I’m participating in the A-Z Blogging Challenge, where I post every day in the month of April (except Sundays) and each day is a letter.

My theme for the month is a series of posts about the things that shaped me.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Sorry about the back-to-back posts with musicals, but that’s just how it goes.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers has what one might call… a problematic plot. The oldest of seven backwoodsmen brothers goes to find himself a bride, and when the rest of them decide they want brides too, they run into town and kidnap their preferred girls, whisking them off to their cabin in the middle of nowhere, cut off from the rest of the world by an avalanche with good timing. Each girl of course eventually falls in love with her respective kidnapper, because of course they do.

But. But. The music is absolutely phenomenal. Howard Keel’s voice is positively magnificent.

And the barn dance scene is positively the best dance sequence in the history of movie musicals.

I’ll admit, my love of musicals drags a little whenever there’s a dance-heavy scene. I can appreciate Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and all the rest, but sometimes it gets a bit boring just watching someone tap their shoes (with a tempo and rhythm I certainly couldn’t, but you get my point).

Not here.

The whole sequence is athletic, exuberant, and just plain fun. Russ Tamblyn is a particular favorite — he was trained as a gymnast before being cast, and as the youngest brother, you see his tumbling skills on full display.

So, as long as you ignore the horrific plot, this is a phenomenal example of MGM’s golden age of movie musicals.

Secret of NIMH

Based on the novel Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Don Bluth’s masterpiece is a film that every (and I mean EVERY) child should watch. And if you didn’t watch it as a kid — watch it now.

This is one of the few movies where I haven’t read the original novel. I keep it on my TBR list, but… you don’t want to ruin something that’s so perfect, do you?

It takes animation to a new artistic level, well beyond any of the Disney movies of the day. (And considering Bluth was a former Disney animator, it’s certainly Disney’s loss.) Every character is hand-drawn, every cel in impeccable detail.

The plot, for those of you unfamiliar: Farmer Fitzgibbons is about to start plowing his field, which means it’s moving day for all the little animals who reside there all winter. But Mrs. Brisby, a widowed field mouse, can’t move her little son because he’s too ill. So she asks for help from a group of rats — rats who were experimented on at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and who owe her late husband a surprising debt.

Honestly, it’s a little surprising that this movie didn’t just scare the bejeebus out of me. Between the Great Owl, Nicodemus, Dragon, and some seriously evil rats, it really should have scarred me for life. Or at least put the fear of cats and owls into me — but nope.

Maybe it’s the animation, which I’ve already said was astounding. Or maybe it’s the voices — I mean, it’s got Derek Jacobi, John Carradine, the absolutely fabulous Dom DeLuise, as well as baby Wil Wheaton and baby Shannen Doherty(!).

Or maybe, even when I was so very little, I understood that maybe magic — or in this case, science — can be scary, but it can also be… wondrous.

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