Fred Moore Movies

Two well-known directors each adapt stories by Edgar Allen Poe in this horror drama. George Romero's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" tells how the wife of an elderly, wealthy man and her lover--who also happens to be the husband's private physician--scheme to control his assets. Dying before they can carry out their plans, his soul is caught between life and death while they freeze the body to finish their work. In the Dario Argento-directed "The Black Cat" a crime photographer, known for his photos' gruesome content, kills his girlfriend's titular pet and then his girlfriend. Soon he gets a good look at what he's done. ~ Kristie Hassen, Rovi

In one of the best-loved and mostly fondly remembered episodes of the TV anthology Disneyland, host Walt Disney discusses the nuts and bolts of animation, and how individual cartoon components ultimately make up the sum total. For example, Disney demonstrates how a bouncing ball inspire a sequence in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, how an intensive study of water, fire, smoke and mud result in the "Rite of Spring" segment of Fantasia, and how a genuine ballet was transformed into a pas-de-deux between a hippo and an alligator in the "Dance of the Hours" segment from the same film. "The Tricks of Our Trade" was later released on 16 millimeter for classroom showings. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This Disney feature-length cartoon combines the most entertaining elements of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Chasing after the White Rabbit, who runs into view singing "I'm Late! I'm Late!," Alice falls down the rabbit hole into the topsy-turvy alternate world of Wonderland. She grows and shrinks after following the instructions of a haughty caterpillar, attends a "Very Merry Unbirthday" party in the garden of the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, stands in awe as the Cheshire Cat spouts philosophy, listens in rapt attention as Tweedledum and Tweedledee relate the story of the Walrus and the Carpenter (a sequence usually cut when Alice is shown on TV), and closes out her day with a hectic croquet game at the home of the Red Queen. The music and production design of Alice in Wonderland is marvelous, but the film is too much of a good thing, much too frantic to do full honor to the whimsical Carroll original, and far too episodic to hang together as a unified feature film. One tactical error is having Alice weep at mid-point, declaring her wish to go home: This is Alice in Wonderland, Walt, not Wizard of Oz! Its storytelling shortcomings aside, Alice in Wonderland is superior family entertainment (never mind the efforts in the 1970s to palm off the picture as a psychedelic "head" film). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Cinderella was Walt Disney's return to feature-length "story" cartoons after eight years of turning out episodic pastiches like Make Mine Music and Three Caballeros. A few understandable liberties are taken with the original Charles Perrault fairy tale (the wicked stepsisters, for example, do not have their eyes pecked out by crows!) Otherwise, the story remains the same: Cinderella, treated as a slavey by her selfish stepfamily, dreams of going to the Prince's ball. She gets her wish courtesy of her Fairy Godmother, who does the pumpkin-into-coach bit, then delivers the requisite "be home by midnight" warning. Thoroughly enchanting the prince at the ball, our heroine hightails it at midnight, leaving a glass slipper behind. The Disney people do a terrific job building up suspense before the inevitable final romantic clinch. Not as momentous an animated achievement as, say, Snow White or Fantasia, Cinderella is a nonetheless delightful feature, enhanced immeasurably by the introduction of several "funny animal" characters (a Disney tradition that has held fast into the 1990s, as witness Pocahontas), and a host of a sprightly songs, including "Cinderelly," "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes," and -- best of all -- "Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In his first postwar animated feature, Walt Disney attempted to repeat the Fantasia formula, substituting "pop" music for the Classics. Make Mine Music consists of ten unrelated cartoon vignettes, each one featuring a popular recording artist. "A Rustic Ballad" is the story of the Martin-Coy hillbilly feud, narrated musically by the King's Men. "A Tone Poem" is an impressionistic interpretation of the song "Blue Bayou", sung by the Ken Darby chorus and rendered artistically by Disney's ace animators. "A Jazz Interlude", done in "sketchbook" style, is performed by Benny Goodman and His Orchestra, and features the jitterbug specialty "All the Cats Join In". Jerry Colonna is next on the program in "A Musical Recitation", offering his own inimitable version of "Casey at the Bat". "Ballad Ballet" features Ballet Russe stars Tatiana Riabouchinska and David Lichine, dancing to Dinah Shore's vocalization of "Two Silhouettes". "A Fairy Tale with Music" turns out to be Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf", narrated by Sterling Holloway. Next, Benny Goodman and company return with a surreal visualization of "After You've Gone", followed by "A Love Story", which features the Andrews Sisters' rendition of the ballad "Johnny Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet." The hilarious "Opera Pathetique" finale finds Nelson Eddy narrating the story of Willy, "The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met". Better in its individual components than its sum total, Make Mine Music was drubbed by critics, who felt that Disney had abandoned his "artistic" aspirations in favor of crass commercialism, but performed reasonably well at the box office, inspiring several more "omnibus" animated features. In later years, the ten individual segments would be released as separate short subjects, both theatrically and as episodes of Disney's various TV series (where the original narration was often supplanted by the unfunny interpolations of Professor Ludwig Von Drake). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The very first Disney feature to include live-action footage, this behind-the-scenes documentary about the studio's animation process includes the cartoon short of the title, which in later years was often exhibited separately from this film. Robert Benchley stars as himself, a visitor to the Disney lot, where he intends to pitch an animated version of the children's fairy tale The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame to Walt Disney himself. Benchley wanders away from his studio-appointed guide and tours the facilities himself, where he sees various new cartoons in the process of being storyboarded, including a Baby Weems short. Benchley also meets Clarence Nash, the voice of Donald Duck, and a young animator (played by Alan Ladd) before being corralled to Disney's screening room, where he is shown the company's new short, none other than The Reluctant Dragon. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

