After his 1976 feature debut with Jabberwocky, Terry Gilliam—known till then only as a occasional actor and full-time animator with the famed Monty Python crew—went five years before releasing Time Bandits in 1981. But the wait was worth it. Gilliam showed that he could blend many different venues into a coherent assemblage, mixing believable yet daft historical settings and characters with scenes out of fairy tales, and painting the whole with his distinctive stylistic patina. His homages to past cinematic landmarks also revealed him to be a knowledgeable practitioner in his new field. And lastly, he proved quite capable of resonant storytelling and complex plotting that never sagged.

Right from the early hodgepodge Mad Max look of the Time Bandits themselves, through the war scenes in Italy, the grungy Nottingham Forest camp, the dusty plains of Mycenae, the ogre- and giant-infested oceans of the Land of Legend, and finally to the Evil One's Fortress (which seems to be composed partially of giant Lego bricks), Gilliam offers a feast for the eyes. His camera angles—often from high above or from a worm's-eye level—continually render even the familiar sights unusual. And he makes the most of what must have been a moderate budget, using outre costumes (the evil pantomime horses employed by the Evil One, for instance) and limited SFX to supplement the ingenious script.

And the script has good lines for everyone. Each of the Bandits develops his own personality, with that of Randall, their leader (David Rappaport) being the sharpest. John Cleese as a smarmy Robin Hood; Katherine Helmond as a kind of evil Blondie to her Dagwoodish ogre husband (Peter Vaughan); Ralph Richardson as a fussy, schoolmasterish God; David Warner's proto-Bill Gates turn as the Evil One—all these characterizations delight.

Culminating in a manner identical to The Wizard of Oz (and after all, what has the aggressive floating head of the Supreme Being been but a kind of Oz Himself?), the film saves its ultimate kick for the end, asserting that independent orphanhood is better than a stultifying family life. In this way and in so many others, Gilliam delivers a kind of adult-friendly kid's film that proves he's the anti-Spielberg. And just to show it wasn't all a fluke, he'd do it all over again, but even better, in 1988's clearly related cousin, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.