The Secret of NIMH (1982)

"A world of fantasy, adventure and excitement opens up for Mrs Brisby when she discovers... The Secret of NIMH." In this episode, we discuss the animated adventure 'The Secret of NIMH.' The movie stars the voice talents of Elizabeth Hartman, Derek Jacobi and Dom DeLuise. Written and directed by Don Bluth. Based on the novel "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" by Robert C. O'Brien.

The Secret of NIMH - IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084649/?ref_=tttg_ov_bk
The Secret of NIMH - Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/secret_of_nimh




Bill's Letterboxd Ratings: https://letterboxd.com/bill_b/list/bills-all-80s-movies-podcast-ratings/
Jason's Letterboxd Ratings: https://letterboxd.com/jasonmasek/list/jasons-all-80s-movies-podcast-ratings/
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hello, and welcome to the All Eighties Movies podcast and
the podcast where we talk about the blockbusters, love locks,
and everything in between. From one of the presses Decades
from Movies the nineteen eighties. I'm host Bill Banton. Long
of me on this journey revisiting eighties movies is my
co host Jason Nasse.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hello, Jason, Courage of the Heart is very rare. The
stone has a power when it's there.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
That's right, listeners, we are discussing with Spoils of plenty.
The nineteen eighty two animated movie The Secret of Nim.
It was produced by United Artists and Don Bluth Productions
and distributed by mgm UA Communications. The movie stars the
voice talents of Elizabeth Hartman, Peter Strauss, and Don Delaize.
Written directed by Don Bluth, this movie is rated G

(01:02):
with a running time of one hour and twenty two minutes.
It was based on the children's novel Missus Frisbee and
the Rats of Nim by Robert C. O'Brien. So what
is this movie about? What's on the box? If you
grew up in the nineteen eighties and went to your
local video store to rent this movie, you would find
this description on the back of the VHS box. It

(01:23):
is what's on the box, take Away, Jason.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
The Secret of Nim marks a spectacular return to the
classic Disney style of animation. The story revolves around a
certain Missus Brisbee, a widow mouse with four little mice
who live underground in a field. Every year at springtime,
the family are forced to leave their home when the
field is plowed. This year, however, one of the little
mice is too sick to be moved, and Missus Brisbee

(01:47):
must find a way to save the family from the
imminent plow forces. She sets off to enlist help and
is joined by a crackpot crow with a heart of gold,
a pompous true and a great wise owl. They alone
are powerless until they meet a race of intelligent super
rats who are party to the sinister Secret of Nim.
The Secret of Nim is a rare film in which

(02:09):
the cartoon characters really capture the imagination, particularly Jeremy the Crow,
an inspired invention The Secret of Nim.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Secret of Nim Jason our first animated movie.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Here we go. I know, I thought the same thing.
I was like, we haven't gone into this foray yet,
but yeah, looking forward to it. Man, all right, so
that was what's on the box?

Speaker 1 (02:30):
And Jason, do you remember the first time you saw
the Secret of Nim Nope, this is gonna be quick. I, however,
do know that I saw it.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
I can feel it in my gut. Bill Bant. I
was only eight when this was released, and the plot
of this movie escaped me completely. I know I saw it,
though I haven't seen it since I was a child,
and I only recall it being an acclaimed animated film.
That's all I got. What about you? Do you remember seeing.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
This pretty sure? I saw it on HBO. Definitely not
in theater. Definitely do not rent this. This was a
cable watch and I don't think I watched it very
many times. So this was a long time coming to
revisit this. And I know it took a long time
to come up with animated movies because let's be honest,
animated movies in the eighties were not the greatest per se.

(03:19):
I mean, everyone probably has one or two they really
do like, but I think overall, compared to where we
are now with animation, the eighties were kind of.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
A dip, no question.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
So let's talk about the movie. What are our impressions
secreted in.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah, I'm looking forward to this Bill because this was
fun just watching a solid animated film, Don Bluth's animated
feature film directorial debut, head of Don Bluth Productions. I
looked at his filmography. Man, this guy. You know once
he broke away from Disney, which we may talk about
in fun Facts and Trivia. He directed an American tale,

(03:54):
The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go to Heaven. These
are big animated films from the eighties, some of the
better films like it, and I agree with you Bill
Bant that there wasn't a lot to pick from, but
his films are good. And then after the eighties you
have Thumbelina Anastasia. One of my cult favorites is titan Ae.
I've watched that several times and I forgot that Don

(04:16):
Bluth had done that one. And then listen to this
Bill Bent. I was looking at his filmography on Wikipedia
and at the very bottom it says Dragon's Lair. The
movie is to be announced.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
They've been talking about it for a long time. I
think there was a one of those fundraiser campaigns to
get it started Kickstarter a year or two back. I
don't know where it went. So I don't know if
that's happened or not. I would love for that to happen.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
How cool would that be? All right?

Speaker 1 (04:42):
Oh, I'd certainly be the theater to watch that one.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah, for sure, for sure. So this being his directorial debut,
and if I'm not mistaken in the research, he feels
that this is his favorite film still to this day.
I get why. Talking about the tone of this, I
like this style of animation, this darkness, this mystery. I'm sucker,
as you well know, for good lore. I like the

(05:08):
cool mysterious locations discovered along the Heroine's journey and this film,
we obviously have all the archetypes present in this. We
have the heroine or hero, the Chosen One and Missus Brisbee.
We've got the hero's journey. We have our sidekick slash
Jester and Jeremy the Crow voiced by the Great Dom Delawies.
We have the wise Old Man with mister Ages, the

(05:30):
Wizard slash Sorcerer, Nicodemus, the Shadow Figure or in Genner.
There's an amulet key or with powers. There's the Promised Land,
which is supposedly either the Lee of the Stone or
Thorn valley for the rats. It's got all of those elements,
which I'm very attracted to, so I definitely enjoyed the tone,

(05:51):
the look, and the feel of this overall. I mentioned
some of the cool names there of some of the characters.
Nicodemus first of all Greek origin, meaning victory of the
people kind known as a spiritual, biblical, or intellectual leader
or truth seeker. Great name, Nicodemus, really cool name. I agree,
that is a good name. Dragon the cat. Would you

(06:12):
ever name your cat? Dragon? That's pretty sinister? That was interesting.
Jenner was kind of a cool name for our bad
guy or antagonist in this film. Mister Ages for the
wise old mouse who is like part time primary care
physician and part time mechanic I guess or alchemist. That
was cool. Missus Brisbee is great. We'll talk about her

(06:34):
name later, our heroin protagonist. Well, you know what I
noted too, is we never learn her first name. No,
we do not. No, I'm stepping on my trivia right now.
Because missus Brisbee doesn't have a given name. Fans have
nicknamed her Elizabeth in loving memory of her voice actress
Elizabeth Hartman, who passed after this. And yeah, until that
character had no on screen first name. She was only

(06:57):
revered as Missus Jonathan Brisbee. Also the name just Nim
in the title Folks by the way, all caps because
it's an acronym for National Institute of Mental Health. And
these are things I had completely forgotten about. Of course,
same here, and I'm like, wow, this is weird but cool.
What does the National Institute of Mental Health have anything

