually quite feisty and mischievous would-be witch. The three youngsters also perform well, especially the youngest "Paul" (Roy Snart) who just won't let anyone else near the knob that controls the bed! A smattering of familiar faces help to keep the story bobbing along nicely and the animations, tough not so frequent as I would have liked, blend in well with some fun action scenes - especially at the end - and make for an enjoyable, feel-good, family movie.

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