Rumpelstiltskin

Plot synopsis:
In order to make himself appear superior, a miller lies to the king, telling him that his daughter can spin straw into gold. (Some versions make the miller's daughter blonde and describe the "straw-into-gold" claim as a careless boast the miller makes about the way his daughter's straw-like blond hair takes on a gold-like lustre when sunshine strikes it.) The king calls for the girl, shuts her in a tower room filled with straw and a spinning wheel, and demands she spin the straw into gold by morning or he will cut off her head (other versions have the king threatening to lock her up in a dungeon forever). When she has given up all hope, an imp-like creature appears in the room and spins the straw into gold in return for her necklace (since he only comes to people seeking a deal/trade). When next morning the king takes the girl to a larger room filled with straw to repeat the feat, the imp spins in return for the girl's ring. On the third day, when the girl has been taken to an even larger room filled with straw and told by the king that he will marry her if she can fill this room with gold or execute her if she cannot, the girl has nothing left with which to pay the strange creature. He extracts from her a promise that she will give him her firstborn child and so he spins the straw into gold a final time. (In some versions, the imp appears and begins to turn the straw into gold, paying no heed to the girl's protests that she has nothing to pay him with; when he finishes the task, he states that the price is her first child, and the horrified girl objects because she never agreed to this arrangement.)
The king keeps his promise to marry the miller's daughter. But when their first child is born, the imp returns to claim his payment: "Now give me what you promised." She offers him all the wealth she has to keep the child but the imp has no interest in her riches. He finally consents to give up his claim to the child if she can guess his name within three days. Her many guesses fail, but before the final night, she wanders into the woods (some versions she sent a servant in the woods instead of going herself to keep the king's suspicions at bay) searching for him and comes across his remote mountain cottage and watches, unseen, as he hops about his fire and sings. In his song's lyrics, "tonight tonight, my plans I make, tomorrow tomorrow, the baby I take. The queen will never win the game, for Rumpelstiltskin is my name'", he reveals his name. Some versions have the imp limiting the number of daily guesses to three and hence the total number of guesses allowed to a maximum of nine.
When the imp comes to the queen on the third day, after first feigning ignorance, she reveals his name, Rumpelstiltskin, and he loses his temper and their bargain. (Versions vary about whether he accuses the devil or witches of having revealed his name to the queen.) In the 1812 edition of the Brothers Grimm tales, Rumpelstiltskin then "ran away angrily, and never came back". The ending was revised in an 1857 edition to a more gruesome ending wherein Rumpelstiltskin "in his rage drove his right foot so far into the ground that it sank in up to his waist; then in a passion he seized the left foot with both hands and tore himself in two". Other versions have Rumpelstiltskin driving his right foot so far into the ground that he creates a chasm and falls into it, never to be seen again. In the oral version originally collected by the Brothers Grimm, Rumpelstiltskin flies out of the window on a cooking ladle.

Tags: fantasy

Review:
Another Winner From Cannon!.
"Rumpelstiltskin" is another Cannon Movie Tale that does a fine job with it's classic material.
Few film versions of "Rumpelstiltskin" have been made, so it's lucky they did right by the story.
Amy Irving as Katie, the miller's daughter is lovely, and sings well, too.
Billy Barty is a suitably creepy Rumpelstiltskin.
The true stars, however, are Clive Revill as the greedy King,and Priscilla Pointer (Amy Irving's real-life mother) as the snobbish Queen.
Both give intentionally hammy performances which are delightful to watch.
The supporting cast includes John Moulder Brown as the Prince, Director David Irving's wife Susan Berlin as the cook's wife (star Amy Irving is his sister) and Robert Symonds, husband of Pointer, and Irving's stepfather as the Miller.
Good songs, good period atmosphere, good movie..
It doesn't get much better than this!.
After years and years of searching, I am so proud to say, I do finally own a copy of this wonderful fairy tale.
As a child of the 1980s, this was my absolute favorite and I rented it time and time again from my town library, in fact I rented it so many times that the tape wore out...
Honestly, I have no idea who did that!I can't help but love this movie!
I saw it for the first time when I was six years old and have been an Amy Irving fan ever since.
As it turns out, her entire family was involved in this production.
Her mom, Priscilla Pointer plays the queen (which she must have had a blast doing) her brother David Irving is the director (a very nice guy, I'm so lucky to have spoken with him personally) and her stepfather Robert Symonds plays the miller to perfection.Long before I knew the Irving connection I loved this movie.
