The Black Cauldron

The Black Cauldron

 

Plot

Taran, is just a pig farmer when all he wants to do is prove his worth by fighting in some legendary battle, Taran gets his wish when he discovers that his little piggy has some special magical powers. These powers reveal the location of the Black Cauldron which is what the evil Horned King wants to get his hands on to help him gain control of the world . Taran sets out on this adventure, making friends and foes along the way, all in the effort to protect this little piggy.

Cast

Taran is voiced by Grant Bardsley who was 14 years old when he voiced the character.

Princess Eilonwy is voiced by Susan Sheridan, although Hayley Mills and Olivia Hussey were recommended for the role.

 

Dallben is voiced by Freddie Jones who went on to play a regular occurring character on British TV soap Emmerdale.

 

The Horned King is played for John Hurt, who you may know better as Olivander from the Harry Potter films and Kane in the film Alien.

Fflewddur Fflam, the old man with the harp, is voiced by Nigel Hawthorne.

 

King Eidilleg, the king of the fair folk, is voiced by Arthur Malet, even though it was announced that Jonathon Winters would be voicing the role.

 

Ordu is voiced by Eda Reiss Merin, Orwen is voiced by Adele Malis-Morey and Orgoch is voiced by Billie Hayes. Ordu, Orwen and Orgoch are the witches in the film.

Creeper is voiced by Phil Fondacaro.

Gurgi is voiced by John Byner.

Development

Back in 1971 Walt Disney Pictures purchased the screen rights to Lloyd Alexander’s 5 books “The Chronicles of Prydain” which themselves are inspired by the mythology of ancient Wales, which are a collection of tales called the Mabinogion. The Disney team read over the text and combined the first two books in the series to create the film The Black Cauldron. A lot of changes have been made when comparing it to the original text.

The film took 12 years to make, with only 5 years where it was in actual production. One of the reasons why the film took so long to make is because it passed through so many hands. Originally John Musker who would later bring us the delights of The Little Mermaid, worked on this film, but he passed the reins over to Ted Berman, Richard Rich and Joe Hale. It was these guys that brought Milt Kahl, one of the 9 old men, out of retirement to help with the designs of the main character Taran.

 

When watching this film I was very shocked at how visually horrific some of the scenes are, in comparison to almost any other Disney film, the amount of death and destruction there is. The poor piggy when he is going to be killed, the amount of melting flesh and the skeletons really add to the gruesome feel of the movie. So I was very shocked when I discovered that a lot of fully animated scenes had been cut out of the film because they were too dark. Removing fully animated scenes hasn’t been done since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This is because it takes a lot of time and money to make those scenes and to just cut them out, is a waste. In fact some reports say the film cost $25 million to make. The scenes were removed when the majority of the film had been finished and they were initially removed by the then CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg who was horrified at what the team working on the film had created. Jeffrey wasn’t the only one who felt this was a dark film. When they did a screening to the public, a lot of the audience walked out, and it even distressed some of the younger viewers to the point of tears, especially when they came to a scene where there was a lot of rotting corpses. This scene was cut. Producer, Joe Hale, was not happy, he did not want Jeffrey cutting up the project that he had been working on for so long. Joe had no other option but to tell Michael Eisner, Jeffrey’s boss, and although Jeffrey was ultimately stopped from editing the film himself, it was agreed that they would have to edit the film because they couldn’t release it as it was. One of the ways the film was going to be darker was by having a different beginning than what we ultimately see. In the beginning there was going to be a scene showing the Horned King and his minions burning down a village. The flames that would have engulfed the scene would then fade away to show the mundane and calm life of Taran and his pig farming.

Around 15 minutes of animation was cut from the film during the editing process and this took time which meant that instead of the film coming out in Christmas of 1984, it came out in July of 1985. The work they did editing the film meant that they could reduce the rating to a PG rather than a PG-13. PG is more of an ideal rating because it means more people can go and see it at the cinema. Even though it received the PG rating, the film was a flop at the box office. Still to this day people don’t like it. The audience rated it a 48% on Rotten Tomatoes.

