Holy hell! She's the first person in my entire life (and I watched this in the theater) to ACCURATELY guess "National Institute of Mental Health!" That was a *gasp* moment back in the 80's.
Ashleigh: I was thinking NIMH stood for National Institute of Mental Health, but based on the poster, I guess not. Me: GIRL!! You don't even know how hard that phone was ringing, because YOU CALLED IT!
Don Bluth’s philosophy about movies is, you can show a child almost anything, as long as the ending is happy and fulfilling. Hence all the violence and scary imagery and heavy themes in his movies.
I'm not sure if I can really agree with Mr. Bluth there, because I saw "American Tail" as a child and HATED it. The fact that the ending was happy meant nothing to me. I didn't want to watch it again, although to be fair, I did remain morbidly curious about it for a while. Saw it again as an adult, and... still didn't like it for how dark and depressing it was. The happy ending still didn't make it up to me. I guess everybody's different.
Something else I just remembered - in the 80s, there was very little animation available in the US. There were few if any links to Japan, and domestically, Disney was almost the _only_ producer of feature-length animation. Bluth was the only person really doing something big outside of that. And this was Disney before the Little Mermaid and the subsequent revival, so their stuff was especially saccharine and uninspiring. So this movie was incredibly prominent as a sort of anti-Disney - one of the few kids' movies that let you have real emotional intensity and depth. I think that's part of why it was so special.
That is EXACTLY why it was so special. We never got juicy stories and characters like this with disney and this film got us interested in animation for older audiences. I felt cheated when I found out japan had been doing it for decades. Lol.
That is right. Some years back, I did a search for animated movies from the '80s on IMDB, and came up with not that much, which was surprising. I lived through the decade, but I had the impression there was more. That was because there was plenty of animation on TV, on weekday mornings and afternoons, and on saturdays. Not much in the movie theaters.
Ah Mrs. Brisby. Strange how this character, an animated mouse, is more relatable than many female characters put on screen. She's not some highly trained superspy or some samurai monk wizard, she's just a mom responding to increasingly dangerous situations for her and her family. Brisby is always caring and compassionate, but also brave and resourceful when she needs to be. With those characteristics and because of them, she proves that she's what so many female characters failingly strive to be in film, a strong, independent, and relatable character.
I love this theme of this film. A mother protecting her babies❤ We need more characters like Mrs. Brisby! Not my favorite film but LOVE the story of her saving her child's life😘😍
Yep, exactly. She's just a normal woman doing the best she can and as she gets pulled deeper and deeper into frightening and dangerous situations, she has to find the strength in herself to face it and keep going because the life of her child is on the line. She's terrified and over her head pretty much from the beginning but she never gives up and she never lets her fear stop her. That's true bravery, being scared shitless (and for damned good reason!) and doing what needs to be done anyway. With no weapons, against people and creatures and circumstances that could easily kill her, she persevered. She found a way, through grit and determination, to overcome immense challenges and despite being physically weaker than any of them she showed inner strength that impressed them all and carried the day.
This is one of Don Bluth's best films. Bluth used to work for Disney back in the 50's, 60's and 70's, but he quit the company for creative differences, and decided to make his own independent studio. In the 80's he really challenged Disney in terms of storytelling, atmosphere and pushing the envelope on what you could get away with in G-rated films. His philosophy is that you can show a kid almost anything as long as there's a happy ending, because you can't appreciate the light if you don't acknowledge the darkness. Aside from _Secret of NIMH_ , more films to check out from Don Bluth are _An American Tail_ , _All Dogs Go To Heaven_ , _The Land Before Time_ , and _Anastasia_ . I think you'll find some enjoyment in these.
Don Bluth's studio also did the animation for the video games Dragon's Lair & Space Ace. I'm friends with the guy who created the animation for the Space Ace logo (he worked for Bluth for a bit as well as working for Disney, Warner Bros & even Jim Henson).
Agreed, but I'd slightly reword it from "creative differences" to "quality differences." 70s Disney was frankly horrid, their framerate and corners cutting to save a buck was visually obvious, and Bluth was dead-on. He's also so right about children's tolerances being totally under-estimated. I can't remember who said it, I think it was Spielberg, but "it isn't healthy for children to never experience fear", it's just a question of presenting it with having a point and a sense of proportion, etc. But just because something scares a kid means it should be stricken is just inane.
You got fans in Rhode Island, i went to the dispensary wearing my Awkward Ashleigh Tshirt and the budtender gave me a "hi yes hello" and i died. Keep up the good work :-)
Don Bluth once said "If you don't show the darkness, you don't appreciate the light. If it weren't for December no one would appreciate May. It's just important that you see both sides of that." Don BLuth believed that children can endure a dark story as long as theirs a happy ending. And for the most part it's true, as a child watching his films i didn't understand all that i watched but as an adult his films make me cry with how well told the stories are from both Light and Dark perspectives. I do wish more studios took chances on darker films for children, not to scare but to teach them that life can be unfair but to show that even in darkest of times hope can still help us through.
Ashleigh mentions it during the video, but the cartoons that SHE is used to growing up watching are literally "completely benign", compared to some of the stuff we got in the 80's and 90's! In my opinion, 1980 thru 1999 are literally THE GOLDEN AGE of animation! It's been almost entirely downhill since that twenty year window, and Disney is responsible for a lot of that! Also completely explains why Millennials are so "sheltered" compared to how kids used to grow into adulthood.
@@jacob4920 millennials grew up with a different kind of dark/light dichotomy. We had Ren and stimpy, rocko's modern life, south Park, etc. Dark and light for us wasn't sadness/joy or loss/gain it was "things that are gross or stupid can also be beautiful and meaningful" And hey, wouldn't you know it, it's the people who grew up with story's that you are praising that ended up making movies and tv shows for millennials. Kinda like never showing your kid how to change a tire and then calling them stupid for not knowing how to change a tire, don't you think?
It's ironic because most millennials fall squarely in the window of years you mention in terms of what they grew up watching. Despite the name of the channel/series, Ashleigh is on the very tail end of being a millennial. By some standards people would even label her Gen Z - perhaps that's what you meant as well? Not that I generally like being beholden to the whole generations narrative anyway, as I think it's far too crude and oversimplified. In any case, while I share a lot of your nostalgia for 80s/90s animation (as someone born in '87), I think it's entirely unfair to say it's been "almost entirely downhill" since 1999. Of course if you're only focusing on Disney and a select few other major releases per year that will give you a certain image of the state of things. But animation is so much more than just the tentpole Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks releases (I would hope as a presumed fan of a creator like Don Bluth that you'd not fall into that trap). In many ways we're STILL going through a golden age for animation. As there are constantly great new things being put out, and it's more acceptable than ever to enjoy various animated properties as an adult. Not to mention the additional huge influx of foreign animated content we've been getting over the past few decades. Sure there's plenty of crap and mediocre stuff to sift through, but that's true of every time. INCLUDING the 80s and 90s (let's not let nostalgia cloud that basic truth that plenty of old cartoons were pretty bad: either low budget and ugly, blatant toy promotions, and/or lesson-centric pap produced because people wanted TV to do their parenting for them). The difference with those older decades is we've had enough time pass to allow us to forget most of the crap and let the cream rise to the top.
@@siukong Strongly disagree to only one part of your argument. The whole "we're STILL going through a golden age" part. Disney hasn't put out a decent animated flick since "Moana." That was back in 2016. Dreamworks hasn't really produced anything great since the last "How to Train Your Dragon" movie. The "Ice Age" series of films has basically fallen off of a precipice of mediocrity, and Don Bluth... he's still alive, but what was the last movie he ever had a major hand in? Feels like it's been at least a decade. The only good animation, nowadays, is coming out of Japan. That's not really something Hollywood should be proud of.
You must watch the animated feature "THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER" It will show you what kind of mental things we had to grow up with!! Losing friends through death and deciete and learning about life and coming of age all while singing songs! (Yes, its a kind of musical)....oh, and did I mention their not humans,..... Their household appliances with human features! Check it out!
This animation was trendy for the time, like " Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" or "Charlotte's Web". Both worth the watch. And I'm so happy you're going to see "Galaxy Quest". A movie you can watch over and over.
Rikki Tikki Tavi and Charlotte's Web bear absolutely no resemblance to this other than both have talking animals. The animation in this is FAR more elaborate.
I loved both Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and Charlottes Web as a kid, I find that more people have not even heard of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi which is baffling to me. They played it on TV all the time!
@@Kenichi2002 It’s sort of a fan thing. They gave her a first name based on the first name of the woman who provided her voice. It’s in honor of her. Other than that, as far as I’m aware, Mrs. Brisby has no original first or last name, before joining with Jonathan and starting a family.
@@SyzygyNoon of course she hasent. she was a "normal" field mouse before meeting jhonathan brisby. I think the hwole "wearing clothes, marrige and living a "modern" live in a family" was a thing that Jhonathan brought up, because of his genetecly alteration what NIMH has done with him. Mhm.. i kinda like the Name Elizabeth for her ^^
"I thought it was the National Institute of Mental Health ..." You were right the first time Ashleigh, LMAO. Been so excited for you to experience Don Bluth's work. He mentored me as a writer (he taught an online course) and every year that goes by I hope he's getting closer to making another film. So far he's had a 22-year hiatus. He wanted a PG rating for Secret of NIMH, but the MPAA stuck him with a G instead. And because it wasn't Disney, people at the time weren't about to take it seriously. We've come a long way since then.
Wow! That is awesome that you studied from him. He is amazing, and one of my all time favorite animators and storytellers. I was raised on all of his movies- I can always tell if its a Bluth movie. He had that special fingerprint. ✨✨
@@smokeyverton7981 For a few years a TV channel in my country used to put Watership Down on at Easter. Watching the Twitter reactions come in from teens seeing it for the first time and expecting a cute Easter story is one of the funniest things ever.
This movie was so intense when I was a kid - the Owl more than anything. And it was, and still is, one of my favorites. Its intensity is genuine and one of its best parts. Such a key part of my childhood. I have no idea how many times I've seen it.
Me too! I just let my son watch it and I was totally afraid that the owl was going to freak him out. He was okay with that part but the NIMH caging and injecting the animals (which was the other part that really freaked me out) definitely got him. He loved it though so we got the book to read together.