(07:19):
to do with this movie? So I enjoyed the mystery
of that and the names. There's some creativity and it's
fun that there's some really simple names in here too,
like obviously Jeremy the Crow, and then you have the
kids like Martin and Tim and Cynthia. So anyway, great
great characters, great voice actors in this. I do love

(07:40):
the animation in this because I will always have an
attachment to this style. It is a bit of a
throwback to, like it says in the What's on the
Box synopsis, throwback to that classic Disney style. Bluth specifically
wanted to bring that style back for this. You mentioned
some of the voice actors were justked about. Elizabeth Hartman

(08:01):
as Missus Brisbee, Derek Jacobe as Nicodemus, Arthur Mallett as
mister Ages. We talked about Tom Delawiz. I mean, he's wonderful,
a lot of fun, and that's just to name a few.
But Shannon Doherty does a voice in this I couldn't
believe that I had no as Teresa, the middle child
of missus Brisbee's. And then guess who else? Will Wheaton

(08:24):
will shocked at that too, his feature debut as well
as Doherty's, and he does the voice of Martin, the
eldest son of Missus Brisbee. All these characters being the
mice starring in this film, So yeah, pretty cool. Got
to give a shout out to the film composer, the
one and only, Jerry Goldsmith. Do you love the music
in this bill? Yes? I did.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
And there's a little hint of Poltergeist in there.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
Wow, nice nice call. I don't know if I picked
up on that.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah, there's a I'm trying to think, what's scene that
really stood out? I'm like, oh, yeah, that sounds very poultery.
It might have been when they went in the rats Layer. Sure,
I think I heard a little bit of it. Now
that you say that, I can kind of hear it.
But yeah, Jerry Goldsmith, you know growing up being a
fan of film composers and orchestral soundtracks. Of course I
always called them the three J's right, the big three.

(09:12):
Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, and John Williams seemed to be
the ones I was always listening to, so always been
a Goldsmith fan. Of course, James Newton Howard would get
on that list for me later on, with Danny Elfmanhn Zimmer,
Michael Caman, et cetera, et cetera. Those were my eighties
film composers. Jerry Goldsmith was definitely up there on the
list for me. So I loved the soundtrack, and this
happened to be his animated feature debut, the first animated

(09:35):
feature he'd ever done. So yeah, I enjoyed this film,
Bill Band. It's definitely of a time. This is just
kind of weird and wild.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
So I'm twenty five minutes into the film and I'm
totally engaged and I find it fun, but I admit
that there's a part of me questioning where's this going.
The films less than an hour and a half long,
were almost a half an hour in and I wasn't
sure what direction it was going in. I was wondering
about the pacing of the story. I don't know if

(10:05):
you had any feeling about that. I'm going to about
to get into a little more of my issues with that,
but didn't know if you were feeling that at all.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
I think mine was more of who is this movie
made for?

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Huh?

Speaker 1 (10:20):
And I think of the opening scene when we have
Nicodemus and he's talking the cold open, right, and he's
writing into the journal the story of cool Jonathan Brisbee.
It is a cool scene, but I'm thinking, if I'm
eight years old and I'm watching this, I'm not really
paying attention to what Nicodemus is talking about. So this

(10:41):
whole cold open has gone over my head. So I
have no idea what is going on. And luckily because
every time I watch movies for this podcast, I always
make sure I do close captioning so I see what's happening.
Also also, even for me as an adult, I was
kind of half listening, but then when I was watching

(11:02):
what was being said, I'm like, oh, I really need
to pay attention to this, right. And there's a lot
of dark moments in this m h A lot of
scary stuff for young children, no question, so older children,
I think they might turned off because it's like a
movie about mice. I don't want to watch a movie
about mice. Pretty significant mouse in the cartoon world already,

(11:23):
so why do I need to watch something else for mice?
And then you have to make them engaging enough for
adults because they want to pay attention to what's going on.
They're the ones that are bringing their kids to watch
this movie. It almost feels like it's more for them.
It has that those kids we went to film school
with you had a like secret to him to be
cool in the film world.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Sure, right, That's what it felt like. This movie was
four interesting.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
I did enjoy the movie, though, I mean I watched
this a ton the last couple couple of days. I
listened to it more than I watched it, which is
surbrise's because it's animation. But my overall thing was like,
who was this movie really made for? Because Adam Maners
left Disney to start another studio and this is their
first effort, right, so you got to hit it out
of the park or else you're in trouble. And I'm

(12:08):
surprised too. I've never seen this book. Missus Frisbee and
the Rats of nim never heard of it. Yeah, I
never heard of it either, And I think even with kids,
you would think I would still see it at the bookstore.
Maybe I've seen adaptations of the Secret of Nim, but
never anything that said Missus Frisbee and the Rats of Nim.
I've never come across it or even heard of it,
which was a surprise.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Good point.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
So this is ballsy to do this, But I did
enjoy it. It's just how were you getting the people
to get in the theater to watch this movie? Even
if you look at Disney films, there's all those dark moments.
There are dark moments, and a lot of Disney's you know, right,
someone's always losing a parent or something. But this one
has a lot more dark moments than you would typically

(12:50):
think for a children's film. When you're looking at the characters.
This movie seems like it's supposed to be for six
to ten year olds because it's supposed to be cute
little mice, but it's really not. So would ten to
fourteen year olds be interested in this?

Speaker 2 (13:04):
I don't know. You make all great points. That's some
great commentary built because and I agree wholeheartedly, the rescuers
had come out in seventy seven I Believe, which was, Yeah,
that's one of my favorites. Yeah, that's a classic. And
so this is a real risk doing another Mice movie, right,
and this is an issue for those when they were
trying to make the movie and get it sold, you know,

(13:26):
So that makes sense. I totally agree with you with
the cold Open. I had to watch the cold Open
three or four times to make sure I knew what
Nicodemus was saying, because I did not have the clothes
catching on. And you're right. It's like, well, maybe this
movie's made for me because I love that lore stuff.
But you're absolutely right. You would think the core target
demographic would be those kids, the little you know, the

(13:48):
young kids from six to ten, eight to ten, what
have you. And the movie in that cold open starts
with basically a death. Nicodemus is talking about the death
of jonasthan Grisbye. That's a really dark way to start,
and it has some cool animation with him using like
that fountain pen, that magical pen writing in his journal
book and you're trying to read the writing that's on there,

(14:11):
and it's a little ahead of the dialogue or behind
the dialogue. I couldn't tell, but it's not the easiest
to follow, so I did have to go back and
make sure. Oh okay, so it's been four years since
they left NIM and Jonathan Grisby passed away at the
hands of dragging the cat, you know, and it's like, okay,

(14:32):
cool opening, but not necessarily easy to follow. So that's
a great point. This was a yeah, you're right, a
big risk to go in this direction for your first
feature out of the box after departing Disney.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Not the easiest sell here, But yeah, I think this
story to me seem pretty basic because it's that and
you've talked about the heroes journey and stuff like that,
and what a parent will do for their child. That
really resonated with me. Missus Brisbe steps out of a
band so many times, having to do things to make
sure she's going to be able to save her son Timmy.

