Disney VHS: The Aristocats w/ Case Disney’s Masterpieces!

Description

The Aristocats [VHS]
Phil Harris (Actor), Eva Gabor (Actor), Wolfgang Reitherman (Director) Rated: G (General Audience) Format: VHS Tape

Duchess and her three kittens are enjoying the high life with their devoted human mistress until the wicked butler Edgar, with his eyes on a big inheritance, decides to dope them and get them out of the picture. How can these fragile creatures cope in the unfamiliar countryside and the meaner streets of Paris? Only by meeting the irrepressible alley cat O’Malley, a rough diamond with romance in his heart! After they get a taste of the wide dangerous world, he guides them home, and Edgar gets his just desserts at the wrong end of a horse. As always, it’s really the voices rather than the animation that are the heart of the Disney magic: Phil Harris is brilliant as O’Malley, Eva Gabor as Duchess is… well… Eva Gabor; but perhaps the most memorable turns are by Pat Buttram and George Lindsay, who turn the old hounds Napoleon and Lafayette into a couple of bumbling Southern-fried rednecks. Their scenes with Edgar, and the musical numbers with Scat Cat and his cool-dude band, are classic. Most striking about seeing The Aristocats now is how deeply Disney’s style of animation has changed since this was at the cutting edge in 1970.

Actors: Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, Sterling Holloway, Scatman Crothers, Paul Winchell
Directors: Wolfgang Reitherman
Writers: Eric Cleworth, Frank Thomas, Julius Svendsen, Ken Anderson, Larry Clemmons
Format: Animated, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
Rated: G (General Audience)
Number of tapes: 1
Studio: Walt Disney Home Video
VHS Release Date: April 23, 1996
Run Time: 78 minutes

On the tape:
Walt Disney World – My Vacation
Toy Story Video Games Preview
The Hunchback of Notre Dame Sneak Preview
Muppet Treasure Island Preview
Tom and Huck Preview
Aladdin and the King of Thieves Preview

The Aristocats is fun and the music is wonderful. Phil Harris and Eva Gabor were great in their respective roles and the kittens made me laugh. Another enjoyable moment happens when O’Mally introduces Duchess and her kittens to his music making pals and a night of music and dance occurs.

First, it’s just cool they used cats as the animal in this film. what other animal would be able to play jazz in such a swingin’ way. but seriously, did you notice how every cat was of a different heritage? Dutchess and the kittens, French, O’Maley (Irish) … who had an incredibly long name (Abraham D’Lacy Geocept Percacey Thomas O’Maley, O’Maley the Alley Cat), which Dutchess noted “covered all of Europe.” When we’re introduced to his friends, we have a Fats Domino type chubby gray trumpet playin’ “Scat Cat.” The bass player’s from Eastern Europe, Russia perhaps or in the 70s would have been USSR? The hippy guitar playing cat with big glasses and beads, the possibly Swiss cat on accordian. They’re all “cats” but of different places, all jamming and all linked to O’Maley enjoying life together. As this movie was comin’ out of the late 60s, Disney’s showing America that anyone, from where ever they’re from or however they talk, can all be friends and hang out. Unfortunately, they give the British a hard time, with the fun loving gabbin’ geese who inform the audience that in being british, they aim to “keep things proper.” The butler, too, was British, I believe. Poor guys. Not only that love everyone and have a ball attitude comes off the screen, but the movie also encourages practicing and teaching the arts-painting, piano, singing (even with the proper syllables! (“do me sol do re fa la it goes…. when you play your scales and your arpeggios….”) what a cartoon!

0-7888-0421-9

Case slightly squished. VHS itself is near mint. Tape is completely rewinded for your convenience.