I recommend this movie to people all the time. They look at me like I’m crazy but I know it’s great. It’s like all dogs go to heaven, land before time, American tale, etc. we grew up on cartoons where folks died a lot
The drama between Don Bluth and Disney made for great entertainment when we were kids. And don't forget, Anastasia was Bluth's version of a Princess movie.
I can only count the number of times I've seen this movie on one hand. But it was the first of Don Bluth's greatest films. But, in my opinion, his magnum opus was An American Tail. That film cemented him as a great animated movie creator. Mainly because that film actually made Disney afraid and encouraged them to kick off what is known as the "Disney Rennaissance".
Don Bluth is one of America’s greatest artists. His animated movies are masterpieces. I think Anastasia is one of his best movies, even his less successful works like pebble and the penguin and Titan AE are incredible.
“No wonder your generation are a bunch of savages” my favorite quote from you. Grest pick from whomever selected it. Keep up the great work. 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾🤩👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
@@Weaseldog2001 Also, make sure you have a box of tissues and be prepared for a LOT of tears. I saw that thing when I was around 12 for the first time. lol Even as tough as it was to watch, it ended up being one of my all time faves. Also always a tear-jerker.
I really enjoyed having Don Bluth's films growing up, I mostly watched the three films that came after this (An American Tail, The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go To Heaven) but either way, the Bluth storytelling worlds were always comfortable yet frightening; perilous yet safe; and other similar oxymorons. I think they advanced what children's animation could be immensely in a lot of ways.
He though children were not stupid. You can do dark and tragic, as long as they can have their Happy ending. And the more challenging the path, the more precious the final happiness is. And I believe his motto is true because The Rescuers is one of my favourite Disney movies.
The Don Bluth philosophy of storytelling is that children will accept all the scary and disturbing things you can throw at them as long as you give it a happy ending. It’s why The Land Before Time had to be re-edited multiple times before release to make the ending as happy as possible.
The Great Owl, Dragon the cat, these were some of the most terrifying creatures we had ever seen in animation at the time. I love the fact that The Secret of NIMH is STILL rewatchable decades later, because as an adult I can appreciate the more nuanced stuff while the little ones can still just gush about the animated rodents.
This was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid, along with "The Dark Crystal" and "The Neverending Story". Just a word of advice about Don Bluth movies: The first ones are often great, but you're usually better off skipping the sequels.
Well i liked "Feivel goes West" and laughed my ass off to it. Sure it wasn't as heartbreaking drama like the first one but still an awesome movie. Basically the ONLY good sequel to a Don Bluth movie. And also a wonderful final role for Jimmy Steward who played the old Sheriff dog :)
I remember reading the book in elementary school then getting to watch the movie in class. Someone else already mentioned it, but you should absolutely check out The Last Unicorn.
47 years old and I still love this movie and have re-watch it once in a while over the years. Also, the theme by Jerry Goldsmith is a melody I think is so overlooked and underrated. What a beautiful tune. Love the pictorial credits at the end as well. Growing up with movies like this and the so called "violent" cartoons (Loony Toons - Buggs Bunny and Friends, Heckle and Jeckle, Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, Popeye, etc) cartoons that have been since banned (you can only watch the "fluffy" versions these days) is what made our generation so great compared to wimpier generations that followed. I think adults soo underestimate children and their logic and capability to learn and decipher the "adult" topics in those old cartoons and themes sometimes hidden subliminaly inside the toons. Kids aren't idiots, but sometimes they are raised to be by blocking their eyes and plugging their ears.
This movie, the Dark Crystal and Labyrinth were my go to’s as a kid. They all seemed to be the same sort of genre for me and I loved them! Really looking forward to Galaxy Quest!!! Love it! 😁
I remember Sci Fi had a stranglehold on the decade thanks to Star Wars (Which I love, don't take this as criticism of sci fi) but for those of us that loved Fantasy, there were very few movies to scratch that itch before Harry Potter, Pirates of the Carribean and Lord of the Rings helped the genre take off. The ones Jam mentioned, plus some things like the animated Hobbit, Legend, Dragonslayer and the Conan films were among the few.
You need to watch Watcher In The Woods, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Watership Down to really grasp what we were subjected to at a very young age lol
Loved The Watcher in the Woods and Child of Glass when I was a kid. I liked the scary Disney. Who am I kidding? I loved Candleshoe and Moon Spinners too. I liked all Disney.
Glad to see someone else remembers The Watcher in the Woods. Watership Down wasn't meant for children, but back then anything animated was seen by the general public as "kid's stuff", so we saw many things we weren't supposed to.
The Great Owl was voiced by John Carradine who was Drew Barrymore's grandfather. He did a great job voicing that character and the great owl scared the daylights out of me when I saw this in the theater at seven years old in the summer of 1982. There were many traumatizing scenes in this film. That's why I loved Jeremy the crow so much. He brought a lightness and much needed humor to what was a very tense movie and Dom DeLuise was so funny voicing him. Another great animated film that came out around the same time was Disney's "The Fox And The Hound". Kurt Russell voices the Hound dog Copper as an adult I believe. You would really enjoy it. You are also the first reactor to watch "The Secret Of Nimh." I love your channel and that you react to movies that no one else does. It's so much fun 😊😊
I love this film. One of the best depictions of hero. Not a soldier or a super hero but a single mother of three kids facing her fears to save the life of her child. Such a great role model for children!
i saw this when i was a kid, and still consider it one of the best animated movies ever made. made in an age where kids were taken seriously as human beings, and not considered to be so fragile that the slightest hint of negativity would scare them for life, as they are today.
@@kristennorth3268 against my better senses i gotta ask. you both agree about the film, yet you felt the need to insult him with an outdated attack that doesn't apply to either of you, over a child rearing you both agree with?
What a great thing to wake up to! Watching while I have my morning coffee. This and "The Great Mouse Detective" were my childhood. So glad you reacted. Thank you!
Was just thinking about Rattigan from The Great Mouse Detective when seeing Jenner in this film. Wish today's kids had more exposure to both of these films.
This movie came out well before Disney's Renaissance period, so it was still in between moments when animated movies weren't as popular. Still, the animation was pretty much the best it could be at the time. Don went on to make a bunch of animated movies, some produced by Spielberg, and are still some of my favorite animated features.
You could even say that Bluth leading a walkout at Disney during production of The Fox and The Hound and then creating the triple punch of NIMH > American Tail > Land Before Time contributed to Disney hunkering down and rebuilding their animation department from the ground up in the mid-80s, culminating in The Little Mermaid. Competition drives innovation!
Many credit Don Bluth and the competition he provided as the inspiration for the Disney renaissance. If Disney didn't change how they made animated movies, Eisner and Katzenburg may have closed the whole department. And all those brilliant animators and directors would have ended up working for Bluth and Spielberg.
@@acoupleofwavylines Absolutely, to the point where Disney they lifted a bunch of ideas from Bluth. Ashleigh was absolutely on the nose with her comparison of Jeremy and Scuttle.
Well, if you're dipping into 80's animated fantasy, then I recommend "The Last Unicorn" "Flight Of Dragons" "The Hobbit" "Lord Of The Rings" "Return Of The King" and "Heavy Metal".
Saw it in the theater in the day. The "official" reason my folks took us is we all thought my kid sister was gonna love it, but despite me being a 14 year old dude, I was the one that loved it. My kid sister was too young and couldn't really comprehend it, and my mom was the sort to always find shit wrong with a movie and she thought this was "too scary and had cussing in it", just the voice of a prude (an OG Karen). But I LOVED it, still do. I totally became a fan of Don Bluth's animation. It's important to understand this was basically one of those "young adult" novels, much like Harry Potter in terms of target depth. Serious consequences, not really unsuitable for very young kids, but they'll probably just be kinda lost, but far simpler than "full adult" novels. That 9-14 sort of age. Another very, very similar film that I adore just as much is The Last Unicorn. I recommend the hell out of that.
6:51 Fun fact.. the reason the animation reminds you of the aristocats.. well because the director of this movie Don Bluth.. was once a Disney animator around the time "The Aristocats" was made
@@brianvernon249 Very true. However the comment was on ashlieghs observation and its the fact Bluth was a Disney animator at the time.. but you're right I forgot to give credit where credit is due to Gary Goldman. Plus to be fair.. the animation on the mice reminds me more of the animation on Bernard and Bianca from the Rescuers which Bluth was the directing animator for.
I LOVED this movie as a child of the '80s and early '90s and it stuck with me not only through elementary school but college as well. One of the books we read in 6th grade English was _Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH,_ and I found out just how different the movie is from the book. They're both equally good as their own entities, imo. When I went to art school for college to become an illustrator, the first semester of senior year Advanced Illustration was independent study in that we came up with assignments for ourselves that were focused on our chosen specialties in order to start building a solid portfolio. I'm a children's/young adult illustrator and love telling stories with my work, so I made one of my assignments an illustration for the NIMH book. I drew Jeremy flying Mrs. Frisby to the Great Owl. The piece is still up on my deviantART gallery, but I don't know if YT allows linking to external things. I'll try in a reply, at least.
We read that book in 5th grade, that's the only reason I already knew what NIMH stood for. And as odd as this may sound, I was happy they changed the name to "Brisby" for the movie, because at the time I could not understand how the author was not sued into oblivion by the company that trademarked "Frisbee". (I was not exactly a normal kid, lol.)
This is a great movie. Most of us were exposed to it through HBO (even those of us who didn't have cable, or had it sporadically). You'd watch this the morning after a sleepover, followed by Return of the Jedi. And yes, things like this was why we are harder than you. But things like Vietnam are why our parents were harder than us, and things like the great depression and ww2 are why their parents were harder than them. I'd say we were the perfect level of hardness, and for a hell of a bargain price!
But remember, war is a real-life thing (also repetitive - we had Desert Storm, Millennials and Zeds had Iraq/Afghanistan, etc.). This was our _escapism._
I must've watched this movie a thousand times as a kid, and could probably write the script from memory. This reaction made my day. Thank you so much, Ashleigh!
I literally gasped in excitement when I saw this thumbnail. Easily my favorite animated movie of all time. Don Bluth was such a master of making kids movies that didn't pander or talk down to children. You need to continue down this rabbit hole with All Dogs Go To Heaven, An American Tail, and Land Before Time.