(15:07):
You know, to go see the great owl when you're
the primary food group for that owl, right, that's gutsy.
That's gutsy. And then the plow starting and then trying
to jump in and shout it off, that's gutsy. Going
to see the rats kind of your enemy, that's gutsy,
So I did like that house. She always had to
step out of her element because she's doing this for

(15:29):
her child.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
One thousand percent. And I appreciate your perspective as a
parent because I am not a parent. I do not
have kids, so I don't look through those glasses when
I see it. I mean, I knew that's what she
was doing, but that it's not necessarily what impacts me
the most. It did work, and it shows how much
heart she has and thus is able to use the

(15:50):
amulet at the end. And speaking of the amulet, you
had a question about the amulet before we got online
to record this episode. And my issue or issues with
this movie, I should say, this film left me with
a lot of questions that mostly revolve around the magical
and fantastical aspects. I'm with you on this. So I

(16:11):
just wrote these questions and you can answer, you can
cut me off whatever, or we talk about it at
the end. But I just wrote these and I'll just
spit them out. And so Nicodemus had some kind of
supernatural powers as a result of the lab testing at
NIM because it didn't seem as though the other rats
had either magical or supernatural powers. He's a wizard type.

(16:32):
And then did he use his power to make the
amulet powerful? Because the amulet itself has supernatural qualities? Was
he doing that in the very beginning when he puts
the amulet in the box, did he put the power
into the I'm not sure that if that amulet as
sparkly is is that what Jeremy called it? Yes, the
road that's great is just has an innate power in itself.

(16:56):
It was there's just like, what's going on here? What
is the amulet? And why is it that Kademus has
these powers? So is this a sword and sorcery movie
or these just animals that are highly intelligent for a reason,
which we do find out later in the film. And
then I was asking myself, why are the rats in
the rose bush harnessing the electricity? What are they using

(17:19):
it for exactly? And why did they need it? Was
it for general living purposes? And then I realized in
reading more and then think about it, it made sense because
they have more human qualities and thus require that power
to do their work inside of the rose bush, et cetera.
To keep the lights on basically, And Nicodemus has a

(17:40):
quote when he's talking to Missus Brisbee says, he says,
my child, we can no longer live as rats. We
know too much. So they're obviously elevated and more evolved.
But yeah, I was like, at the end, I'm going
you have Jenner and his sidekick Sullivan. They've got swords
and they're going to start to implement their evil plan.

(18:02):
Where'd the swords come from? Where are they carrying swords?
So again, I love the lore in this, but I
just have some questions, specifically with those fantastical elements. Missus
Brisbee literally uses the Amulet at the end to lift
her cement block home from the mud, like Yoda uses
the force to lift the x Wing from the swamp.
Where did this magic come from? Why is this magic

(18:24):
here existing in this world? It felt separate a little bit.
I liked it, I just needed to have a little
bit more of the why, like why it was there.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
I suppose I'm one hundred percent agreement, and I thought
that somehow Nico demons had put Jonathan's spirit into the
amulet and that's how it was able to activate and
save the kids.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
But totally idea, Yeah, I thought that's kind of what
he was doing too, But it doesn't get answered.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
No, it doesn't get answered. Why does he have magical
powers if you got the same shots that all the
other rats and mice did. Why are they just more intelligent?
But none of them show any signs of having any
kind of power?

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Right, So I have more questions that I'll bring up later.
But my other issue I think with this because I
mentioned the pacing in the way the story unfolds, I
felt like Jenner, our antagonist, is introduced a bit too late.
It's about forty minutes or so into the film, almost
halfway through, and his motivation is very simple. I just

(19:26):
felt like we needed to be introduced to the rats
in the rose Bush earlier. That's the part of the
film that started to really intrigue me, because that's the core.
That's when we learn about Nim. We learned about these
rats that are now, like I said, more evolved and
highly intelligent, and they have been stealing the power of

(19:47):
the electricity and feel shame for that. They've been stealing
electricity and power from the Fitzgibbons home, the farmer's house,
and now their whole plan, which is mentioned by Nicodemus
in the very very beginning is to move to another
location so that they don't have to steal anymore and

(20:08):
somehow attain or obtain their own power by their own means,
meaning electricity. So it's very strange, but it just I
felt like the rats and gender should it that whole
idea concept plotline through lunch should have been introduced earlier.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
Yeah, I think that does make sense. We're saying. I'm
trying to figure out how you've put it in.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
Mm hmm. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
You really don't meet one of our batties until yeah,
halfway through the movie.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Well, it's funny you just said one of our batties, because, honestly, Bill,
I thought this was going to be headed toward a
showdown between the rats and or mice and dragging the cat.
I thought that was going to be a big thing
at the end, and it just didn't happen.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
Of course, Oh that's true. Yeah, dragging the cat kind
of disappears.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
I mean literally, missus Brisbee succeeds in her mission in
drugging the cat, and then that's it. We don't see
him anymore. I like draggoning the cat, I kind of
I just maybe that is just a taste thing For me,
I just liked him. I was like, when is the
big the big battle with Dragon the cat, because that's
the whole with the movie starts with you learn about
Jonathan Brisbee's death and you think, I'm assuming he was

(21:19):
killed by the cat or we don't. We'd actually don't
know how he died specifically, I don't think.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
Do we no, But it is to go to drug
the cat, so I would guess it was Dragon that
did it, mm hmm. But it's not one hundred percent clear, right.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
So when that is how the movie kind of starts
and you're just like, ooh, there's this big bad cat,
which is great, you got mice, you got cats that
that totally makes sense their rivals enemies and how is
that going to come to a head at the end.
So those are my issues. That was it. Otherwise it's
an entertaining film. It looks fantastic. The colors are great,
so many rich colors. I like the characters. I thought

(22:00):
the voice actors were a lot of I mean, Dom
Delowiz is fun. So it was an It's hard to
say I was even revisiting it feels like I was
visiting it for the first time and I thought this
was kind of a weird wild ride that I wasn't expecting.
Pleasant surprise for me overall.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
Yeah, are you wanna get in the favorite scenes or moments?

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, let's do it, all right?

