Tag: 1980s

Reflections: The Secret of NIMH (1982)

~ Not Alison ~ Leave a comment
photo of the cover of the blu-ray release of the 1982 movie The Secret of NIMH, focussed on a cutely drawn mouse holding an amulet with a reflective red stone

1. The Nostalgic Part
This is another one of those movies I loved as a child, fascinated by and drawn to the dangerous, frightening parts: strange experiments changing you into something you weren’t, companions perishing in a desperate escape, wounds that bleed.

For me this movie has always been blanketed with a layer of tragedy. Bambi is famous for traumatizing children with their first dose of animated death, but in my childhood it was Secret of NIMH that stood out for the weight of physical danger and horrible things being done to you against your will. I wasn’t in any doubt about what happened to those mice that fell down the shaft during the escape, or about the fact that the experiments were horribly painful to the rats. By this time I had seen Star Wars, Clash of the Titans,  and Dragonslayer, but the violence in those live-action movies didn’t affect me the way things in NIMH did. Was NIMH more disturbing because it was less glaringly fantasy-based; because the movie kept things more mysterious; or simply because the story was more intimate so I cared more about the characters? Or was it maybe because all the live-action heroes were fighting back, and the animated mice and rats were so terribly helpless?

2. The Background
The movie is based on a book, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brian, published in 1971. I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard the film changed a lot, which is what you’d expect.

The movie changed the lead character’s name from Frisby to Brisby, and common wisdom says it was to avoid connection with the brand name of a certain “flying disc.” I suspect common wisdom is right, whether that was a legal move necessitated by trademark concerns or simply a worry that her name would make people laugh.

Then much more than now, it was tough to get an animated movie on the theater screen if you weren’t Disney. (This was also before VCRs were common, so there wasn’t even a direct-to-video market.) But this is one of the few that managed it. Don Bluth and his team were helping to blaze a trail for non-Disney animation to be produced and released in the U.S.

3. Scattered Things
Evidently this movie was rated G by people who saw that it was a cartoon and didn’t bother to watch it. It includes vibrant red blood, a deliberate murder, another deliberate killing that was either an effort to save someone else or a bit of revenge (or both), and talk about torture and hearing the screams of laboratory animals at night. The main character is a widow whose husband’s death is the first thing you hear about in the movie. There’s also a quick curse word (spoken by one of the good guys, no less), and I have a suspicion it was thrown in by the filmmakers so the movie would be PG. To no avail.

The movie does an impressive job creating an air of menace and danger in multiple scenes with different threats. Mrs. Brisby is at the mercy of a whole lot of things, whether it’s larger animals or human decisions or illness affecting her children.

I thought the clumsy bird was a crow, but he’s just tiny compared to the cat. On the other hand, the movie—set in North America!—also shows a spider that’s three times the size of a mouse, so I think the animators were a bit unreliable regarding scale.

There’s a quick mention by Mrs. Brisby that her children are better at reading than she is—and while it’s true that learning as a child can be faster than learning as an adult, this is definitely a little nod to the fact that her husband was more than an ordinary mouse and has passed things on to their children.

I am always gripped by scenes of radiant transcendent power summoned by great emotional need to accomplish the impossible just when all hope is gone. And yet I can’t help feeling Secret of NIMH should’ve avoided mixing magic with the science fiction. The amulet, Nicodemus’s whirligig device that shows images from the past, and the rosebush vines that move and rearrange themselves are things I can’t square with the notion that the rats owe their secret world to the intelligence produced in them by medical experimentation.

Before I rewatched this movie, my memory had no doubt that Mrs. Brisby ends up with Justin, the captain of the guard. My memory is wrong. They’re clearly drawn to each other, I wasn’t inventing that, but there’s no hint that they become a couple once the action is over. Which is pretty reasonable but not typical for animated films.

Reflections: Dragonslayer (1981)

~ Not Alison ~ Leave a comment
photo of the cover for a DVD release of the 1981 movie Dragonslayer, showing a dragon flying in the upper right corner and the hero crouching with spear and shield in the lower left corner
Cover of one DVD release of Dragonslayer

1. Movie Background
Dragonslayer is one of those movies you know was made before the PG-13 rating existed, because there’s no way it would’ve gotten a simple PG otherwise. On the other hand, the more-than-PG material isn’t a large portion of the movie, so the studio might’ve chosen to simply trim out some shots to secure a PG and keep the younger audience dollars intact. (And it’s not so much the main dragon fight as the underwater semi-nudity and a sprinkling of gore, since action violence gets more allowance than other non-child content.)

