Sammy's Super T-Shirt

I loved this film when I was 5 years old. They took the school on a trip to the movies. Very English. I liked the sound effects. I used to dream of having a super T-shirt. I managed to find the full movie on You Tube. Still worth the watch 35 years later.

Sammy's Tiger T-shirt made its way into a factory where a man was carrying out experiments on textiles to make them indestructible. Sammy and his friend sneak into the lab and try to get the shirt back. They accidentally set off the machine. The shirt gets zapped by radiation that gives it superpowers. Sammy and his friend escape but the men from the factory chase after them and try to get the shirt back.

I'm so happy to learn the title of this movie. I remember it being shown to our elementary school in the 80s when we'd a have special movie day in the gymnasium where all grades got to watch. I thought I recalled it being a projected movie, but if it was a TV movie, then it must have just been something one of the teachers recorded and played back on the "giant silver top loading VCR." Same as a poster up above, I wasn't even sure I had really seen this or imagined it. The movies that stick in my mind from elementary school viewings are Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Disney's Ichabod Crane, the Pippi Longstocking movies (I had no idea as a child that she was poorly dubbed) and now that I know the name, Sammy's Super T-shirt.

I used to love this movie, and would equally love to see it again. When I was in the 1st grade (1979-1980), my school's t-shirt had a lion's face on the front as our mascot. I used to constantly pretend that it WAS Sammy's super t-shirt. The only thing I couldn't do was run backwards, like the skid that stole it in the movie and put it on backwards. I don't remember too much of it since I haven't seen it in the last 25 years or so, but I just remember as a kid being totally into it. It was 70's kid television at it's best. Anyway, if anyone is interested in selling a copy, I'd be all about logging into PayPal to make it happen.

Created by the Children's Film Foundation (remember the pigeons taking off in Trafalgar Square on the intro credits?), Sammy's Super T-Shirt was just one of the cheesy kids flicks aired by the Beeb on Friday afternoons in the Seventies and Eighties.

This film was all the more memorable to me as it was shot around my local area. The cinder athletics track where the grand finale takes place was where I too competed in district championships while at school (although I would have benefited from Sammy's Tiger power and the ability to speed up the film to make me run faster!).

And the creepy house where Sammy gets kidnapped was known as Murphy's Mansion. Run down and dilapidated after its appearance in the film, it was home to many figments of kids' lively imaginations - killer tramps living in tunnels, murdered children haunting rooms, zombies lurking in the woods. Naturally it was the mecca for any adventurous child, and could only be accessed by swinging precariously over a river from a boarded-up bridge or by climbing over fences and running through back gardens.

It's long been knocked down and replaced by bog-standard new houses - not quite the same really. And the same goes for the pigeons at Trafalgar Square - where are they now?

First of all anyone wanting to see this treasure again the full movie is on YouTube I'm currently watching it. I remember watching this in the 80's and like most people I thought I'd dreamt it only to find it and realising it was after all real. I totally wanted that t shirt myself. Bit outdated now but still fun to watch