Fun Fact: the title of the original book was "Mrs Frisbee and The Rats Of NIMH" but she was renamed to Brisby for the movie to avoid a potential suit from the Frisbee company. It's a good read and much more grounded (aside from the intelligent rats). The element of magic was entirely made up for the movie.
I enjoyed the book as well, but I think it stayed on the flashback with NIMH too long and that is something the film was able to do better say what happened show a bit with experimentation, rats learning, animals escaping.
@@jamesmoyner7499 Fair. That flashback does last quite a while. I'm sure it's not 50% of the book, but it sure feels that way when I try to remember it now.
I love how she calls us "hard-asses" and then apologizes for fear that it will offend us! No Ashleigh, we take it as a compliment! Keep calling us that!
I'm so glad you reacted to this. I highly recommend Watership Down, it's very similar to this movie, but it's about rabbits, and how they have to find a new home because humans are trying to develop the land their warren is on. It's dark, strange, but very cool, and is a great story.
When you were watching Willow you mentioned that it must have been the third in the trio of scary gen-x kids movies w/Labyrinth and Neverending Story - and I literally thought of this movie lol (and a few more). So many things we watched were so dark. Here are a few more if you are interested: The Dark Crystal (Jim Henson), Legend, and the terrifying Return To Oz
Legend... but what version ? US cut with Tangerine Dreams score, longer European cut with the Jerry Goldsmith's one, or Director's Cut (Goldsmith score again) ?
@@chrisbergsten1429 Oh god, it barely got made at the time. If you've not seen it, there is a Return to Oz documentary floating around on youtube... Can't remember who made it, but it covers all the ABSOLUTELY INSANE shit the writer / director had to go through to get that film made. It's about an hour long, and it's quite good. I went looking for it and I'm not sure if it's still on youtube or not, but there's another video I remembered on a channel called 'in praise of shadows' that's got a bit of behind the scenes stuff. He talks about some of the stuff that happened, but the short story is that the director got fired during production and a bunch of other directors had to step up and strong-arm disney into letting him finish the movie. They underestimated the production costs of doing all of these fantastical effects and stuff, so they had to skimp on things. The other doc that I saw went into how they had to reduce the scope of the film alot due to just practical reasons since the puppets and costumes and stuff were so complicated to make, so some parts of the movie are really elaborate with these big ornate sets, but then some other scenes they were basically out of money and had to shoot whatever they could shoot. My understanding of the production, tho, was that it was basically torture for a lot of the practical effects people who had to contort themselves in order to do the puppeteer work, and that there were a lot of instances of people in costume falling over because they couldn't see anything (or because they had wheels on their hands and feet, heh). I think the guy who did the stop motion stuff had a lot of fun with the effects, tho, and it's some of the best stop motion in any film, imo.
This movie doesn’t mess around and it’s one of my all time favorites. In particular I love that there’s this mythical status around Jonathan Brisby. His poor little wife trying to save her family and running into all these terrifying and powerful people that won’t give her the time of day until they know who she is, that whatever debt or respect they owe her late husband is so profound they’ll help her despite themselves.
The book this movie is based on is incredible. One of the very best. I've read it to my students many times. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh. If anyone is interested.
GREAT REACTION! This was my (now 42 yr.old) son's FAVORITE MOVIE when he was a child! Our family quotes lines from it even now!("Come inside, or go away!"). Yes, the 80's DID have a LOT of animated shows that were a little "dark". In fact a lot of parents at the time really started previewing the VHS tapes they had rented for their kids to watch BEFORE they let their kids watch it. It was definitely a different time!
12:13 Justin is voiced by my mother's biggest crush, Peter Strauss, who starred in many TV movies and miniseries, such as "Rich Man, Poor Man" and "The Jericho Mile".
@ Lyly I felt the same way i've always had an interest in mythology and practical effects The Dark Crystal does live up to it's dark name !😅 One of the great fantasy classics..ASHLEIGH has got to react to that ! CHEERS.
I absolutely love this film. It is not only one of the best animated films ever made, but one of the best films ever made. Okay so some facts for it: This film is dark and even though this is Don Bluth’s first film he made and made after he left Disney with a whole bunch of their animators. It is an incredible film and Bluth said it best “Kids can handle anything as long as there is a happy ending.”. The score in this film is spectacular especially in the house raising scene and one of my favorite movie moments. Also the main character was renamed from Frisbee in the book to Brisbee because they didn’t want to be sued by the Fribee company. The voice of the crow Jeremy is Dom DeLuise who has been in several Mel Brooks films you have already watched for the channel- He was Pizza the Hutt in Spaceballs, He was the Don in Robin Hood Men in Tights, He was Emperor Nero in History of the World Part 1, He was the director Buddy Bizarre who's musical was interrupted in Blazing Saddles and he is in a few other Don Bluth films. Lastly it is rather funny in your preview review you were right about NIMH being National Institute Mental Health. To explain something they can't move Timmy because he has to stay in bed thus why the house has to be moved. Yes this film was not a big hit when it first came and slowly gained a cult following. I didn't see this film until I was around 12 in 2007 and was completely sucked in.
Taking the movie as is, I liked it. I was still bummed, because I was one of the few that had read the book a couple years prior, "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats from NIMH". The book was better at explaining the scientific stuff, there was no mystical mumbo-jumbo in it.
@@gorramgomer Well I think Doug Walker explained it best there is three things all working together you have science, magic, and the unknown. Plus magic is just science that doesn’t have an explanation to it yet.
😭😭 flashing back to my worn out VHS recording off of TV of this movie. I loved this movie as a child♥️ and was therefore heartbroken when I showed it to my son and he didn’t care about it at all😂
Watched this about a billion times growing up. Still holds up. Gorgeous animation and relevant story with depth and arc and laughs and cries. One of my favs. Also... female lead overcoming insurmountable odds and saving the day is always good to see. This always reminds me of my momma when I watch it. She'd do this for my sister and I without even thinking about it.
That's nothin. I accidently took my nephew to see The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. The title sounded cute and I didn't research the film beforehand. I'm allowed to take him to dinner or sports but not movies anymore.
When we moved into our house a few years ago, there is a huge overgrown rose bush in our yard. My husband made an offhand comment about hope there aren't magic rats in there. A now it is forever known as the NIMH bush, lol.
I had this movie on VHS as a kid in the 80s and I always loved that it was a little dark. It’s always been one of my favorite cartoon movies. Terrific voice acting in it too. The great Dom DeLuise who played the crow, also does the voice of the friendly cat in An American Tail.
80's movies are amazing. Practical effects still look as awesome as before, stories were kind of dark/scary but they also showed that light came at the end of it, and they were so original, most of those stories wouldn't even be approved for production for fear of being canceled (Back to the Future comes to mind: a young man is friends with an old man, goes to the past and his mom has the hot for him).
This was my favorite children's book from when I was young- so glad you saw the movie, though it is different from the book. In the book there is no mystical/magical element, the rats escape NIMH because the drugs made them rational and intelligent, and they wanted to use their own science/abilities instead of living off mankind in the rosebush. The magical elements do make for a better movie though.
Somehow, whenever a cartoon has mice as the main characters it turns out great. :) I haven't seen this one, but The Great Mouse Detective is one of my favorite cartoons ever, and I also love An American Tail, Fievel Goes West, The Rescuers, and The Rescuers Down Under.
This is one of the staples of my 80's childhood! This, Dark Crystal, The Great Mouse Detective, and An American Tail. Those were, without a doubt, the four movies that were a part of any movie library you had at home. And I think I watched every one in the theater but Dark Crystal. That one freaked me out just on TV, I can't imagine my brain dealing with Dark Crystal on the big screen! Wonderful reaction as always, would love to see your reaction to Roger Rabbit with animation and live action working together. Plus, I just love Bob Hoskins!
I always loved The Dark Crystal. I saw the trailer with some other movie and I just had to see it. And it didn’t disappoint. I can still remember the theater and the popcorn and the Sweet-Tarts. The soundtrack is my all-time favorite piece of music, too.
@@pingidjit My daughter and I would watch it together when she was young, and just the voice of Vincent Price for Ratigan was incredible! But I would get the biggest laugh from my daughter when I imitated Figget the bat with "Owww!! MY FOOT, MY ONLY FOOT!!"
slow day at work, so this is my 4th Ashleigh review already this morning. not much to add to the 2,500+ other comments, but if you get around to watching the recent Netflix sci-fi/horror film "Archive 81" (my daughter watched it with me last week, and it was already my second time watching the 8 episodes) then you'll enjoy how "Secret of NIMH" is referenced 2 or 3 times -- AND there's a rat in the series as well. coincidence? probably there's no such thing as coincidences. thanks for building up this channel Ashleigh!
This reminded me of a movie we use to watch as kids in the late 70's called Watership Down, based around rabbits in southern England trying to escape human encroachment on their woodland burrows, it is well worth a watch!
Spittin' straight facts, there! As for me, I had a big dollop of Return to Oz and Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow shaping my tastes at that impressionable age.
The Black Cauldron though disappeared for many, many years. I had an older cousin who took me to see it and I loved it. But it didn’t do well and was pretty much discarded by Disney until almost twenty years later when they put it out on DVD.
Oh snap! I can't believe you're watching this. This is one of my favorite movies from my childhood. My 3rd grade teacher read us the book in class for story time back in 1987. Then, we watched the movie. I've loved it every since. Granted, it's a lot different from the book, but the plot is the same. The animation is excellent. Some key differences: 1. There was no magic in the book 2. Nicodemus didn't die, had an eye patch and didn't have magic powers 3.Justin didn't kill Jenner. Jenner and his followers left the other. They were all killed trying to steal electrical wires and were electrocuted 4. Mrs. Brisbie's name in the book was Mrs. Frisbie. They changed it for copyright purposes because of the toy. 5. Brutus didn't look as bad ass as he did in the movie. He was described as very large and actually spoke. He more or less told Mrs. Fribie to leave, not chance her away.