Offhand, I don’t know what made a movie studio put out a sword-and-sorcery fantasy film in 1981. (It wasn’t made in response to Clash of the Titans, because the two movies would’ve been in production at the same time.) Star Wars and its many coattail-riders were still the big thing, not castles and dragons and wizards. I don’t know when Dungeons and Dragons began its 1980s rise, but Dragonslayer did come out before the D&D cartoon and action figures, and also before He-Man.

Then again, there’s Thundarr the Barbarian and Blackstar. IMDB tells me Thundarr was around in 1980 and Blackstar started airing in late 1981. (I thought Blackstar was later, but I guess I won’t argue.) So there was something going on with entertainment in this area.

(Also, an extra nod to Blackstar, a mainstream Saturday-morning cartoon whose hero was specifically identified as a Native American and whose heritage wasn’t, to my memory, played for stereotypes. All the way back then.)

2. The Nostalgic Part
I saw this movie in the theater. I have a suspicion my mother would not have allowed that if she’d known what all was in it. Somehow instead of being frightened by the scary stuff I was fascinated and really enjoyed it. I do remember, though, that at the part where the two leads end up swimming together and the big revelation ensues, I didn’t understand what was going on and had to ask. Watching it now the visuals are clear enough, but either I blinked or I was simply less attuned to the different curvatures of human sexes. (This scene is not wildly explicit, but it’s not especially vague either.) When I first saw it, I didn’t understand why the character had been pretending, but I didn’t worry about it.

I remember playing Dragonslayer in the back yard, crouching down with a make-believe shield and imagining the giant dragon above me ready to breathe down fire.

I also remember, though, my utterly unreasonable prejudice against the hero’s short, curly hair. It just seemed frivolous. Heroes weren’t supposed to have hair like that, in my mind.

3. Points of Interest
By and large, the moviemakers didn’t try to show more than they knew their special effects crew could manage. Compared to Clash of the Titans, this movie is less ambitious, and therefore more visually convincing. It helps, of course, that the dragon is mostly seen in dark, tight caves or flying in the distance at night. In fact the cave scenes are quite effective in showing the menace of this creature in a way that the Kraken fight did not. An effect I especially liked was the sheets of flame moving across the surface of a lake, which I’m guessing was done with simple gasoline but looks great.

There’s a virgin sacrifice who does not stand trembling with shrieks or weeping, or even pleading, but actively fights to get loose and escape. Working resolutely before the dragon appears, she bloodies her hands and wrists to get loose from her manacles, and even when the creature approaches doesn’t scream until she’s actually lifted into the air. There would be nothing wrong with screaming in her situation, but the filmmakers’ choice to have this minor, unnamed character act with fierce determination instead of the conventional helpless-victim routine deserves extra appreciation.

While we’re on the subject, we see another young woman sacrificed, and she is there through her own courage and moral sense of justice. Even when she’s freed she boldly steps forward to go on and meet this fate—knowing what will happen to her, but accepting it because she believes this will save the kingdom and running would make things worse for everyone. She doesn’t need to die, but her reasons aren’t stupid.

Like those two, the female lead of the story is, throughout, courageous and bold and determined. These three are the only women who stay on camera more than five seconds, but they display their bravery despite a scenario in which screaming, wailing, or cowering would be the more typical movie portrayal. They aren’t helpless or passive or mere objects: they have agency and they use it, whether the effort succeeds or not.

Including a Christian priest seems like a setup for a cheap swipe at religion . . . and in some ways it is, eventually . . . but all the same he shows himself to be steadfast and faithful, not a hypocrite or a punchline like I was expecting.

In the middle of the movie there’s a scene where the unlikable villain-esque king condemns the hero as a self-appointed savior who has meddled in things without any idea what the consequences will be. The king is the bad guy of the movie, second to the dragon, but in this speech he is entirely and utterly correct in what he says about the hero. And events prove him right.

