Cameos on Witch Mountain

I went to see "Race to Witch Mountain" last night, and it was a lot of fun. I would recommend it, even if you've never seen the original Witch Mountain films from the '70s. If you are a fan of the original, though, you'll love seeing the Winnebago pop up and noting that part of the movie takes place in the small town of Stony Creek. In that town, we meet a waitress named Tina (Kim Richards, who played Tia Malone in "Escape" and "Return") and Sheriff Antony (Ike Eisenmann, the original Tony Malone).

At one point, our heroes have a close encounter with a train. We see the train's engineer for a brief moment, but he's portrayed by none other than Dick Cook, head of the Walt Disney Studios. Dick started his Disney career as a train operator on the Disneyland Railroad.

So far, these appearances and homages were ones I had known about and expected, but "Race to Witch Mountain" also had a surprise in store. About 10 minutes in, a TV reporter is on screen, doing a story about a major event which has occurred. The reporter was attractive and vaguely familiar, but once she identified herself, I nearly fell out of my chair. She closed the report with, "Reporting live, this is Natalie Gann."

The actress playing the reporter was none other than Meredith Salenger, whose first film role was in the 1985 Disney film "The Journey of Natty Gann," costarring John Cusack. I'm still not sure what the connection might be, but I was delighted to see this small nod to the Studio's past. In fact, it made me wonder what other tidbits might be in the movie. Hopefully others will be revealed in time. Meanwhile, I'm planning on adding "The Journey of Natty Gann" to my Netflix queue. It'll be nice to see it again after all these years.