Don Bluth is one of the greatest animation master of the last century, creating beautiful drawn characters for young and old. Creating adventures mixt with humour and thrill which resonates as metaphors for real life events.
To save her ill son, a field mouse must seek the aid of a colony of rats, with whom she has a deeper link than she ever suspected. (source IMDB)
Don Bluth (“An American Tail “, “Anastasia” “All Dogs Go to Heaven”), a former Disney animator, decided to adapt the book “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH” by Robert C.O’Brien as his feature debut. Visually beautiful, the powerful detailed personality for each character is the corner stone for this film. Bluth not only created a rich world with an endearing main character and intelligently structured movie, he also created a nightmarish visons of the life of lab rats. The film is not your average children movie featuring blood, snarling rats, and a bone-crushing owl who might just eat our mouse heroine.
“The Secret of NIMH” was the first feature film to be directed by Don Bluth. He created in September 1979 the studio Don Bluth Productions with the help of fellow animators Gary Goldman, John Pomeroy, and eight other animation staff after leaving Walt Disney Studio. In the years that followed the studio became famous for its competition with Disney which led to the gigantic success of “An American Tail”(biggest animation box-office success for a non-Disney movie at the time) and “The Land Before Time” (both movie made in collaboration with Steven Spielberg).
“The Secret of NIMH” after a moderate success in theatres (because MGM didn’t believe in the project) became a classic due to its success on home video.
