‘Fantasia’ a One-of-a-Kind Adventure

One thing you can’t fault Disney for is knowing how to hype. When it comes to video, the house of Mickey Mouse is rewriting the book.

In case you missed the commercials, “Fantasia” is hitting the video racks today and, says Disney, after it’s sold out, you’ll never have another chance to pick up this 120-minute film in its pristine, spruced-up original state.

But you can get the videotape or laser disc releases while they last: $25 for the standard version on tape; $40 for standard-play (CLV) laser. The $100 deluxe model in both tape and laser comes with lots of collector-aimed bells and whistles: a “certificate of authenticity”; a commemorative full-color illustrated brochure; a lithograph of the original ’39 concept painting; a short feature on the “Making of a Masterpiece,” which includes a “Clair de Lune” segment never released with the original. (And because tape doesn’t have the digital clarity of the laser format, the deluxe tape set comes with its own “laser,” a two-CD soundtrack.)

Enough dealers think enough consumers are ready to snap up the 1940 melding of classical music and animation to have ordered 9 million of the standard and 250,000 of the deluxe videotape versions, according to Disney. “Fantasia” also has set records for the number of laser discs shipped: 135,000 of the plain-wrap and 65,000 of the deluxe set, both whopping numbers for laser sales, says Image Entertainment, which distributes the lasers.

If the choice is between videotape and laser disc, this is one of the strongest cases for laser yet, even though the tape quality is just about the best around. Nothing for home viewing to date matches the standard-play laser version for purity of color, clarity of images and the use of the full range of laser-disc playback, including freeze frame, slow motion, specific random-frame access and multiple-times speed and scan.

In a way, watching the complete, newly restored “Fantasia” on laser disc is a lot like going to the Hollywood Bowl to hear Beethoven and Bach. It may not be a pure musical experience, but it’s a one-of-a-kind adventure.

The much talked-about “Fantasound” that resulted in the first stereophonic sound system was never heard to its full potential in theaters of the time, which were seldom equipped for the kind of sound Walt Disney dreamed about.

The 1939 Philadelphia Orchestra led by showman Leopold Stokowski sounds better than anyone has a right to expect, even with 1991 digital enhancement. Heard in the stereophonic mode, the music sounds like most analog recordings updated for the digital age. But heard in Dolby surround sound (on a Yamaha Theatre Digital Processing System), the music becomes a panoply of sound effects following dinosaurs, elephants, woodland sprites and assorted other animated creatures around and off the screen, darting here, going there, running toward you and zipping away from you. It is one of the strangest sound experiences imaginable.

The deluxe laser package includes five standard play (CAV) sides showing the complete film in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio of the original theatrical prints. The CAV freeze frames are magnificent: clear and precise.

The sixth side is extended play (CLV) and contains the 42-minute promotional feature “Fantasia: The Making of a Masterpiece” produced by former “Entertainment Tonight” staffer Robert Heath and written by film historian and “ET” personality Leonard Maltin. While well-done, it’s nothing more than a full-blown promotion for the Disney Studios. Still, it has items of interest: the restoration process; statements from the animators; the Debussy “Clair de Lune” snippet not included in the final film released in 1940.

When it first came out, Disney’s bold experiment in sight and sound baffled almost everyone and enraged classical music critics. It is easy to see why: centaurs and centaurettes prancing about to Beethoven’s “Pastoral” symphony; pterodactyls and Tyrannosaurus Rex facing extinction to Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” (he was reportedly furious when he saw the finished product).

Some of the music was better served. Dukas’ “The Sorcererer’s Apprentice” delighted most audiences from start to finish, one of the truly great pieces of animation starring Disney’s favorite creation, Mickey Mouse.

Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” Suite wasn’t really damaged by the Disney animators. Stokowski’s interpretation of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor was already anathema to most critics, so few minded the abstract images thrown on the screen. Ostriches, hippos, elephants and alligators even seemed appropriate to Ponchielli’s silly “Dance of the Hours.” The frightening, fantastic images drawn to “Night on Bald Mountain” have undoubtedly not been ameliorated for children by the vapid imagery for the “Ave Maria” that followed it, teaming damnation and salvation.

But whether the teaming of video and Disney’s fantastic melding of sound and image makes for the kind of sales Disney envisions remains to be seen.