Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Littlest Horse Thieves
When you think of live-action Disney movies from the 1970s, you probably think of wacky gimmick comedies. Lord knows this column has been dominated by them in recent weeks. But every so often, the studio would get serious and release a slower, more melancholy movie about animals and/or kids. Movies like Rascal, The Biscuit Eater and Ride A Wild Pony kept Walt’s love of animals alive at the studio in the years following his death. The Littlest Horse Thieves (or, as it was known in the UK, Escape From The Dark) falls squarely within this category.
The film was written by Rosemary Anne Sisson, her second Disney assignment after Ride A Wild Pony. Burt Kennedy, the screenwriter who’d written many of Budd Boetticher’s best westerns, receives a story credit. As near as I can tell, this is Kennedy’s only credit on a Disney project. This would be the first of three Disney projects for British director Charles Jarrott. Jarrott cut his teeth in television before moving on to the lavish costume dramas Anne Of The Thousand Days and Mary, Queen Of Scots. But Jarrott was also responsible for the 1973 musical disaster Lost Horizon and The Other Side Of Midnight, a howlingly bad romance based on a trashy Sidney Sheldon novel. So his track record is spotty at best.
As with Ride A Wild Pony, producer Ron Miller went for authenticity by shooting on location. The production made use of a variety of historic locations around Yorkshire, England. Sets were constructed at London’s Pinewood Studios. The extra effort was worth it. Whatever else you might say about The Littlest Horse Thieves, it evocatively captures the feeling of a Yorkshire mining town circa 1909.
The film is centered around a Yorkshire coal mine where a new manager, the magnificently named Richard Sandman (Peter Barkworth), has arrived to make the operation profitable for owner Lord Harrogate (top-billed Alastair Sim making his final film appearance in what amounts to an extended cameo). During his tour of the mine, Sandman sets his sights on the pit ponies, the horses that pull the carts of coal to the surface. Sandman recognizes that replacing the ponies with machines would double the amount of coal they could bring up and sets to work modernizing the colliery.
The new manager is also appalled to see two young boys emerge from the mine at the end of shift. A century earlier, this would have been no big deal but in the more enlightened times of 1909, you had to be 14 to work in the pit. The boys, Dave and Tommy Sadler (Andrew Harrison and Benjie Bolgar, neither of whom continued acting much past this), aren’t miners. They help Bert the horsemaster (Joe Gladwin) tend the ponies in their underground stables. Still, kids aren’t supposed to be in the pit and Sandman warns Bert against allowing them back.
Dave and Tommy’s father died in the mine and their mother, Violet (Susan Tebbs), has married another miner, Luke (Maurice Colbourne). The boys have not exactly given their new stepfather a warm welcome. As a result, they spend as much time as possible away from home, either with the ponies or running around on the moors with their dog.
On one of these rambles, they meet Mr. Sandman’s daughter, Alice (Chloe Franks), after their dog chases her up a tree. After a rough start, the three soon become friends. Alice is particularly captivated to hear about the pit ponies. With Alice disguised as a boy, Dave sneaks her into the mine to visit the animals. Word has already begun to spread that the ponies are set to be replaced. Dave and Alice imagine this means a happy retirement where the ponies can frolic in the sunshine and eat all the straw their bellies can hold. Bert knows better but doesn’t have the heart to say so, deflecting the issue by telling Alice to ask her father.
Back at home, Alice’s no-nonsense governess, Miss Coutt (Geraldine McEwan), informs her the ponies are almost certainly bound for the slaughterhouse. When Dave hears about this, he decides they’ll have to steal the horses to protect them. They find a sealed mine entrance and get to work repairing the lift. Sandman even inadvertently helps out when Alice not-so-innocently asks how a drive engine works. Miss Coutt doesn’t think that’s an appropriate subject for young girls but Sandman is proud his daughter has an inquisitive mind and tells her everything he knows.
With a little help from Bert, who’s more than happy to turn a blind eye to the kids’ scheme, they restore the lift, get the ponies to the surface and hide them in an abandoned barn. Their victory is short-lived, however. Mr. Sandman has discovered that Alice is missing and they find the kids’ hiding place with little trouble. The horses are returned to the colliery, although they’re kept above-ground this time. Since they’ll be shipped off to the slaughterhouse soon anyway, the kids just saved them the effort of bringing them up.
