- For the television series, see All Dogs Go to Heaven: The
Series
All Dogs Go to Heaven 1989 animated film
directed and
produced by
Don Bluth
and released by
United Artists. Set
in
1939, the film tells the story of two dogs,
Charlie B. Barkin (voiced by
Burt
Reynolds) and his loyal best friend Itchy Itchiford (voiced by
Dom DeLuise). Charlie, who is murdered
by his gangster business partner Carface Carruthers, forsakes his
place in Heaven to return and take revenge. On his return he frees
a young orphan girl, Anne-Marie, who Carface was holding captive
because of her ability to talk to and understand animals (giving
Carface insider information about whom to bet on in races). At
first Charlie and Itchy intend on exploiting Anne-Marie's gift too,
but they soon become attached to her and act as her protectors.
Charlie learns that he will have to change his ways in order to get
back into Heaven.
The film
was produced at Sullivan Bluth
Studios in Dublin
, Ireland
, funded by UK-based investors Goldcrest Films. On its cinema
release it competed directly with an animated feature released at
the same time,
The
Little Mermaid produced by
Walt Disney Feature Animation.
While it did not repeat the box-office success of Sullivan Bluth's
previous feature films (
An American
Tail and
The Land
Before Time) it was very successful on
home video, becoming one of the biggest-selling
VHS releases ever. The film inspired a
theatrical sequel, a
television series and a
holiday direct-to-video
film. It has since then become a
cult
film and classic.
Plot
In 1939,
New
Orleans
, Charlie B. Barkin (voiced by
Burt Reynolds), a rough-and-tumble mutt with a
con man's charm, is working at a casino with his gangster business
partner Carface Carruthers (voiced by
Vic
Tayback). Carface, unwilling to share the earnings, has Charlie
locked away at the pound and runs the casino with an iron fist, but
with the help of his best friend Itchy (voiced by
Dom DeLuise), a nervous
Dachshund, he breaks out. Unaware of Carface's
malicious intent, Charlie returns to him expecting open arms, but
Carface wants to sever ties with him. To get Charlie out of the
picture for good, Carface arranges his death. He takes Charlie out
to
Mardi Gras, gets him drunk and runs
him down with a car, knocking him into the river.
Having died, Charlie goes to
Heaven by
default, despite not having done a single nice thing in his life;
as the angelic Heavenly Whippet Anabelle explains, "unlike people,
dogs are naturally good and loyal and kind”. Dissatisfied at having
died before his time, Charlie distracts Anabelle, takes back his
"life watch" (a glowing
pocket watch)
and winds it up again, forsaking his place in Heaven and returning
himself to Earth. While he has been returned to life, and he is
immortal while his life watch still ticks, when it does stop he
will be condemned to
Hell for eternity unless
he performs a good deed to earn a place in Heaven (as Anabelle says
through the watch, "You can never come back"). Charlie ignores this
and slams the watch shut.
Back on Earth Charlie reunites with Itchy and plots his revenge
against Carface by setting up a rival business, "Charlie's Place".
Before he can do this he must collect money to begin construction.
Itchy is reluctant to cooperate, fearing retribution not only from
Carface but also a "monster" he has heard Carface possesses.
Charlie is intrigued by this and investigates, Charlie discovers
the "monster" is in fact a little orphan girl named Anne-Marie who
Carface has been harboring because of her ability to communicate
with animals, giving Carface the advantage when gambling on races.
Seeing the potential to use Anne-Marie's gift for his own gain,
Charlie decides to take her. Anne-Marie immediately sees that
Charlie is using her just as Carface did. Charlie is able to
convince her that the money is for the poor and he will find her a
mom and dad. While betting on a horse race Charlie pickpockets the
married couple Harold and Kate while Anne-Marie unwittingly helps
divert their attention. Trying to keep Anne-Marie from discovering
his true intent, he uses some of the money to buy her dresses and
other clothing. Once the casino is built Anne-Marie decides to
leave Charlie because of his negligence to fulfill his promise to
her about helping the poor and finding her parents. He then takes
Anne-Marie to an abandoned church where a collie named Flo is
caring for orphan pups. Charlie kindly gives them food and teaches
them to share but during this Anne-Marie stumbles upon the wallet
he stole on the stairs. She then questions Charlie on it. He does
not reply, but Anne-Marie recognizes the couple's picture in the
wallet and sees that Charlie stole it. She storms up stairs after
yelling at him. His conscience pricked, Charlie begins to worry
about his fate, and that night suffers a nightmare where he is
banished to Hell and is encountered by a monstrous, doglike version
of
Satan using Charlie's own skeleton body and
its minions. The nightmare ends with the Devil saying to Charlie,
"You can never go back!"
