Missed casting opportunities

As I understand it, this movie's budget was $4 million, an enormous sum at the time for an animated film (by comparison, STAR WARS, which was released the same year, was made to the tune of $11 million). With all that money, you'd think they could have netted some big-name stars to voice the characters, instead of the relative nobodies they actually did get.

Even so, some of the voices are just SO distinctive that they at least sound like famous actors. I was recently rewatching this and it struck me that the Loony Knight sounds an awful lot like Paul Lynde, who was in fact doing quite a bit of voiceover work at the time. If you're 30 years old or younger and you have no idea who Paul Lynde is, well, whenever you hear an annoyingly nasal, "sissy" male voice ("nayaaahh!" and such), that's a tribute to Lynde. (Think Roger, the space alien from AMERICAN DAD.)

King Koo-Koo, meanwhile, could have been voiced by Paul Frees. If you've ever been in Disneyland's "Haunted Mansion" attraction you've heard his voice, as he's the narrator. He is also the voice of the Disney character Ludwig von Drake, whom King Koo-Koo seems based upon.

So it was a little surprising to me that neither of these guys were cast in the film; their vocal stylings were obviously what the casting director was going for.