As someone who has a wonderful mom, this movie hits me so hard every time!! Such a great movie and I'm sad not a lot of people know it! Thanks for the great reactions you're my favorite person to watch 😀
GenX grew up with the Black Cauldron. That’s a dark animation. I saw Bambi as a small child in an outdoor theater. A drive in. No conversations about the film were allowed because as my mom used to say “ children are to be seen and not heard “. Lol
Talking about being scared at an early age: My dad took me to see The Beast Within. When I said I was too scared to finish it, he told me to wait in the lobby of the theater till it was over. I was 8. My mom took me to a high school haunted house one year. We go around a corner and I see my aunt in a hospital bed with her leg hacked off and bloody while a man in a surgeon gown and mask was running around with a soup bone in one hand and a meat clever in the other while my aunt kept screaming, "Help me Chris! Help me!" When I start screaming, my mom grabs me by the shoulders and crouches down to my eye level and said, "Get your shit together, or I'll make you go sit in the car." I was 3. The 70's / 80's was wild as a child friend. Heavy Metal, American Pop, Wizards... Animated films were traumatizing back then. Love to Beans and Hubben from your Gen X buddy.
If you're getting into animated movies from back then, and want to comment on why we're all f*&^ed in the head, you should watch 1987's The Brave Little Toaster! :) That movie is the cause of atleast 85% of my mental illnesses! 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣🥺🥺🥺☹️😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Such a classic movie, I watched it so much as a kid and still absolutely love it, Don Bluth had such a distinctive style, really wish he had a more expansive catalogue especially with things in the same vein as this. One thing I love about it is it's basically a fantasy story, just scaled down to the perspective of small animals in our world. It's also really interesting how unique and distinct Mrs. Brisby is as a character, because not only is she a female protagonist in what is basically an adventure film, she's actually an older woman, a mother, and she's doing all this for her children. That's a surprisingly rare motivation for a main character especially in this kind of film, you might get characters like her as a side character or something but I really can't think of that many main characters like her, especially in animation. Like the closest I can think of is maybe the mom in Brave kind of? but Merida is still definitely the main character there.
And I don’t know whether to be so proud or so sad that Millenials AUTOMATICALLY see NIMH and understand it as “National Institute of Mental Health.” Us target audiences did not have to make that connection at the time. (Seriously though, I lost it when you said you doubted it based on the image! 😆)
I saw this when it came out. I was 5 years old and it turned into my favourite animated movie. I had seen "Bambi" and "Lady and the Tramp" at that time, so my reference was not that big, but I still think it holds up remarkably well. I just love how dark it is in parts. Shortly before it came out I had seen E.T. These were the first two movies with scores by John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith I ever saw, and it convinced my 5 year old self that they were the greatest composers alive. And in hindsight, I wasn't wrong about that. ;)
Yeah and the animation quality was absolutely AMAZING! Sooo smooth and detailed.You could tell Don Bluth cared for that and NOT saving costs there by skipping animation steps.
For your amusement, some of the voice actors in this movie are... Jeremy the crow.....Dom DeLuise Justin the rat.....Peter Strauss Nicodemus the rat.....Sir Derek Jacobi The Great Owl.....John Carradine Martin Brisby the young mouse with the blue shirt.....Wil Wheaton
Holy hell! She's the first person in my entire life (and I watched this in the theater) to ACCURATELY guess "National Institute of Mental Health!" That was a *gasp* moment back in the 80's.
The moment you realize this isn't a fantasy, but is actually Sci-Fi.
dude i had the same reaction to her guessing it like holy shit!
I had to read the book to get this.
To be fair, as a kid I'd never heard of The National Institute for Mental Health until this movie.
Next time please, please, pleeeeease watch Wargames.
Ashleigh: I was thinking NIMH stood for National Institute of Mental Health, but based on the poster, I guess not.
Me: GIRL!! You don't even know how hard that phone was ringing, because YOU CALLED IT!
Don Bluth’s philosophy about movies is, you can show a child almost anything, as long as the ending is happy and fulfilling. Hence all the violence and scary imagery and heavy themes in his movies.
In most cases, it's the adults who can't handle heavy themes in movies. Kids can take a lot more than we give them credit for.
I'm not sure if I can really agree with Mr. Bluth there, because I saw "American Tail" as a child and HATED it. The fact that the ending was happy meant nothing to me. I didn't want to watch it again, although to be fair, I did remain morbidly curious about it for a while. Saw it again as an adult, and... still didn't like it for how dark and depressing it was. The happy ending still didn't make it up to me. I guess everybody's different.
@@Kelaiah01 that just means you’re more sensitive. Nothing wrong with that.
@@chenstormstout9456 Heh, aww, thank you. x3
@@Kelaiah01 hey I don’t discourage people’s reasons for not being able to watch certain things.
Something else I just remembered - in the 80s, there was very little animation available in the US. There were few if any links to Japan, and domestically, Disney was almost the _only_ producer of feature-length animation. Bluth was the only person really doing something big outside of that. And this was Disney before the Little Mermaid and the subsequent revival, so their stuff was especially saccharine and uninspiring. So this movie was incredibly prominent as a sort of anti-Disney - one of the few kids' movies that let you have real emotional intensity and depth. I think that's part of why it was so special.
That is EXACTLY why it was so special. We never got juicy stories and characters like this with disney and this film got us interested in animation for older audiences. I felt cheated when I found out japan had been doing it for decades. Lol.
That is right. Some years back, I did a search for animated movies from the '80s on IMDB, and came up with not that much, which was surprising. I lived through the decade, but I had the impression there was more. That was because there was plenty of animation on TV, on weekday mornings and afternoons, and on saturdays. Not much in the movie theaters.
Ah Mrs. Brisby. Strange how this character, an animated mouse, is more relatable than many female characters put on screen. She's not some highly trained superspy or some samurai monk wizard, she's just a mom responding to increasingly dangerous situations for her and her family. Brisby is always caring and compassionate, but also brave and resourceful when she needs to be. With those characteristics and because of them, she proves that she's what so many female characters failingly strive to be in film, a strong, independent, and relatable character.
I love this theme of this film. A mother protecting her babies❤ We need more characters like Mrs. Brisby! Not my favorite film but LOVE the story of her saving her child's life😘😍
She is a well written and believable strong female character.
Yep, exactly. She's just a normal woman doing the best she can and as she gets pulled deeper and deeper into frightening and dangerous situations, she has to find the strength in herself to face it and keep going because the life of her child is on the line. She's terrified and over her head pretty much from the beginning but she never gives up and she never lets her fear stop her. That's true bravery, being scared shitless (and for damned good reason!) and doing what needs to be done anyway. With no weapons, against people and creatures and circumstances that could easily kill her, she persevered. She found a way, through grit and determination, to overcome immense challenges and despite being physically weaker than any of them she showed inner strength that impressed them all and carried the day.
This is one of Don Bluth's best films. Bluth used to work for Disney back in the 50's, 60's and 70's, but he quit the company for creative differences, and decided to make his own independent studio. In the 80's he really challenged Disney in terms of storytelling, atmosphere and pushing the envelope on what you could get away with in G-rated films. His philosophy is that you can show a kid almost anything as long as there's a happy ending, because you can't appreciate the light if you don't acknowledge the darkness.
Aside from _Secret of NIMH_ , more films to check out from Don Bluth are _An American Tail_ , _All Dogs Go To Heaven_ , _The Land Before Time_ , and _Anastasia_ . I think you'll find some enjoyment in these.
Don Bluth's studio also did the animation for the video games Dragon's Lair & Space Ace. I'm friends with the guy who created the animation for the Space Ace logo (he worked for Bluth for a bit as well as working for Disney, Warner Bros & even Jim Henson).
he also made disney's best-animated movies robin hood and the rescuers.
Agreed, but I'd slightly reword it from "creative differences" to "quality differences." 70s Disney was frankly horrid, their framerate and corners cutting to save a buck was visually obvious, and Bluth was dead-on.
He's also so right about children's tolerances being totally under-estimated. I can't remember who said it, I think it was Spielberg, but "it isn't healthy for children to never experience fear", it's just a question of presenting it with having a point and a sense of proportion, etc. But just because something scares a kid means it should be stricken is just inane.
While he was at Disney, Bluth also worked on The Rescuers which is also about courageous mice and a silly bird.
@@slick8086 Kinda thinkin’ 99% of animation is a brave mouse and a bird pal.😄
You got fans in Rhode Island, i went to the dispensary wearing my Awkward Ashleigh Tshirt and the budtender gave me a "hi yes hello" and i died. Keep up the good work :-)
I did not realize y’all called them “budtenders”. That funny!
The Devil’s Lettuce?!
WOW! The Ashleigh love is highly contagious and spreading
That good ol' Jazz Cabbage.
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 have you notice that ash has not been answered any of us in the comments?
Don Bluth once said "If you don't show the darkness, you don't appreciate the light. If it weren't for December no one would appreciate May. It's just important that you see both sides of that." Don BLuth believed that children can endure a dark story as long as theirs a happy ending. And for the most part it's true, as a child watching his films i didn't understand all that i watched but as an adult his films make me cry with how well told the stories are from both Light and Dark perspectives. I do wish more studios took chances on darker films for children, not to scare but to teach them that life can be unfair but to show that even in darkest of times hope can still help us through.
Ashleigh mentions it during the video, but the cartoons that SHE is used to growing up watching are literally "completely benign", compared to some of the stuff we got in the 80's and 90's! In my opinion, 1980 thru 1999 are literally THE GOLDEN AGE of animation! It's been almost entirely downhill since that twenty year window, and Disney is responsible for a lot of that!
Also completely explains why Millennials are so "sheltered" compared to how kids used to grow into adulthood.
The Black Cauldron is another good one.
@@jacob4920 millennials grew up with a different kind of dark/light dichotomy. We had Ren and stimpy, rocko's modern life, south Park, etc. Dark and light for us wasn't sadness/joy or loss/gain it was "things that are gross or stupid can also be beautiful and meaningful"
And hey, wouldn't you know it, it's the people who grew up with story's that you are praising that ended up making movies and tv shows for millennials.
Kinda like never showing your kid how to change a tire and then calling them stupid for not knowing how to change a tire, don't you think?
It's ironic because most millennials fall squarely in the window of years you mention in terms of what they grew up watching. Despite the name of the channel/series, Ashleigh is on the very tail end of being a millennial. By some standards people would even label her Gen Z - perhaps that's what you meant as well? Not that I generally like being beholden to the whole generations narrative anyway, as I think it's far too crude and oversimplified.
