The mystery is over, I've finally seen "Song of the South"

I had always heard about this movie growing up, but I had only seen clips of it. Even then, they were only the clips that were animated. You've seen them, the ones with Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Fox. I think the clip most people remember is the one with the Tar Baby.

Well, my father has some crazy way of coming up with movies out of nowhere. We have thousands of movies. I'm not even joking. From where I'm sitting, I can see dozens of movies including a set of Jerry Lewis DVDs, musicals from The Court Jester to The Wiz and Hair, DVD TV sets of Lost in Space, Planet of the Apes, Mr. Bean, Star Trek Voyager, Babylon 5, Deep Space Nine seasons 2 and 3, the first two seasons of Combat!,and bunches of other movies I don't think the rest of the electrons on the Schminternet can accomodate listing here.

A lot of the DVDs he gets, he buys from used DVD and CD stores. Others, he orders from the Schminternet (like Troma) and eBay. This movie though, Song of the South, is not an easy one to come by. In a nutshell, Disney has blacklisted it because of the happy and complacent slave stereotypes in a post-Civil War era (it's a children's movie! Who's gonna show slaves getting whipped in a movie for children?). There's a whole essay about this topic on the IMDb at link above, if you want to read more about an opinion on why Disney shouldn't have pulled it from the shelves.

Song of the South is a nice family movie, with a story much like that of Huckleberry Finn and Jim. A little boy (who dresses in Little Lord Fauntleroy outfits) befriends an old black guy who tells stories of Br'er Rabbit. The boy's mom doesn't approve of the stories told to her son by Uncle Remus, because he copies the actions of Br'er Rabbit and gets himself into trouble. In the end though, everything ends happily ever after and Br'er Rabbit doesn't get eaten by Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear.

So how did Dad get his hands on this movie? A nurse at the hospital gave it to him. Apparently, she's been looking for it for years and the only way should could get it was by buying a bootleg copy for $20. It starts with the title in Chinese. If anyone wants to see the movie, let me know :-)