Walt Disney Home Video What-Ifs?

A sort of follow-up to the very first article I ever posted here...

I once wrote a fun little alternate history of Walt Disney Home Video. In this alternate history (newcomers, read no further), the division released The Great Mouse Detective on video on March 27, 1987. Back then, I figured the preview reel would consist of the dark red anti-piracy cards, a trailer for Benji, the Hunted (which was opening that following summer), and then the 1984 Classics logo.

With a little editing and such, I made a custom print. But I beefed it up a bit. Outside of a few releases, few Disney films had more than one preview on their 80s videocassette releases. Most of the time, there were no previews at all! The most previews I've seen on a pre-1990 tape? 2! On VHS releases of films like Mosby's Marauders, One Little Indian, and a few others.

My Great Mouse Detective print has three previews: Benji, the Hunted, the 50th Anniversary re-release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and a "Now on Video" trailer for Sleeping Beauty...


Next up, I did a what-if print for Oliver & Company. Basically, beat-for-beat, the same as what I wrote on the earlier blog entry...


Before that, I also cobbled together a Black Cauldron print, but this one is not based on the alternate history post...

This one is based on the idea that The Black Cauldron got a US theatrical re-release in February 1991. I deduced that the planned but later scrapped re-release of this movie in the states was supposed to happen around that time, so I made a July 1991-era print of it, and went a little off-route.


The trailer for The Rescuers Down Under is a slightly edited version of the original theatrical trailer. I didn't want go the expected path and use the brief one that appears on the Jungle Book and Robin Hood videocassettes. The Jungle Book preview is a TV spot, also edited.