Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: With Raya And The Last Dragon, the new SpongeBob movie, and the half-cartoon Tom And Jerry all available this week, we’re looking back on some of the most underappreciated family-friendly animation.
The Rescuers (1977)
The Rescuers is frequently cited as one of Disney’s darkest animated movies. At the very least, it has the darkest color palette. The last film to be produced with the thick, scratchy-line style introduced in One Hundred And One Dalmatians (the result of a cost-saving process that involved photocopying pencil drawings directly on the animation cells), it is notably short on the sort of bucolic, exotic bedtime-story scenery that has long been a Disney staple. The tones are muted and rainy; the larger part of the movie takes place in a swamp.
The plot—which, atypically, takes precedence over individual sequences—is no grimmer than that of the studio’s fairy tale adaptations. It does, however, lack the spells, sorcerers, and towers that make such stories of abduction or forced captivity palatable. Two little mice, the glamorous Miss Bianca (Eva Gabor) and the stammering, triskaidekaphobic Bernard (Bob Newhart), set off to rescue an orphan girl. She’s been kidnapped by the evil, treasure-seeking pawn shop owner Madame Medusa (Geraldine Page), who is somewhat like Cruella de Vil if she really let herself go. (In fact, in early development, the film was going to feature the One Hundred And One Dalmatians villain.)
For its opening stretch, The Rescuers almost plays like a mystery, as Bernard and Miss Bianca (who work for an international rodent organization called the Rescue Aid Society) seek Penny’s whereabouts. This eventually leads to the Devil’s Bayou, where the girl is being kept on a dilapidated river boat, guarded by Madame Medusa’s trained crocodiles. As in any Disney animated film, there are kooky side characters, most notably an albatross who operates a one-bird airline. Yet the film never oversugars or bounds into its sweetness—this is in fact what sets it apart.
The Rescuers has been regarded as a severely overlooked work ever since the Disney studio’s renaissance period, so it’s worth mentioning that it was actually a huge hit, outgrossing Star Wars in many parts of the world. Unquestionably, it looks to modern eyes like a different Disney—absent of soaring big dreams or songs espousing carefree values, touching and eerie in its finest moments, and as compelling as a story about a small child in a dark, scary place and the efforts of even smaller creatures to rescue her can be. Anyone on whom it left an impression at the right age probably couldn’t phrase it at the time, but a grown-up can say it: It’s the only classic Disney animated film in which the main characters get involved in the story simply because they care.
Availability: The Rescuers is available to stream on Disney+. It can also be rented or purchased digitally from Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, Microsoft, DirecTV, and VUDU.
66 Comments
This and The Fox and the Hound just have a kind of… well, maybe the best word to describe it would be dinginess, that set them apart from the rest of the studio’s output. And although I agree that The Rescuers is more dark in color palatte than story tone, the same can not be said about The Fox and the Hound. Re-watching it for the first time in decades a few years, the darker elements of the plot really surprised me.And finally… can someone explain to me why only one of the three supposedly Austrialian characters in The Rescuers Down Under speak in an Aussi accent?
The bear in the Fox and the Hound scarred me as a child.
I regularly have dreams where bears are chasing me or breaking into my house. I blame the Fox and the Hound and The Great Outdoors.
It’s such a brilliantly rendered villain. When he finally appears in the film, my toddler grabs a few stuffed animals and goes absolutely apeshit, mimicking the fight between Copper, Tod, and the bear.
The Fox and the Hound was actually too dark for even the studio heads, who insisted the initial cut be changed so Chief survived his fall from the train tracks (and thus Copper is robbed of all his motivation and looks incredibly petty for wanting to murder his childhood friend over an accident with no long-term consequences, which the filmmakers were livid about).
Wow, the movie barely has a happy ending as it is. That’s even darker.
Australia is a land of immigrants, almost as much as the US is. For a while, it used to be practically a cliche for British people to move to Australia “for a better life”. Not saying that Disney really considered that, but a lot of Australians don’t sound like Crocodile Dundee, because they weren’t born there.
Maybe I should have rephrased that as “Why do two of the three main Australian characters speak in American accents?”
Oh, yeah, because there’s only one fuckin’ Australian accent, Septic, because only countries that matter get to have regional accents, right? Right?
If you wanna have fun, look up the book Fox and the Hound book. Its almost comically bleak.
I read the summary on Wikipedia. That ending is certainly NOT something you would ever see in a Disney film. Makes the ending of Old Yeller look like Dumbo in comparison.
Yeah it does. Makes me seriously wonder how the board meeting pitch went.
