The Rescuers

A few pictures to introduce the film that got me back into animation in 1990

If you came here searching for the hidden image in "The Rescuers", check the Urban Legends / Disney films section.   (((UNSUITABLE FOR CHILDREN))) - contains images of bare nakedness!

UK TV trailer for the March/April 1990 re-release of "The Rescuers"   [Non Streaming]

US trailer for the 1990 release of "The Rescuers Down Under"   [Non Streaming]

This is a picture of Bernard and Bianca after being chased by Madame Medusa's two alligators.

Penny is forced by Madame Medusa and her cohort Snoops to search an old pirate's cave for the Devil's Eye diamond.

Madame Medusa finally has the Devil's Eye hidden in the teddy bear, but she's not going to share with Snoops! (Boo Hiss!)

The Rescuers is about an orphan named Penny who is kidnapped by the dastardly Madame Medusa (Geraldine Page) in order to make her look for a giant diamond known as the Devil's Eye. Penny is held prisoner in an old decaying riverboat, but sneaks away one night and drops a message in a bottle into the water. This bottle is recovered by New York mice, and taken to the headquarters of the Rescue Aid Society under the United Nations building where two agents, Bernard the janitor (Bob Newhart) and the Hungarian agent Bianca (Eva Gabor) set off to rescue her.

Bernard and Bianca have all the fun of being chased by a lion, by two alligators and by Medusa with a rapid-fire shotgun! I like the first half of this film quite a bit more than the second half. The first half centres around Bernard, Bianca and their world, the second is largely around the human world and seems a little less fun somehow, although this is still a very entertaining film!

This was one of the first films I saw after our local cinema The Odeon was built in 1990, although I had seen the film on its first release in 1977.   I wasn't expecting to like it - those days I saw just about every film going because the new cinema was the first one easily available to me, and I've always liked the experience of going to the cinema from being a young child.   I gave it a try.

I tried to be hard and adult - I was a 21 year old around an average age of about 17 including parents! I was just here for the art of course! As soon as Bernard had his throat corroded by moonshine and Wilbur the albatross got toasted by Medusas swamp mobile I was gone! I couldn't stop laughing!

When I saw this film in 1977 I hated it, but this time round I thought I was going to leave on a trolley! I recovered my composure after about a minute fortunately! These days I can watch in safety, now that the surprise of the sadism has worn off! (I'm a sucker for sadistic humour!)

This film saw Don Bluth taking the role for the first time as directing animator, and his future partner in crime John Pomeroy was allowed his first big animation job - the animation of Penny. Disney has progressed a long way from those days of scribbly "Zagreb" animation, but for a lot of people, this is the Disney of their childhood!

A strange series of events led to my current interest in animation. I'm going to enjoy boring you with the details!

I have always enjoyed cartoon art in different forms. When I was in hospital in 1979 on the childrens ward, we used to share around our comics during the night, and the one that was thrown my way was Marvel comic's Ghost Rider. I became instanty keen on this new form of comic. Not about people getting covered in paint or eating giant jellies, but about this guy who was being persued by the Devil for his soul, and who turned into a flaming skeleton by night! Try as I might, for the next few years I could never find this comic again. During the summer of 1982 Ghost Rider appeared in a new Marvel comic about the Incredible Hulk, and once more I had a reason to live! Tucked away in the middle of this comic was a small cartoon strip that featured a small black and white mouse called Mrs Brisby, who every week for about five weeks was set in different cliffhanger situations, but we were always told that to find out what happens we had to see "The Secret of NIMH!"

I was really interested in seeing this film, but I wasn't able to. After my failure to see NIMH I totally went off the idea of animated films for almost ten years. The life of school took over, and I kind of 'put away childish things'. Years later, after I had left school, and had recently attained the freedom of a car, and was too grown up for such things, I went to see The Rescuers for fun, for something to do, and in part to remind myself of what it was like to be me in 1977! After the experience described above, I was well into animation again! Not just for the films, but for the art of animation. I drew scenes from every film that held my interest, and even drew a few full-colour 30 frame flip books! They each took two weeks to draw and animate! (I should have got out more often!)

Now that I was interested in animation again I watched just about every animated film and short going, so when a new animated Christmas film called "An American Tail" was shown on the new but short-lived British Satellite Broadcasting network in 1990 I made sure to watch. I thought everything about it was brilliant, especially the artwork which has always been 'my thing'! I looked out for everything that was made by my now favourite animator Don Bluth, and discovered an old ghost from the past - he made The Secret of NIMH! that film I'd wanted to see nearly half my lifetime ago! I had a look for this film in every video library, but was never able to find it, so I gave up. Two years later I was spurred into looking again when NIMH was finally shown on ITV (with only 10 seconds of ending credits!)

The Secret of NIMH on ITV (Yorkshire TV region), Christmas 1992.

Instead of just looking for the tape I ordered it from a video shop, and this time I got it! When I got the tape I began to draw dozens of NIMH pictures! I stopped drawing after a while, but I still watched animated films off and on, and remained a fan of Don Bluth's films. In 1993 I finally got to see NIMH at the cinema! It looked a bit old and creaky by then, but it was well worth going! I had to see it, if only to keep a promise to myself! After getting on the net on 17 November 1997 I started searching again for an old interest - Don Bluth animation! In doing so, I searched for Mrs Brisby, and came upon Charlie Dukes Secret of Nimh page! I looked at all of those pictures, the red haze went up, and before I knew what was happening I was drawing again like an artistic Tazmanian Devil! So thats pretty much how I come to be here! They were right on The Lion King - life IS a circle!!  

I've since discovered from other sites that The Rescuers has real connections with NIMH other than personally for me.   Beyond the fact that Don Bluth worked on this film as Directing Animator, Geraldine Page (Medusa) was a friend of Elizabeth Hartman's (Mrs Brisby), and after Elizabeth Hartman died on 10 June 1987, she also died three days later.

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