The Black Cauldron

Uh, and so, uh, to quickly go through it, like, Brad Bird went to Disney, didn't like what was going on at Disney then.

He worked on Fox and the Hound and early times on The Black Cauldron.

It was a messy, messy time at Disney.

He is bouncing up against management all the time thinking they are unimaginative.

And I especially love shelf overhead that's got all of these Easter egg props.

Some deep cups here, like The Black Cauldron.

I thought that that was one of those movies that Disney did not want to acknowledge.

Right,

yes.

But you got The Black Cauldron up there alongside Big Hero 6 and a little animated Figaro taking a nap.

Adorable.

Love all those adorable touches.

That was really lovely.

The stock answer is The Black Cauldron.

My favourite Disney film, obviously, because I'm nothing if not a stereotype.

The Black Cauldron is an 80s Disney animated feature that they released and then basically have disowned in the years since.

They had a few years where they experimented with child-friendly horror And The Black Cauldron was a dark fantasy film more so than outright horror, but has a lot of horror elements to it.

And this was beloved by me because it had fairies in and like magical creatures.

It was based on Welsh mythology.

And there's a prescient pig, like a fortune telling pig that can see the future.

Well, I think it is interesting, or the thought of like the narrative, the controlled narrative, or the attempts to or the success of it.

It's like films that we don't know a lot about, what was Disney, Treasure Planet, Black Cauldron, stuff where it's like, oh, this is...

We didn't think it was that good so let's ignore it or let's put it down.

Like, how successful are they at doing that versus this one where it's like, well, we really like these parts so let's do that, but let's ignore the whole film that it came from and all of the baggage there.

And I mean, sure, that does include... ...like, all the shorts and stuff like that.

But the thing with Disney is that... ...at their absolute worst... ...they would be, like, around... ...a mixed bag... like like there would be at a point like when you think back of like the 70s and 80s or uh the mid 90s like the black cauldron yeah or like even the mid 1940s the 2000s or even some people would argue like even in the 2020s right now like there is a lot of it that's just a mixed bag where you do get like some solid hits from disney that are actually great features yeah they are on

kind of a rough stretch with wish and strange world but uh but hopefully they can They can you know, I wanted to it's not great.

Although honestly, I would argue that They're like right now with the 2020s.

And we've seen a whole bunch of them.

Like, not just with Atlantis and Treasure Planet, but, like, you would be surprised of, like, how many Disney films would have to go through that route.

Like, even The Black Cauldron went through this.

Alice in Wonderland is actually a great example, considering that that movie was considered one of the most hated, or possibly the most hated Disney animated feature at the time.

We recently did 85 for this episode with my friend, our mutual friend, Brian Salisbury.

Would you rather watch Red Sonja or The Black Cauldron?

I'm going to go with Red Sonja.

I'm going to pick Sonja over The Black Cauldron.

It's a good double feature, though.

It

content

wise that's a great question i would i would say all of the above i think definitely stylistically definitely even the story itself is pretty dark and grim it's it starts very dark it ends pretty dark there's very little humor in it and that wasn't really disney's mo at this time save for a couple years later when they produced the black cauldron which i would imagine a was a little bit.

They may have, like, pulled some inspiration from Dragon Slayer into there, although The Black Cauldron was, you know, a book many years before this.

But, yeah, all of the above of style, content, you know, there's some brief nudity in it that Disney would never have done.

Yeah.

There's a lot of fantasy movies like A NeverEnding Story.

Sure.

Like The Black Cauldron, but also, what am I thinking of? The Dark Crystal.