Speaker 1 (22:21):
So what are our sum of our favorite scenes and moments
from the Secret of Nim for all eighty two minutes
of it? Well, I mean we did talk beforehand. I
think we all had the same certainly. The first one
was meeting Jeremy played by Dom Delawiz.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Jeremy the Crow.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
Just hearing his voice, I forgot how much I used
to love Dom Delowiz.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
As a kid.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yep, yep, absolutely when we get into accounaball run. I
was Captain Chaos once for Halloween. That's how much I
loved Dom Delowiz in that character, and just hearing him
just brought back so many memories. He was just a fun,
lovable guy. He just always just seemed to be happy
when he was on screen, and that's what I just

(23:04):
kind of missed, And he has that with this character too.
He's just a fun dufas crow, always getting into mischief.
So just have him introduced just a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
One thousand percent couldn't agree with you more. I knew
he was in the movie, but then he just shows up.
He just starts talking and it's like, oh my god,
that's Don Delawise. He's hilarious. I love this. This is
going to be fun. He's goofy, he's clumsy, he's all
those things. It's perfect. I mean, he's cast so perfectly
as Jeremy the Crow and this so lots of fun.
That goes right into you know, his introduction goes right

(23:35):
into my first favorite scene, which is the escape from
Dragon the Cat. And this is just a really fun
action sequence and watching it just for the animation, because
we get Dragon chasing both Jeremy missus Brisbee through the trees.
There's all these snapping branches. Dragon looks amazing, so intimidating
with his one yellow eye and one blue eye, and

(23:57):
he's got the big claws and he's just big and
fat and strong and just jumping all over surprisingly agile.
So they're jumping through the trees and then into the water.
The animation is so colorful and it looks great. It's
really well directed action. There's some really cool action in it.
I appreciated all of that. There's one moment where Jeremy,

(24:19):
because when we're introduced to Jeremy the crow, he's tangled
up in the string. He actually uses that string, dangles it,
and Missus Brisbee jumps onto it and then swings onto
the tree. A great moment and the action sequence, and
then afterward with Jeremy kind of being self congratulatory and
at the same time mistakenly somehow manages to save the
medicine for Missus Brisbee's sick son. A lot of fun.

(24:42):
It's good action. I watched it a couple times. I
was like, this just looks really it's just really cut
well and looks really cool, and dragon's really intimidating. I
liked it a lot.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
And this is what I love about old animation too,
is like the scene when Missus Brigsby's climbing up the
tree and you can see some of the branches are
off color because you know there's the ones that are
going to be animated.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Oh sure, I missed that stuff. Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
You be like a rock and like, oh, okay, the
character's going to kick that rock just because it's a
different color than the background.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
Temp.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
I don't, I can't. I can't remember what they call that.
The back the backdrop and then they you know, you
put the cells on top of it to animate, but
there's something off color you know, that's going to move
or something. So I did enjoy seeing all that, especially
through the action sies when they're scrambling through or swimming
in the water, like, oh okay, you can see the
stuff that's going to move or get touched in that point.

(25:35):
So it was a lot of fun. That's funny you
catch that.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
Yeah, for sure, they have those background I don't know
if Matt paintings or what it would be like kind
of correct, but yeah, they have that whole Yeah, it's
so many layers. It's just layers upon layers of stuff,
but you can kind of see that. So it is
fun to pinpoint for sure. So what do we have next?
So I'm just going right into another cool animation action sequence.
And it's the morning of the move. It's the plow

(26:00):
is coming early because the frost has lifted. It's moving day,
and the Brisbee's got to get out of the house.
But they can't move because young Timothy is sick with pneumonia.
So that's a problem. This is just a little bit
of a kind of an Indiana Jones sequence, good action.
You got the plow coming through the field headed right
towards the Brisbee house, which is the cinder block that's

(26:21):
underneath the ground. But you have this great character an
anti shrew, a shrew who is like basically the ant
to this family who has warned them they got to
get out of their house. And so she's there with
the family and Missus Brisbee when the plow approaches, it's
just this cool action where Missus Brisbee just kicks into action,
jumps onto the plow and is like trying to figure

(26:43):
out a way to stop it. She figures that's the
only way to do this. Missus Brisbee then flies in
to save the day, cuts the fuel line, and of
course the plow stops right before running over the Brisbee home.
They're jumping through the gears. The animation is just really
cool and it's just funest and then you have the
great Jerry Goldsmith score in the back. That's it fun.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yeah, I found it to be a pretty fun scene.
And then you see the tube like, oh, okay, any
street is gonna pull this tube off. Stop somehow stop
the tractor. There we go boom. Another favorite scene was
the meeting the rats, so missus Brisbee has to meet
with the rats in order for them to come up
with a plan to move her house before the plow

(27:25):
does eventually rip through their home. And just going back
to dragons Layer, just because so much of that animation
reminded me of so many of the scenes from Dragon's Layer,
the game which I loved playing in the early eighties
at United States of America. I remember playing it the
first time. It was on the boardwalk in Wildwood. My

(27:47):
mom put in the fifty cents and died, Died, died,
But it was hooked to that game forever. You just
see that looks in that scene and just the world
that the rats created. I always love animated stuff when
we get to go into a world like rats or
little people, and how they use common objects in a

(28:09):
different way from what we use them for. And you
see a lot of that. Christmas legs for us is
our main lighting for them. So just that kind of
stuff is a lot of fun to watch. Could agree more.
I had this as well. I just I wrote down
the descent into the Rat's layer deep inside the rose bush.
Such a cool location, cool idea. It's ominous, everything appears electrified,

(28:31):
great colors once again, love all the electric effects. Then
there's one moment Missus Brisbee goes into like an open
like a clearing, and this beautiful like green valley within
the bush, and then you have Brutus, this giant rat
guard with an electrified spear.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Love that moment. It's just so cavernous, and there's a
great line because you talk about the size difference in
the pright and they remind you how tiny they are
because at one point missus Brisbee is following mister Ages
through this cavernous area to get to Nicodemus, and she says,
is it always so dark? And mister Ages goes, We're

(29:06):
down three feet like it's that's like a big deal
for them, Yeah, waist deep, whoa right? Three feet. But
my favorite part is when they meet Justin the captain
of the Guard and they all get aboard the lantern
and close the door, which then seals them inside the
lantern and it's lowered downward underneath the water and goes

(29:29):
below the water all the way to the bottom and
the water and then just drains out of the cavern.
They get out of the lantern and make their way
into the grain storage area, and then the council room.
It's just a really cool thing with the lantern being
lowered and they're inside it. So again that size ratio
thing was pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
The whole mechanics on getting to the I guess main ballroom,
as you would say, a lantern are used as an elevator.
Another scene that really reminded me of Dragon's Layer when
she was walking through the first initial part and the
thorn bushes come out of nowhere and they kind of
intertwine and almost like you can't turn around and get out,
you got to go forward, and I was like, oh God,

(30:08):
that's so Dragonslayer also so cool.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
I love the idea that the rats of the sequence,
when they go into like the council room and you
have Genner talking to the all the council men or
council rats, that there's a line in there where they
feel that all the other animals in the field are
lower creatures, which is just a cool concept. The fact
that they're rats, and we as humans obviously think of

(30:33):
rats as kind of guttural, yes, dirty diseased animals, not
all of them, of course. I don't want to offend
all the rats out there, but I'm just saying that
they are the ones calling the other animals lower creatures
is very cool. Love that when you keep bringing up
Dragon's Layer because I've never lost money quicker, I should
have just literally thrown my roll of quarters into the trash.

