I like to think that I’m a big fan of the Muppets but I admit I tend to pass on their made for Tv/streaming specials.
While I do recall their Haunted Mansion special coming out in 2021. I just was not in the mood to watch it then and after that I just forgot all about its existence.
Not sure how this title came across my mind agian for the spooky season but here we are 5 years on and I’m ready to give it a watch.
Maybe I’ll be surprised and it’s sleeper hit that will be a staple of the season OR maybe it more akin to other Disney’s Muppet offerings as in it tried but doesn’t really match the classic Muppet’s humor.
Another big Anniversary for Disney is 1986’s The Great Mouse Detective. It was directed by John Musker and Ron Clements. The duo has directed seven Disney movies together including The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Moana but The Great Mouse Detective was their directorial debut. The movie was based on a series of books Basil of Baker Street written by Eve Titus and illustrated by Paul Galdone.
The Great Mouse Detective does get a bit lost amongst the other titles in the Disney pantheon as it came out at the tail end of Bronze/Dark Age and aside from the villain there isn’t a lot buzz around it.
But is it a bad movie that deserves to be forgotten?
Well, well, well it didn’t take long for me to get to a Pixar movie that I had never seen before now. I do believe I have seen clips of A Bug’s Life before but I have a vague memory of it playing on a TV of a room I was in once, if that counts. Also I did go on the Animal Kingdom extraction “It’s Tough to be a Bug” like so many I was freak out by the sensory effects but mostly I recall enjoying the extraction.
So It’s not that I had nothing to go one for this movie but I had never sat down and watch it in its entirety before.
On my time on Earth I have only seen nine of the Pixar movies. I feel remiss about that so I have decided in the same vein of my Disney movie marathon I will (try) to watch them all. Unlike that marathon I think I will review of all them and with a running rank of the top few as I go and a separate full ranking after I watch all the available ones up, whenever that happens. Also unlike that Disney marathon I’m going in order of release date instead of a random order.
First up Toy Story (1995). Which is one of the movies I had seen prior.
In early February of 2026 Disney Plus premiered a soft launch reboot of The Muppet Show. In classic fashion they had a Special Guest but unlike the previous reversions there was more human involvement for this iteration.
The reason behind this relaunch reboot was thinly veil attempt to gauge public interest, to see if the masses actually wanted a new contemporary of The Muppet Show. I mean people have been wanting a new version for years ever since it was teased with 2011 movie but instead Disney elected to do other things with the Muppets like an Office-like show, the Electric Mayhem show, the YouTube-like improve show and that Haunted Mansion Movie – two of which I enjoyed and one I utterly forget about and still haven’t seen and another I didn’t even finish watching.
But how was this reboot soft launch endeavor thing? Time for Tepid Take!
Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025) Starring Oscar Issac
Recently I sat down and watched Guillermo Del Toro’s latest film offering, his take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. And here is a review.
Shelley’s Frankenstein was never part of my school ciriculum and oddly enough I’m not much of a horror/sci-fi fan to have read it on my won, so a critique this film on its adhesion to the novel is not something I can fully comment on maybe someday but as now I have a backlog of reading*. That being said I have read other reviews and takes on Del Toro’s Frankenstein to know that this is very much his take and more of spiritual interpretation of the novel that an adaptation of Shelley’s novel. Though it seems none of the movie adaptations actually do a by the book version with its theme but an approximation.
So what was my take or impress of Del Toro’s Frankenstein based solely on his vision? Also Spoilers
The second episode picks right after the first where Wednesday is nearly killed by a fellow classmate, Rowan but saved by the CGI Burton monster. However all the grown-ups are gaslighting her into thinking that Rowan wasn’t murdered by the goofy-looking monster and instead Rowan ran away/got expelled and that’s there is no monster except for the universal-style monsters who pay tuition.
Esmeralda & Djali, Dingo Pictures, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Unequivocally Dingo Pictures made a fairly faithful adaptation of Hunchback that was very badly executed. It’s only enjoyable in an ironic way.
