The Rescuers

The Rescuers is the twenty-third full-length animated feature film in the Disney animated features canon. The story is about the Rescue Aid Society, an international mouse organization, headquartered in New York and shadowing the United Nations, dedicated to helping abduction victims around the world at large. Two of these mice, a hesitant Bernard (Bob Newhart) and the elegant Miss Bianca (Eva Gabor), set about rescuing Penny, a kidnapped girl, who is being held against her will by treasure seeker Madame Medusa.

The film was based on Margery Sharp's "The Rescuers" children's novels, most notably, The Rescuers (1959) and Miss Bianca (1962). Due to the film's success, a sequel entitled The Rescuers Down Under was released in 1990.

Plot
The film begins in an abandoned river boat in Devil's Bayou, where orphan Penny drops a message in a bottle containing a plea for help into the river. The bottle is carried out to sea and washes up in New York, where it is recovered by the Rescue Aid Society. The Hungarian representative, Miss Bianca, volunteers to accept the case and chooses the janitor Bernard as her co-agent. The two visit Morningside Orphanage, where Penny lived, and meet an old cat named Rufus. He tells them about a wicked woman named Madame Medusa who once tried to lure Penny into her car and may have abducted Penny this time.

The mice travel to Medusa's pawn shop, where they discover that she and her partner Mr. Snoops are on a quest to find the world's largest diamond, the Devil's Eye. With the help of an albatross named Orville, and a dragonfly named Evinrude, the mice follow Medusa and Mr. Snoops to the bayou. There, they learn that Penny was captured to enter a hole that leads down into the pirates' cave where the Devil's Eye is located.

Thanks to Miss Bianca's perfume, the mice attract the attention of Medusa's pet alligators, Brutus and Nero. Bernard and Miss Bianca escape, and find Penny. The following morning, Medusa and Mr Snoops send Penny down into the cave to find the gem, unaware that Miss Bianca and Bernard are hiding in her skirt pocket. The three soon find the stone within a pirate skull; as Penny pries the mouth open with a sword, the mice push it out from within, but soon the oceanic tide rises and floods the cave. Miss Bianca, Penny, and Bernard barely manage to retrieve the diamond and escape.

The greedy Medusa steals the diamond for herself and hides it in Penny's teddy bear. When she trips over a cable, Medusa loses the bear to Penny, who runs away with it. Medusa retaliates with gunfire, causing the mice to flee until they are met by Brutus and Nero, her alligators. Bernard and Miss Bianca trick them into entering a cage-like elevator, trapping them.

Two of the gang set off Snoops' fireworks, making the boat sink. Penny and the gang use Medusa's "swampmobile". Medusa is left clinged to the boat's smoke stacks with Brutus and Nero attacking below.

Back in New York, the Rescue Aid Society watch TV to hear that the Devil's Eye is given to the Smithsonian Institution and Penny is adopted by a new father and mother. Bernard and Miss Bianca remain partners in the Rescue Aid Society's missions and soon after depart on Orville, accompanied by Evinrude, to a new rescue mission.

Production
The film was four years in the making with the combined talents of 250 people, including 40 animators who produced approximately 330,000 drawings; there were 14 sequences with 1,039 separate scenes and 750 backgrounds.

It was the first Disney film that combined the talents of Walt Disney's original crew of story writers and animators (including Walt Disney's "Nine Old Men") with a newer, less experienced crew that Walt Disney Productions had recruited in the mid-1970s.

The film marked the last joint effort by veterans Milt Kahl, Ollie Johnston, and Frank Thomas, and the first Disney film worked on by Don Bluth as an animator, instead of an assistant animator. Other animators who stepped up during production were Glen Keane, Ron Clements, and Andy Gaskill, who would all play an important role in the Disney Renaissance of the 1980s and 90s.

The Rescuers was also the company's first major animated success since The Jungle Book and the last until The Little Mermaid. The film marked the end of the silver age of Disney animation that had begun in 1950 with Cinderella. This also marked the first successful animated film that Walt Disney himself had not worked on.