If you wanna have fun, look up the book Fox and the Hound book. Its almost comically bleak.Me: the whole point of the movie is pretty much interspecies relationships don’t work. How much more bleak can it get?/reads synopisis of book plot…….gawddamn WTF?
I just did the same thing, read up the synopsis on Wiki and, WOW. I know there is “Disneyfication” of fairy tales and books, but damn, they would have been better off just ignoring the book altogether and just going with something original. I like the 70’s-mid 80’s Disney because they were bleak at times, but the original book of TFatH is beyond dark. Keep in mind I love The Black Hole, and saw it in the theater as a five year old.
I’m not sure there’s ever been a book that was less-faithfully adapted to film. At least The Secret of NIMH and Who Framed Roger Rabbit kept some semblance of the plot and/or atmosphere intact in translation.
Roger Rabbit is pretty damn far removed from the book but I can see aspects. Almost nothing beyond the character names work with Fox and the Hound.
I’d argue NIMH is very recognizably Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH even with all of the changes. That’s much less so than Roger Rabbit, for example.
If you wanna have fun, look up the book Fox and the Hound book. I do NOT like your version of fun. 🙁
In earlier Disney features, all the animation frames had to be drawn twice, once on paper and then again onto the cels. The paper drafts would include some stray lines that the cel copiers would clean up. In this period, Disney came up with a way to get rid of the manual copying step, but the drafts remained a bit messy and that messiness in the final films.
Yeah, a lot of animators apparently loved the Xerox process because it kept the full life of their original animations (some of which inevitably gets lost when they’re had inked)–and it’s been said they could never have done the large shots of 101 Dalmatians without it (since when showing all the dogs they now could easily just xerox in more of the same dogs)–but Walt of course always claimed to hate it. The look of it suits films like Dalmatian and Rescuers but not so much something like Jungle Book. By the 80s they were using colour Xerox which meant the outlines didn’t always have to be black and the sketchy quality of the lines was better cleaned up (Little Mermaid hardly shows any of that look though it used the process throughout). Of course by the time of Rescuers Down Under they had invented the CAPS system where animation was scanned into a computer and coloured there…
I have a ton of nostalgia for Fox and the Hound and think it has great moments, but it’s certainly an example where the cute Disney elements really clash with the darker ones…
And yeah, that Bear scene is classic–that was the first major piece of animation Glenn Keane did for Disney, before becoming one of their most important animators during the renaissance (and finally moving past, one would hope, his origins as one of the kids in that damn Family Circle strip… 😛 )
i watched this for the first time on a lark the other month and was shocked at how great it was. when i was a little, little kid and home alone was sold out we saw ‘rescuers down under’ and i remember always liking it, but somehow just never seeing the OG. worth mentioning that this was don bluth’s team while he was still at disney, and it shows. it feels like a ‘real movie’ in the way that only those old disney animated films do (largely because of the aforementioned style).
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The Rescue Aid Society song is a favorite of mine.
“It’s the only classic Disney animated film in which the main characters get involved in the story simply because they care.”It’s been a long time but I remember Gabor in particular being really great in this regard, she has this noblesse oblige to her voice where she doesn’t deny her good fortune and status and is ready to use them however she can. I think that generosity infuses the rest of the production, let’s check Wikipedia to confirm: “[Madame Medusa’s] appearance was based on animator Milt Kahl’s then-wife, Phyllis Bounds (who was the niece of Lillian Disney), whom he did not particularly like.” Ah.
A number of years ago I did a month-long binge watch of most of the Disney canon, and The Rescuers really stood out. It was much better than I expected.
The Rescuers also has “Someone’s Waiting for You’ one of the best Disney songs
The entire soundtrack has this wonderful quality of like… comforting melancholy if that makes sense. “Tomorrow is Another Day” is musically kind of downbeat, but just incredibly lovely.
I have this weird sad nostalgia for Tomorrow is Another Day. I remember watching the film when I was so young. I rewatched it while my mother was dying. If something could both nostalgically happy and heart wrenching, it’s that song. Shelby Flints vocals are kinda hard to describe, its just what it needs to be.
Except for the song they sing at the rescuer meeting. That song is, well, terrible.
They’re the Rescue Aid Society, not the Glee Club, after all. Singing was not high on their priority list.
We don’t talk about that song…. its why everyone pivots to Flint and her Joni Mitchell style voice.
Down vote.The Rescue Aid Society’s meeting song is perfect.And is also something I apparently remember verbatim, despite not having heard it in probably 25-30 years.The Rescuers was one of my very favorites as a kid and I remember being disappointed to the point of anger leaving the theater after seeing the sequel.