(30:55):
It was so fun. Don't get me wrong, off dragons
Layer is the best, but man, I sucked at it,
and it was always fifty cents instead of twenty five cents.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
Right, Yeah, it was first video game. I remember being
fifty cents. Damn two quarters and I played for all
thirty seconds.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
Sex Mom and dad are like, you're already done in
the arcade? Yeah, lost all my quarters in two minutes.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
And then a final favorite scenier moment for us I
think we agree on this one is the final duel
between Justin and Jenner.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
Yep, great stuff.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
So the Rats do agree to help the Brisbees move
their home because of the debt for Jonathan Brisbee, because
we do find out it's Jonathan Brisbee that got them
out of nim or did the last stage to get
them out, so they're beholden to him. But the first
a little bit argument about it, and then Jenner sees
it as an opportunity to get rid of NiCoT Damas

(31:44):
because he wants to be in charge of the rats,
and unfortunately they are successful and Nicodemus dies and that's
when Justin realizes that Jenner set this whole thing up
and they have the final duel.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
I enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun. Always like
a good swordfi. You were talking about this earlier Bill,
this is violent. There's death in here. I was like, wait, oh, damn,
Nicodemus is actually dead. I didn't think they would succeed
with the plan they did. They killed him. I forgot
about that too. These rats are slicing each other up,
We're seeing blood flowing. I always like a good sword fight,

(32:18):
solid choreography. Love the fact that it's Jenner's kind of
evil sidekick that comes to the good side and as
he's dying, saves the day by throwing his knife into
Jenner's back and then he falls to his death. So
little trivia on this. I love this. The staging of
the climactic sword fight between Justin Jenner was largely taken
from the Tony Curtis Kirk Douglas duel in the Vikings

(32:42):
film from nineteen fifty eight, and some choreography, including the
villain getting stabbed in the stomach, was literally copied by
the animators. Other moments were inspired by fight scenes in
the Adventures of robin Hood nineteen thirty eight. A little
robin Hood in there? Yeah for sure? Was that Errol Flynn? Yes?
That one?

Speaker 1 (33:01):
Yeah, Okay, Time to move on to Swiss Cheese and
Complaints Apartment. And why don't we call the Swiss.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
Cheese because although this movie is delicious, it does have
farmhouse mouseholes, yes, and it doesn't have those farmhouse mouseholes.
We just file a complaint with the Complaints Apartment. So
what do we have for Swiss cheese complaints in this Well,
in the beginning, this is just super nitpicky. I was like,
apparently anti Shrew isn't too concerned about our poor sick Timothy.

(33:30):
She visits the Brisbee home and there's some interaction between
her and the eldest son, Martin, who doesn't care for
her too much. But Shrue is very Shrewish, and she's
just warning them that they're going to have to get out,
they got to move, but she gets tangled up with
the kids and then just takes off, and they're trying
to tell her that Tim is sick, but she doesn't
seem to be affected by It's like there's a kid

(33:53):
with the pneumonia and they're like if they call her
anti shrew. I think that was the problem I had.
I was just like, if she's anti shru, shouldn't she
be a little more concerned about the sick boy.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
I don't know, you would think so, or she'd even
knew that he was sick to begin with.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
And that whole warning system, they didn't have been a
lot of time. That was basically the next day the pole.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
Started, right, Yeah, that was quick.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
Who could pack up their place and overnight and get
that stuff out?

Speaker 2 (34:19):
I thought about that too. That's interesting. That was in
the back of my mind. When you see all the
other creatures running away, you have I failed to mention
that during that action sequence, it's great to see all
the rabbits, the bunnies, the squirrels, the birds flying out
of the fields, like, oh, they're just abandoning their homes.
They got to leave it all behind, no time to move.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
So, speaking of animals, I couldn't figure this out either.
Why could some talk and some couldn't, Like we understand
why the rats of nim could speak, that's explained, But
why does Missus Prisby speak. I can understand maybe why
the kids speak because they're from Jonathan, but Anti Shrew
why can't she speak? But then rabbits can't. The great

(34:59):
alcol Jeremy can. All the other animals in the field,
they don't seem to have that ability.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
No, they're just like squeaking and squawking. How did all
that work? You bring up a great point. I'm glad
you said that, because it's the problem again, the magic
in this movie. I don't understand. It's one thing to
have a conceit where you're watching a kid's animated film
where the animals talk, of course, right, yeah, Like you
just go and that's kind of what you expect. But

(35:25):
then when some can and some can't, and then you
learn that there are rats that were injected with some
special concoction that made them of higher intelligence, then you're like, oh,
that would be cool if that's why they can talk.
They can actually speak English because they were given this
special injection. And then they would have to explain why

(35:45):
missus Brisbee also can speak, but maybe she didn't not
you know, you could come up with some other things,
but I thought that's what they were going to go with.
They were going in that direction as to why they
could talk when I saw that some of them couldn't.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yeah, dragging can talk.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
Honestly, it didn't bother me. But when the movie's over
and then you think about it, why was it that way?
It should have just been the mice in the rats
and that kind of should have been it.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Right, Speaking of things happening quickly, at the end, when
the rats, led by Nicodemus and Justin, decide to help
missus Brisbee move her home, they moved super quickly. They
designed and built an entire pulley system in order to
move the Brisbee cinder block home. It seems like ours,
it's just really quick. I'm like, wow, they have an

(36:37):
entire pulley system.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Well, it seemed weird because I think it almost seemed
like they were moving it from one side of that
rock to the other side, right, which made me think,
why are you even on that first side to begin with?
If you know the pliole comes every year, mm hmm.
If everybody knows the pile comes, it's like living in
California and like, oh, you know, what, I'm gonna build
my house right on the fault line and take my chances.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
Right, or you know in California there's mudslides, so you
just put your house right. Yeah, I'm going to put
my house at the foot of the mountain on the cliff, yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Or yeah, I'm gonna put my house right by the
river that always overflows. Move somewhere where you don't have
to worry about the great move every year.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
Kind of a major inconvenience. So yeah, I'm glad you
brought that up too, because it seemed like that was
a big deal. The Great Owl says to miss Brisbee,
go back, talk to Nicodemus and the rats, and move
to the lee of the stone. And I'm like, well,
that sounds cool. What the hell does that mean? So
I had to look it up, and lee means a
protected downwind area. It acts as a metaphor for safety

(37:44):
and shelter, so it refers to the sheltered space behind
a large anchored stone, the lee of the stone. And
so it's like, I thought the lee of the stone
was some other magical place like where she was going
to move, and you're right, then, it's just no, it's
the other side of the stone where there's right. It's
nothing special. It's just the lee of the stone on
the other side, the sheltered side.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
Which made me think too, they live in a cinder block.
I don't even think it's that big for mice to
begin with.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
That's actually a good point. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
But if I'm the farmer and I'm gonna plow my field,
this is the first thing they do is walk the
field to see if there's stuff like cinder blocks in
there to dig it out. So when I drive my
plow over it, I'm not wrecking my plow.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Man, you just hit another thing. I was thinking about
putting this and make the big fears that the plow
is going to destroy their home, and I'm going you
live in a cinder block, it's going to destroy the
plow if anything.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
Yeah, it's just going to turn it. Yeah, I'm gonna
get to my big complaint.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yeah. I know.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
In Leath a Weapon, I talked about how much I
did not like that final closing song. Oh my god,
this one blows it away. This is gonna be one
of the worst final credit songs ever. And even the
other song in this movie is not good either. It
almost remined finds me of Willie Welcome to Chocolate Factory.
Uh huh the cheer Up Charlie song. I always skip
that scene in the movie, and I was like, oh

(39:07):
my god, this is like it's cousin song. When she's
feeding Timmy the medicine and there's that song playing, I'm like,
this song is awful. It's in it's and then I
was like, I can't get any worse than this, But nope,
when the closing credits come on, that song is twenty
times worse. That's definitely now the worst closing credits songs
I've heard from an eighties movie.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
You nailed it. It's off putting, to say the least.
I know it's supposed to be fairy tale esque and
to have that vibe and feeling it just makes me
think of Princess Bride, which is great because that's Mark Knopfler.
And then it also makes me think of another movie
like this where it's fantastical and mystical or is a
legend with Tom Cruise and Tim Curry, and that movie

(39:52):
has some weird lyrical music too, but I think it's
John Anderson from Yes does some one of the songs
in that and it's actually okay, but it's does this fit?
Does this feel like it belongs here?

