Although the likes of Pixar and more recent animated offerings like FROZEN have captured the imagination to billions of dollars in revenue globally, some of Disney’s earlier offerings are well remembered.
One of the best-loved and acclaimed animation offerings was the 1977 movie THE RESCUERS, a fond childhood memory for myself in the summer that saw Luke and Co first bow (at least in the USA) with STAR WARS. Along with the likes of SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER which played in a double-bill with the Theatrical version of the TV SPIDER-MAN starring Nicholas Hammond, who was a child actor in the classic musical THE SOUND OF MUSIC, this was the essence of family cinema back then.
Based on the books by Margery Sharp, THE RESCUERS is the tale of an orphaned girl, Penny, who has been nabbed by a couple, Madame Medusa and Snoops, who run a pawn shop in New York. Their desire is to get her because of her size into a cave in the awful Devil’s Bayou where they own a decrepit riverboat so she can get the priceless ‘Devil’s Eye’ jewel that is buried in there.
One night, she throws an SOS message in a bottle into the water and the bottle floats all the way to New York where it is picked up by representatives of the mouse version of the United Nations, the Rescue Aid Society. Miss Bianca, one of the delegates, chooses janitor Bernard to be her co-agent and they get down to the Bayou with help from an albatross called Orville, where they encounter Medusa and her pet crocodiles, Nero and Brutus….
Endless family fun and accessible as ever, with an Oscar-nominated song (SOMEONE’S WAITING FOR YOU), the film was hugely popular in its’ initial release and a subsequent reissue, before finding favour in home video land.
One of Disney’s best animations….