But the next day, Dave gets some unexpected support from Luke. He riles up the men with a little bit of concern about the ponies and a whole lot of worry about their job security. If the ponies are expendable, who’s to say the men won’t be next? The miners go on strike, refusing to work until the ponies are put back in their place and things go back to the way they were.
The strike lasts for several days until Mr. Sandman announces that Lord Harrogate has struck an exclusive distribution deal that will guarantee the miners’ work for at least a year. But the ponies are out and there’s nothing to be done about that. If the men don’t get back to work immediately, Lord Harrogate will close the mine and they’ll all be out of jobs. Luke tries to rally the troops to hold out for terms but it’s too late. At the end of the day, the men care more about their own welfare than the fate of a few ponies.
The first day back at work, an explosion rocks the village and traps a number of men, including Luke, underground. (You didn’t really think a movie about coal mining wouldn’t have at least one cave-in, did you?) The foreman says they could potentially reach the men via the alternate entrance the kids re-opened. The only trouble is that the underground gas prohibits the use of any kind of flame. They’d be wandering blind and could easily get lost.
But Dave has another idea. When the ponies were brought to the surface, he and Bert realized that Flash, the oldest and best of the ponies, was blind thanks to his lifetime of work in the mines. Fourteen years of exposure to coal dust has rendered his eyes useless but he was still able to find his way around the shafts without any trouble. Flash should be able to lead the rescue party directly to the men.
Sandman himself joins the rescue party, with Flash and his longtime driver, Ginger, leading the way (and hey, that’s future Boba Fett Jeremy Bulloch as Ginger!). The townsfolk wait anxiously above, even Sandman’s prim-and-proper wife (and hey, that’s Sybil Fawlty herself, Prunella Scales, as Mrs. Sandman!). Flash locates the trapped miners and the rescue party gets everyone safely back above ground. But Flash himself heads back to his familiar underground stable. Another explosion seals off both the mine and Flash’s fate.
To celebrate the successful rescue, Lord Harrogate hosts a picnic for the town on his estate. In his speech, he announces a statue of the heroic Flash will be erected in the town square. Even better, he dedicates a field in Flash’s honor for the remaining ponies. The kids’ dream of a happy retirement where the ponies can frolic in the sunshine comes true after all.
To be honest, I was more than a little bored watching The Littlest Horse Thieves. Not a lot happens in this movie and it happens very slowly. But in retrospect, I appreciate it a little more. After so many frantic comedies, it was nice to see a movie that moves at a more languid pace. I was not surprised that Flash died in the end. This is the studio that produced Old Yeller, after all. But I was impressed that the film didn’t shy away from darker details like the pony’s blindness and inability to adjust to life above ground.
The movie gets a little lost during the strike sequence. Sisson’s script does try to explore multiple facets of the issue, including Violet’s disapproval of the strike and the miners’ mixed feelings about it. But this isn’t exactly Matewan. The only thing we really care about is the ponies. Once they’re sidelined, everything else just feels like filler.
Escape From The Dark opened in the UK on May 26, 1976. In America, the retitled The Littlest Horse Thieves didn’t get a stand-alone release. Instead, it opened on March 11, 1977, as half of a double-bill alongside the movie we’ll be discussing next week. As a result, the movie is somewhat forgotten in this country. Usually, movies like this found a second life after airing on The Wonderful World Of Disney but not this one. It’s possible the studio felt the movie was a little too British to cross-over to American audiences. I have a pretty good ear for accents but even I had trouble deciphering the thick Yorkshire dialogue in the opening minutes. It gets easier but American kids could get impatient and bail if they can’t understand what people are saying.
Looking ahead, The Littlest Horse Thieves appears to be one of the last films of its type. We’ll see plenty more animals in this column but they won’t be in service of this kind of period drama. The movie definitely feels like it would be more at home in 1957 than 1977. I suppose that makes this the end of an era, in a way. I’m not exactly sorry to see it go but eventually, I’ll probably miss the more serious and sentimental side of Disney.
VERDICT: It isn’t my cup of tea but it leans more Disney Plus than Minus.
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