During the 1960s and early 70s Disney films took on the trend of comedy, rather than story, heart, and drama. The Rescuers marked the return of the animated drama films the studio had previously been known for, such as Bambi and Dumbo. Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston stated in their website that The Rescuers had been their return to a film with "heart" and also considered it their best film without Walt Disney. Also unique to the animation was the opening credits: this film marked the first time that practiced camera movements over still photographs were used to make the opening credits. Prior to this, the studio had used the cels with the credits motionless over different still backgrounds, sometimes over one single background, as was done in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

The film marked the end of the studio's so-called "sketchy" animation period of the 1960s and 70s. The new xerographic process restored a softer outline that previously was not possible with the technology, which so far only had been able to produce black outlines. This allowed the use of a medium-gray tone and even a purple tone for outlines, such as that used for Miss Bianca.

Bernard was inspired by the character of the same name in Margery Sharp's The Rescuers series and much of his personality and character were kept. In the novel Miss Bianca, however, Bernard plays a very minor role.

Penny was inspired by Patience, the orphan in the novel. Mr. Snoops is a version of Mandrake, a character of the book. His appearance is a caricature of animation historian John Culhane. Culhane claims he was practically tricked into posing for various reactions, and his movements were imitated on Mr. Snoops' model sheet. However, he stated, "Becoming a Disney character was beyond my wildest dreams of glory."

Brutus and Nero are based on the two bloodhounds, Tyrant and Torment in the novels. A pigeon was originally proposed to be the transportation for Bernard and Bianca, until animator Frank Thomas remembered a True Life Adventures film of albatrosses and their clumsy take-offs and landings, and suggested the ungainly bird instead.

Originally, Cruella de Vil from One Hundred and One Dalmatians was to have been recast as the villainess in The Rescuers, but this idea was dropped since the studio was not interested in producing sequels at the time. She was replaced by a retouched version of the Diamond Duchess in Miss Bianca. The two characters share surprisingly few similarities, other than perhaps the tendency to drive recklessly. The motive to steal a diamond originated in Margery Sharp's 1959 novel, Miss Bianca. Her appearance was based on animator Milt Kahl's ex-wife, whom he didn't particularly like. This was Kahl's last film for the studio, and he wanted his final character to be his best; he was so insistent on perfecting Medusa that he ended up doing almost all the animation for the character himself.

An audio clip from Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree in which a bee buzzes the "Charge!" theme, was reused for when Evinrude buzzes out the same tune to signal the Swamp Folk to attack. The growling noises made by Brutus and Nero, would then be reused in The Fox and the Hound as the growling made by the villainous black grizzly bear.

Differences from the books

 * In the film, the Rescue Aid Society is located in the basement of the United Nations building in New York City. In the books, the R.A.S. (known, instead, as the Prisoner's Aid Society) is located in a hole, in an otherwise unspecified location (presumably somewhere in England).
 * In the film, Miss Bianca is the Rescue Aid Society's Hungarian representative, while Bernard is the janitor (He eventually becomes the U.S. representative in the sequel). Starting with the second book in the series, Bianca becomes Madam Chairwoman, while Bernard remains her secretary throughout the series.
 * Bernard and Miss Bianca are not romantically paired in the books.
 * Penny's name is "Patience" in the original books, and Garth Williams's illustrations depict her as looking less childlike than in the movie.
 * Madame Medusa is simply known as the "Diamond Duchess" in the books, living in a palace made entirely out of diamonds, instead of a southern swamp. Also, Mr. Snoops (known as "Mandrake") is her majordomo, instead of simply being a colleague.
 * In the books, Medusa owns two giant bloodhounds, named Tyrant and Torment, who are cared for in a hunting lodge by the Chief Ranger, instead of two alligators, named Brutus and Nero.

Sequel
The Rescuers was the first Disney animated feature to have a sequel. After three successful theatrical releases of the original film, The Rescuers Down Under was released theatrically in 1990.

The sequel takes place in the Australian Outback, and involves Bernard and Bianca trying to rescue a boy named Cody and a giant golden eagle from a greedy poacher named McLeach. Both Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor reprised their lead roles. Since Jim Jordan, who had voiced Orville, had since died, a new character, Wilbur (Orville’s brother, another albatross) was created and voiced by John Candy.

The film Oliver & Company was also originally supposed to be a sequel to The Rescuers, featuring Penny now living with her adoptive parents and Rufus the cat. However, due to concerns that the story would not have been convincing, Penny was replaced by a similar girl, named Jenny.