At one point the female lead tells the hero, in essence, “We failed. We’d better just leave town before things get worse.” And the hero . . . agrees. Off they go. The movie won’t be complete unless they eventually turn back, but when she brings it up there are no arguments about abandoning other people or running away from the mess you made or unfairness to anyone else, just the acknowledgment that circumstances are terrible and it would be very impractical to stick around. This is unusual for an action hero.

Dragonslayer fundamentally takes itself seriously, as a movie should if it means to frighten you with a deadly dragon. Unusually, it treats sacrificial maidens as being real people, not just screaming audience-bait. There’s a good bit of humor mixed in, but it’s basically in the things characters say (along with a bit of satire at the end aimed at kingly pretension), while the events and actions are treated as bearing real costs and consequences, resulting in significant danger when people make the wrong decisions. Maybe the movie didn’t need quite so much engagement with the baby dragons, though.

Reflections: Clash of the Titans (1981)

~ Not Alison ~ Leave a comment
photo of the cover of the blu-ray for the movie Clash of the Titans (1981), showing a large Perseus aiming a sword, with Medusa aiming her bow in the lower left corner and Pegasus flying in the lower right corner

If you’ve ever heard someone say, “Release the kraken!” in an imposing voice, you can thank this movie.

The Nostalgic Part
I saw this movie as a child when it was originally released. My siblings and I had the action figures, even though the toy company made Perseus look mean and unappealing. But, I mean, Calibos! How could you resist a figure like that? (Though I don’t think my mom was too comfortable with it.) Sadly, in our household we never had the Kraken toy, which was awesome-looking.

For many, many people of my generation, this movie was a spark that got us interested in Greek mythology. Even if it got things wrong, it made us care about the stories.

The Mythological Background
First, we have to get this out of the way:

1. A kraken is actually a giant squid, and comes from Northern European legends, not Greek myth. The Perseus of myth did face a sea monster, however. (In Greek it was labeled as a kétos, a generic term that could include giant fish and whales as well as unspecified menacing sea creatures.)

2. Perseus did not ride on Pegasus; Bellerophon did, when fighting the Chimaira. Perseus had winged sandals to keep him in the air. Pegasus is connected to Perseus, however, since the winged horse reportedly sprang from the neck of Medusa when Perseus decapitated her.

3. Pegasus is a Greek word, not a Roman one, and if you’re going to be pedantic, the proper plural is pegasoi (not pegasi) and you ought to be spelling the singular pegasos or pégasos in the first place.

4. The Titans were a specific group of beings in Greek myth; Medusa wasn’t one of them, and neither was the sea monster that threatened Andromeda.

Next, some other mythological tidbits:

A. Medusa had two sisters, and all three were referred to as Gorgons, although “the Gorgon” would usually mean Medusa. The tradition is a little unclear about whether all three could kill people with a look, and in some accounts Medusa was mortal and the other two were immortal, though all three were daughters of the same two primal deities.

B. In the original stories, there was a king who wanted to marry Perseus’s mother, and Perseus said something careless to him about getting the Gorgon’s head. Unexpectedly the king took him up on it, saying, “Okay, bring it to me.” More unexpectedly, Perseus did so.

C. Curiously, the earliest Greek sources for the Perseus story seem to assume he used a sickle, not Medusa’s head, to defeat the sea monster. The head was a way to kill his human enemies, not a giant creature.

D. Mythology says Andromeda’s mother got the kingdom cursed with a sea monster by claiming to be more beautiful than the Nereids (a group of sea divinities). The movie changes this to the mother saying Andromeda was more beautiful than Thetis (who in myth was one of the Nereids and also the mother of Achilleus).

The Movie
Although the movie doesn’t stay faithful to the original myths, there is nevertheless some good storytelling here. It doesn’t just throw in bits of myth at random, hoping to “look cool,” it uses those elements to create obstacles for the hero to overcome and add complexity to the story.

Focusing on Thetis, instead of a group of Nereids, makes the plot and character motivations easier to follow and relate to.

Making Andromeda the subject of the “more beautiful” boast creates an obvious reason why the daughter, not the mother who makes the boast, is the one being sacrificed.

