101 Dalmatians/The Sword in the Stone

Now it’s time for another dog movie for all you canine lovers. Let’s now look at “One Hundred and One Dalmatians,” released in 1961. This movie uses the same drawing style that “Lady and the Tramp” used and it belongs in the same category of animated favorites although there is some questionable stuff.

Pongo the Dalmatian (Rod Taylor) and his bachelor master Roger (Ben Wright) “accidentally” encounter Perdita (Cate Bauer) and her mistress Anita (Lisa Davis) in a London park, where everything ends up with a “double marriage.” After some time, Pongo and Perdita give birth to 15 puppies and Anita’s old school friend Cruella de Vil, voiced by Betty Lou Gerson, wants to buy those puppies when they get spots, but Roger and Anita won’t agree. As a result, Cruella’s henchmen Jasper (J. Pat O’Malley) and Horace (Frederick Worlock) are ordered to steal the puppies. She also has a handful of other Dalmatian puppies, with the mission to make them into fur coats once they become full grown dogs. Even Scotland Yard can’t find a solution to this one, so it’s up to the dogs to save all of the puppies.

Brett Willis said in his review, “The story line itself requires a certain amount of depicted or implied violence, and to that is added a lot of general meanness and gratuitous slapstick. And while there’s no profane language in the usual sense, Cruella constantly calls people “fools,” “idiots,” etc. (see what Jesus says in Matthew 5:21-22 about calling people hateful names). Cruella and her two lackeys could almost be the Three Stooges. Also, there’s a TV show called “What’s My Crime?” in the background.”

The pros are obviously Pongo and Perdita doing everything in their power to rescue the puppies, and other humanized dogs helping them when they are going back home.

I highly recommend you check this movie out because it is that good of a movie, especially if you love dogs. Then again, that’s got to be a lot of people who like dogs because dogs are quite possibly the best household pets ever.

Next up we are going back to Medieval Times, more specifically the Arthurian times, in the 1963 Disney classic, and one of its best, “The Sword in the Stone.” According to Variety, “Bill Peet, artist-writer and longtime member of the Walt Disney production company, has chosen a highly appropriate fable, the 1938 T.H. White book of the same title, for screen adaptation for the youngsters. It emerges as a tasty confection.”

This feature-length animation classic shows an additional the magic of the Disney animators and imagination in character creation. But there might be those nit-pickers out there that would want a script that stayed more with the simple story line rather than taking a lot of twists and turns which doesn’t really have much to do about the story of King Arthur as a child.

Essential people to this story include the boy who is going to be next in line as the King of England because he is the only one who is strong enough to remove the sword that is stuck in a stone in a London churchyard (strangely enough, they call him Wart (Rickie Sorensen, Richard Reitherman and Robert Reitherman) here, which doesn’t sound right at all), and Merlin (Karl Sweson), a magician and prophet, who’s on the other hand wise and somewhat goofy. Other include Mad Madam Mim (Martha Wentworth), who turns out is a nice old lady, an English nobleman (Thurl Ravenscroft), a kind-hearted owl (Junius Matthews), flora & fauna, and so on.

The songs by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman are in the recognizable Disney cartoon tunes with great titles like “Higitus-Figitus,” “Mad Madam Mim,” and “The Legend of the Sword in the Stone.” They’re great songs and go along nicely with the animated action.

Once again, I highly recommend you see this movie as well because I seriously think you will love this one as well. Hopefully you enjoyed today’s entry on “Disney Month,” stay tuned for more tomorrow.