CAN HE BRING THE DIRTY RAT TO JUSTICE?
In 1897, a famous mouse detective is hired to find a kidnapped toymaker; the dastardly Professor Ratigan needs the inventor to help him overthrow the Queen. The first film John Musker and Ron Clements made for Disney is a delightful and funny rodent version of Sherlock Holmes where the real star is the villain, engagingly voiced by the inimitable Vincent Price. Fortunately, the characters of Basil and his assistant Dawson are also very amusing. The adventure offers good songs and several fast-paced action sequences, not least the final fight in the clock tower (which Sherlock Holmes fans will recognize as a version of the Reichenbach Falls incident).
1986-U.S. Animated. 74 min. Color. Produced by Burny Mattinson. Directed by John Musker, Ron Clements, Dave Michener, Burny Mattinson. Novel: Eve Titus (“Basil of Baker Street”). Music: Henry Mancini. Voices of Vincent Price (Professor Ratigan), Barrie Ingham (Basil), Val Bettin (David Q. Dawson), Susanne Pollatschek, Candy Candido, Eve Brenner.
Trivia: Alternative title: The Adventures of the Great Mouse Detective. John Cleese was allegedly considered for the voice of Basil. Sherlock Holmes’s voice belongs to Basil Rathbone and is sampled from one of his movies as the detective. This film also has a partly computer-animated sequence, the first time the technology was used to such an extent in an animated film.
Last word: “[Musker and I] were both exiled from ‘Cauldron’ and we both worked together on ‘Great Mouse Detective’. Ron Miller, who was the head of the studio at that point, was the producer of ‘Great Mouse Detective’. We had been working on the story for maybe a year and a half, and Ron just disappeared. […] He never showed up, and we became this little floating island, [wondering], ‘Does anybody know that we’re here?’ Finally, Michael Eisner came, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Roy Disney came back, and we had to pitch our ‘Great Mouse’ idea to them as if it were a brand new project, even though we’d been working on it for a year and a half. They liked it and wanted to do it.” (Clements, Animation Magazine)
