Thank you all for your feedback.

I agree this entire scene is a compromise. I too prefer the original puppets, and if 1080p footage of them was available, my preferred cut would be to restore the original scene.

I also love the idea of this scene being more like the exotic dance performance that it seems to be. I'm sure the desire to make the movie very kid friendly in 1983 prevented it from being more than just suggested. It would be cool to see someone edit it like that though, but there is even less Oola in the 97/04 version to make it work in HD.

I'm reworking the first half of this scene; a bunch of the shots in there were just filler that I didn't feel worked. The shot of the little lizard guy was one of them; I think the shots of him near the end work better with the music, because he seems to be rocking out with a riff in the song. It's a challenge making the new performance fit the old song, but I did try to pick shots that seemed to work; they need to be aligned a little better because I was concentrating on roughing out the sequence; but I'm going to go back and fine tune it.

I like the idea of adding some musical cues to make it fit better. I would love to give the backup singers something to do musically.