"The Rescuers" (1977) remains my all-time favorite Disney movie. Though I might argue that "The Fox and the Hound" (1981) was the real ending of the "classic era" at Disney. No, "The Rescuers" ranks higher on my list of Disney animated classics (again, #1, to be exact), but "The Fox and the Hound" also had its sweet, heartbreaking and sentimental moments. It was also the last film any of the original Disney animators (Wolfgang Reitherman, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston were, by this point, the last 3 of the original 9 to still be working at Walt Disney Productions, and each of them entered retirement after this film was completed), the last to simply end with "The End: Walt Disney Productions", in this case, accompanied by two faint chimes, before the screen goes black, and most of all, the last one to be released by Walt Disney PRODUCTIONS, before Michael Eisner took over the company, renaming it Walt Disney PICTURES and ruining everything for a while with the release of the nefarious "Black Cauldron" in 1985. Even when Disney did get back on its feet, after "BC" made less money than "Care Bears: The Movie", released the same summer of '85, things still just haven't been the same for the most part at their studios (at least as far as most of the animation department is concerned). That said, a few exceptions and throwbacks to the Disney classic era, released within the past decade or two, include "The Princess and the Frog" and even some sequels and midquels to the 1937 – 1981 classics, such as "Bambi II" (which is quite amazing, since it took 64 years; 1942 – 2006, to get made), "Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure" and even "The Fox and the Hound 2", which while it could've potentially had a better plot (i.e. being an actual sequel vs. an "interquel"), it still had some memorable country songs and ALMOST the same sentiment of the original film, which again, I feel, was truly the end for classic Walt Disney animated features. :.)
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