The Fox and the Hound (1981)
Disney Animated Classic Number 24
Starring: Mickey Rooney, Kurt Russell, Jack Albertson, Pearl Bailey, Pat Buttram, Jeanette Nolan, Dick Bakalyan, Paul Winchell & Sandy Duncan
Directed by: Ted Berman, Richard Rich & Art Stevens
Rating: ★½
In the late 1970s, the powers that be at Disney decided they would base their next family friendly film on a book about an alcoholic farmer who not only spends most of the novel training his hound dog to track down and kill a fox, but then blows said hound’s head off with a shotgun because he can’t take his ‘beloved’ pet with him to a nursing home.
This rather disturbed story, The Fox and the Hound by Daniel Mannix, was deemed suitable source material for a feature animation for children.
This rather disturbed story, The Fox and the Hound by Daniel Mannix, was deemed suitable source material for a feature animation for children.
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| You've got a friend in me... well actually you don't. By the time the movie is over, they won't be friends. |
They must have just focused on the title rather than the content of the novel as, luckily for kids across the globe, neither the fox nor the hound in Disney’s version are horribly massacred. Instead, their version of The Fox and the Houndis supposedly about prejudice or something, but due to an awful script and absolutely no character development or dramatic tension, it is hard to figure out exactly what the point of the movie is. And before you say ‘it’s about society and friendship’, which is what they want you to think, based on the content of the bumbling and thoroughly inadequate film itself, the message about people overcoming prejudice is completely absent. In fact, the conclusion solidifies the opposite: that people can’t overcome societies’ bigotry.
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| When you're good to Mama; Mama's good to you! |
Set in the English American countryside The Fox and the Hound begins with an eerie, creepy and ominous introduction, as we travel through the dark and cavernous woods during the opening credits. The soundtrack is basically woodland noises such as animals screeching and trees rustling, which makes you expect that the film itself will be one full of dread and horror. We are proved partially right, as a fox and cub are being chased by a merciless hunter through the woods, and after hiding her child, the fox darts off, only to be shot and killed off-screen, much like Bambi.
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| Amos likes to kill things. Anything, in fact. |
The cub, Tod (Rooney), is found by racist stereotype owl Big Mama (Bailey), finch Dinky (Bakalyan) and woodpecker Boomer (Winchell) who assist him in finding a home with Widow Tweed (Nolan), an elderly woman who lives next door to hunter Amos Slade (Albertson). Amos likes to kills things- anything in fact, judging by his ‘shed of death’- and he uses his hunting dog Chief (Buttram) and new recruit Copper (Russell) to assist him. As Tod and Copper are next door neighbours, their paths cross once or twice, and in this incredibly undeveloped amount of time we are meant to believe that they become ‘best of friends’, mainly because Big Mama sings a song about it.
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| The 'best of friends' song is meant to make us believe that they become friends in two minutes... |
After they splash in a puddle together, Copper is taken away to learn how to hunt, and Tod is warned by his avian friends that his ‘best friend’ will not be the same when he returns. Some time passes and they have both grown up, and of course Copper is expected to kill Tod, which he doesn’t, and then the Widow throws Tod into the woods after he accidentally almost kills Chief, and while he is in the forest he meets Maid Marion Vixey (Duncan) who he shares intimate relations with. Then both of the foxes are tracked down by a revenge fuelled Amos and Copper, but Tod saves their lives from a bear and the film ends- rather surprisingly- with everyone going their separate ways. So the moral of the story is that it is okay to be friendly with other species, as long as you aren’t actually friends, and keep to your own kind.
Excellent message, Disney.
Excellent message, Disney.
The Fox and the Hound has the same feel, tone and animation as The Rescuers but isn’t as interesting. The animals are cute, but the film is incredibly slow paced, and doesn’t really have any narrative weight. The story is stretched so thinly that there is a subplot about Dinky and Boomer chasing a caterpillar which is more detailed and has almost as much screen time as the titular fox and hound, which is not a good thing. At all.