If Ickert and Haas’ intentions were that they wanted to created animated works with limited resources and skill sets because they just wanted to create animated works with no intention of a global audience than whatever. It’s still doesn’t change the fact that work was poorly done but if they were doing to please themselves without any thought to monetary gain or fame than the Dingo Pictures’ filmography is inoffensive. It’s just a story creative people living out their dreams.
On that Pesky Other Hand
Frollo, Dingo Pictures, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
One can not rule out the little fact that most of Dingo Pictures’ movies, Hunchback very much included, were mockbusters of Disney movies that were released the same year as the Disney movie. So there is most likely was an element of monetary gains from their movies which were produced very cheaply and quickly to capitalize on name recognition.
While it’s a romantic idea that Dingo Pictures were just a ragtag group of creative friends making animated movies for the sheer passion of the art form, I very much doubt it. Plus there is all the weirdness surrounding the company and the shady yet humorous dubs in many languages.
Esmeralda and Quasimodo
All in all Dingo’s Hunchback is bad, not fully devoid of enjoyment but not at all a rewatchable version of the work. Watch only if curiosity gets the better of you OR you’re a adaptation/Dingo completeionist
To answer so the subject’s question about Dingo being the worst version? No, I’d still 2023 Quasi is worst but that one is also barely a version.
If you have eyes and at least one working brain cell you can tell that the visuals of Dingo’s pictures are subpar.
Notre Dame, Dingo Pictures, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The details of the inner workings of the company are mucky however the company was led by Ludwig Ickert and Roswitha Haas with other members rumored to be a small group of their friends and family along with Simone Greiss. There some indication that Greiss was one of the lead animators at Dingo Pictures though she is not credited on Hunchback. If IMDB is much to go off of Ickert is listed as an uncredited animator with Haas as the director.
The films were animated with Deluxe Paint for the Commodore Amiga. According to the mockbuster wiki, the animated processed involved recording the backgrounds, and then syncing up the animation up with a camera. This process lead to several very notable issues across Dingo’s filmography.
In Hunchback one notable issue is from phone interference. This could be the result of the dub but the technicals issue are abound through the company’s filmography such as a fly making a cameo in Pocahontas.
Esmeralda, Dingo Pictures, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Speaking of Pocahontas, if you just look at the model it’s very clear that Esmeralda’s design is recycled from the previous movie’s character designs. Gringoire’s design is also repurposed as well. It’s not hard to guess why, it was lower effort and cost effective.
The Crowd, Dingo Pictures, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Also given the styles of dress for the extra it safe to assume they too are recycled designs from other Dingo projects. No shades it’s just very obvious if you have eyes and watching the movie. Also a double whammy if you look at the picture above, you see the extra in bustle gown is repeated with a different color palette and a slightly wider anachronistic skirt.
2d Bell Tower with watercolor showing underneath, Dingo Pictures, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The backgrounds are a combination of watercolor and 2d ones which do not mesh mesh well with each other. It is very jarring to go from amorphous soft watercolors to lacking 2-d backgrounds. Almost as though the one backgrounds done in the 2-d style were an after thought.
Esmeralda dancing, Dingo Pictures, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
There is also the “animation” itself. It’s very stilted and done very odd. Weird zooming on faces for screams, reversing the image with some foot lifts to make it look as though Esmeralda is dancing or the very long time it take for a coin to land in Djali basket. Mostly the animation is downright amateurish with seemingly low-effort or perhaps it’s their signature style.
Quasimodo ringing a Bell and being cut-off, Dingo Pictures, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
One more weird aspect of the visual that must be addressed is the issue of overscan. Overscan is a feature of CRT televisions which causes the margins of the picture to be hidden beyond the borders of the screen. This why it looks like the animation cuts-off and disappears before the edge of the frame. This does look like bad execution but it seems to be an issue with limitations of the tech and was fixed in at least one of Dingo’s later projects. However it’s everywhere Hunchback and very noticeable
The Music
Esmeralda & Djali, Dingo Pictures, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The music for the Dingo films was done by Ludwig Ickert himself. Ickert actually had a music background and was a band called The Rangers in the 60s.