Charlie and Anne-Marie, as they elude
Carface at a market
hears his name being said softly and awakes to find the pups
shaking him awake and the fact that he is holding on the top of a
broom handle. The pups inform him that Anne-Marie has left to
return the wallet he stole, and goes after her. He finds her eating
breakfast with the wallet family in their home, and the couple
planning to take Anne-Marie in. Realizing he is about to lose his
trump card in his revenge against Carface, Charlie tricks
Anne-Marie into leaving by pretending to be sick. As they leave,
they are ambushed by Carface and his sidekick Killer (voiced by
Charles Nelson Reilly). Hiding
in a dilapidated warehouse, they fall through the crumbling floor
and into a flooded underground cavern. There they are captured by a
tribe of mice who plan to sacrifice them to King Gator. Moments
from being devoured, Charlie lets out a melodic howl of anguish.
King Gator (voiced by
Ken Page), a
camp character with a penchant for
musical theatre-style songs, instantly
develops a liking for Charlie's voice and sets him and Anne-Marie
free. Unfortunately, their adventure in the flooded underground
caverns has left Anne-Marie sick with
pneumonia.
Meanwhile Carface, still out to get Charlie, storms into Charlie's
Place with his thugs, assaults Itchy and sets fire to the
establishment. Charlie meanwhile has taken Anne-Marie to Flo at the
abandoned church. Itchy limps into the church, badly beaten and
bruised. He is angry at him for paying more attention to Anne-Marie
instead of being there to help his oldest friend. Charlie, in
frustration, replies that he is only using her (despite having
obviously grown to care deeply about her). Unfortunately,
Anne-Marie overhears and, despite her illness, rushes heartbroken
out into the night. Before long, Carface spots her, recaptures her
and flees with Charlie chasing after them. Itchy comes out and sees
that Charlie has taken off. Flo then insturucts him to take
Anne-Marie's stuffed rabbit and deliver it to the wallet family,
Itchy rounds up all the dogs in the neighborhood and heads to the
married couple's house to alert them to Anne-Marie's plight, while
Charlie heads for Carface's hideout to confront him and rescue the
girl.
At Carface's hideout, Charlie finds Anne-Marie but Carface knew he
would come and planned a trap. Charlie then fights his way through
a horde of henchmen, but soon gets captured and tied to an anchor,
ready to be thrown into the water. As he struggles, Charlie gets
bitten and lets out a piercing howl. King Gator hears the voice and
rushes to his aid. Just as Charlie is about to drown, King Gator
frees him and begins tearing the oil tanker apart. Charlie
confronts Carface in a deadly battle while the ship breaks apart
around them. With the shaking and shuddering, the cage holding
Anne-Marie falls into the river, and some oil barrels get knocked
over, which causes the oil to spill onto the electric generator and
starts a fire. Charlie goes to save Anne-Marie, but Carface leaps
on him and knocks his precious life watch, the only thing keeping
him alive, onto the debris floating on the water. Just as Carface
is about to deliver a killing bite to Charlie, King Gator rams the
ship again. Carface tumbles into the water where King Gator is
waiting. King Gator finds Carface "delicious", and Carface screams
and swims away with Gator following behind him. Charlie leaps to
save both his life watch and Anne-Marie, but is unable to get to
both. Faced with the choice, he pushes the piece of wood Anne-Marie
is laying on out of the wrecked tanker. His watch sinks to the
bottom of the river, Charlie swims down to get the watch but fails
and its workings fill with water and it stops. On the riverbank,
Itchy and the other dogs have led Harold and Kate to the scene.
When Itchy sees the tanker explode, he knows that Charlie has died.
Carface's former sidekick, Killer, has carried Anne-Marie away from
the burning ship to safety.
Some time later, Anne-Marie sleeps at Harold and Kate's house.
Charlie's spirit returns, escorted by the Devil from his nightmare,
to bid her farewell before he is banished to Hell. As the Devil
beckons Charlie, a bright blue light enters and drives it away, and
the voice of the Heavenly Whippet tells Charlie that his act of
self-sacrifice has earned him his place in Heaven again. Charlie
says his heartfelt goodbyes to Anne-Marie, and returns to
Heaven.
In Heaven, Carface is furious at his untimely death, having been
killed and eaten by King Gator, and, just as Charlie did, he winds
up his life clock to return to life, swearing revenge on King Gator
with Annebelle screaming at him while chasing him, "Touch that
clock and you can never come back!". With a wink at the camera,
Charlie remarks, "He'll be back". Then, he zips back under the
clouds, leaving his
halo behind floating, which he
quickly grabs off-screen.
Cast
Main cast
- Burt Reynolds as
Charlie B. Barkin, a roguish
German Shepherd He is one of the
film's two protagonists. The character
was designed specifically with Reynolds in mind for the role, and
the animators mimicked some of his mannerisms in the character. At
first, he and Itchy wants to use Anne-Marie for his own benefit. He
and Itchy become attached to her and along the way, he forms a bond
with the girl. At the end of the film, he tells Anne-Marie to take
care of Itchy.
