Hey guys! Welcome to the Review Basement Media Library where I'll be talking about the VHS, DVDs, Blu-rays, 4K Blu-rays, video games and books that I own. Today I'm going to be talking about a VHS release that I've been wanting to get my hands on for almost 30 years. Robin Hood from the Walt Disney Classics collection. This is the second release of the movie in the line as well as the second release of the movie overall, released in 1991. Unlike the movie reviews that I do, I'm going to focus more on the release itself and less on the movie, though I will discuss the movie a little bit.
As you know from my Living with Disabilities posts, Robin Hood is the movie I never got to finish watching all the way through on VHS. And that's because I would always start watching it while I was waiting to see my Cardiologist at CHEO, and they would call me into the examination area before the movie was over. Then at one point I saw the second half of the film on TV while I was in the hospital. I finally saw the whole movie when I bought it on Blu-ray (I'll be talking about that Blu-ray later on down the line), but I'd never watched the VHS all the way through. Until last night.
On Sunday my friends Michelle and Jonathan (her husband Jonathan, not the one I talk about all the time) came over with a box full of VHS tapes. Mostly Disney tapes, but there were a few non Disney tapes as well. As I rifled through the box I picked out the tapes that I wanted. The last one that I discovered inside was this one. Which had me super excited because I hadn't come across it at any thrift stores or flea markets in the year and a half since I started building my VHS collection again. And believe me, I looked for it when Brad and I went to Kingston to visit Jonathan and we went to Chumleigh's. I also looked for it at the Carleton Place Flea Market when Brad and I went there a long time ago, but they didn't have it there either. At least not at the time.
I think Robin Hood is one of Disney's very underrated films. People are aware of it but it came out in that really weird period between Walt's death in 1966 and when Walt Disney Productions became The Walt Disney Company in 1986. Other underrated movies from that period are The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The Rescuers, The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron. I guess one thing that Robin Hood is mostly known for is it's reuse of animation from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Jungle Book, and The Aristocats. Disney wasn't the only studio doing this in the '70s. I mean Filmation made a living re-using animation in their TV shows from The New Adventures of Superman to The Archie Show to Star Trek: The Animated Series. And they continued to do so all the way through 1986 when they produced Filmation's Ghost Busters. Yes, Robin Hood is full length animated feature film, but animation was pretty expensive in the '70s and by re-using the animation, with the characters from Robin Hood instead of the ones from the movies they used the animation from, they were saving money and able to continue putting out more animated movies in addition to the less expensive live action films they were also putting out in the '60s and '70s. So I think it's a bit unfair to call Robin Hood out for re-using animation when a company's entire catalogue of Saturday morning cartoons does it in every single episode. It's something I'll get into more when I review the movie later on down the line.
One thing I noticed about this printing of the release is that there weren't any previews before the movie. I've seen the opening of the release on YouTube and there's a preview for the 1991 Walt Disney Classics release of The Jungle Book and a preview for the home video release of The Rescuers Down Under. I don't think the version of the tape that I watched at CHEO had the previews either because outside of YouTube, I've never seen those two previews together. I've seen the preview for The Jungle Book on the tape for The Rescuers Down Under and I've seen the preview for The Rescuers Down Under on the tape for The Jungle Book, but I've never seen them together on a tape before. Just on YouTube.
If you've never seen Robin Hood, it's on Disney+ so go watch it. Honestly it's one of my favourite Disney movies with this VHS release being one of my most nostalgic VHS tapes that I have in my collection right now. Just because it was that one VHS I never got to watch all the way through when I was a kid and to finally get to sit in my basement and watch it without any interruptions was awesome.
And that's the first installment of The Review Basement Media Library. I'm going to try to make this a weekly thing, but I also might alternate it with the regular movie reviews. We'll see though because I don't plan on this replacing the regular movie reviews. I just wanted to talk about my media library with the specific releases that I have rather than just the book, movie, TV show or video game in general. But I have so many DVDs, Blu-rays, 4K Blu-rays, VHS tapes, books and video games that to try and do it in one post would be super long and super insane for me to try to pull off. So this way you get to see my media collection and not have to read a really long blog post. Like I said, it's not going to replace my movie reviews because those are the bulk of this blog. This is just a fun thing that I wanted to do. I don't even care if it gets a lot of views. I'm just doing this for myself. Oh and I'm also going to be talking about editions and releases that I used to have in my collection but don't anymore. Later.
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