The Rescuers
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Template:Infobox Movie The Rescuers is the twenty-third film in the Disney animated features canon. It was produced by Walt Disney Productions, and first released on June 22, 1977 by Buena Vista Distribution. The film is about a society of mice, headquartered in New York and shadowing the United Nations, who go about doing good deeds in the world at large. Two of these mice, a hesitant and very New York-sounding Bernard (Bob Newhart) and the elegant, Hungarian-sounding Miss Bianca (Eva Gabor), set about rescuing Penny, a kidnapped girl, with the help of a comical albatross and the various animal inhabitants of the bayou where Penny is being held.
The film was inspired by a series of children's novels by Margery Sharp.
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The Characters
- Bernard: He is a New York-sounding mouse that has one job: janitor. He is the most superstitious of the gang as he suffers from Triskaidekaphobia (13 steps on the ladder, Flight 13, 13 steps on the stairs, Friday the 13th), and hates flying.
- Miss Bianca: She is a Hungarian-sounding mouse that is adventurous. She loves Bernard, and sometimes uses a little humor in problems.
- Madame Medusa: She is a villainess and only cares about The Devil's Eye, an enormous diamond. She has two pet alligators: Nero and Brutus.
- Penny: She is a small orphan girl, abducted by Madam Medusa because she's small enough to fit into the hiding place of The Devil's Eye and retrieve it. She has a beloved teddy bear, which Madame Medusa uses at one point as a new hiding place for the diamond.
- Mr. Snoops: He's the partner of Madame Medusa. He is also greedy and hates Penny. His character is based on animation historian John Culhane, who was constantly snooping around the studio at the time the film was made, hence the character's name.
The Sequel
There is a sequel, The Rescuers Down Under (1990), set in the Australian Outback in which Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor reprised their roles from the first film. John Candy took the late Jim Jordan's place in the comical albatross role.
Re-releases
In December 1983, The Rescuers was re-released with the new Mickey Mouse short, Mickey's Christmas Carol. It was also re-released in the summer of 1989, due to The Rescuers Down Under being released in 1990. The VHS and LaserDisc versions of The Rescuers weren't released until 1992, when it was released on those formats in the Walt Disney's The Classics collection. It was re-released in 1999, but was recalled due to a photographic image of a topless woman in the background of New York when they are flying on Orville, the albatross.
Topless woman rumor
The movie is famous for an image of a topless woman hidden in the background of one scene. When the mice are flying over the city, a topless woman is seen very quickly in a window, in just two frames. In 1992, however, the movie was released on video, but didn't have the picture of the topless woman because it was made from a different movie cut.
On January 5, 1999, Disney re-released The Rescuers on video, but complete with the photograph of the topless woman. Disney quickly found it, and on January 8, 1999, they recalled the video tape and laserdisc, and on March 1999, they re-released it with the edited scene. In 2003, they released it on DVD with the edited scene.
The Disney Reprints
In 1976, Disney reprinted Miss Bianca by Margery Sharp and it showed a Eva Gabor look-alike Miss Bianca, and a Bob Newhart look-alike Bernard. Disney later recalled the books, and redesigned Miss Bianca and Bernard due to kids having nightmares about the humanistic mice.
Innovations
This film marked the beginning of the use of more refined photocopying technology that restored a softer outline look that previously was not possible with the process.
See also
External links
- The Rescuers official homepage (http://disney.go.com/disneyvideos/animatedfilms/rescuers/)
- AnimatedMovies.net description (http://www.animated-movies.net/TheRescuers.html)
- The Rescuers (http://www.bcdb.com/bcdb/cartoon.cgi?film=40&cartoon=The%20Rescuers) at the Big Cartoon DataBase
- "Photographic images of a topless woman can be spotted in The Rescuers" (http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/rescuers.htm) at snopes.comzh:救难小英雄