Comforting melancholy is the phrase I was trying to describe. Perfect description.
Whatever song that is during the flight to Devil’s Bayou, my younger son really liked it. It was his favorite scene in the whole movie.
The songs in Rescuers are kinda fascinating—they were written by Carol Connors, Ayn Robbins (the first all female songwriting team for Disney—well unless we count Peggy Lee’s work on Lady and the Tramp but that wasn’t a team 😛 ). Connors had had pop success before,singing lead on Phil Spector’s first hit, for his short lived band he was a part of,The Teddy Bears’ To Know Him is to Love Him and had written some minor hits. Ayn Robbins, the lyricist, was a personal secretary to Eva Gabor who wrote poetry as an amateur and they were hired for this after someone heard a few songs they did for an unproduced Christmas animated special. (Apparently the Eva Gabor connection had nothing to do with her casting or them being hired). And they didn’t seem to go on to write anything of note together afterwards. But I totally agree that the songs are effective and, in some cases, pretty affecting.
The sequel gets a lot of attention and for good reason, but the first Rescuers is certainly still good. The music is especially hard on the heart strings. That mid movie song number about how the little girl doesn’t have a mother, with images of animals with a mother being shown is… well I’m a mess just writing this. Seriously the soundtrack is super underrated. The woman who sang those songs was Shelby Flint, I have no idea why she didn’t become a household name.
I’m still pissed they didn’t use an a Wedgie for the eagle in the second one. Then again, would’ve been a short film after Marahute ripped Kirk Douglas’ face off in the first five minutes.
That would certainly have been memorable.
The opening sequence of The Rescuers Down Under kicks more ass than any Disney opening sequence before or since. Just awesome, balls-to-the-wall action.
And Down Under is 50x better.
I watched Down Under quite a number of times before I ever saw the original. I suppose the fact that it had that sequel should have been evidence it wasn’t a flop.
Yea I watched this recently and wasn’t that into it. I don’t know what to tell you.
I remember this film fondly; I may have seen it when it came out, or a bit after, but definitely on the OG Disney Channel when I was still a kid.I liked it for many of the reasons mentioned here: it wasn’t spells and sorcerors; the animals weren’t cute handmaidens but had agency; the child kidnapping seemed a lot more real and therefore scarier than any evil spell.
It’s also the first Disney animated feature to hide real tits in there.
As a kid I loved your Maleficents and your Jafars, but as an adult I always find villains most memorable when their motivations are realistic and purely petty.
Lady Tremaine abuses her stepdaughter because she can and Cinderella has virtually no legal rights. Cruella de Vil buys 84 puppies but steals the last 15 out of pure spite, and she’s so rich she doesn’t have to bother with moral code.
Madame Medusa abducts a little kid to get rich; she’ll probably tie Penny to a cinderblock and dump her in the swamp afterwards. Penny has no family and no advocate, and the police aren’t exactly beating the bushes to rescue her.
I agree, but would absolutely include Maleficent in that number. (Real Maleficent, at least. Not the retconned Angelina Jolie bullshit.) Bitch put a death curse on a baby because she wasn’t invited to a party. Pettiness #goals right there.
You’re absolutely right.
“You didn’t invite me to your party, so I’m going to punish your baby” is 100% petty.
I mean really this goes back to Snow White–look at all the trouble the Evil Queen goes through and all she sacrifices just because she can’t handle having a step daughter who is prettier than she is…
I’m still waiting on a third Rescuers movie by Disney, and this time Bernard’s in his twilight years. He must come back for one last job, which leads him to meditate on loss, mortality, and whether the world is even a better place after a life of rescuing. I didn’t know that they almost slotted Cruella De Vil in there. That would have been pretty cool, actually.
Yeah I wish they had gone with Cruella actually, even though in theory I’m against such cross-overs. That said, then we would have lost Geraldine Page’s great work…
As a generation x guy, I have a dim memory of this being in theaters, but I don’t have much of a memory of having actually seen it. I’ll have to try checking it out.
We watched this a ton when it was on Netflix. My 3- or 4-year old daughter, I forget exactly how old she was at the time, insisted for WEEKS that she wear a jumper with tights and Mary Janes so she would look like Penny.
I’ve always liked The Rescuers, probably because of the memories of watching it as a kid. But there is a distinct melancholy vibe to the entire movie, and the dark color palette no doubt played a big part of that, as did its wistful soundtrack. But to me the film is also a perfect encapsulation of the general malaise that hung over the country during the mid-late 70’s. The original Pete’s Dragon also had a touch of this, although to a much lesser degree because of the energetic songs, dances and musical numbers.