- Dom DeLuise as
Itchiford "Itchy" Dachshund, a paranoid and
twitchy Dachshund who has long been best
friends with Charlie. He has a problem keeping his fleas under
control. At first, along with Charlie, he wants to use Anne-Marie
for his own benefit and when she needs them as guardians, he steps
in to help take care of her. At the end of the film, Anne-Marie
adopts him when Charlie has to go to heaven. He is one of the
film's two protagonists.
- Judith Barsi as
Anne-Marie the orphan girl with the ability to
talk to and understand any animal. She forms a bond with Charlie
and Itchy when they become her guardians. At the end of the film,
she adopts Itchy when Charlie has to go to heaven. This was Judith
Barsi's second role in a Sullivan Bluth film, having previously
played the character of Ducky in The Land Before Time. It was also
her last role; her father Jozsef Barsi murdered both her and her
mother Maria Barsi on July 25, 1988, before the film was completed.
- Vic Tayback as
Carface Carruthers, a shifty American Pit Bull Terrier. The
gangster who runs a casino with Charlie, whom he later kills when
he decides he does not wish to share his business monopoly with
Charlie. He serves as the main antagonist of the film.
Supporting cast
Production
The earliest idea for
All Dogs Go to Heaven was conceived
by Don Bluth after finishing work on
The Secret of NIMH. The
treatment was originally about a canine
private eye, and one of three
short stories making up an
anthology
film. The character of a shaggy
German Shepherd Dog was designed
specifically with
Burt Reynolds in
mind for the role. However, Bluth's first studio,
Don Bluth Productions, was going
through a period of financial difficulty, ultimately having to
declare bankruptcy, and the idea never made it beyond rough
storyboards. The concept was revived and rewritten by Bluth,
John Pomeroy and
Gary Goldman in November 1987, building around
the title
All Dogs Go to Heaven, and drawing inspiration
from films such as
It's a
Wonderful Life,
Little
Miss Marker and
A Guy Named
Joe. The film's title came from a book read to Bluth's
fourth grade class in school, and he resisted suggestions to change
it, stating he liked how “provocative” it sounded, and how people
reacted to the title alone.
During the
production of their previous feature film, Sullivan Bluth Studios
had moved from Van Nuys, California
to a state-of-the-art studio facility in Dublin, Ireland, and All Dogs Go to Heaven was their first
to begin production wholly at the Irish studio. It was also
their first to be funded from sources outside of Hollywood; the
previous two feature films,
An
American Tail and
The
Land Before Time, had been backed by
Amblin Entertainment and
Universal Pictures, and executive
producers
Steven Spielberg and
George Lucas had exercised a degree of
control over the content of the films, a situation Bluth found
disagreeable. The studio found investment from UK-based
Goldcrest Films in a US$70m deal to produce
three animated feature films (though only two,
All Dogs Go to
Heaven and
Rock-A-Doodle, would be completed under
the deal). The three founding members of the studio, Bluth, Pomeroy
and Goldman, had all moved to Ireland to set up the new facility,
but during the production of
All Dogs Go to Heaven, John
Pomeroy returned to the U.S. to head up a satellite studio which
provided some of the animation for the film. Pomeroy also used his
presence in the U.S. to generate early publicity for the film,
including a presentation at the 1987
San Diego Comic-Con.
The film's lead voices, Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise, had
previously appeared together in a number of films, including
The Cannonball
Run. For
All Dogs Go to Heaven, they requested
they be allowed to record their parts in the studio together (in
American animation it is more common for each actor to record their
part solo). Bluth agreed, and allowed Reynolds and DeLuise to
ad-lib extensively; Bluth later commented
“their ad-libs were often better than the original script”. Another
pair of voices, those of Carface and Killer (
Vic Tayback and
Charles Nelson Reilly respectively)
also recorded together.
As production neared completion, the studio held test screenings
and decided that some of the scenes were too intense for younger
viewers. When first submitted to the
MPAA,
All Dogs Go to Heaven received a PG rating. Writer and
producer John Pomeroy found this unacceptable, and decided to
shorten or remove several shots in order to attain a G rating, most
notably a clear shot of Charlie being knocked down by a car, and
his nightmare about Hell. Co-director Gary Goldman also agreed to
the cuts, recognising that some concessions needed to be made in
the name of commercial appeal. Don Bluth previously owned a private
film print of the uncut version, which he had planned to duplicate
onto video to convince Goldcrest to release in its original form,
but it was stolen from a locked storage room. The original drawings
and cels of all scenes, including the cut scenes, were destroyed by
Goldcrest Films so that they would avoid paying storage fees.
