English Title: The Fearless Four
Warner Bros.
Starring: Oleta Adams, Mario Adorf, Hartmut Engler
Directed by: Michael Coldewey, Eberhard Junkersdorf, Jürgen Richter
Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!
Synopsis: Loosely based on the Grimm Brothers tale of The Town Musicians of Bremen, a dog, a cat, a donkey and a rooster, all musically talented, band together to help expose a corrupt sausage manufacturer.
Cartoon Cats: The cat in the group is a Siamese named Gwendolyn (voiced by Oleta Adams), a housecat whose wealthy owner passes away, leaving her in danger from the woman’s greedy relatives.
Gwendolyn escapes the home and joins Buster the dog (voiced by Hartmut Engler), Fred the Donkey (voiced by Mario Adorf) and Tortellini the rooster (voiced by Joachim Kemmer).
Of all the animals Gwendolyn is the only female and is also the only one who plays an instrument, a mandolin which she carries with her.
Eventually the band makes their way to Bremen where they are discovered and hired as commercial singers by an evil sausage manufacturer named Mix Max. When the band realizes they are being exploited to help Mix Max sell more sausage (and kill more animals) they fight back.
In one scene Gwendolyn finds a mother cat and her kittens on the way to the sausage-making machines. They use any and all animals in their sausage!
After defeating the bad guys, Gwendolyn returns home and finds that her mistress’ jewels, which the greedy relatives were looking for, were there all along.
Also Buster and Gwendolyn end up falling in love, despite the fact that Buster has bemoaned her being a cat through much of the film.
A couple of scenes were cut from the English version, one of which shows Gwendolyn seducing their Mix Max employer. The other shows the animals imbibing after winning their freedom.
Final Mewsings: Who says interspecies relationships can’t work?
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