I grew up watching all the Faerie Tale Theatres and the Cannon Movie Tales but this was my all-time favorite.
I grew up singing "Queen of the Castle" and "Miller's Daughter" and nothing, no matter how great a cinematic achievement will ever compete with this in my mind.I suppose those movies that were special to us when we were children will always be perfect in our minds despite their flaws.
But, I don't care.
Rumpelstiltskin has no flaws.
It's a lovely story.
Wonderfully acted, beautifully sung, and lovingly directed.
I spent years and years searching for this film, enquiring at every movie store and every rental place I ever came across.
I cannot begin to say how much this movie meant to me.Now I am actually a film student myself.
Although this is a children's film and I'm in my twenties, this is one movie that I'll watch my entire life.
Thank you, Amy, David, Priscilla, and Robert for inspiring me so much!
I grew up watching this movie, and as a film student I know that no matter how many times I see "Casablanca" or "Lawrence of Arabia" or even "Mulholland Dr" it's the movies that I watched when I was a child that will always hold a permanent place in my heart.
So what if I did have a thing for John Moulder-Brown?
So what if I saw every Amy Irving movie as a direct result of this?
Say all you want about Citizen Kane, it's the movies like these that you watch devotedly when you're six years old that can get you hooked for life.
How can you thank someone for giving you the love of movies and inspiring you in your future career?
It is a children's film, but one that I will watch until I'm ninety..
Rumpelstinkskin.
Cannon Movie Tales version of the Rumpelstiltskin story.
I enjoy quite a few of these movies, despite their low budgets and high cheese factor, but this one is not good.
Amy Irving plays the woman who, when forced to spin straw into gold, turns to the magical dwarf Rumpelstiltskin for help.
In her thirties by this point, Irving is too old for a part that seems to be written with a woman in her late teens or early twenties in mind.
This movie is a family affair for Irving.
Her brother David wrote and directed it (his first of three Cannon Movie Tales films) and her mother, Priscilla Pointer, plays the nasty Queen.
Even her stepfather, Robert Symonds, gets in on the act and plays her father here.
Billy Barty plays the title character and clearly is having a good time, which goes a long way towards making this work as much as it does.
His constant rhyming gets old quickly, though.
Clive Revill plays the gold-hungry King and appears to be having quite a good time himself.
John Moulder-Brown, with his ridiculous wig and all-kinds-of-wrong mustache, is the weakest part of the cast.
As with all these Cannon fairy tale films, they take a short story and stretch it to the breaking point.
This has some truly putrid songs that will test your will to live.
The production values are not good and the film looks drab and cheap at all times.
The cheapness is never more evident than the gold straw that is obviously just Christmas tinsel.
It's really a stinker and I wouldn't recommend you start with this one if you are wanting to try out the Cannon Movie Tales series..
My favorite version of "Rumpelstiltskin".
First time I saw this as a child I adored.
It was played on TV a few times during the 80's (I remember because once it was cancelled by a football game and I've never cared for that sport since).
Billy Barty was so awesome and the prince wasn't bad despite his funny haircut.
True, the songs weren't the greatest, but they weren't horrible either..
A Good Film!!!!!.
Liza-19's comments were absoulutly beautiful.I feel the same way about stupid little cartons,Cannon Movie Tales,and Faerie Tale Theatre's from when I was a child.I did not see this as a child.I swear that I saw something like this on TV when I was a kid though.I dont know what station it was on but I may have only caught the ending.I dont remember where I watched it.How Strange!This was interesting.It is definatly not the best Cannon Movie Tale.This film can be rather boring at times,but it is good because of great acting,sets,songs etc.
I loved the movie!It has good production values.This was the first Cannon Movie Tale.I would call it THE TEST MOVIE TALE.It was the one that tested whether or not they made more of the Movie Tales.They liked this one so they made others.This one is something that is age appropriate for everyone.There is nothing that is frightening or scary.Youre child would have to be really easily scared to get scared in this one..
Amy Irving sings????.
Not really *LOL*  but I do like her opening song.
The rest kind've stink, and only Billy Barty is really good in it...
Definately for children.
They'll love it!
If you have children, and you aren't sure whether the story is too scary for them or not, just sit with them in your arms and let them bury their face in your shoulder.
They'll never need you to sit with them again!.
Kicks the Cannon Movie Tale film series to a pretty good start.
