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SYNOPSIS
In 1979, legendary animator Don Bluth made the decision to leave Walt Disney Productions and establish his own animation studio with several former Disney employees. The newly established Don Bluth Productions first made a short – Banjo the Woodpile Cat – and then its first feature: The Secret of NIMH, adapted from Robert C. O’Brien’s popular children’s book Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

The widowed Mrs Brisby (Elizabeth Hartman), a field mouse, lives with her children in a cinderblock on the rural Fitzgibbon farm – although not for much longer. With harvest season approaching, she must relocate her family before their home is destroyed by the farmer’s plough. But her son, Timothy (Ina Fried), has fallen ill and can’t be moved. In desperate need of help, Mrs Brisby pays a visit to the Great Owl (John Carradine), who in turn introduces her to Nicodemus (Derek Jacobi): the wise leader of a rat colony living beneath a rose bush on the Fitzgibbon property. The rats are technologically advanced and possess vast intelligence due to their connection to a mysterious place they call NIMH, and agree to help Mrs Brisby due to a cherished friendship with her late husband. But not all of the rats are so kind, and the power-hungry Jenner (Paul Shenar) has a vested interest in making sure that Mrs Brisby and her family stay put…

A sweeping fantasy epic realised through astoundingly beautiful cel animation, The Secret of NIMH paved the way for Bluth’s later successes An American Tail, The Land Before Time and All Dogs Go to Heaven. The Masters of Cinema series is honoured to present this touchstone of American animation on Blu-ray.

SPECIAL FEATURES
Limited edition [2000 copies]
Limited edition O-Card slipcase featuring original poster artwork [2000 copies]
1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray from a studio supplied master
Brand new audio commentary with animation scholar Sam Summers, author of DreamWorks Animation: Intertextuality and Aesthetics in Shrek and Beyond Archival audio commentary with director Don Bluth and producer Gary Goldman
The Rats of NIMH – A new on-camera interview with director and animator Don Bluth
Beyond Your Wildest Dreams - A new on-camera appreciation of The Secret of NIMH with animation expert and fan Stacey Abbott
Courage of the Heart – A new video essay by children’s media expert Catherine Lester on motherhood in The Secret of NIMH
Secrets Behind the Secret – archival featurette
Theatrical trailer
Stills Gallery
A collector’s booklet featuring new writing on Don Bluth and The Secret of NIMH by Peter C. Kunze, author of Staging a Comeback: Broadway, Hollywood, and the Disney Renaissance

Curious to know owns the rights to this in the U.K., since the previous U.K. release came from Fox.

One of my childhood favorites. Exhibit A in the argument that kids movies in the 80s were fearless, because this movie is disturbing as hell!

yoloswegmaster wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 2:01 pm Curious to know owns the rights to this in the U.K., since the previous U.K. release came from Fox.

MGM. Fox handled MGM's home video distribution from the late 00s until the Disney buyout.

ChunkyLover wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 2:24 pm

yoloswegmaster wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 2:01 pm Curious to know owns the rights to this in the U.K., since the previous U.K. release came from Fox.

MGM. Fox handled MGM's home video distribution from the late 00s until the Disney buyout.

Thanks!

domino harvey wrote:One of my childhood favorites. Exhibit A in the argument that kids movies in the 80s were fearless, because this movie is disturbing as hell!

I've shown my kids loads of 80s stuff through the years, and they're shocked at what we had for kids' entertainment. They saw this one when they were a bit older,, but were still disturbed by the lab sequence, and my daughter says she still finds the owl to be nightmare fuel.

I live with a cat now and...

Spoiler

...every time she insists on sitting beneath a drawer I need to open, I think of this movie. You know what I mean! (Which is why I keep one hand underneath when I do open them!)

domino harvey wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 2:19 pm One of my childhood favorites. Exhibit A in the argument that kids movies in the 80s were fearless, because this movie is disturbing as hell!

I haven't seen it in > 35 years and I'm still traumatized by it. Would watch again!

Aesthetically gorgeous, but my god does it miss the point the novel makes about science vs. spiritualism.

The scene with Mrs. Brisby trapped in the farmer’s house that alternates between the kitchen and plough in the field is iusr incredible.

It’s remarkable what a small crew this film had. When I saw Don Hahn’s wonderful Waking Sleeping Beauty, about Disney’s transition from Ron Miller to Eisner/Katzenberg, the famous photograph of Bluth, Goldman, and co. literally driving away from Disney got a huge laugh

Complete soundtrack now available from Intrada...