Calibos is an invention of the movie, but he makes a good villain, and it’s useful to have a human-but-slightly-inhuman antagonist to mess things up so Perseus doesn’t get by too easily. (Calibos is probably inspired by actual-myth-character Phineus, who had been promised Andromeda and therefore hated Perseus, but he was totally human and wasn’t much of a challenge.)

A little thing like saying Calibos’s worst crime was wiping out all the winged horses except Pegasus helps explain why Calibos finds it so easy to trap Pegasus when Perseus struggled to do so: Calibos is an old hand at this. It also provides an unstated reason why he doesn’t simply kill Pegasus outright: having already been turned into a semi-creature for slaughtering winged horses, he’s not going to risk killing the last one and getting cursed even more horribly. We can assume that he plans to release Pegasus once the immediate crisis is over and figures Zeus won’t throw any thunderbolts just for pinning the animal in a cage a few days.

The early sequence of Argos being destroyed is pretty strong stuff, despite the easy-to-spot superimposed images.

Giving Zeus a little theatre model with clay figures of people has no basis in myth that I’m aware of, but it’s a great device for the movie.

Yes, the special effects look dated and often clumsy. There was no CGI back then, and everything was done in-camera or with superimposed images or with stop-motion miniatures. This may be peak Harryhausen, though. Clay Calibos’s head is too big, but Medusa and the Kraken look quite impressive for what they are.

Other Thoughts
Perseus is an idiot for not retrieving his sword near the end. Come on, this is not a helmet lost in the swamp. The sword is right there. Just because someone’s impaled on the blade is no reason not to get it back.

Charon doesn’t belong in this story at all, but he is just the right kind of creepy and adds an extra tone of menace to the approach to Medusa. I do wonder how Perseus paid the fare to get back, though.

Isn’t it an amazing coincidence how the Kraken has an ape-like face so he can look like a certain other movie monster when he reaches out a gigantic hand to take hold of the woman chained up as a sacrifice?

Much of my information on actual Greek myths is derived from Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1-volume hardback 1993 / 2-volume paperback 1996).

Looking Back: Crispy Critters Cereral

~ Not Alison ~ Leave a comment

In the dim and distant past, circa 1987, there was a breakfast cereal called Crispy Critters. It was basically cereal shaped like animal crackers, and the mascot was a creature named Crispy apparently modeled on Jimmy Durante.*

Tucked away since then in the attic of my parents’ house were two Special Edition Golden Books featuring Crispy and his animal pals, once included with cereal boxes as a promotional incentive. Their “special edition” status comes from that limited release and from the fact that they’re paperbacks, not hardcovers like standard Little Golden Books.

Crispy in No Place Like Home
Crispy’s Bedtime Book

No Place Like Home tells the story of Crispy and the animal band making friends with a squirrel child who can’t find his way home after it starts getting dark.

Crispy’s Bedtime Book describes how young Emily can’t sleep because she didn’t pay attention in class that day, so she gets a lesson from her cereal about the letter C.

(Both books were written by Justine Korman, illustrated by Dean Yeagle, and painted by Mike Favata.)

Crispy and his animal band (not a great scan; sorry)

Today a person’s first impulse might be to make fun of these, but reading No Place I liked the names of the animal characters and their choice of instruments. The internet says this cereal originally showed up in the 1960s, and the 1987 version was an attempted revival. I don’t know which era these animal pals first appeared in, but somebody put a bit of thought into them and I appreciate that. (“Waldo” and “rhino” don’t actually rhyme, but oh well.)

On the other hand, in the Bedtime Book you have this page:

Camille the Camel imagines herself in a cactus-filled desert

In the real world, the camel is found in Africa and Asia. The cactus is found in North America and South America. But probably somebody said, “Hey, camels like deserts. Deserts have cactuses. Perfect!” and never gave it another thought.

Now, it’s not enough that I notice this kind of thing and get annoyed by it; no, I have to come up with an explanation too. My mind insists on making this not a mistake. So: Camille the Camel is from the other side of the world, but now she lives in North America. Unable to travel back to her home deserts, she visits the southwest U.S. to experience the best alternative on hand. So she can be found in cactus-filled deserts, sighing wistfully and thinking of a home she’s unable to return to. And I feel better for giving a sad and lonely backstory to a cereal-box character I will likely never think of again.

*I’m not making a joke. Listen to a commercial.