The owl house watching Bartok and Anastasia

Bartok the magnificent

The title of the film is shown, before showing more of its clips)

Oswald: Directed by Don Bluth with Gary Goldman and based on the comic relief from his animated film Anastasia, Bartok had the animation budget of a straight-to-video movie and, honestly, about as much interest from the studio. They seemed, understandably so, more interested in their cinematic release than their smaller VHS tie-in. But because of this, they interfered less, and we got a bizarre, unique and, honestly, kind of enjoyable little special out of it. It's not one of Bluth's grand works or anything, but it has more of his traditionally odd signatures, resulting in a crazy but surreally charming adventure. And we're here to look at this adorably insane film in all its wonderful head-scratching glory.

Luz: So sit back and get ready to go, "Why?"...as you should with any good Don Bluth production. This is Bartok the Magnificent.

Amity: I was literally thinking about this the other day! And then had a sad when I remembered the movie wasn't made by Disney....then again I should be grateful because Disney is an evil corporation and behind many dark theories of children going missing. Dear parents who are watching this, please watch your kids when they go to the bathroom!

Gus: so this is a prequel to "Anastasia". I guess animated bats live for a REALLY long time.

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(The movie starts with showing the inside of the hut on chicken legs, which belongs to a famous Russian witch, Baba Yaga)

Luz: The film opens with a song about a witch named Baba Yaga, which in Russian translates to pointless, but funny throwaway joke in Ant-Man sequel.

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Chorus: (singing) Baba Yaga!

Oswald: This immediately gives you a feel for the film. There's clearly little money thrown at this, there's not even that much animation to start out. But the stylized angles, colors and designs are already more unique than what you usually see in the direct-to-video product. This looks like Toys "R" Us if it went to Hell.  No disrespect. Still miss you.

Willow: In Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga is a supernatural being (or one of a trio of sisters of the same name) who appears as a deformed and/or ferocious-looking woman. Baba Yaga flies around in a mortar, wields a pestle, and dwells deep in the forest in a hut usually described as standing on chicken legs (or sometimes a single chicken leg). Baba Yaga may help or hinder those that encounter or seek her out. She sometimes plays a maternal role, and also has associations with forest wildlife. According to Vladimir Propp's folktale morphology, Baba Yaga commonly appears as either a donor or villain, or may be altogether ambiguous. In addition, there are some other similar figures in other European folklore - In Eastern Europe, these figures include the Bulgarian Gorska Maika ('Forest Mother'); Gvozdenzuba ('Iron Tooth'), and Baba Roga (used to scare children in Croatia and Bosnia).

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(We are shown Bartok the albino bat impressing the people of Moscow with his performances on the Red Square)

Luz: We cut pretty quickly to our main character, though--a Russian bat named Bartok, played by Hank Azaria and before you go insane, he said he was open to a real Russian bat voicing the part.

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(However, it is revealed to us that most of Bartok's performances are staged, like the weight-lifting. A blue kite shaped like a big bat is shown)

He travels town to town telling fake tales of his amazing heroics.

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Raine whispers: So, he's pretty much like a bat version of Oscar Diggs from Oz the Great and Powerful.