In any case, while I share a lot of your nostalgia for 80s/90s animation (as someone born in '87), I think it's entirely unfair to say it's been "almost entirely downhill" since 1999. Of course if you're only focusing on Disney and a select few other major releases per year that will give you a certain image of the state of things. But animation is so much more than just the tentpole Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks releases (I would hope as a presumed fan of a creator like Don Bluth that you'd not fall into that trap).
In many ways we're STILL going through a golden age for animation. As there are constantly great new things being put out, and it's more acceptable than ever to enjoy various animated properties as an adult. Not to mention the additional huge influx of foreign animated content we've been getting over the past few decades. Sure there's plenty of crap and mediocre stuff to sift through, but that's true of every time. INCLUDING the 80s and 90s (let's not let nostalgia cloud that basic truth that plenty of old cartoons were pretty bad: either low budget and ugly, blatant toy promotions, and/or lesson-centric pap produced because people wanted TV to do their parenting for them). The difference with those older decades is we've had enough time pass to allow us to forget most of the crap and let the cream rise to the top.
@@siukong Strongly disagree to only one part of your argument. The whole "we're STILL going through a golden age" part. Disney hasn't put out a decent animated flick since "Moana." That was back in 2016. Dreamworks hasn't really produced anything great since the last "How to Train Your Dragon" movie. The "Ice Age" series of films has basically fallen off of a precipice of mediocrity, and Don Bluth... he's still alive, but what was the last movie he ever had a major hand in? Feels like it's been at least a decade.
The only good animation, nowadays, is coming out of Japan. That's not really something Hollywood should be proud of.
My favorite line in this movie:
“Look! The poor turkey fell down.”
Yes... And Jeremy exclaiming "You have a SPARKLY!". 😂😂😂
😂😂
My wife and I will say "You've got a sparkly" when ever either of us shows the other anything new and cool. This was on constantly when I was a teen.
Omg that’s hilarious! Lol. Its those little inside jokes that give couples their own ‘language.’
same! I also often say "excuse me pardon me" because of this film lol
Okay but, why is that the cutest fucking thing though?!?.. like, why can't I have that with someone 😂
Yes, we say that, too ... or if we are late, one of us will say RRRRRRUN THE PLOW IS COMING RRRRRUN
I was in 3rd grade when I read the book “Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of NIMH”. Loved that book and read it multiple times.
Seems like you ought to remember her name was Mrs. *Frisby* .
Yup it was 3rd grade, but I saw this movie before that
@@marqijackson6103 I was in 3rd grade in 1979. Definitely read the book before seeing the movie.😂
I think we read the book in class...then watched the movie. It was ubiquitous in my childhood in the 80s.
@@magnificentfailure2390 Hmm, for some reason I thought it was "Madam Brisby"...?
I guess the book was Frisby, but the movie was Brisby? Go figure...
You must watch the animated feature
"THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER"
It will show you what kind of mental things we had to grow up with!! Losing friends through death and deciete and learning about life and coming of age all while singing songs! (Yes, its a kind of musical)....oh, and did I mention their not humans,..... Their household appliances with human features!
Check it out!
Great suggestion-
I still get triggered anytime the power cord comes close to the brushes while vacuuming.
Jeez! The Brave Little Toaster is high octane Nightmare Fuel.
That'll traumatize Ashleigh! 😮😆
Worthless...
@@means_well for me it's that effing clown...Run...
This animation was trendy for the time, like " Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" or "Charlotte's Web". Both worth the watch. And I'm so happy you're going to see "Galaxy Quest". A movie you can watch over and over.
Galaxy Quest is a lot better if you’ve watched the original Star Trek movies
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is a GREAT cartoon.
I forced… er… introduced Galaxy Quest to some yungins last night. About the 100th time I’ve seen it. They dug it!
Rikki Tikki Tavi and Charlotte's Web bear absolutely no resemblance to this other than both have talking animals. The animation in this is FAR more elaborate.
I loved both Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and Charlottes Web as a kid, I find that more people have not even heard of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi which is baffling to me. They played it on TV all the time!
Elizabeth Brisby is one of my favorite characters. Her love, courage, and vulnerability are what makes her amazing. And the softness of her voice..
where the first name come from? in the film everyone calling her "mrs. Brisby"
@@Kenichi2002 It’s sort of a fan thing. They gave her a first name based on the first name of the woman who provided her voice. It’s in honor of her.
Other than that, as far as I’m aware, Mrs. Brisby has no original first or last name, before joining with Jonathan and starting a family.
@@SyzygyNoon of course she hasent. she was a "normal" field mouse before meeting jhonathan brisby. I think the hwole "wearing clothes, marrige and living a "modern" live in a family" was a thing that Jhonathan brought up, because of his genetecly alteration what NIMH has done with him. Mhm.. i kinda like the Name Elizabeth for her ^^
Love her
"Yall got scared from an early age" 🤣🤣🤣🤣 100% fact! I spent the entire 80s being traumatized by all these fantastic classic movies 🤣
THIS was my movie growing up!
Yes, I think I watched it every day 💚🤗💚
Good to see you here! Have you read the books? Long before the movie.
We saw this in the theater, LOVED it! Still love it.
Me too, Mum. My daddy took a red bike reflector, painted the frame gold, carved the words in the back, and put it on a chain for me. I loved it!
Omg, this and American Tale
@@fullmoonprepping4024 I read the books while I still at school
"I thought it was the National Institute of Mental Health ..." You were right the first time Ashleigh, LMAO.
Been so excited for you to experience Don Bluth's work. He mentored me as a writer (he taught an online course) and every year that goes by I hope he's getting closer to making another film. So far he's had a 22-year hiatus.
He wanted a PG rating for Secret of NIMH, but the MPAA stuck him with a G instead. And because it wasn't Disney, people at the time weren't about to take it seriously. We've come a long way since then.
Wow! That is awesome that you studied from him. He is amazing, and one of my all time favorite animators and storytellers. I was raised on all of his movies- I can always tell if its a Bluth movie. He had that special fingerprint.
✨✨
@@amandaholbrook7752 Pete's Dragon 1977 is also a Bluth film
@@revolg9 yes I know! I was commenting that he was my favorite storyteller.. he had a hand in all my favorites as a child. 💗
I will be forever boggled by how the hell this film got rated G.
It was back when PG was hardcore!!
This movie and Watership Down are what helped scar me as a child. Good times....lol. The animation is also top notch in it's style.
I've been trying to get someone to watch WATERSHIP DOWN. Used to come on TV every year around Christmas. That and the animated HOBBIT
Yes, I enjoyed the Netflix mini-series too. AB should watch the movie though.
@@smokeyverton7981 For a few years a TV channel in my country used to put Watership Down on at Easter. Watching the Twitter reactions come in from teens seeing it for the first time and expecting a cute Easter story is one of the funniest things ever.
Those were my two FAVORITE movies as a kid! I watched them SO MANY TIMES!!!!
Oooh. Watership was soooo good!
The remake was slow. I was disappointed.
This movie was so intense when I was a kid - the Owl more than anything. And it was, and still is, one of my favorites. Its intensity is genuine and one of its best parts.
Such a key part of my childhood. I have no idea how many times I've seen it.
Me too! I just let my son watch it and I was totally afraid that the owl was going to freak him out. He was okay with that part but the NIMH caging and injecting the animals (which was the other part that really freaked me out) definitely got him. He loved it though so we got the book to read together.
Jeremy was voiced by Dom DeLuise, who played the “French Mistake” director in “Blazing Saddles” and Pizza the Hutt in “Spaceballs”. 😁👍
He's also in Smokey and the Bandit 2, hopefully she gets to that someday.
@@toyrunner87
Well eventually she'll get to "Cannonball Run" so there's that 😏
I was thinking Tiger in American Tail, then I looked it up and Dom did both of them .
@@richardrobbins8067 THAT was what I was hoping for too!!! ❤️❤️❤️
@@darreth0104
I know it ain't the same, but still pretty great 'Just SUMM Reactions' viewed it a week ago. If that helps🙂
I recommend this movie to people all the time. They look at me like I’m crazy but I know it’s great. It’s like all dogs go to heaven, land before time, American tale, etc. we grew up on cartoons where folks died a lot
Most of those were Dog Bluth movies so . . . checks out
The drama between Don Bluth and Disney made for great entertainment when we were kids. And don't forget, Anastasia was Bluth's version of a Princess movie.
Oliver & Company was by far my favourite!!
All Dogs Go to Heaven, absolutely great!
Modern family movies like Encanto and Turning Red are good and all, but I miss when animated movies had real stakes.
I can only count the number of times I've seen this movie on one hand. But it was the first of Don Bluth's greatest films. But, in my opinion, his magnum opus was An American Tail. That film cemented him as a great animated movie creator. Mainly because that film actually made Disney afraid and encouraged them to kick off what is known as the "Disney Rennaissance".
I love the original Land Before Time.
Don Bluth is one of America’s greatest artists. His animated movies are masterpieces. I think Anastasia is one of his best movies, even his less successful works like pebble and the penguin and Titan AE are incredible.
@@oaf-77 Anastasia reminds me of Ashleigh since they're both sassy redheads lol 🤣
I couldn’t count how many times I’ve seen nimh. I grew up with this, it was a very significant film for me
I loved American Tail growing up. I used to carry a plush Fievel doll with me everywhere
“No wonder your generation are a bunch of savages” my favorite quote from you. Grest pick from whomever selected it. Keep up the great work. 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾🤩👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
She hasn’t even seen The Black Cauldron or Watership Down
“Watership Down” is another animated classic from the 80’s.
And features bunny rabbits.
@@Weaseldog2001 Also, make sure you have a box of tissues and be prepared for a LOT of tears. I saw that thing when I was around 12 for the first time. lol Even as tough as it was to watch, it ended up being one of my all time faves. Also always a tear-jerker.
@@nalakia and the movie is remarkably true to the book.
*cough-cough* 70s!
That movie completely fucked me up as a kid!
I really enjoyed having Don Bluth's films growing up, I mostly watched the three films that came after this (An American Tail, The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go To Heaven) but either way, the Bluth storytelling worlds were always comfortable yet frightening; perilous yet safe; and other similar oxymorons. I think they advanced what children's animation could be immensely in a lot of ways.