 

Normally if a film doesn’t do so well at the box office, like Fantasia for example, they will re-release the film in cinemas or on VHS and later DVD and this would help to create that little bit more money, however because this film was just so dark, Disney didn’t want to release the film, they did ultimately release it on DVD and actually released some merchandise relating to the film, but it was several years after it was meant to come out.

 

CGI

The Black Cauldron was in development at the same time as The Rescuers, although The Rescuers came out before, they were both pioneer films that worked on CGI. No one really knew how well CGI would work, and it was quite expensive so only certain parts of the film used CGI, in this film they used it on the boat, the floating ball of light, the flames scene at the end of the film and the cauldron itself. It was involving CGI into this film in small ways that allowed for film in the future like Frozen and Tangled to be completely CGI. The Disney team still used some old favourite tricks, for example when it came to the smoke coming out of the cauldron, this was created using live action footage of dry ice.

Tim Burton

Tim Burton, the man behind Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice and many other films helped to work on this film and in fact, this would be the last time he worked on a Disney before, before leaving to start his own production company.

Tim worked as a conceptual artist, coming up with ideas of what the minions of the Horned King would look like. However a lot of his sketches were discarded as they wanted to make the film in the style similar to Sleeping Beauty and this wasn’t the aesthetic Tim was working towards. Talking of Sleeping Beauty, Princess Eilonwy was modelled to resemble Princess Aurora.

 

Easter Egg

A character, very similar looking to Tinkerbell can be seen amongst the fair folk.

I can’t confirm this, but when the Black Cauldron is activated by the Horned King, it’s believed that the sound comes from a recording of a space shuttle launch.

 

A Remake

It was revealed back in 2016 that Walt Disney Productions had once again bought the film rights to the series. Maybe this means that a live action remake is coming out. Since 2016 we have had no updates on this theory.

 

Before I wrote this blog I had never seen this film and I thought Halloween was the most perfect time to watch it. The Black Cauldron is definitely one of the more grim and scarier looking Disney film. It’s also one of the least popular films. I think with the names being a little more confusing and there aren’t any stand out characters it’s one of the Disney film that’s quite forgettable. Having said this, I do think that it’s one of the film you need to watch in order to see how much the Disney company have improved. If you’ve seen this film, please let me know in the comments what you think of it.

 

Come back on Friday 12th October where I will show you fandom artwork.

Fox and the Hound

Fox and the Hound

Plot

Fox and the Hound tells the story of an orphaned baby Fox and hound dog who become best friends until they grow up and realise that society tells them they have to be enemies.

 

Original Story

Fox and the Hound, the film, was very loosely based on the book of the same name by author Daniel P. Mannix. The only real similarities between the two versions is the names of the characters, almost everything else has been tweaked, or completely changed.

For example Chief and Copper hate each other throughout the book and are both fighting to be there masters favourite and the leader of the pack.

Tod’s adoptive human mother is the one that kills his mother and the brothers and sisters he has had in the book. Tod and Copper are never friends in the film and Tod purposely makes it so that Chief is killed by the train.

I won’t spoil the entire book just encase you want to read it, but be aware, it’s not the happy Disney version.

 

Film Development

The inspiration for the 24th Disney animated feature came after Woolie Reitherman, the films co-producer and one of the 9 old men, read the original story. It resonated with him because he and his sons once looked after a fox.

 

Fox and the Hound was meant to go into production a lot earlier than it did, but at the time a lot of animators were leaving the studio because Don Bluth had left the studio to start his own animation studio: Sullivan Bluth Studios, also known as Don Bluth Entertainment. He was responsible for animated films like “The Land Before Time” and “All Dogs go to Heaven”.

 

There were a few concerns that the film was a little too slow, so to spice things up they were going to introduce two new characters who would be cranes. They even went as far as picking out the voice actors, Phil Harris and Charo, a Spanish singer. Charo came in to perform a live action reference for animation, but ultimately they were never included due to pacing and budget reasons.

 

The majority of this film was created using the traditional hand drawn animation style that they have been perfecting since the days of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs back in 1937, however this film started to take animation in a new direction by including computer-generated imagery (CGI). You can see it in the scene where Amos Slade tries to catch Tod and Vixey by smoking them out of there hole.

