Nursery rhyme movie, help me find it!

February 17, 2013 12:01 PM

This movie is a straight-to-VHS, released pre-1990, and features live-action reenactments of nursery rhymes with occasional use of illustrations for the more animal-based rhymes (though I do remember Humpty Dumpty being portrayed in live-action).

British accents. When the rhyme was done, a "page turn" effect would occur to intro the next rhyme. I remember, as a child, being creeped out by this and want to revisit to see if it's as bad as I remember (although my mother assures me that it is).

Does anyone know the title or, better yet, where I could get a copy in the US?

posted by itchie to media & arts (5 answers total)

Woah, I also had a VHS of this thing when I was a child, and my sister and I were also totally freaked out by it! Unfortunately I can't remember the title, but the two main characters I remember were Humpty Dumpty (with his hideous white visage) and Mother Goose. I hope someone comes along who can put a name to it!
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 2:04 PM on February 17

Could it have been Jim Henson's Mother Goose Stories? It has the mix of live person and puppet action, animated page wipes + British accents: Humpty episode, which went straight to video in 1987.

There was also The Mother Goose Video Treasury, 1987. Live action + puppets, quasi-British accents, but no animated page wipes AFAIK. Humpty segment starts at 20:07.

Both series are available on DVD at Amazon.
posted by jamaro at 3:29 PM on February 17

Unfortunately, jamaro, these aren't the ones - the one I'm talking about was a single "show" or "movie" (I think it ran about an hour, hour and a half?), not split into episodes. Glad to know that there are plenty of horrible renditions of nursery rhymes in existence, though!

Thank you for your work.
posted by itchie at 5:06 PM on February 17

I found it! By god, I found it! Going off of jamara's links, I found the videos on Youtube. The video was called "Longman's Nursery Rhymes," here is the creepiness of the Humpty Dumpty scene in all of its VHS glory.
posted by itchie at 5:16 PM on February 17 [1 favorite]

Even more horrifying than the Henson egg :D
posted by jamaro at 6:23 PM on February 17