I was just going to suggest _An American Tail_
He though children were not stupid. You can do dark and tragic, as long as they can have their Happy ending. And the more challenging the path, the more precious the final happiness is. And I believe his motto is true because The Rescuers is one of my favourite Disney movies.
The Don Bluth philosophy of storytelling is that children will accept all the scary and disturbing things you can throw at them as long as you give it a happy ending. It’s why The Land Before Time had to be re-edited multiple times before release to make the ending as happy as possible.
The Great Owl, Dragon the cat, these were some of the most terrifying creatures we had ever seen in animation at the time. I love the fact that The Secret of NIMH is STILL rewatchable decades later, because as an adult I can appreciate the more nuanced stuff while the little ones can still just gush about the animated rodents.
80s kids movies: funny, laid back and off-handedly traumatizing
It toughened us up and taught us to never get too attached to our heroes.
Yeah, the Great Owl was Not kid friendly.
LOL truth!!!!
The Last Unicorn used to scare the crap outta me.
The peanut butter solution
This was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid, along with "The Dark Crystal" and "The Neverending Story".
Just a word of advice about Don Bluth movies: The first ones are often great, but you're usually better off skipping the sequels.
He didn’t have much if any input in those sequels.
Well i liked "Feivel goes West" and laughed my ass off to it. Sure it wasn't as heartbreaking drama like the first one but still an awesome movie. Basically the ONLY good sequel to a Don Bluth movie. And also a wonderful final role for Jimmy Steward who played the old Sheriff dog :)
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 lol I love fievel goes west. Lol I would lmao at the lazy eye scene everytime.
@@vando6679 Yup! THAT is where i had lost it and was rolling on the floor xD
I never saw Fieval Goes West, but that at least seemed to get some good reaction. The rest of the sequels, avoid....
I remember reading the book in elementary school then getting to watch the movie in class. Someone else already mentioned it, but you should absolutely check out The Last Unicorn.
47 years old and I still love this movie and have re-watch it once in a while over the years. Also, the theme by Jerry Goldsmith is a melody I think is so overlooked and underrated. What a beautiful tune. Love the pictorial credits at the end as well. Growing up with movies like this and the so called "violent" cartoons (Loony Toons - Buggs Bunny and Friends, Heckle and Jeckle, Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, Popeye, etc) cartoons that have been since banned (you can only watch the "fluffy" versions these days) is what made our generation so great compared to wimpier generations that followed. I think adults soo underestimate children and their logic and capability to learn and decipher the "adult" topics in those old cartoons and themes sometimes hidden subliminaly inside the toons. Kids aren't idiots, but sometimes they are raised to be by blocking their eyes and plugging their ears.
I can’t believe she reacted to this underrated masterpiece! This channel is awesome!
This movie, the Dark Crystal and Labyrinth were my go to’s as a kid. They all seemed to be the same sort of genre for me and I loved them!
Really looking forward to Galaxy Quest!!! Love it! 😁
I remember Sci Fi had a stranglehold on the decade thanks to Star Wars (Which I love, don't take this as criticism of sci fi) but for those of us that loved Fantasy, there were very few movies to scratch that itch before Harry Potter, Pirates of the Carribean and Lord of the Rings helped the genre take off. The ones Jam mentioned, plus some things like the animated Hobbit, Legend, Dragonslayer and the Conan films were among the few.
I have The Dark Crystal on dvd!
(only because I no longer have a vcr) 🤫
@@ralphwiggum6385 Jim Henson Creature shop classic
Love Galaxy Quest. When Rickman eventually says That Line, it always gives me goosebumps. Such a great actor.
I think I've seen The Dark Crystal more than Star Wars. The making of was amazing.
You need to watch Watcher In The Woods, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Watership Down to really grasp what we were subjected to at a very young age lol
Watcher in the Woods scarred me for life!
Plague Dogs was done by the same people that did Watership Down.
Loved The Watcher in the Woods and Child of Glass when I was a kid. I liked the scary Disney. Who am I kidding? I loved Candleshoe and Moon Spinners too. I liked all Disney.
Glad to see someone else remembers The Watcher in the Woods.
Watership Down wasn't meant for children, but back then anything animated was seen by the general public as "kid's stuff", so we saw many things we weren't supposed to.
Watership Down traumatised 9 year old me back in the day.
The Great Owl was voiced by John Carradine who was Drew Barrymore's grandfather. He did a great job voicing that character and the great owl scared the daylights out of me when I saw this in the theater at seven years old in the summer of 1982. There were many traumatizing scenes in this film. That's why I loved Jeremy the crow so much. He brought a lightness and much needed humor to what was a very tense movie and Dom DeLuise was so funny voicing him. Another great animated film that came out around the same time was Disney's "The Fox And The Hound". Kurt Russell voices the Hound dog Copper as an adult I believe. You would really enjoy it. You are also the first reactor to watch "The Secret Of Nimh." I love your channel and that you react to movies that no one else does. It's so much fun 😊😊
I love this film. One of the best depictions of hero. Not a soldier or a super hero but a single mother of three kids facing her fears to save the life of her child. Such a great role model for children!
i saw this when i was a kid, and still consider it one of the best animated movies ever made.
made in an age where kids were taken seriously as human beings, and not considered to be
so fragile that the slightest hint of negativity would scare them for life, as they are today.
Okay, Boomer. I too was a kid when this came out but also actually have a kid today. All the fragility rants are urban legend.
@@kristennorth3268 against my better senses i gotta ask. you both agree about the film, yet you felt the need to insult him with an outdated attack that doesn't apply to either of you, over a child rearing you both agree with?
@@chrissandoval7675 who are we insulting?
@@daveyjones5702 you? no one. ms. north? you. if me asking clarification from ms. north is insulting, than i guess i'm guilty of that.
@@chrissandoval7675 well i'm not sure what she means by 'boomer', but i had interpreted he post as agreeing with me.
What a great thing to wake up to! Watching while I have my morning coffee. This and "The Great Mouse Detective" were my childhood. So glad you reacted. Thank you!
Was just thinking about Rattigan from The Great Mouse Detective when seeing Jenner in this film. Wish today's kids had more exposure to both of these films.
This movie came out well before Disney's Renaissance period, so it was still in between moments when animated movies weren't as popular. Still, the animation was pretty much the best it could be at the time.
Don went on to make a bunch of animated movies, some produced by Spielberg, and are still some of my favorite animated features.
You could even say that Bluth leading a walkout at Disney during production of The Fox and The Hound and then creating the triple punch of NIMH > American Tail > Land Before Time contributed to Disney hunkering down and rebuilding their animation department from the ground up in the mid-80s, culminating in The Little Mermaid. Competition drives innovation!
Many credit Don Bluth and the competition he provided as the inspiration for the Disney renaissance.
If Disney didn't change how they made animated movies, Eisner and Katzenburg may have closed the whole department. And all those brilliant animators and directors would have ended up working for Bluth and Spielberg.
I would recommend Watership Down.
@@acoupleofwavylines Absolutely, to the point where Disney they lifted a bunch of ideas from Bluth. Ashleigh was absolutely on the nose with her comparison of Jeremy and Scuttle.
It's also a Bakshi film, if memory serves right, he's alot more willing to push more mature elements in animation
Don Bluth believed that children could handle anything as long as there was a happy ending. And he really put us to the test with a lot of his movies.
Fun fact: Don Bluth based the look of Mrs Brisby on his grandmother.
Well, if you're dipping into 80's animated fantasy, then I recommend "The Last Unicorn" "Flight Of Dragons" "The Hobbit" "Lord Of The Rings" "Return Of The King" and "Heavy Metal".
Also Fire and Ice
🙌🏼 Flight of Dragons 🙌🏼 my all time favorite!!!!! The Secret of NIMH was way up there too.
Another I just thought of: The last unicorn.
Also: Just because its animated doesn't mean its for kids. Granted, its an easy trap to fall into
So Good! I love that movie!
The Last Unicorn was one of my favorite books when I was a kid/teenager in the 80s, I still reread it every once in a while.
Like "Fritz the Cat"! 😁👍🏻
In the source novel, the rats were divided into two groups, one wanted to live off the grid, the other wanted use technology.
They should'a worked together and converted the Farmer's house to solar.
Saw it in the theater in the day. The "official" reason my folks took us is we all thought my kid sister was gonna love it, but despite me being a 14 year old dude, I was the one that loved it. My kid sister was too young and couldn't really comprehend it, and my mom was the sort to always find shit wrong with a movie and she thought this was "too scary and had cussing in it", just the voice of a prude (an OG Karen). But I LOVED it, still do. I totally became a fan of Don Bluth's animation.
It's important to understand this was basically one of those "young adult" novels, much like Harry Potter in terms of target depth. Serious consequences, not really unsuitable for very young kids, but they'll probably just be kinda lost, but far simpler than "full adult" novels. That 9-14 sort of age.
Another very, very similar film that I adore just as much is The Last Unicorn. I recommend the hell out of that.
Why do I still remember the doggone theme song to the last unicorn?? Hell, I barely remember the plot, but I remember that song. Lol.
@@Ivy94F Because it was a fantastic song, that's why. You do realize the band America did the lyrical songs, right?
It was great to hear Dom Deluise's laugh again. It was always quite infectious. RIP Captain Chaos.
6:51 Fun fact.. the reason the animation reminds you of the aristocats.. well because the director of this movie Don Bluth.. was once a Disney animator around the time "The Aristocats" was made
Gary Goldman - the real animator. Bluth was just the director. Goldman’s cat faces are what’s known.
@@brianvernon249 Very true. However the comment was on ashlieghs observation and its the fact Bluth was a Disney animator at the time.. but you're right I forgot to give credit where credit is due to Gary Goldman.
Plus to be fair.. the animation on the mice reminds me more of the animation on Bernard and Bianca from the Rescuers which Bluth was the directing animator for.
I LOVED this movie as a child of the '80s and early '90s and it stuck with me not only through elementary school but college as well. One of the books we read in 6th grade English was _Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH,_ and I found out just how different the movie is from the book. They're both equally good as their own entities, imo.