Eventually Disney would only role out CGI films like Tangled and Frozen but back in 1981, the technology was still in its baby stages and it needed small experiments like the one in this film to work out the problems and limitations.

 

Cast

Tod, the adult fox is voiced by Mickey Rooney, whereas the young fox is voiced by Keith Coogan

In the film Tod is given his name because Widow Tweed calls him a toddler, and then Tod, “Todde” in middle English means Fox.

Copper, the adult hound dog is voiced by Kurt Russell, although they considered Jackie Copper for the role, whereas the young dog is voiced by Corey Feldman.

There was a rumour that Kurt wore his costume for his character in Escape from New York when recording his lines, but this isn’t the case. Escape from New York had finished filming when Kurt was asked to record his lines. Both films were released on the same weekend.

Amos Slade, the owner of Copper, is voiced by Jack Albertson and sadly this would be his last film role as he passed away four months after the film was released due to cancer. Although he does a great job as Amos in this film, to me he will always be Grandpa Jo in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

The role of Widow Tweed, Tod’s adoptive mum was offered to Lilian Gish and Helen Hayes but they both turned down the role, so instead Jeanette Nolan voiced her.

Chief, the elderly dog, is voiced by Pat Buttram who was the sheriff of Nottingham in Disney’s Robin Hood and Napoleon in Aristocats.

Originally, when Chief was hit by the train when trying to catch Tod, he was meant to pass away, and therefore it would have made Coppers anger towards Tod a lot more believable and justifiable, but instead they made it so that he just has a broken leg because they didn’t want another situation like Bambi’s mum.

Big Mama, the owl, is voiced by Pearl Bailey, a Tony award winner American singer and actress. She is the character in the film who performs the beloved “Best of Friends” song which was composed by Richard Johnston and the lyrics were written by Stan Fidel.

Vixey, Tod’s love interest is voiced by Sandy Duncan. The inspiration for the design of Vixey was Maid Marian from Robin Hood. Also, Vixey was so named because a vixen is a female fox.

Vixey was animated by first time animator Tim Burton, the man who would go on to work on projects like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands, The Corpse Bride, etc . Being that a cute fox isn’t Tim’s style, he really didn’t enjoy the job of animating her.

Porcupine is voiced by John Fielder who has voiced Piglet in the Winnie the Pooh movies.

Badger is voiced by John McIntire, the real life husband of Widow Tweed’s voice actress Jeanette Nolan. Together they also voiced characters in The Rescuers – Ellie Mae, the swamp muskrat was voiced by Jeanette and John voiced Rufus.

Dinky, the sparrow, is voiced by Richard Bakalyan.

Boomer, the woodpecker is voiced by Paul Winchell, who has also voiced Tigger in many Winnie the Pooh films and Shun Gon, one of the cats in Aristocats.

 

The bear is voiced by two people. Clarence Nash and Jimmy MacDonald provided all the snarls, growls and roars. There recordings were reused from when Clarence and Jimmy voiced Shere Khan from The Jungle Book and Brutus and Nero, the crocodiles from The Rescuers.

In order to create a bear that was a little more scary than the bears they’ve done in the past, e.g. Winnie the Pooh or Baloo, they looked at the 1976 horror film Grizzly. It’s important to note though that Ollie Johnston, one of the films animators and 9 old men, has stated that he doesn’t believe the bear is a villain. The bear, like the rat in Lady and the Tramp is acting instinctually.

 

Bits and Bobs

In the opening scene of the film Tod and his mother are on the run from a hunter and pack of dogs, some believe that it could have been Chief and Amos Slade, however this seems unlikely as moments later we see that Chief has been at home while Amos has been collecting Copper.

 

A direct to video sequel was released in 2006 featuring Tod and Copper before they grew up. It focused on the idea of Copper wanting to leave home to go and join a group of singing dogs. As imagined, it wasn’t one of the better sequels Disney have released.

Come back on Friday 6th July for a blog post all about the saddest Disney and Pixar moments.