The mellow tone works hand in hand with the gloomy animation and the low key country soundtrack. Big Mama predictably lives up to her racist archetype by singing every song, which are okay, but not overwhelming memorable. The directors try to inject some sort of interesting action into the movie sporadically, including a sort of car chase when Amos tries to shoot Tod and when Chief is hit by a train and thrown into a river.
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| Chief was originally meant to die, but didn't. It would have made more sense if he did. |
The dark and melancholy tone throughout is most potent in the scene where the Widow thinks to herself about how much she loves Tod as she is driving him towards the woods where she then abandons him. Leaving a human reared animal in a forest would realistically mean certain death- she might as well have handed him over to Amos- but that doesn’t stop her.
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| Widow Tweed: what a bitch. |
The Fox and the Hound is strange in that it simmers between boring, dull and tedious to end up boiling over into overtly frightening. Just after Big Mama’s love song about natural attraction- where the two foxes have a romantic rendezvous under a waterfall (does this sound familiar?)- the film completely changes character. The sense of menace and death is potent throughout, but this all comes to a head in the final showdown in which Amos and Copper are intent on murdering Tod and Vixen, but instead are attacked by a nightmarish bear with red eyes. This whole scene is jarring and exciting, but also scary. After Tod saves the day, by sacrificing himself (but not dying) you would think that the big payoff should be that Copper and Tod forgive, forget, and go back to being friends. But they don’t. Yes, they forgive and forget, as does Amos, but they aren’t allowed to talk to one another, so the film ends as it began: threateningly foreboding and bittersweet.
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| This bear must have given children across the world nightmares... |
And this makes it forgettable filler in the Disney canon. Nothing really happens to move the story along, and because of this, it falls flat. The ending is senseless, particularly because the evil villain gets away with it all and will presumably continue to kill everything that crosses his path, and because we learn nothing. The movie tries to counteract this by having the dogged caterpillar magically transform into a colour-changing Technicolor butterfly, but this isn’t satisfying or important.
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| The technicolor butterfly: the actual 'main plot' of this Disney Disaster |
It would be no surprise to anyone who knows the history of The Fox and the Hound to discover that it has serious problems. This movie was a turning point for Disney, as their ‘Nine Old Men’ (Disney’s core animators who began work on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and oversaw every film after it) began the development for the movie but handed it over to younger Disney animators, as their time was well and truly over.
These new animators included the following: John Lasseter (of Pixar fame), John Musker & Ron Clements (who went on to direct Basil, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, Treasure Planet and The Princess and the Frog together), Henry Selick (director of A Nightmare Before Christmas & Coraline), Brad Bird (The Incredibles) and Don Bluth (The Land Before Time). Because of this new team of animators, there was an old versus new dynamic, which caused tension and therefore problems with the film’s development, as producer Wolfgang Reitherman wanted to stay true to the depressing novel, and director Art Stevens wanted to take the movie in a different direction.
These arguments ultimately proved destructive and divisive; Don Bluth walked out of Disney, taking eleven others with him, and formed his own studio that went on to create animated films that intentionally went head to head against Disney. In the end, the film was delayed and its premiere pushed back, as a significant percentage of the animators left and new ones had to be found to replace them.
Ultimately, the story underwent dramatic changes to become more family friendly, including Chief surviving his brush with death. Director Stevens did not want to show any character dying, so altered the script to ensure his survival. It may interest you to know that other beloved Disney characters who have avoided the grave in this way include Trusty from Lady and the Tramp and Baloo from The Jungle Book.
At the time, The Fox and the Hound was the most expensive animated film ever produced, costing $12 million, and was a critical and financial success. I’m not sure I understand why, as, in its entirety, it is so incredibly low key that it triumphs at being forgettable filler and adding absolutely nothing to the Disney canon. The songs are bland, the plot weak and the tone dismal. The bleak atmosphere that it creates in the first tedious few minutes foreshadows exactly what happens in the movie: nothing interesting or memorable.
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| 'Don't tell anyone this movie sucks. We've got toys to sell!' |
If you ever happen to watch this film, and are as bored as I was after one minute of woodland foraging, then do what your gut tells you to and just turn the movie off.
It is the sensible thing to do.
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