Feeling constrained by the rigors of the Walt Disney Company, animator Don Bluth led a team of colleagues away from the House of Mouse to form their own production company: Don Bluth Productions. After a string of successful shorts, the team successfully broke into features with THE SECRET OF NIMH, an adaptation of Robert C. O’Brien’s dark children’s fantasy Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH – a story once pitched to Disney but denied.

The film follows a widowed field mouse named Mrs. Brisby (changed to not have to deal with Frisbee™), whose youngest son falls ill just before the start of the farmer’s annual plow. Unable to move her son from harm’s way, Mrs. Brisby seeks help from the mysterious Rats of NIMH, a clannish and strife-laden bunch, who possess technology that could save her family.