While not the best of the Cannon Movie Tale films (Hansel and Gretel), it's not the weakest either (The Emperor's New Clothes).
Instead it sits comfortably in the middle, and serves as a pretty good start.Rumpelstiltskin is less than perfect (none of the Cannon Movie Tale films are, with the flaws varying in number and size for each).
The Cannon Movie Tale films all had low budgets, which while rarely showing in the photography nearly always showed in the costumes for example.
This is true for Rumpelstiltskin too, while nicely photographed the production is rather dimly lit, the sets are flat in colour and are the sort that were constructed on the lowest amount a shoe-string budget can get and the costumes (apart from an appropriate one and some effectively grotesque make-up for Rumpelstiltskin) are shoddy.Like The Emperor's New Clothes and to a lesser extent The Frog Prince, Rumpelstiltskin also suffers from a story which, while great and nicely done in its own right, feels even when padded too short to suit a feature length film, some of the first half especially drags and has scenes going on longer than they need to.
And while most of the songs are enjoyable, though not the strongest set from a Cannon Movie Tale production, one does miss big-time and that is, despite Clive Revill's enthusiasm and fine voice, the embarrassingly weird and not particularly necessary (seeing as it adds very little to what we already know about the King, and it seemed only to be there for convenience) I'm Greedy.
John Moulder-Brown is very charming as the Prince, but doesn't have an awful lot to do and the character is not developed all that much.The rest of the songs, a nice mix of bright and breezy and nostalgic pathos, do work nicely, with Queen of the Castle and Miller's Daughter being the highlights, and the incidental score is whimsical and characterful.
The script is wonderfully witty in places, especially with the King and Rumpelstiltskin, and balances the serious parts of the story well without being too dark or heavy.
The story is very padded, is not always successfully executed and there are liberties, but the whole basic story, characters and events are present and correct, and with an easy balance of the fun, the emotional, the charming and the creepy on the most part.
The characters help make the film engaging and it's competently directed and staged throughout.Of all the performances from a uniformly solid cast, Billy Barty steals the show as a truly grotesquely creepy and very entertainingly performed Rumpelstiltskin while Clive Revill matches him closely in a riotous turn as the hilariously pompous King.
Priscilla Pointer is wonderfully snobbish, Robert Symonds plays the miller nobly and Amy Irving beguiles and affects as the heroine of the story (she acquits herself very well as a singer too), and shares an easy-going chemistry with Barty and Moulder-Brown in particular.
Overall, a pretty good start for Cannon Movie Tales.
6.5/10 Bethany Cox. It Has Billy Barty.
Billy Barty is Rumplestilskin.
good enough for me.
good enough for me.
any movie that showcases Barty's acting talent is watchable for that alone.
this also happens to be a Cannon Farietale family musical, and i'm partial to those, so that makes for double enjoyment here.this also has Amy Irving.
she was in 'Carrie' and 'The Fury'.
cool.
cool.
i love those horror flicks.
she's good in this movie and does a decent job of singing and is often pretty funny too.
can't say Irving is one of my favorite actresses or anything, but i've always liked her and been aware of her even though i don't seem to know anything about her.
she's always seemed a likable enough presence in film.the songs here are nice although i doubt they'll stop any show sometime soon.
but i guess if forgettable tripe like 'The Fantastiks' can go on to become one of the longest running musical plays in theater history, than i suppose the music here will more than suffice.
compare this musical score with say 'Stop the World' or the musical version of 'Lost Horizon' and you might rethink the music score here as fresh and breezy in contrast with that muck.i liked this.
i like Cannon Farie Tale musicals and i like fairy tale films in general.
as long as they are the authentic thing and not just a bunch of revisionist hogwash.
that's what is so often good about the Cannon Farie Tales, they don't attempt to rewrite the Fairy tales and usually present them as straight forward as possible.personally, i liked Shelley Duvall's 'Rumplestilskin' better.
probably because i think that Herve Villechaize is a more interesting actor than Barty.
with due respect to Barty of course.
i just don't think that Barty's career had the same cutting edge to it that Villechaize's did.it's pretty easy to recommend Cannon Farie Tales to families.
they are wholesome and unoffensive and pretty good for kids in terms of quality and intellect.
they are definitely smarter property than what is usually sold to kids and families.
with the recent trend and interest in fairy tales, Cannon also offers the more genuine thing without a bunch of big studio marketing rewrite.