In the English dub you can hear a little bit of background music but if you go to the German version there is a lot more music. The music is not the worse, it’s vaguely generic medieval sounding with lutes, accordions, guitars etc. It doesn’t sound as grand or well-orchestrated as Disney’s Hunchback, though few scores do, but Dingo’s just sounds like one person playing one instrument at a time.
The English Dub
Esmeralda and Quasimodo
There is some speculation that the English Dub was done for pennies by a third-party company, East West Entertainment but it was also published on a gaming consoles as “games” under Midas Interactive Entertainment. The dub was done without much, or any involvement from Dingo Pictures.
While the German Dub has few voice actors credited, the English dub does not.
There are like two actors doing all the voices. Between the man’s voice and the woman they spilt all the voice work. Sometimes the man will do a female as in one of the nuns and sometimes the female voice will do a male character like judge’s voice. Once you can hear that they’re just two people doing all the voices you can’t unheard it and it makes the whole thing that much more silly and frustrating.
Frollo, Dingo Pictures, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The dub did give us the line “YOU IS THE POPE OF FOOLS!” That line of Frollo’s dialogue is the most memorable quote from the dub, so take that has you will.
The sum total of the parts of this adaptation make for a weird stilted not scary fever-dream. It’s weird and uncanny and at times torturous with briefs moments of bizarre enjoyment. It’s bad but it possible to enjoy because it’s so bad in all areas of its technicals and story telling.
Esmeralda & Djali, Dingo Pictures, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
I can’t get my head around this version. To get to the point, yes the Dingo Pictures version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is very bad. Anything that is “enjoyable” about it is because it crosses the line to so bad that it’s at least somewhat funny. Yet this version had someone, somewhere along the line who read the book and recalled enough of it to make an oddly fairly faithful adaptation.
Quasimodo, Dingo Pictures, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
So yes, it’s bad but they kept to the book, so one whole point, I guess, if fidelity matters. Now they most likely kept to the book because adapting to a different medium does require a lot of thought and effort and that was not so much the aim of Dingo Pictures. I would say cheap expediency was the name of the game. So they followed the book with little to no thought to how the story worked in animation.
Some key differences between the book and this adaptation
Frollo, Dingo Pictures, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The first key difference is Frollo is not lusting after Esmeralda. He hates her because she’s pretty, popular and distracting. This change could be a way to simplify the story and the character. It easier if his hate can be explain is a few lines of dialogue and zero visuals. And maybe this solely in the English dub and is different in the original German. I do not speak German so I do not know. Also Frollo is an Abbé which is just a low-ranking priest and not the Archdeacon.
Another difference is Quasimodo’s arrest. He is arrested when a random lady accuses him of attacking her. Which is really ridiculous because of limits of the animation, the lady in question and Quasimodo never even share the same frame. Again this just a simplification.
Esmeralda giving Quasimodo water, Dingo Pictures, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
There are a few notable characters missing. First off there is not Phoebus. There is a blond solider but he’s a nameless extra. Since there is no Phoebus there is not Fleur de Lys unless Fleur de Lys is the name of the old lady that accused Quasimodo of attacking her.
And another big different is the ending. Esmeralda leaves Paris with Gringoire after reuniting with her mother. Quasimodo is arrested this time for killing Frollo and is left to rot in jail. It’s a downer ending even though Esmeralda gets away, Quasimodo is left alone to die in a jail cell.
The Story is more or less there
Esmeralda and Quasimodo
If I’m being nice, this is more like animated storybook. It steam rolls through the story without any subtly, nuance or characterization. Characters will just exposit information and when they can’t the narrator does it.
This expositing of information does make Esmeralda seem level-headed as she says that she is not in love with Gringoire as she doesn’t know him and he doesn’t know her. Her saying this just an excuse to artlessly say her backstory. This version of the few versions to have Gudule a.k.a. Sachette and the only version that Esmeralda knows of her mother’s existence. It doesn’t really factor into any character moments it’s just there because it’s easier that way.
Ultimately what we have here is a “more or less” version of the Hunchback.