When I went to art school for college to become an illustrator, the first semester of senior year Advanced Illustration was independent study in that we came up with assignments for ourselves that were focused on our chosen specialties in order to start building a solid portfolio. I'm a children's/young adult illustrator and love telling stories with my work, so I made one of my assignments an illustration for the NIMH book. I drew Jeremy flying Mrs. Frisby to the Great Owl. The piece is still up on my deviantART gallery, but I don't know if YT allows linking to external things. I'll try in a reply, at least.
That's awesome! Thank you for sharing!
We read that book in 5th grade, that's the only reason I already knew what NIMH stood for. And as odd as this may sound, I was happy they changed the name to "Brisby" for the movie, because at the time I could not understand how the author was not sued into oblivion by the company that trademarked "Frisbee". (I was not exactly a normal kid, lol.)
This is a great movie. Most of us were exposed to it through HBO (even those of us who didn't have cable, or had it sporadically). You'd watch this the morning after a sleepover, followed by Return of the Jedi.
And yes, things like this was why we are harder than you. But things like Vietnam are why our parents were harder than us, and things like the great depression and ww2 are why their parents were harder than them. I'd say we were the perfect level of hardness, and for a hell of a bargain price!
But remember, war is a real-life thing (also repetitive - we had Desert Storm, Millennials and Zeds had Iraq/Afghanistan, etc.). This was our _escapism._
I must've watched this movie a thousand times as a kid, and could probably write the script from memory. This reaction made my day. Thank you so much, Ashleigh!
I literally gasped in excitement when I saw this thumbnail. Easily my favorite animated movie of all time. Don Bluth was such a master of making kids movies that didn't pander or talk down to children. You need to continue down this rabbit hole with All Dogs Go To Heaven, An American Tail, and Land Before Time.
I loved this movie ever since I was a kid. Another great magical movie is Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal.
And the Last Unicorn was kinda wild too.
@@Crazyhorrse love The Last Unicorn
Fun Fact: the title of the original book was "Mrs Frisbee and The Rats Of NIMH" but she was renamed to Brisby for the movie to avoid a potential suit from the Frisbee company.
It's a good read and much more grounded (aside from the intelligent rats). The element of magic was entirely made up for the movie.
I enjoyed the book as well, but I think it stayed on the flashback with NIMH too long and that is something the film was able to do better say what happened show a bit with experimentation, rats learning, animals escaping.
@@jamesmoyner7499 Fair. That flashback does last quite a while. I'm sure it's not 50% of the book, but it sure feels that way when I try to remember it now.
I love how she calls us "hard-asses" and then apologizes for fear that it will offend us! No Ashleigh, we take it as a compliment! Keep calling us that!
Us Gen Xers ARE hard-asses! We were put through it growing up during that timeframe.
Gen Xer's = Badasses. 😁
We have an X in out generation name. Of course we're badasses!
This Gen Xer was not offended. It would take a lot more than that!
When my daughter was little, the Secret of NIMH and Furngully were two of her favorites.
I'm so glad you reacted to this. I highly recommend Watership Down, it's very similar to this movie, but it's about rabbits, and how they have to find a new home because humans are trying to develop the land their warren is on. It's dark, strange, but very cool, and is a great story.
And definitely not for the squeamish.
Watership Down, Secret of NIMH and the Dark Crystal were my holy trinity as a kid.
When you were watching Willow you mentioned that it must have been the third in the trio of scary gen-x kids movies w/Labyrinth and Neverending Story - and I literally thought of this movie lol (and a few more). So many things we watched were so dark. Here are a few more if you are interested: The Dark Crystal (Jim Henson), Legend, and the terrifying Return To Oz
I was going to say you HAVE to mention the dark crystal because that shit creeped me put as a kid and it was fantastic.
Legend... but what version ? US cut with Tangerine Dreams score, longer European cut with the Jerry Goldsmith's one, or Director's Cut (Goldsmith score again) ?
@@jean-mi1825 I just remember the BIGASSDEMON lol
and omg - Time Bandits. That is still disturbing and brilliant. And disturbing.
@@chrisbergsten1429 Oh god, it barely got made at the time. If you've not seen it, there is a Return to Oz documentary floating around on youtube... Can't remember who made it, but it covers all the ABSOLUTELY INSANE shit the writer / director had to go through to get that film made. It's about an hour long, and it's quite good.
I went looking for it and I'm not sure if it's still on youtube or not, but there's another video I remembered on a channel called 'in praise of shadows' that's got a bit of behind the scenes stuff. He talks about some of the stuff that happened, but the short story is that the director got fired during production and a bunch of other directors had to step up and strong-arm disney into letting him finish the movie. They underestimated the production costs of doing all of these fantastical effects and stuff, so they had to skimp on things. The other doc that I saw went into how they had to reduce the scope of the film alot due to just practical reasons since the puppets and costumes and stuff were so complicated to make, so some parts of the movie are really elaborate with these big ornate sets, but then some other scenes they were basically out of money and had to shoot whatever they could shoot.
My understanding of the production, tho, was that it was basically torture for a lot of the practical effects people who had to contort themselves in order to do the puppeteer work, and that there were a lot of instances of people in costume falling over because they couldn't see anything (or because they had wheels on their hands and feet, heh). I think the guy who did the stop motion stuff had a lot of fun with the effects, tho, and it's some of the best stop motion in any film, imo.
This movie doesn’t mess around and it’s one of my all time favorites. In particular I love that there’s this mythical status around Jonathan Brisby. His poor little wife trying to save her family and running into all these terrifying and powerful people that won’t give her the time of day until they know who she is, that whatever debt or respect they owe her late husband is so profound they’ll help her despite themselves.
The book this movie is based on is incredible. One of the very best. I've read it to my students many times.
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh. If anyone is interested.
Yep, we read the book in 5th Grade at school before watching this movie version of it in the mid 80s. I loved the book as a kid.
Absolutely. The book was definitely a page-turner. It was written for children, but its tone was never condescending.
@@TimSeraphiel My 3rd grade teacher read it to us.
GREAT REACTION! This was my (now 42 yr.old) son's FAVORITE MOVIE when he was a child! Our family quotes lines from it even now!("Come inside, or go away!"). Yes, the 80's DID have a LOT of animated shows that were a little "dark". In fact a lot of parents at the time really started previewing the VHS tapes they had rented for their kids to watch BEFORE they let their kids watch it. It was definitely a different time!
12:13 Justin is voiced by my mother's biggest crush, Peter Strauss, who starred in many TV movies and miniseries, such as "Rich Man, Poor Man" and "The Jericho Mile".
The Dark Crystal is the movie I can vividly remember being freaked out by as a kid but still ended up loving.
@ Lyly I felt the same way i've always had an interest in mythology and practical effects The Dark Crystal does live up to it's dark name !😅 One of the great fantasy classics..ASHLEIGH has got to react to that ! CHEERS.
Me too the villains freaked me out at 3ish
I absolutely love this film. It is not only one of the best animated films ever made, but one of the best films ever made.
Okay so some facts for it:
This film is dark and even though this is Don Bluth’s first film he made and made after he left Disney with a whole bunch of their animators. It is an incredible film and Bluth said it best “Kids can handle anything as long as there is a happy ending.”. The score in this film is spectacular especially in the house raising scene and one of my favorite movie moments.
Also the main character was renamed from Frisbee in the book to Brisbee because they didn’t want to be sued by the Fribee company.
The voice of the crow Jeremy is Dom DeLuise who has been in several Mel Brooks films you have already watched for the channel-
He was Pizza the Hutt in Spaceballs,
He was the Don in Robin Hood Men in Tights,
He was Emperor Nero in History of the World Part 1,
He was the director Buddy Bizarre who's musical was interrupted in Blazing Saddles and he is in a few other Don Bluth films.
Lastly it is rather funny in your preview review you were right about NIMH being National Institute Mental Health.
To explain something they can't move Timmy because he has to stay in bed thus why the house has to be moved.
Yes this film was not a big hit when it first came and slowly gained a cult following. I didn't see this film until I was around 12 in 2007 and was completely sucked in.
Taking the movie as is, I liked it. I was still bummed, because I was one of the few that had read the book a couple years prior, "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats from NIMH". The book was better at explaining the scientific stuff, there was no mystical mumbo-jumbo in it.
@@gorramgomer Well I think Doug Walker explained it best there is three things all working together you have science, magic, and the unknown. Plus magic is just science that doesn’t have an explanation to it yet.
@@gorramgomer the book is fantastic. Since I love the book I could never get into this movie because they added magic. The magic ruined it for me.
😭😭 flashing back to my worn out VHS recording off of TV of this movie. I loved this movie as a child♥️ and was therefore heartbroken when I showed it to my son and he didn’t care about it at all😂
Right there with you. Even bought the book for my daughter.
Nuthin'. 🤷
Watched this about a billion times growing up. Still holds up. Gorgeous animation and relevant story with depth and arc and laughs and cries. One of my favs. Also... female lead overcoming insurmountable odds and saving the day is always good to see. This always reminds me of my momma when I watch it. She'd do this for my sister and I without even thinking about it.
I was seven years old when this movie came out, and my mom innocently took me to see it in the theatre. I'm not sure I ever recovered.
That's nothin. I accidently took my nephew to see The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. The title sounded cute and I didn't research the film beforehand. I'm allowed to take him to dinner or sports but not movies anymore.
@@seanrosenau2088 OH BABY!!!!
You were older than I was. I first saw it in 1985 when I was five or six.
It's still my favorite animated movie of all time.
When we moved into our house a few years ago, there is a huge overgrown rose bush in our yard. My husband made an offhand comment about hope there aren't magic rats in there. A now it is forever known as the NIMH bush, lol.
I had this movie on VHS as a kid in the 80s and I always loved that it was a little dark. It’s always been one of my favorite cartoon movies. Terrific voice acting in it too. The great Dom DeLuise who played the crow, also does the voice of the friendly cat in An American Tail.
willow earlier this week and secret of nimh today, your member requests are really fire :)
80's movies are amazing. Practical effects still look as awesome as before, stories were kind of dark/scary but they also showed that light came at the end of it, and they were so original, most of those stories wouldn't even be approved for production for fear of being canceled (Back to the Future comes to mind: a young man is friends with an old man, goes to the past and his mom has the hot for him).
