The Black Cauldron

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Post by Bill1978 » February 28th, 2009, 7:51 am

Also (always wondered if this were true or not), I read years back on the old Animated-Movies site that The Black Cauldron was going to come out on video around 1990ish, but the success of The Little Mermaid ended up shoving it back into the vault.
I too have heard this story and I suppose it does make some sort of sense. Why remind the world of a 'flop' that was supposed to reignite a company when you can flog the hell out of the true movie that saved the company.

I'm still waiting in antipication to find out what these deleted scenes will be. At least I should be spared some horrible Disney Channel Star ruining a perfectly good song though.

Oh God I just had a horrible thought that some Exec is thinking of getting someone to record a Fflewdur song.

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Post by Ben » March 1st, 2009, 5:26 pm

Well this is a little odd...I've just checked to see when The Black Cauldron got a reissue and can't find anything about it. I know it did come out because <I>I went to see it</I>!

It never came out on VHS and was hard to see, so when it came out in the early 1990s I jumped at the chance, having remembered little from when I saw it in 1985/86.

It was around the time of the Great Mouse Detective and Oliver & Company reissues, so would have been between 1992 and 1996...my feeling was that it was nearer 1996 because the VHS then did come out soon after that.

It was only a limited theatrical reissue, with the terrible poster title of "Taran And The Magic Cauldron", though if I remember right the actual film still only said The Black Cauldron. I remember that because I was worried it would come to LaserDisc and VHS as "Taran" but when I saw "TBC" on the credit I thought that at least the film would be intact itself.

The (pan-and-scan) VHS came out in 1998, but there was no widescreen LD, meaning we had to wait another two years before the Gold DVD, which used the LD master, came out in 2.35:1 (the word was that the DVD would be cropped as well until someone in the company recalled the widescreen transfer and thought they should make use of it).

I guess the sudden availability of that meant enough people grabbed it while they could and that it made sense to do a remaster on it. The anamorphic version I saw last year was beautiful: crisp image and solid but non-saturated color, and we know it's been pre-mastered to HD for eventual Blu release.


A thought: maybe the "Taran" reissue was UK/International only? I know we got reissues of lots of the Disney films in the 1980s and 90s (Snow White, Pinocchio, The AristoCats, etc) even when they didn't show up in the States or even appear on the official reissue lists.

I'm hoping the deleted scenes will be the 15 or so minutes cut originally, but still reckon they won't show some of the harsher stuff. :(

Here's hoping the eventual Blu disc actually realises its aimed at collectors...!

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Post by Darkblade » March 1st, 2009, 8:19 pm

is this going to have the stuff that was edited out during production?

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Post by Neal » March 1st, 2009, 8:20 pm

Maybe. We don't know, yet.
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Post by Darkblade » March 1st, 2009, 8:44 pm

I hope that it does....I would be seriously ticked off if its not. :x I dislike it when they dont add stuff that is mentioned but we cannot even see it.

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Post by Ben » March 2nd, 2009, 7:54 am

Ben wrote:I'm hoping the deleted scenes will be the 15 or so minutes cut originally, but still reckon they won't show some of the harsher stuff. :(

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Post by Darkblade » March 2nd, 2009, 12:58 pm

Darn....It seems that we will never see the uncut footage ):

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Post by Once Upon A Dream » March 2nd, 2009, 1:07 pm

Harsh stuff? how bad are those scenes? Most deleted scenes for all kind of films are mostly weird,Disney deleted scenes are so random I don't understad how they wanted to add them to the films (Like Dr Finkelstein being Oogie Boogie,the other Glut scene in The Little Mermaid or the alternate opening of Tarzan).
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Post by Darkblade » March 2nd, 2009, 1:56 pm

Once upon a dream from what I heard the stuff that was cut from the movie...one of them was a shot that had that girl's...I m not going to say but I can tell you this that it woudlve made the movie pg13.

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Post by Once Upon A Dream » March 2nd, 2009, 2:15 pm

What girl? you mean Eilonwy? what they did to poor Eilonwy? sounds crazy.
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Post by Darkblade » March 2nd, 2009, 2:30 pm

Yeah Elionwy, thats her name? God its been awhile since I watched the movie...I heard that they removed the scene where her dress was ripped revealing...Im not saying it.

This was also one of the cuts
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/3622 ... enevu0.jpg

be warned...its pretty creepy.

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Post by Ben » March 2nd, 2009, 2:30 pm

The scenes cut were either graphically violent or featured nudity. The film came close to receiving an R rating in its original cut, before Katzenberg changed around some ordering, and trimmed it to prevent it getting a PG-13.

The net has various descriptions of what was cut, but no-one knows for certain how much of it was animated. By all accounts, the ending suffered most, with fully animated scenes of the Cauldron sucking the life out of people and generally gruesome shots from earlier on.

The tone was more hard-core at the start of production, and more Gummi Bears by the time it ended. ;)

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Post by Darkblade » March 2nd, 2009, 2:32 pm

The chances of the uncut take of this movie are slim, like the missing scene in Tex Avery's Red hot riding hood.

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Post by Ben » March 2nd, 2009, 2:36 pm

The "uncut" take of The Black Cauldron doesn't actually exist. It was never mastered in that completed form.

What we do have are the excised scenes, which could be seen on their own. The order of other scenes was changed in the Katzenberg shuffle, so it's not like they could "just" reinsert what was cut out. The entire film has stuffed moved around to make the shorter version "work".

There <I>is</I> no "uncut", long version of TBC...just removed moments from the version that was completed and exhibited in theaters.

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Post by Once Upon A Dream » March 3rd, 2009, 1:27 pm

Ugh,didn't even check the link... oh my gosh,what is wrong with them? R rated? why? I think I even less like this movie now,sounds awful.
Yeah,her name is Eilonwy,and she's really a princess by the way? they don't say anything about her family,maybe she lied.
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