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(#7) The Great Owl Is Introduced Like A Fearsome Monster
There's hardly anything more frightening to a mouse than an owl. The birds are easily one of the top-tier predators in their ecosystem, and to a mouse, they represent a skyborne terror that swoops down from the heavens and plucks up their loved ones.
While many of us love owls, seeing the Great Owl from the eyes of Mrs. Brisby is terrifying, and that's especially true in the movie. When he first arrives in his cobweb-infested lair, he lands atop a pile of bones - many of which are conspicuously mouse-sized - and crushes several after squashing a spider.
He then twists his head around in an almost unnatural way and proceeds to terrify the film's protagonist. Ultimately he helps her, but few children could watch this scene without feeling the same level of terror Mrs. Brisby clearly feels on screen.
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(#11) The Storm Mud That Traps The Brisby Mouse Family Is Like A Black, Evil, Living Blob
Pretty much everything in this movie is dangerous. Mrs. Brisby meeting with the owl, then the rats, then her work helping the rats, stopping the plow - it's one thing after another, and this poor little field mouse must contend with it all while her son grows ever sicker in her home.
When she finally gets the rats to help her, a storm causes the ground to turn into a horrible muddy mess of evil that seems to grab hold of her home and suck it into its deadly grasp with her family inside.
The rats find that they are unable to save the home from the mud, and it only works out in the end when the magic of the amulet gives Mrs. Brisby the power to lift and move her home herself.
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(#12) The Filmmakers Were Rogue Disney Animators Who Left To Start Their Own Company
It's likely The Secret of NIMH would never have been turned into a film had it not been for the pioneering work of Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. Both men had previously worked at Disney, but they felt that the Golden Age of Animation was nearing its end and the operational climate of Disney was partly to blame.
They determined that they could create the animation they wanted by establishing their own studio, and they took along 14 animators who shared their concerns about the House of Mouse. Bluth described their departure like so:
D-(for Disney) Day. It got to be that we couldn't be creative in the true sense of the word. The red tape, the bureaucracy, the chain of authority - everywhere you turned, someone was saying, 'we don't do that at Disney,' or 'that isn't what Walt would have wanted.' When we realized how difficult it was to grow in those confines, we decided to leave the organization.
Their first project was to adapt Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of N.I.M.H. Don Bluth Productions took financing from Aurora Productions, and with a 30-month window and $5.7 million, they produced their first movie. It was a critical hit, though only a modest success at the box office. It wasn't until its home video and cable release that the film really took off.
The studio released other classics of the age over the years, including An American Tail, All Dogs Go to Heaven, and many more.
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(#4) In The Film, The Caged Rats Are Shown Being Injected With An Unknown Substance
John Calhoun's study wasn't met with applause and cheer, and many people considered the work he did with mice and rats to be somewhat despicable. The ones who thought his experiments cruel might have also helped influence the book, as the scientists working at NIMH in the novel aren't presented as anything other than horrific monsters.
In the movie, this is taken a step further via a flashback sequence, which shows human hands holding rats as they inject who knows what into their bellies. The results of these experiments could be seen in the increased intelligence of the rats, but it's clear they recall the whole ordeal quite horrifically.
One interesting aspect of the use of NIMH in the film revolves around its name. The rats never spell it out, and it's only spoken of once in the film when the farmer's wife mentions the organization:
Yes, you know, the National Institute of Mental Health. He was asking if we had noticed anything strange about the rats on the farm...
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(#6) The Film Added A Supernatural Element That's Not In The Book
The book and movie share plenty of similarities, and the main plot is pretty much identical. The movie did take some artistic license with how it presented some of the characters and events, but the real change is in the supernatural elements, none of which were in the novel.
In the movie, Mrs. Brisby meets the ancient rat, Nicomedus, who tells her of her late husband's connection to the rats and then gives her an amulet called "The Stone." More than simple jewelry, the stone is a magical artifact that grants the wearer power when they are courageous (which is something Mrs. Brisby isn't for much of the movie).
By the end of the film, just when all hope is lost, she manages to save her children with the power of the amulet, and while many of these events were in the book, they were carried out in natural rather than supernatural ways.
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(#8) Prior To The Film, Mrs. Brisby's Husband Was Eaten Alive By A Cat Named Dragon
Most kids love cats, but few could look at them the same way after seeing Dragon in The Secret of NIMH. Dragon is the cat who lives on the Fitzgibbon farm, and he terrorizes the local rodent population, which is pretty much what you would want a cat to do in such a situation.
He terrorizes every critter he comes across, and though it happens prior to the events of the film, Dragon is the reason Mrs. Brisby is a widow. Her husband, Jonathan, was one of Dragon's victims, and was eaten alive a short time before the events of the film take place.
Jonathan fell to Dragon's horrific jaws when he attempted to put the monstrous cat to sleep with a drug planted in his food bowl. Mrs. Brisby isn't made aware of this fact until later in the movie, and she follows in his footsteps, helping herself and the rats by succeeding where Jonathan previously failed.
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The Secret of NIMH is an American animated fantasy-adventure movie. The movie adapted from the 1971 children's novel Mrs Frisby and the Rat of NIMH and tells the story of a group of mice in an intelligence development experiment by NIMH. The plot is compact and fascinating. After the release, it was popular with the audience but also received plenty of criticism, many producers and critics thought this movie was too dark.
You will be scarred after checking more information here, the random tool has 12 items, including something people were not aware of when they were a child. The movie scarred a generation of children and has a weirder backstory.
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