Speaker 1 (40:03):
It's may you want something catchy? It was catchy. You're
not gonna sing this. It's not memorable for the movie.
Maybe just caught up in the Disney trap, because there's
always there's always those great memorable songs from a Disney.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
It's another great point, So you'd.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
Think he would have done that for this. You know what,
not only may do better animation than you're doing right now, Disney.
I'm gonna put in a better song animation, yes, from
what Disney was doing at the time. Definitely better animation.
Music not so much. I got one more complaint.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Oh go ahead. Jeremy the Crow completely disappears for the
third act finale or finales if you will. There's the
sword fight, there's the raising the house from the mud,
all of that. Before that happens, we do see missus
Brisbee talk to Jeremy, who was kind of swimming underwater

(40:55):
in disguise under the lily pads, and then she says,
go get a ton of string. I want you to
get more string. Go get a bunch of string, and
he takes off like he's on a mission. Great, and
then this whole thing happens. And I was waiting for
Jeremy to show up at some point with either the
string to help pull something or do something with it.
But I just thought he would appear at some point

(41:16):
for some reason, to even clumsily help things along. He's
literally does not show up until the very end of
the movie, just gone.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
It is very weird how characters come in and out
of this film.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
He's the comic relief. It gets really dark at the end.
Maybe that's why they didn't they took him out.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
I don't know how do you bring him back in
for that moment, but he should have been in there somehow. See,
that would be perfect. You somehow bring Dragon back and
Jeremy comes in somehow and gets dragging out of the
picture so they can try to complete their task with
saving the brisbee.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
Oh, that's a great call. That's a great as if
Dragon wakes up, Yes, he wasn't drugged enough. He wakes
up in the middle of thing and then goes after
them as they're trying to get the cinder block out
of the mud, and Jeremy has to run interference and
fight off Dragon. Oh. That would have been great.

Speaker 1 (42:07):
I'm sure they had that written now, it just wasn't
in the budget.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Yeah, yeah, they didn't have a lot of money to
work with, as it turns.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
Out, all right, I want to move on to Hey,
that's that actor case probably a voice actor in this
segment with Spotlight, a character actor you have seen in
many other films, an actor making their big screen debut,
or an actor that makes an uncredited cameo's Hey, it's
that actor.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
Who do we choose this week? This week for our
Hey it's that actor, we went with John Kerodine, John Carodine,
who voices the Great Owl, classic actor from Poughkeepsie, New York,
known for his deep baritone voice, and it is great
in this as the Great Owl, known as one of
the great character actors in American cinema, actually did voice

(42:50):
work all the way back in the late nineteen twenties
for Cecil B. De Mill. He was a protege and
close friend of John Barrymore, was then a prolific film
actor and later on typecast is a horror film star
and low budget and ultra low budget horror films. He
was a member of the group of actors often used
by John Ford that became known as the john Ford
Stock Company. His IMDb filmography goes all the way back

(43:12):
to nineteen thirty and between. Then in the eighties, he's
known for classic films such as The Grapes of Wrath, Stagecoach,
The Ten Commandments. He plays a role in one of
my favorite Danny k movies, The Court Jester in nineteen
fifty five. But during the eighties he was featured in
these notables, The Boogeyman from nineteen eighty, The Howling in
eighty one, The Nesting also in eighty one. He's the
Supreme Commander in Bill Band's favorite movie of all time,

(43:34):
The Ice Pirates nineteen eighty four. He plays a character
named Leo in Peggy Sue Got Married, which we also
did on this very podcast. That film was from eighty six.
And then I just wanted to say the title of
this film, The Adventures of Tora prison Ship Star Slammer,
that was also in nineteen eighty six. You gotta look
that one up, look at the cover. It's great. He

(43:54):
played Count Dracula in four films. House of Frankenstein from
forty four, House of Dracula from forty five, Billy the
Kid Versus Dracula in sixty six and Nocturna in seventy nine.
Father to five sons, three of which at least I
think there's four of them were actors. You'll know these
three for sure. His sons David Carodine, Robert Carodine from

(44:15):
Revenge of the Nerds RIP, and Keith Carody. One of
his grandchildren is actress Martha Plimpton, who's featured in some
of our favorite eighties flicks. John Carodine passed away from
natural causes in nineteen eighty eight at age eighty two.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
Dig Yeah, great voice as the great Al. He was
great as a great al. Okay, move it on to
facts and trivia. What are some facts and trivia we
have about the secret of them?

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Let's see here. This was a seem to be a
popular fun fact during the film's production. Aurora, which was
I believe is that they're one of the production companies.
Roora contacted the company Whammo, the manufacturers of Frisbee flying discs,
with concerns about possible trademark infringements if the Misses Frisbee

(45:00):
name from O'Brien's original book was used in the film.
Wammo rejected Aurora's request for Waiver to use the same
sounding name to their Frisbee in the film. Aurora informed
Bluth in Company that Missus Frisbee's name would have to
be altered, but by then the voice work had already
been recorded for the film, so the name changed to
Missus Brisbee necessitated a combination of re recording some lines,

(45:23):
and because John Carradine was unavailable for further recordings, careful
sound editing had to be performed, taking the B sound
out of another word from Carrodine's recorded lines and replaced
the F sound with the B sound, altering the name
from Frisbee to Brisbee. Wow.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
So the film was famously produced out of don blues
garage or a shoe string budget so tight that the
final stretch was financed by Bluth, Gary Goldman, and John
Pomperroy mortgaging their homes so to achieve the level animation
quality they were striving for. The team rucine Lely were
grueling sixteen hour days, often bringing work home just to

(46:04):
keep pace crazy.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
This was Jerry Goldsmith's first music score for an animated movie.
He later said it was among his personal favorites. He
was instrumental in introducing the movie to Steven Spielberg, who
went on to work with Don Bluth on An American
Tale in eighty six. According to Bluth and Gary Goldman
in their DVD commentary, Goldsmith so loved the movie that
he volunteered in extra three weeks to polish and refine

(46:28):
the score, even though he was not contractually obligated to
do so.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
According to Don Blue's biography, early versions of the Secret
of Nim looked very different from the final film. An
initial draft stayed much closer to Missus Frisbee and the
Rats of Nim, while a later script by Stephen Barnes
introduced major changes. In this early draft, the scientists from
Nim's played a much larger role, with the story cutting
back and forth between them and the animals. There was

(46:55):
even discussions of making one scientist a central villain balanced
by a more sympathetic good scientist, a concept that was
ultimately scaled back to a brief flashback and mostly offscreen presence.
In the finished film, Missus Brisbee herself was written as
even more openly emotional, and the character Isabelle from the
book was included rather than being removed.