Intrada presents the long-sought after expanded edition of The Secret of NIMH (1982). While Intrada's previous edition was slightly expanded, it still came up short around 8 minutes of score due to missing elements. Since that previous release, MGM was able to locate the original 35mm stems that included their own stereo audio music tracks of everything as heard in the film. CD Producer Chris Malone took these new elements and blended them with the rest of the score to create the expanded program including all the bits for which collectors have been pining. As with Intrada's First Blood album, the first disc presents the score in film order, removing much of the album assembly that Goldsmith had prepared for the original album. Disc 2 includes Goldsmith's original album program as he assembled it to preserve all the creative decisions that he made. It's never sounded better. The CD features new cover art by Stéphane COËDEL and an additional Tech Talk by Roger Feigelson.
It's no secret now that Goldsmith took the scoring assignment under the condition that he could score the feature like a live-action film. “As I told the producers, if they wanted a Disney-like, synchronize-every-cut type of score I couldn’t do it. I wanted to score it as a live-action film, and they agreed.” The score features as many as eight different themes for the film’s major characters and situations. As the composer described it: “They go from pure romanticism to impressionism, everything. It’s sort of an animated Peter and the Wolf, but it all hangs together cohesively. It’s a much more conservative score than, say, Omen or Outland or Alien or even Poltergeist, but it’s still diversely styled, musically, and it all seems to tie together very well.”

In the film, two stories run in parallel. Mrs. Brisby is a widow, and one of her four children, Timothy, is sick with pneumonia. She is desperate to move her home away from the farmer’s fields, where it will soon be destroyed by plowing, but her family can’t move while her son is ill. The second story involves a group of rodents—rats and mice—being held at a facility run by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). After experimental drug treatments alter the rodents’ DNA and render them intelligent, they escape—with the help of Mrs. Brisby’s husband—and form a colony underneath the farmer’s lawn. Because Mr. Brisby is killed while drugging the farmer’s cat, Dragon, he is a revered figure to the rats, who eventually help Mrs. Brisby and her family move their home.

CD 1 THE SCORE
01. Main Title (Film Version) (3:21)
02. Potion* (1:42)
03. Allergic Reaction (Film Version) (2:14)
04. Athletic Type (Film Version) (0:40)
05. Flying Dreams (Vocal By Sally Stevens) (Film Version) (3:21)
06. The Tractor (3:02)
07. No Thanks (2:06)
08. Step Inside My House (4:46)
09. In Disguise (Film Version) (2:47)
10. The Sentry Reel (Film Version)** (2:33)
11. At Your Service (3:42)
12. Tied Up* (1:34)
13. Be Brief* (0:42)
14. The Story Of NIMH (Film Version) (4:06)
15. Escape From NIMH (Film Version) (2:24)
16. New Resolve* (2:10)
17. In Disguise* (1:32)
18. A Better Mousetrap* (1:09)
19. Moving Day (8:01)
20. House Raising (4:38)
21. Flying High/Flying Dreams (Film Version)/End Title (Film Version)**
Total Score Time: 63:03

THE EXTRAS
22. Flying Dreams – Demo (Piano Duet) (3:25)
23. Flying Dreams – End Title Demo (Vocal By Sally Stevens) (3:17)
24. Flying Dreams – Demo (Vocal By Paul Williams) (3:21)
25. Flying Dreams – End Title Foreign Language Version (Vocal By Sally Stevens)* (3:29)
Total Extras Time: 13:39
Total CD 1 Time 75:46

CD 2 ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK ALBUM (2015 Edition)
01. Main Title (3:19)
02. Allergic Reaction/Athletic Type (2:44)
03. Flying Dreams (Vocal By Sally Stevens) (3:20)
04. The Tractor (3:02)
05. The Sentry Reel/The Story Of NIMH (6:08)
06. Escape From NIMH/In Disguise (5:04)
07. Flying Dreams (Vocal By Paul Williams) (3:24)
08. Step Inside My House (4:46)
09. No Thanks (2:06)
10. Moving Day (8:01)
11. House Raising (4:38)
12. Flying High / End Title (2:41)
Total CD 2 Time: 49:42

*Previously Unreleased
**Includes Previously Unreleased Material

https://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id. ... egory=-113