The reusing of cast and techniques is where the similarities end for the most part... at least terms of quality. The story is a mess, but a fun mess with Mathews as the handsome farmer saving the process from the evil over the top Thatcher from second rate stop motion monsters, bad matte paintings and sub-par animations. Mathews has a lot of charisma and does his best to sell it all but it's not enough to get thorough some of the slow parts of the story. The time and place is some fairytale old England but it might as well be the Arabian nights worlds of Sinbad, so much so they turned this film into a musical(!) on release to avoid being sued. Luckily the version I saw on Tubi was a later release with no music.
Jim Danforth is credited with he stop motion animations and this is pretty obviously one of his first attempts at the process - he did get much better later on. The first effects scene with the princess dancing with a tiny figure from a dollhouse is well done and choreographed but after that... well each following monster looks more and more like a stuff dog's toy.
Was it worth the 46 year wait to see it? Sure. Why Not. It's not good but it is amusing in points with the weird-ass rhyming leprechaun character in a bottle and the villain over acting and chewing all the scenery. There is a certain lost charm to the animated puppets, at least for me that kept me watching until the very end.
* a side note* Torin Thatcher seemed to be limping throughout the entire filming of this movie - what was up with that?