[58171] Also, in the soundtrack version of the song
Let Me Be Surprised, Charlie says "
Damn,
that Carface. I'll kill him!", but in the film version, he
just says "
That Carface. I'll kill him!".
Release and reaction
Dissatisfied with the terms imposed by
Universal Pictures, which had distributed
their previous two films, the studio found an alternative
distributor in
United Artists.
Somewhat unusually, production investors Goldcrest Films covered
the cost of the
release prints and the
promotional campaign, in return for a greatly reduced distribution
fee from UA. This was similar to the arrangement with United
Artists when they distributed Bluth's first feature film,
The Secret of NIMH.
Goldcrest Films invested $15 million in printing and promoting the
film. Due to contractual issues, very little tie-in merchandise
accompanied the film's theatrical release; several computer games
and software packages were released, and restaurant chain
Wendy's offered toys with their Kids' Meals or
regular fries.
All Dogs Go to Heaven opened in the U.S. on
November 17 1989, the same
day as
The Little
Mermaid produced by
Walt Disney Feature Animation;
once again, Sullivan Bluth Studios' latest feature would be vying
for box office receipts with Disney's, just as their previous one
(
The Land Before Time)
had. Many critics were hard on the movie, drawing unfavorable
comparisons to Disney's offering, criticizing the disjointed
narrative, the quality of the animation, and the songs by Charlie
Strouse and T.J. Kuenster, with some finding the darker subject
material objectionable in a family film, featuring as it does
depictions of death, violence, drinking, smoking, gambling, demons
and Hell. But reviews were positive, with critics praising the
film's emotional qualities, humor and vibrant color palette.
Roger Ebert, who was uimpressed with
(one of Bluth's better rated movies)
An
American Tail, gave it three out of four stars. More recent
reviews of the film have generally been less harsh, with
Box Office Mojo awarding it a B-
rating.
On its theatrical release, while still making its budget of $13.8
million back,
All Dogs Go to Heaven's performance fell
short of Sullivan Bluth Studios' previous box office successes,
grossing US$26m, just over half of what
An American Tail
and
The Land Before Time each took. However, the film
became a
sleeper hit on its home video
release; a strong promotional campaign helped it become one of the
top-selling VHS releases of all time, selling over 3 million copies
in its first month. As of today, 44% of the critics give positive
reviews on
Rotten Tomatoes. However,
this is only based on 9 reviews (with Ebert being the only "Top
Critic"). The more numerous website users, on the other hand, gave
it a score of 72%.
Sequels
The success of the film, particularly its performance on home
video, prompted several follow-up productions. A theatrical sequel,
All Dogs Go to Heaven
2, a
television series,
All Dogs Go to
Heaven: The Series, and a
Christmas special,
An All Dogs Christmas
Carol, based on Charles Dickens'
A Christmas Carol were made. Don
Bluth and his studio had no involvement with any of them.
Dom Deluise is the only voice actor to appear in
all installments of the franchise.
Songs
- You Can't Keep A Good Dog Down
- Welcome To Doing Whatever You Wish
- Let Me Be Surprised
- What's Mine Is Yours
- Soon You'll Come Home
- Let's Make Music Together
- Love Survives (Credits)
Soundtrack
On July 1, 1991, A soundtrack to All Dogs Go to Heaven was released
but according to Amazon.com, It has been discontinued by the
manufacturer.
Track Listings
- Love Survives - Irene Cara and Freddie Jackson - Length: 3:25
(Unlike the NTSC version, the soundtrack and European versions
sound high-pitched.)
- Mardi Gras - Music Score - Length: 1:17
- You Can't Keep A Good Dog Down - Burt Reynolds and Dom Deluise
- Length: 2:30
- Hell Hound - Music Score - Length: 2:09
- What's Mine Is Yours - Burt Reynolds - Length: 1:48
- At The Race Track - Music Score - Length: 1:49
- Let Me Be Surprised - Melba Moore and Burt Reynolds - Length:
4:54
- Soon You'll Come Home - Lana Beeson - Length: 2:38
- Money Montage - Music Score - Length: 3:43
- Dogs To The Rescue - Music Score - Length: 3:10
- Let's Make Music Together - Ken Page and Burt Reynolds -
Length: 2:24
- Goodbye Anne-Marie - Music Score - Length: 2:10
- Hallelujah - Candy Devine - 1:21
See also
Notes
- Cawley, All Dogs Go to Heaven
- Cawley, An American Tail
- Cawley, The Land Before Time
- Cawley, At Home in Ireland
- Beck, The Animated Movie Guide p.14
- Box Office Mojo
- Lenburg, p.32
-
http://www.amazon.com/All-Dogs-Heaven-Original-Soundtrack/dp/B000008CS1
-
http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/catalog/soundtrackdetail.php?movieid=1051
References
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