The Magic Toyshop (1987)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

It is a performances centric movie

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

I saw this film when I was very young on British TV. Someone commented that it left an indelible impression on them - same for me.Of course, years later I found out who Angela Carter was and read all of her novels. Reading the magic toyshop was a strange experience, rarely I think has a film captured the atmosphere of a novel so perfectly. Only one other film that i saw as a child had a similar impact - The Red Shoes. There are some similarities I think. I would love to get hold of a copy. Can anybody help me with this?

I saw this film when I was very young and it was shown on British TV. It made a huge impression on with its fairytale story and blackly humorous touches. Years went by and I hadnt thought of the film until I wanted to see the comments for it on IMDb.com. I managed to get a DVD copy It was even more brilliant than I remembered.Melanie is orphaned when her parents die on holiday and is left to take her younger brother and sister to live with her strange uncle who has not had contact with the family. Her uncle owns a toyshop which is filled with wonderful toys and disturbing life like puppets. She also meets the rest of the family in his mute wife and her brothers. Her uncle puts on surreal plays with the puppets and makes Melanie take part. She develops a relationship with Finn who is her aunts brother and discovers the incestuous secret in the family.I love this film because it is so quirky and deals with the subjects of growing up and relationships in such an interesting way. The dialogue works and the actors are all well cast, especially Melanie and her aunt. Tom Bell brings the right amount of creepiness as the uncle. The sets are all fab and really give a sense of a post war Britain (you will know what I mean when you see the bathroom!) Great film and I wish they would put this out on general release as I had a tough time trying to get a copy.

I have recently found this film on one of my husband's VHS tapes (the blank variety which he uses to record stuff from the telly). The film looks as if it was last shown in the eighties and I don't remember having seen it since. It has not (to my knowledge) been released on DVD or VHS although I shall browse around for a copy.The film tells the story of three young people: two girls, one on the edge of puberty and the other much younger, and a young boy who go to live with their mother's brother and his young, mute Irish wife. His wife also has two brothers who live with them. The children's uncle is an unpleasant control freak who forces his young wife to wear a silver collar whilst she watches a marionette show put on by him and her brothers in his toyshop.The eldest girl and one of the Irishmen (the younger) develop a love for each other whilst they live in the same house. The girl helps her aunt out in the shop whilst her brother helps his uncle to make things in the workshop.There are a lot of very disturbing elements to the film. There is the uncle's treatment of his wife as some kind of dumb (literally) possession (illustrated by the collar) whilst the Irish indulge dancing, drinking and somewhat forbidden love. Interestingly, though, I have seen far more explicit themes played out in other movies made in Hollywood today.Makes you wonder whether the British film industry and the BBC have some kind of hidden agenda going on.Still, despite it not being a children's movie, there are a lot of playful, magic moments in it and the one Irishman does some beautiful paintings.

The Magic Toyshop is a rich and by turns sensual and disturbing adaptation of the Angela Carter book, to which the film stays particularly true.At the heart of the story is the young Melanie, who after her parents die tragically is sent to stay with her Uncle Philip, Aunt Margaret and her cousins Francie and Finn. Aunt Margaret is mute, and Uncle Philip is a control freak who stages plays with life size puppets and when not doing so treats his family as little more than an extension of his marrionette collection. Through a series of strange and often surreal events the perverse dynamics of this family begin to reveal themselves to Melanie.SO WHY CAN'T WE WATCH THIS FILM?Since it was screened on BBC1 back in 1988 it has never been repeated, or released on video or any other format, anywhere. I know this because I've been trying to hunt down a copy for over a decade, it is not only unavailable but seemingly unheard of to the point where I've sometimes wondered if the film was never really made and I dreamed the whole thing. I can understand some of its themes being considered contraversial, such as Uncle Philip's symbolic molestation of Melanie with the swan puppet, or his need to assert his dominance over Aunt Margaret by making her wear a silver collar, but suppressing films that bring these themes out into the open is only reinforcing the old taboos.I guess we can only hope that it gets some kind of release, somewhere, sometime in the future...