Why? Because the basic premise should have been good for a movie, especially a kid's movie. How was that Disney bought the rights and made a film. The problem is that Disney was in pretty sad shape in this era, and its movies weren't doing that well. The future of the film studio was in jeapordy, even on the animation front.
Disney didn't exactly spend big money on their live action films, so they tended to keep them rather simple, without anything that required elaborate special effects (even Escape from Witch Mountain was largely wire effects and process shots). However, in a period were big budget special effects-laden films were hits, Disney looked like old hat. It had been quite a while since they had a bona fide live action hit. They tried to jump on the sci-fi bandwagon, with The Black Hole, but it didn't make a very large profit, so they tried to split the difference. The Bond films were popular so why not try one for kids? The problem is that the stunts didn't have the budget to rival Bond, so they look mostly like stuff you could see on tv. The budget also didn't stretch to a big name actor, so you got Michael Crawford, while Oliver Reed had burned so many bridges even a Disney film looked good. The end result is an enjoyable piece of fluff for the very young crowd and something that adults could at least sit through. However, with more exciting pictures out there, the audience didn't exactly turn out in droves.
The biggest problem was that Disney had largely been writing down to their audience in their live films, which made them less and less engaging and they earned less and less money. The result was each subsequent film had a lower budget than the one before and they became self fulfilling prophecies.
Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!
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