Fantasia, Walt Disney's animated masterpiece of the 1940s, grew from a short-subject cartoon picturization of the Paul Dukas musical piece The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Mickey Mouse was starred in this eight-minute effort, while the orchestra was under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. Disney and Stokowski eventually decided that the notion of marrying classical music with animation was too good to confine to a mere short subject; thus the notion was expanded into a two-hour feature, incorporating seven musical selections and a bridging narration by music critic Deems Taylor. The first piece, Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor", was used to underscore a series of abstract images. The next selection, Tschiakovsky's "Nutcracker Suite", is performed by dancing wood-sprites, mushrooms, flowers, goldfish, thistles, milkweeds and frost fairies. The Mickey Mouse version of "Sorcerer's Apprentice" is next, followed by Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring", which serves as leitmotif for the story of the creation of the world, replete with dinosaurs and volcanoes. After a brief jam session involving the live-action musicians comes Beethoven's "Pastorale Symphony", enacted against a Greek-mythology tapestry by centaurs, unicorns, cupids and a besotted Bacchus. Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" is performed by a Corps de Ballet consisting of hippos, ostriches and alligators. The program comes to a conclusion with a fearsome visualization of Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain", dominated by the black god Tchernobog (referred to in the pencil tests as "Yensid", which is guess-what spelled backwards); this study of the "sacred and profane" segues into a reverent rendition of Schubert's "Ave Maria". Originally, Debussy's "Clair de Lune" was part of the film, but was cut from the final release print; also cut, due to budgetary considerations, was Disney's intention of issuing an annual "update" of Fantasia with new musical highlights and animated sequences. A box-office disappointment upon its first release (due partly to Disney's notion of releasing the film in an early stereophonic-sound process which few theatres could accommodate), Fantasia eventually recouped its cost in its many reissues. For one of the return engagements, the film was retitled Fantasia Will Amaze-ya, while the 1963 reissue saw the film "squashed" to conform with the Cinemascope aspect ratio. Other re-releases pruned the picture from 120 to 88 minutes, and in 1983, Disney redistributed the film with newly orchestrated music and Tim Matheson replacing Deems Taylor as narrator. Once and for all, a restored Fantasia was made available to filmgoers in 1990. A sequel, Fantasia 2000, was released in theaters in 1999. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

It was called "Disney's Folly." Who on earth would want to sit still for 90 minutes to watch an animated cartoon? And why pick a well-worn Grimm's Fairy Tale that every schoolkid knows? But Walt Disney seemed to thrive on projects which a lesser man might have written off as "stupid" or "impossible". Investing three years, $1,500,000, and the combined talents of 570 artists into Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney produced a film that was not only acknowledged a classic from the outset, but also earned 8,500,000 depression-era dollars in gross rentals. Bypassing early temptations to transform the heroine Snow White into a plump Betty Boop type or a woebegone ZaSu Pitts lookalike, the Disney staffers wisely made radical differentiations between the "straight" and "funny" characters in the story. Thus, Snow White and Prince Charming moved and were drawn realistically, while the Seven Dwarfs were rendered in the rounded, caricatured manner of Disney's short-subject characters. In this way, the serious elements of the story could be propelled forward in a believable enough manner to grab the adult viewers, while the dwarfs provided enough comic and musical hijinks to keep the kids happy. It is a tribute to the genius of the Disney formula that the dramatic and comic elements were strong enough to please both demographic groups. Like any showman, Disney knew the value of genuine horror in maintaining audience interest: accordingly, the Wicked Queen, whose jealousy of Snow White's beauty motivates the story, is a thoroughly fearsome creature even before she transforms herself into an ancient crone. Best of all, Snow White clicks in the three areas in which Disney had always proven superiority over his rivals: Solid story values (any sequence that threatened to slow down the plotline was ruthlessly jettisoned, no matter how much time and money had been spent), vivid etched characterizations (it would have been easier to have all the Dwarfs walk, talk and act alike: thank heaven that Disney never opted for "easy"), and instantly memorable songs (Frank Churchill, Leigh Harline, Paul J. Smith and the entire studio music department was Oscar-nominated for such standards-to-be as "Whistle While You Work" and "Some Day My Prince Will Come"). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi