THE SECRET OF NIMH (1982) | FIRST TIME WATCHING | MOVIE REACTION

"It's rated 'G' it can't be that bad." A generation's maniacal laughter suddenly can be heard.

I love when they make the good guys occasionally creepy or ugly in movies. It teaches kids that being ugly or old or just different isn’t the same as being bad. Too often, pretty = good can be really untrue.

Walt Disney: “I’m going to traumatize kids by killing Bambi’s mom.” Don Bluth: “Hold my beer.”

Don Bluth had the right idea of children's stories: they need the darkness and the hard edges, else the lessons are without weight. Pretty much every Bluth project is a home run. Troll in Central Park, Thumbelina, Swan Princess*, Rock a Doodle. They'll scare kids, but in the _best_ way. *Turns out, Swan Princess is not a Don Bluth film, but boy howdy does the animation remind me of it.

Cassie is like “oh it’s G rated. That’s good”. My mind. “Uhhh… that’s 80s G . That could be PG today “

Don Bluth has a very amusing philosophy for his movies "Kids can handle just about anything as long as you stick a happy ending on it" which explains why so many of his movies have a lot of dark themes and imagery

"Obscure" and "Secret of NIMH" are not words that belong in a sentence together. This is widely lauded as an animated classic. NO ONE made 80s kids cry like Don Bluth. Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go To Heaven. AMAZING movies, but often heartbreaking. The Secret of NIMH is loosely based on the 1971 novel Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien. Although the basic plot outline is the same, the original book was considerably more grounded (as grounded as a book with chemically modified super-intelligent talking rats can be) and lacked the mystical elements of the film. Two sequels were written by O'Brien's daughter after his death, though they're not as well-known. The movie also received a sequel of its own, one of MANY straight-to-video sequels to Don Bluth's films, all of considerably poorer quality than the original films (Land Before Time had THIRTEEN such sequels). The cast is fantastic. Dom DeLuise voiced Jeremy the Crow, Derek Jacobi as Nicodemus, Wil Wheaton (yes, from Star Trek) as Martin Brisby, Shannen Doherty as Teresa Brisby, Edie McClurg as "Mrs. Right," and John Carradine played the Great Owl. Mrs. Brisby was voiced by stage and screen actress Elizabeth Hartman in her final role, as she retired after completing this film. Sadly, five years later she committed suicide at the age of 43. The Frisby family name was changed for the movie to Brisby out of fears of lawsuits from the Frisbee company. While Mrs. Brisby's actual first name was never spoken in the film, (or book, for that matter) Don Bluth himself has suggested it's Elizabeth, in honor of her late voice actress. Dragon's design is exaggerated because we're seeing him from the perspective of a mouse, so of COURSE he looks horrifying and monstrous. Don Bluth didn't just know how to make kids cry, he knew how to scare the hell out of us. Disney entertained. Bluth gave us heartbreak and trauma. Jenner's role in the film is another deviation from the book. In the novel, Jenner is only mentioned in passing, as he and a number of other rats had already left the Rose Bush on their own sometime before the story begins. It's implied that he was killed along with the rest of his group, though the sequel book reveals he actually survived to start a colony of his own. Jenner is voiced by Paul Shenar, who appeared in the original 1987 version of Man on Fire and Scarface. He died of AIDS in 1989. It's funny how one of the best sword fights to come out of 80s cinema was two cartoon rats. Don Bluth actually came up with Disney, and was the animation director for The Rescuers. Creative differences that came up while work on The Fox and the Hound led Bluth to resign and start his own company. He did one short film and also did some animation work on Xanadu, before breaking out BIG TIME with Secret of NIMH, becoming Disney's biggest competitor. Titan A.E., which you mentioned in your intro, was another of Bluth's films. He also produced the animated arcade games Dragon's Lair, Dragon's Lair 2, and Space Ace, which were basically the forerunners of the Quick Time Events of modern gaming.

The cat and the owl are portrayed so scary and devil-like because its from the pov of the mice, who would of course see them as monsters who hunt them.

This movie WAS my childhood! I’m 46-years-old, and I still quote, “Miss Priss, you have a sparkly!!!” when somebody has something cool or pretty.

3:55 she has the perfect voice for this character. It's because the actress Elizabeth Hartman (mrs brisby) struggled with depression and other mental health problems. This was her final piece of work before she took her life jumping out a window. So the pain and anguish you hear in her voice is real.