Speaker 2 (47:16):
In the adaptation.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
One planned sequence had dragged the cat attacking the Brisbee home,
after which mister Ages and Justin would explain to the
children what happened to their father. The climax was also
far more grounded. Instead of a mystical resolution involving the amulet,
one version had nim gassing the Rats home, forcing a
desperate escape. Another concept centered on Brisbee making a literal

(47:41):
leap of faith across a deadly chasm, with her children
succeeding only because of the encouragement Justin had given her earlier,
making courage rather than magic the driving force behind the ending.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Yeah, it's interesting you talk about that. You can read
it on it. The changes they made from the book
and then beyond kind of explain my issues with this.
With the fantastic they added that fantastical magical quality gener's
character too. I think you know, either was bigger or
smaller from the book. But the changes they made were like, Okay,
that's why it feels a little separate from everything else,

(48:16):
or we just have a lot of questions as to
why it's there or how it works.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
Great because they just don't explain why it happens.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
Yeah, and it wasn't in the book that makes sense.
The movie also heralds a return to using the multiplane
camera for scenes requiring depth, especially Nicodemus's magic hologram, and
in the opening sequence, where with the aid of backlit animation,
the wise old rat beckens magic vapors from an ink
well to grace the pages of an ancient book with

(48:43):
fiery gold lettering. Last, but not least, there are more
than six hundred colors used in this movie. One character,
chemist Mouse mister Ages has twenty six colors.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Wow, that's cool. Yeah, can move on to box office.
So The Secret of Dim hit theaters on July second,
nineteen eighty two, opening in only eighty eight locations. With
an estimated budget of seven million dollars, The movie pulled
in fourteen point six million across North America. It opened
in the seventeenth spot at the box office and never

(49:16):
entered the top ten. It didn't help that Disney had
released Bamby on the same day, which opened in seven
hundred and fifty theaters and made close to two million
dollars that week. Nim's biggest grossing week was on its
third week of release, when it was in seven hundred
theaters and pulled in one point four million in ticket sales.
By the end of its run, it became the sixty

(49:36):
eighth highest grossing movie of nineteen eighty two. Then, moving
on to reviews. From growing up in the eighties, we
would watch sneak previews with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert
to hear the reviews and watch clips of upcoming movies.
Their review of The Secret of Dim was unanimous two
thumbs up. Gene wasn't a big fan of the opening
of the movie or the main character, but once the
movie explored the world of the rats, things really picked up.

(49:59):
Roger impressed with the movie's depth, depth of characters, and
depth of animation. Rotten Tomatoes is it a Tomato Meter
score of ninety three percent? What's the Popcorn Meter score
of eighty six percent? It also has an IMDb rating
of seven point five. So this brings us to additional
thoughts and questions. Do we have any additional thoughts in
questions about the secretive nim Yeah, I've got a few

(50:21):
for you, okay.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
In the very beginning of the film, after the cold
open with Nicodemus, we're introduced to mister Ages. He's inside
this piece of this giant piece of farm equipment that's
sitting out in the field. What is he working on?
In the beginning, he's clearly inside the equipment. We learned
later on that he's one of the two mice that
survived the nim experiments and got out. So he's highly intelligent,

(50:42):
we learned later. So it kind of makes sense looking back.
But is he using his intelligence for that medicine preparation,
or alchemy or the power that he has because he
seems to live inside that equipment right his home is
down inside that farming tool.

Speaker 1 (50:59):
I got a little confused. I initially thought he was
in the plow trying to sabotage it so it wouldn't
be ready. But then I'm like, why would you have
all that stuff in there if the plow is going
to happen soon and then you would lose everything, So
he must be in a different machine.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
Yeah, and then what he's doing.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
I have no idea, but yeah, maybe it is for
the exodus to the was that thorn valley they were
going to go to correct Maybe he was working on
our power source once they moved. That's the only thing
I could think of. I think he did reference like
something big.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
Yep, yep, must be what it is?

Speaker 1 (51:37):
There you go the power source for what they're going
to survive on.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
Okay, well that leads to my next question, the good segue,
because do we need to see Thorn Valley at the end.
This is what it's all leading up to, all building
up to, is this exodus to Thorn Valley where the
rats are going to go. We don't ever see it,
and we don't know what they're going to do or
how they're going to survive once they get there.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
I was interested to see where Thorn Valley was because
it was like it'd be hilarious. It's really just on
the outskirts of the farm. It's just some little if
It also is on just on the other side of
the stone. Yeah, I did want to see it, but
I didn't think it was necessary to see it. Okay,
we've mentioned Dragon's lay Are tons of times throughout this.

(52:22):
Did you ever finish the game? I never did. I
never completed it. I believe I've watched the gameplay on
a YouTube video so I could see what happens somebody
playing it live and they finish it. But no, did
you win the game? Had you gotten through it? Yes,
I have. I remember the first time I saw someone
beat it. I was in Atlantic City and there was

(52:43):
this place, oh god, I think it was called Ocean One.
They actually had the game on a big screen so
people could gather around and watch, and some kid had
finished it, and maybe it was like fifty people watching
this kid finish the game. So I was the first
time I saw the ending. All it is is memorization, right.
I think there's maybe twenty six different animated scenes, and

(53:05):
then it does them reverse. So once you learn how
to do it, the one way all you got to
do is just reverse on the on the other side,
and then when you get to the final scene with
the Princess Daphne, that's yeah, it's really not that hard.
It's just, yeah, you just have to put the time
in because I know so he did that Dragon's Layer
two and then Space Ace and they're more linear. I

(53:26):
was terrible at those. Yep, that's hard. They just didn't
seem as fun. It's a kind of a bummer that
didn't catch on as well. Yeah, but the problem was
the games were very they were expensive to make, and
they broke down really easily from because of your everything
was on a disc record sides discs. Someone hit it
and knocked it off whack. But yeah, I don't know

(53:48):
if I ever knew that. Yeah, Yeah, that's that's cool man. Yeah,
that was during the time it captured my imagination because
the animation in the game just looked so cool. Oh yeah,
And I mean that was the first attract. And it's
like this medieval fun story and your hero is kind
of goofy but still cool. And on top of it,

(54:08):
it was during that Choose your Own Adventure phase that
I was going through reading Choose your Own Adventure books.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
And playing Yes, God, I love those two the text
Choose your Own Adventure game on Apple two wee and
was playing Zork. Love that game. I'm waiting for that
movie to come out. I'm sure it will at some point.
And because you were just doing you just writing text
and giving directions and it's just totally left to your imagination,
dragons Layer had a little bit of that feel like

