Obscure Muppet Moments

[mneme]

After many years, I've finally seen (and own) an obscure Muppet musical that I grew up listening to: The Frog Prince.

Much fun, and even quite a bit of found filk here (in particular, M'Im Inteen and "Frogs")--with much of the asthetic of The Court Jester, only with muppets. Most quotable (aside from songs):

"Robin, I'm sorry, but this is too hard for just two frogs."
"Kermit, you're right. We need more frogs!"

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, I loved this musical as a kid. I had the whole musical on 33 1/3 RPM vinyl, and I listened to it a lot.

To this day, I can say to my sister "Bake the hall in the candle of her brain" and she knows what I mean.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Funny, I can say that to my sister too. You're not my sister, are you? ;)

[selki.livejournal.com]

Me too, both sentences!

Another sister of mine played Melora in a local production.

[mneme]

Ok, now that's impressive.

How did they get a score?

[selki.livejournal.com]

I checked with my sister over Christmas, and I must have misremembered, mixing up listening to that with her being in *other* musicals.

[mneme]

Ah, that makes sense. Too bad, though; it was a nice alternate universe.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

(that anonymous comment was me -- it logged me out without my noticing)

[mneme]

Ok, will answer here, then.

Oh, yes. I did too, and did too! It was delightful watching drcpunk struggle with that particular Spoonerism (since while while it was my first time -watching- the musical on video, it was her first exposure to it at all!).

The biggest difference (though really, it's all wonderful, and while there are some advantages to the mind's eye, it's nice to get the visuals) is that "Sweetums" (the song Sweetums sings about eating a frog) works far, far better on the screen, where you can see the action, which is quite entertaining, rather than just hear various thumps and crashes.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes: Sweetums gonna hit and smash/turn old frog to Froggie Hash.

I'm not sure if it's comforting or frightening that I know the majority of the lyrics to the various songs off the top of my head even today, a good 30 years since I originally heard the album.

I know it's available on VHS, if one knows where to look. I should find myself a copy one of these days.

::hums "Sir Robin the Frog"::

[mneme]

I've had N'Im Inteen and "Frogs" ("Sing out for the mud and sing out for the ooze...") running through my head near-continuously for the last few hours.

It's not, BTW, all that easy to find the video (though, obviously, possible). It's OOP (made in 1990, never re-issued), and took me two tries to buy from people selling through Amazon -- the first seller shipped a The Frog Prince box with another video inside it (to balance it out, the second seller shipped The Frog Prince out of the original box, so I now had a box to keep it in, and I did get a refund on the first sale).

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

The second I read this, I said "BAKE THE HALL IN THE CANDLE OF HER BRAIN!"

And someone beat me too it.

[shield-toad111.livejournal.com]

Now I want to see this... I feel like I've heard of it before (as I'm a fan of pretty much all things muppet-y) but have definitely never seen it. I'll claim that I was too young to have seen it, as that's the most likely reason.

[mneme]

Probably. As I mentioned, I'd never seen it, though I did have the sound track and listened to it quite a few times -- it came out in 1972 -- the year I was born!

[jl8e]

I've never even heard of this before.

Which is kind of strange, since my entire immediate family are huge Muppet fans.

[mneme]

As mentioned, it's pretty obscure -- predating The Muppet Movie by 7 years.

It's telling that it took this long for it to even occur to me to hunt down the actual movie, since I'd never seen any sign of it growing up.

[cattitude.livejournal.com]

Around the same time they also made The Musicians of Bremen. It isn't as good but is still well worth seeing.

I'm going to have "Frogs" running through my head all weekend now. "The life of a frog is the life you should choose."

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Did you notice that all the other frogs have Arthurian names? ("Hi, Gawain. Hi, Kay.")

-Lisa

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Interstingly, this was the movie that decided Jim Henson that Kermit was a frog. Prior to that he might have been Kermit the lizard.

[aclarie.livejournal.com]

Is this on the season one box set of the muppet show? hmm I own it maybe ill give it another rewatch soon

[mneme]

Nope. The Frog Prince predated The Muppet Show by 5 years.

As far as I know, it hasn't been released on DVD -- only the 1994 VHS release I have (plus the various soundtrack ones, like the one I grew up listening to).

know where I can get a soundtrack?

[(Anonymous)]

My whole family grew up on this and we listened to it all the time. i'd love to find a soundtrack to give to everyone. Any ideas?

Re: know where I can get a soundtrack?

[mneme]

Amazon? Froogle's not bad to look either, but I had better luck on Amazon.

I found an order of magnitude more sources of the soundtrack when I was hunting for the VHS. But I didn't see much in a quick tour. Me, I'm going to see if I can get my old record and dup it to cd.