Someone is Waiting for You and Pete’s Candle on the Water always remind me of each other. But Pete’s is a far inferior movie, at least to watch now that I’m grown up–all that slapstick crap with the villains, etc.
Yeah, there are some portions of Pete’s Dragon that I’ll always have a soft spot for – again, because I was a kid when I saw it – but even then it was one of those movies that I always wanted to like more than I actually did.
I remember being 4 or so when I saw Pete’s in the theatre with my grandparents. When I saw it again quite a bit later, I was surprised that there were so many small things that seemed new—only recently I randomly was on Wiki’s page for it, and found out that’s cuz I saw an edited down reissue (the only Disney film, aside from Bedknobs and Broomsticks and, of course, the multiple different edits that were released of Fantasia before it was finally restored in 1990, that had major edits for re-release). One of those cuts apparently was Candle on the Water (wow but I guess that’s expected since the common wisdom is kids hate ballads—one reason even much later the love ballad from Pocahontas was cut)
from imdb: “
This Disney film has a troubled history as far as the many different
versions released over the years. It originally ran 134 minutes. After
its premiere engagement in Hollywood, it was cut down to 121 minutes
before it premiered in New York. When it was released in Europe, it ran
105 minutes, with the following edits: -”Candle on the Water” (which
survived only as an instrumental passage over the credits replacing the
original overture) and “The Happiest Home in These Hills” were
eliminated entirely. -Verses from “I Saw A Dragon,” “Passamashloddy,”
“There’s Room For Everyone,” and “Every Little Piece” were cut. -21
scenes were shortened. This version was used for the original home
video release in 1980, while every video since then has run 128 minutes,
restoring the songs and the majority of dramatic material. However,
when Disney re-released it in theaters in 1984, it was the European cut. Even
further cuts were made for the TV version of the film, which premiered
on “The Disney Sunday Movie” in 1986 at 92 minutes.”
(I have no idea why no matter how I edit my post it puts garbled sentences at the start—oh well, love Kinja)
I love The Rescuers. One of my favorite movies as a little kid. We had the storybook/record of it and I listened to it all the time.True fact, our daughter is named Penny because of this movie. I think we should watch this again soon.
man I wish I still had all those 45s/cassettes with the little storybooks – Disney, star wars, He-man
I was ten when Rescuers Down Under came out and already a Disney freak so saw it right when it opened (I still remember an intermission with a Mickey countdown clock between the Mickey-Prince and the Pauper featurette and the movie). But at the time what I found really odd was, though I knew of the original Rescuers thanks to Disney books, clips on TV, etc, and had read or had read to me nearly all of the original, quite different, novels, I still hadn’t seen the film and there was no real way TO see it since it wasn’t on home media. I thought I always saw the Disney reissued during that time, but while Wiki says Rescuers was reissued to theatres just before the sequel, I completely missed it if it played anywhere near by. I always wonder how many other kids were in the same boat…
Rescuers is definitely by far the best of the 1970s features, even if that’s not saying much (also the last Disney work Don Bluth played a significant role in—and the last Disney film that still had much work from the Nine Old Men animators). The background is pretty interesting—Disney had optioned the books earlier but didn’t know how to proceed since the books often have more political elements—after some prep work in the 1960s Walt got uncomfortable with adapting the first plot which centers on poet held captive by a totalitarian government in the Siberia-like stronghold Black Castle.
I do not like this film. The Rescuers Down Under, on the other hand…
Bianca has always been on of my favourite Disney role models. Competent, courageous and compassionate. It also helps that she’s a mouse so I felt somewhat less discouraged by not measuring up in the looks department.
Probably my favourite Disney movie after Bedknobs and Broomsticks, which has the other one of my favourite Disney role models, Miss Eglantine Price, who argueably also gets involved in the orphan-saving antifascist action simply because she_cares_.
I recently got sucked into a wikepdia-wormhole and found out that Bianca’s based on novel by Margery Sharp, who also wrote Cluny Brown, and seems generally worth looking into.
The Rescuers was my favorite of all the Disney films as a child. There’s something about it that just really hit the sweet spot as a kid – the villain is bad but not too scary, the heroes are noble but not stupid, and the music was pretty uniformly great.Also, as a lonely child, Penny seemed to be the Disney character who felt the most like me.
I absolutely adore this movie. The characters, the story, how cute Penny is, how gross Medusa is, all of it. The pet gators, predecessors to Flotsam and Jetsam. Buddy fricking Hackett. And of course Bob Newhart and Eva. it’s so lovely, all of it.
And don’t dismiss the Rescuers Down Under either, one of Disney’s first films to incorporate computer animation.