Film 823: The Rescuers
Trivia: Evinrude the
dragonfly, who pushes a small boat in the film, is named after a manufacturer
of outboard boat motors.
The film was one of the last
Walt Disney classics to be animated by members of Walt Disney's "nine old
men".
Many crazy sound
"instruments" were used in the recording of the "Rescue Aid
Society" song, including a toy piano.
This was the first Walt Disney animated feature
to inspire a sequel.
Early in story development,
Bernard and Bianca were supposed to be rescuing a poet much older than Penny
from a gloomy prison. This idea was scrapped since the directors decided that
it was just not working.
HIDDEN MICKEY: A Mickey Mouse
watch hangs on the wall in the Rescue Aid Society mouse organization building.
The Rescue Aid Society honors
their founder, Euripedes Mouse, who removed a tiny needle from a ferocious
lion's paw, a clear reference to the classic Aesop fable, "The
Mouse and the Lion."
The last Disney animated
classic film to receive an Oscar nomination until The Little Mermaid, twelve years
later.
Originally, the Rescue Aid
Society was to be placed in a hole somewhere, until the idea of a luggage bag
in the basement of the United Nations building came up.
When Miss Bianca enters the
Rescue Aid Society's headquarters, she takes her seat as the delegate
representing Hungary. Eva
Gabor (the voice talent for Miss Bianca) was born in Budapest, Hungary.
In the scene where Penny is
seen carrying Rufus the cat off to supper, Penny grabs Rufus and uncomfortably
carries him off in her arms, pushing him up with her knee as he begins to slip.
Ollie Johnston, who animated this
scene, explained that he did this in order to show the tender affection between
Penny and Rufus, by having the cat be too fond of Penny to complain, since it
would have been easier for Penny to walk away and have Rufus follow her.
The talking animals in this
film can communicate not only with other animal species but also with human
children who bother to begin conversation with them. The 1977 "Disney's
Wonderful World of Reading" picture book based on the film revealed that
the reason Rufus had not told of Penny's fate to another child at Morningside
Orphanage was because no child or adult had bothered to ask him. It is unknown
whether Rufus could have spoken to a human child without being talked to first,
or if he could talk to grown-ups at all.
The popularity of the film
almost led to a spin-off TV-series in 1989; however, when the animation
department green-lit its sequel, The
Rescuers Down Under, the project was scrapped. The series was
still made, but Bernard and Miss Bianca were replaced with Chip and Dale, and
the series was called Chip
'n' Dale Rescue Rangers.
Fans of Walt Disney animation, and
animation in general, have often mistakenly referred to the sometimes
"sketchy" style in this film, as well as in others such as The Sword in the Stone and The AristoCats as
"lazy" and budget-cut. In fact, the veteran animators working on
these films, particularly Milt
Kahl, strongly objected to their drawings being altered in any way and
demanded that they should appear on the film's animation cels exactly as they
had been drawn.
The VHS version of the film
was recalled by Disney in 1999 due to an inserted image of a topless woman,
which appears about 38 minutes into the movie, as Bernard and Bianca fly
through the city.
Madame Medusa's fiery red
dress and hair and Penny's light blue overalls use their color to contrast the
theme of good and innocence against evil. This use of color for personification
was later used in other Walt
Disney Company films such as Beauty and the Beast and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
This is the very first Disney
animated classic film to feature a small prologue prior to the start of the
opening credits; the credits are thus attached into the storyline as they are
shown over images describing the journey of Penny's bottle. Madame Medusa is
also the first Disney villain to affect the flow of the story from the very
start of the film.