(54:35):
you were choosing the direction where your character could go,
you know, choose or you know the adventure he was
about to go on. So it had that same kind
of magical quality to it.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
Yeah, and the fact it kind of randomized, like you
could play the game ten times and it would take
you on a journey ten different ways. And I think
that was kind of fun about it, which is what
I didn't like about Space Ace or dragons Layer two.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
Right, makes sense. I got a couple more questions real quick. One,
if Nicodemus could see that Missus Brisbee was in trouble
after the plow scene, there's a quick scene where you
have Nicodemus looking through his like what is it called,
like that hologram, It's like a I don't even know,
like a looking glass. I don't know what it is.
But he can see what's happening outside of the rose Bush,

(55:20):
and he keys in on Missus Brisbee, who is clearly
in trouble and now has talked to Anti Shrew and
Auntie Shrew says you need to go talk to the
Great Owl, and Nicodemus is watching, going, yes, Missus Brisbee,
go seek the wisdom of the Great Owl and that
should help you on your journey. And I'm like, hey, Nick,

(55:43):
why don't you just skip a step and go get her,
Like you can just leave the Rosebush, go find Missus Brisbee.
You know that she needs to, like it, just seemed
though he had this magic eye, this eye and the
sky kind of thing, and could see what was going
on with her, and all already knew she was in
trouble and that eventually she was going to come to

(56:03):
him as if she It was kind of like almost
like a prophecies kind of thing where he figured the
wife of Jonathan Brisbee would eventually come to his doorstep.
So it was like, if he knows that, why not
just send some rats out to go retrieve her, get
her and then find out exactly what it is what
she needs, which is their help. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (56:22):
Yeah, well he should have sawd too that Jenner was
plot in the kiln, you know, yeah, do you think
about that too much?

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (56:30):
A lot of issues going on at that point.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
I had a really simple question for you, Actually, go ahead.
Do you think the Great Owl, who was really cool?
Does he look like an owl?

Speaker 1 (56:40):
It was interesting because we meet him and he's covered
in cobwebs, But would he just sit there and spiders
spin webs on him that fast during the day and
then he goes out, eats and repeats the process.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
He looked cool, he looked great. It's just I'm used
to the the classic look of an owl that has
kind of a roundish head that you know obviously can turn.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
The toosy pop out. That's who you're looking for. Yeah,
I expect.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
And he just kind of looked old and curmudgeonly and
just kind of kind of strange, just covered in hair
and feathers and webs.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
Like you said, Yeah, he's been around for a while.
It's got a lot of bones in that, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
Yeah, Oh, I just got even to miss Brisbee man
with the name drop god every time she said her
husband's name, boom. I just got what you needed. That's awesome,
that's right. Do you know who I am?

Speaker 2 (57:34):
Right? Free steak Dinners for life? That that movie was
made today? Do you know who I am?

Speaker 1 (57:41):
Jonathan Brisbee's wife, O my house.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
You wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for my husband.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
Ye okay, let's move on to a rating. So on
a scale of one to five trackers, what do you
give the secret to?

Speaker 2 (57:53):
Nim? This was tough, Bill Band. I like this movie.
I'm going to be generous. I'm giving it four tracks.
I think this is it's a cool movie. You know
why I'm going to give it for is because I
think it was an achievement for the time. We didn't
talk about it in our Fun Facts and Trivia specifically,
you did touch on it in the very beginning of
our podcast. The fact is, Don Bluth and several other

(58:15):
animators literally left Disney and this was to do this
out of the gate, and they did not have a
large budget, and Blue took a chance with not only
you know, changing some stuff from the book clearly, but
also it was a risk. It is dark in tone.
They didn't have a lot of money to work with,

(58:36):
and they did it. The movie's fun, it's entertaining. It
has a great score by Jerry Goldsmith. There's some rollicking
adventure to be had. I love the action sequences. It
is extremely colorful. Dom Delawez is really fun in the
scenes that he has as Jeremy the Crow. And I
liked it following Missus Brisbee or Missus Frisbee if you
will on her journey, love the locations, love me some

(58:59):
good low or was it a little confusing at times?
And did it come out of nowhere at times? Yeah?
It did, but it didn't bother me enough to give
it a lower rating than for so I'm gonna give
it for tractors nice.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
I'm gonna give it three and a half. I think
I probably like this movie now more than I did
as a kid. I really didn't remember that much going
back to watch it, and I really had no interest
in seeing it. If it wasn't for this podcast, I
don't know if I ever would have seen the movie again.
I have a copy of it. Someone gave me a
copy of it for our kids, and I'm just like,
I just kind of remember to being dark. I don't

(59:34):
know my kids will be into it, but now I
feel like I need to show them this. I'm wondering
if they'll like it at their age. I mean they're teenagers,
but yeah, it might be that thing Mouse movie what
I want to watch this Mouse movie for. But I
almost feel like I'm the right aide to enjoy this
movie right now.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
I don't know. Yeah, it's a great point you made
right from the beginning.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
And I agree. I enjoyed the score. I just really
enjoyed listening to Dom Delle Louise. And it's eighty two
minutes and it's it's fast. It's it's really quick, and
that's always a good sign. Nothing worse than having an
eighty two minute animated movie and feeling like it's four
hours and it drags. It really doesn't. There's a lot
of good and it's not cheap animation. The whole body

(01:00:16):
moves when they're talking, they're animated, it's just not the
mouth that's just saying words. There's a lot of movement.
There's a lot of love that's put into this film.
You can really see it. And credit to the animators
and all the hard work they did, putting in time
and effort to it. It really does show on the screen.
So this was a big surprise for me. I mean,
you and I had a hard time trying to pick

(01:00:36):
a movie to do. We did the schedule. All we
put was animated movie and I kept going back and forth,
going what are we going to do? I don't even
know if I'd like any of these, And you said,
let's try this, And I'm glad you picked this one.
This makes up for the hitcher, Jason.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
I appreciate that. Yeah, I still are you for the
Ice Pirates though, Oh that's true. It was a labor
of love. It was a painstaking price. You can find
all of the technical details in the trivia if you
want to look it up, do a little research. But
I appreciate the fact that Don Bluth decided to go
a little old school. He went back to some classic
techniques that he thought had been put aside just to

(01:01:15):
get this style of animation done so and it paid off.
I'm glad you, said Sprite. I was also pleasantly surprised.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
So yeah, and I want to find this book now.
I'm surprised, right, I just never really come across it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
It's a cool idea.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
Yeah, yeah, I'd like to know how different it really
is from the book.

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
National Institute for Mental Health nim wild. Okay, that wraps
it up for this week's episode.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
Thank you so much for hanging out with us. We
really appreciate it. If you enjoyed the show, be sure
to follow us on your favorite streaming platform, leave a rating,
and drop a review. A nice so the better Curious
For more you would be check out all amiesmoviespodcast dot
com for everything you need to know.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
About our show.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
We'll catch you next time as we jump into another
unforgettable jin from the great movie decade of all time,
the nineteen eighties. Until then, stay awesome and have an excellent.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Dany no taste for blood. Huh. They've taken the animal
out of here. Thanks for staying up with us. Good
Night World.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
It opened in the seventeenth spot, the Box off the
Box Office.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
That's an interesting accent.