This was my favorite children's book from when I was young- so glad you saw the movie, though it is different from the book. In the book there is no mystical/magical element, the rats escape NIMH because the drugs made them rational and intelligent, and they wanted to use their own science/abilities instead of living off mankind in the rosebush. The magical elements do make for a better movie though.
Somehow, whenever a cartoon has mice as the main characters it turns out great. :) I haven't seen this one, but The Great Mouse Detective is one of my favorite cartoons ever, and I also love An American Tail, Fievel Goes West, The Rescuers, and The Rescuers Down Under.
"I don't remember any children's cartoons that had blood in it like this."
Welcome to the violent, tragic world of Don Bluth cartoon films.
I know, right! Oh my breathless lord, so much trauma! But you know what, I feel like it helped me survive when my own personal trauma came.
Hmm... I wonder if she's ready for Watership Down?
@@LA_HA No one is ever really ready for "Watership Down".
Also did Don Bluth have some kind of history with childhood illness? Because it's a part of like half his movies.
@@silentjay01 That's nothing. Have you ever seen Felidae? th-cam.com/video/Bg1Zy1L22Yk/w-d-xo.html
This is one of the staples of my 80's childhood! This, Dark Crystal, The Great Mouse Detective, and An American Tail. Those were, without a doubt, the four movies that were a part of any movie library you had at home. And I think I watched every one in the theater but Dark Crystal. That one freaked me out just on TV, I can't imagine my brain dealing with Dark Crystal on the big screen!
Wonderful reaction as always, would love to see your reaction to Roger Rabbit with animation and live action working together. Plus, I just love Bob Hoskins!
I always loved The Dark Crystal. I saw the trailer with some other movie and I just had to see it. And it didn’t disappoint. I can still remember the theater and the popcorn and the Sweet-Tarts. The soundtrack is my all-time favorite piece of music, too.
Love love love the Great Mouse Detective.
@@gvehar What really left the impression on me was the villain character with the high pitch sound! Just creepy every time you heard him do it!!
@@pingidjit My daughter and I would watch it together when she was young, and just the voice of Vincent Price for Ratigan was incredible! But I would get the biggest laugh from my daughter when I imitated Figget the bat with "Owww!! MY FOOT, MY ONLY FOOT!!"
Roger Rabbit is famous for the bouncer seen but that one short scene is most of Pete's Dragon
slow day at work, so this is my 4th Ashleigh review already this morning. not much to add to the 2,500+ other comments, but if you get around to watching the recent Netflix sci-fi/horror film "Archive 81" (my daughter watched it with me last week, and it was already my second time watching the 8 episodes) then you'll enjoy how "Secret of NIMH" is referenced 2 or 3 times -- AND there's a rat in the series as well. coincidence? probably there's no such thing as coincidences. thanks for building up this channel Ashleigh!
This reminded me of a movie we use to watch as kids in the late 70's called Watership Down, based around rabbits in southern England trying to escape human encroachment on their woodland burrows, it is well worth a watch!
I’m convinced the one-two punch of this and The Black Cauldron explains A LOT about us gen-Xers of a certain age.
Crunchy munchy!
HR Puffnstuff as well
Spittin' straight facts, there!
As for me, I had a big dollop of Return to Oz and Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow shaping my tastes at that impressionable age.
The Black Cauldron though disappeared for many, many years. I had an older cousin who took me to see it and I loved it. But it didn’t do well and was pretty much discarded by Disney until almost twenty years later when they put it out on DVD.
@@DicnballzBitch
Did and Marty Kroft were doing ALL the acid, weren't they?
Oh snap! I can't believe you're watching this. This is one of my favorite movies from my childhood. My 3rd grade teacher read us the book in class for story time back in 1987. Then, we watched the movie. I've loved it every since. Granted, it's a lot different from the book, but the plot is the same. The animation is excellent. Some key differences:
1. There was no magic in the book
2. Nicodemus didn't die, had an eye patch and didn't have magic powers
3.Justin didn't kill Jenner. Jenner and his followers left the other. They were all killed trying to steal electrical wires and were electrocuted
4. Mrs. Brisbie's name in the book was Mrs. Frisbie. They changed it for copyright purposes because of the toy.
5. Brutus didn't look as bad ass as he did in the movie. He was described as very large and actually spoke. He more or less told Mrs. Fribie to leave, not chance her away.
As someone who has a wonderful mom, this movie hits me so hard every time!! Such a great movie and I'm sad not a lot of people know it! Thanks for the great reactions you're my favorite person to watch 😀
GenX grew up with the Black Cauldron. That’s a dark animation. I saw Bambi as a small child in an outdoor theater. A drive in. No conversations about the film were allowed because as my mom used to say “ children are to be seen and not heard “. Lol
Talking about being scared at an early age: My dad took me to see The Beast Within. When I said I was too scared to finish it, he told me to wait in the lobby of the theater till it was over. I was 8.
My mom took me to a high school haunted house one year. We go around a corner and I see my aunt in a hospital bed with her leg hacked off and bloody while a man in a surgeon gown and mask was running around with a soup bone in one hand and a meat clever in the other while my aunt kept screaming, "Help me Chris! Help me!" When I start screaming, my mom grabs me by the shoulders and crouches down to my eye level and said, "Get your shit together, or I'll make you go sit in the car." I was 3.
The 70's / 80's was wild as a child friend. Heavy Metal, American Pop, Wizards... Animated films were traumatizing back then.
Love to Beans and Hubben from your Gen X buddy.
Other good ones from the same era are: D.A.R.Y.L, Short circuit, The Rescuers ..
This movie was a STAPLE of mine growing up :) I've always had the " ... the lee of the stone ..." in my head :)
💘 this movie! :)
If you're getting into animated movies from back then, and want to comment on why we're all f*&^ed in the head, you should watch 1987's The Brave Little Toaster! :)
That movie is the cause of atleast 85% of my mental illnesses! 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣🥺🥺🥺☹️😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Ashleigh: “I at first thought it was the National Institute for Mental Heath but I don’t think it is.”
Me: “OH BUT IT IS!”
(especially when your baby boy is sick and you need to move your cinderblock house)
Such a classic movie, I watched it so much as a kid and still absolutely love it, Don Bluth had such a distinctive style, really wish he had a more expansive catalogue especially with things in the same vein as this. One thing I love about it is it's basically a fantasy story, just scaled down to the perspective of small animals in our world. It's also really interesting how unique and distinct Mrs. Brisby is as a character, because not only is she a female protagonist in what is basically an adventure film, she's actually an older woman, a mother, and she's doing all this for her children. That's a surprisingly rare motivation for a main character especially in this kind of film, you might get characters like her as a side character or something but I really can't think of that many main characters like her, especially in animation. Like the closest I can think of is maybe the mom in Brave kind of? but Merida is still definitely the main character there.
The Secret of NIMH is one of my all time favorite films. All of the Don Bluth animated films are amazing.
Now that we've opened the can of traumatizing child movies can we get the trifecta: Watership Down, The Plague Dogs, and Felidae!
This is really nice. I’d love to see more animated content in the future.
Fantasia (1940)
The Jungle Book (1967)
Heavy Metal (1981)
The Land Before Time (1988)
Rock N' Rule..
@@theman4884 She's seen all the Disney stuff.
@@MechaGai Ok Heavy Metal then
@@theman4884 Also The Land Before Time was NOT Disney. That was also done by Don Bluth after he left Disney, and was produced by Steven Spielberg.
80s Don Bluth!? Yes! Finally! The Land Before Time and American Tail soon?
I second and third and fourth this.
Yes Please. I would also add All Dogs Go to Heaven to that list.
@@theCrownofSympathy I keep forgetting that was '89. Very much yes! And RIP Judith Barsi.
I remember closing my eyes at the spider scene. And the Justin/Jenner fight has always been a favorite sword fight.
I'm an 80's- 90's kid and this was one of my favorite movies back then. I've never gone more than a few years without watching it.
Ashleigh - if you think NIMH is dark & scarry, you should watch the DARK CRYSTAL.
Better yet: Watership Down.
@@gordieparenteau6555 or plague dogs
my uncle actually recorded the entire movie to audio tape and listened to it at work like an audiobook
Oh, the trauma that our cartoons brought us...yes. I still tear up when I hear music from An American Tail and The Land Before Time.
ohhhh land before time. ...
Land Before Time brings up all the big feels, yep, yep, yep!
We watched this in first grade on rainy days,it has also become one of my daughters favorites
I saw this when I was 6. I was both terrified and fascinated, as well as finding additional sympathy for animals of all sorts.
And I don’t know whether to be so proud or so sad that Millenials AUTOMATICALLY see NIMH and understand it as “National Institute of Mental Health.” Us target audiences did not have to make that connection at the time. (Seriously though, I lost it when you said you doubted it based on the image! 😆)
I'm neither a millennial nor American, so for me it's nickel-metal hydride. :)
@@MravacKid So for you the Secret of NiMH is not to overcharge them, or it’ll explode?
I saw this when it came out. I was 5 years old and it turned into my favourite animated movie. I had seen "Bambi" and "Lady and the Tramp" at that time, so my reference was not that big, but I still think it holds up remarkably well. I just love how dark it is in parts.
Shortly before it came out I had seen E.T.
These were the first two movies with scores by John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith I ever saw, and it convinced my 5 year old self that they were the greatest composers alive.
And in hindsight, I wasn't wrong about that. ;)
I lived for Don Bluth animated films when I was a kid. Loved the darkness of the stories, preferred it over the cheese of Disney for sure.
Yeah I was not a Disney kid, I was a Don Bluth kid back in the day, even got to meet him once at a comic con, very very nice man.
Yeah and the animation quality was absolutely AMAZING! Sooo smooth and detailed.You could tell Don Bluth cared for that and NOT saving costs there by skipping animation steps.
You take-a da kids and make-a dem sad and scared.
I grew up with this film! One of my childhood favorites! Had a blast showing it to my kids!
For your amusement, some of the voice actors in this movie are...
Jeremy the crow.....Dom DeLuise
Justin the rat.....Peter Strauss
Nicodemus the rat.....Sir Derek Jacobi
The Great Owl.....John Carradine
Martin Brisby the young mouse with the blue shirt.....Wil Wheaton