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'''Pete's Dragon''' (first released on November 3, 1977) is a live-action/animated musical feature film from Walt Disney Productions. It is a live-action film but its title character, a dragon named Elliott, is animated. It is about a young orphan named Pete (played by Sean Marshall) who enters a small fishing community in Maine in the early 20th century. His only friend is a dragon, Elliott (voiced by Charlie Callas and animated by Don Bluth), who also acts as his sentinel. Elliott can make himself invisible and is generally visible only to Pete, which occasionally lands Pete in trouble with the locals.
Also featured in the film are Helen Reddy, Mickey Rooney, Jim Dale, Red Buttons, Jeff Conaway and Shelley Winters. The film was directed by Don Chaffey, and the songs are by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn. The song "Candle on the Water" received an Academy Award nomination, and Helen Reddy's recording (with a different arrangement than the one her character sings in the film) was released as a single by Capitol Records, reaching #27 on the Adult Contemporary charts.

Contents

Plot outline

Box office

Alternate versions

Songs

Trivia

External links

Plot outline

In early 20th century Maine, a boy named Pete runs away from his adoptive family, the Gogans, who mistreat him and use him as a slave. As they are looking for him, they are confronted by a dragon named Elliott, who knocks them into the mud while he is invisible. Lena Gogan (Shelley Winters) tells her boys that unless they find the “little twerp”, they will have to start working the farm by themselves, because they can’t afford another orphan.
The next morning, Pete thanks Elliott for everything he has ever done for him. They arrive at Passamaquoddy, a small fishing town. Pete tells Elliott that he needs to be invisible so as not to frighten the people. Elliott reluctantly agrees. Even so, Elliott makes his presence known by knocking over things, making footprints in wet cement, breaking fences and eggs, etc. Pete is immediately labeled bad news and is forced to hide while the town looks for him.
A man named Lampie (Mickey Rooney) drunkenly comes out of the bar and sees Pete and Elliott (who has since turned visible again). When Lampie realizes he is seeing a dragon, he runs back into the bar to warn the townsfolk. No one believes that Lampie saw a dragon, especially his daughter, Nora (Helen Reddy). That night Lampie and Nora return to their home, the Passamaquoddy lighthouse, and Lampie tells Nora exactly what he thought he saw. Nora tells him to go to sleep. She goes outside and sees Pete go into the cave right next to the water.
Pete is really scared and upset with Elliott. He doesn’t know what to do or where to go. Nora comes into the cave and asks him if he wants to spend the night in the lighthouse. He agrees and tells Elliott to wait for him in the cave.
Nora brings Pete up to the lighthouse, and he tells her about how he is running away from the Gogans. She promises that he will be safe in the lighthouse. Pete sees a picture of a man and asks who he is. Nora answers that it is her fiancé Paul, a sailor whose ship has gone missing for a long time. Pete tells her that he’ll ask Elliott about Paul since “he [Elliott] has a way of knowing things”. He explains that Elliott is his dragon. Nora believes Elliott to be some kind of imaginary friend, and that Pete is trying to cheer her up, so she pretends to think that Elliott will help her.
The next morning a con man and failed medical student by the name of Doc Terminus (Jim Dale) and his sidekick Hoagie (Red Buttons) come into Passamaquoddy. The town is immediately upset by his appearance, and he tries to sway them back into buying his phony medicines for a dollar apiece (while repeatedly mispronouncing the name of the town, saying things such as "Passamashloddy").
Nora buys Pete a new suit. That night he wants to show Elliott his suit and Paul's picture, so that Elliott can help look for Paul. After Pete goes down to the cave, Nora thanks her dad for pretending about Elliott with Pete. Lampie, however, is still convinced he saw a dragon, and Nora tells him to be realistic. He snaps back that she isn’t the one to talk about being realistic, when she's been waiting a year for a man who will never come back. Lampie apologizes and goes to the hardware store, while Nora climbs to the top of the lighthouse to sing "Candle on the Water," a haunting and romantic song metaphorically linking her love to the light.
Instead of going to the hardware store, Lampie goes to the bar and asks Doc Terminus what he knows about dragons. The Doc takes him for a deluded drunk, but Lampie says he can prove that there is a dragon. Hoagie says he wants to see it, so Lampie takes him.
However accepting Nora is of Pete, the town is not, and the next morning when Pete goes to school for the first time (not at all fond of the idea), he is shunned by nearly everyone except the kids. Noticing that the fishermen are overly superstitious and consider Pete a jinx, Nora tells them to calm down and that there is no connection between Pete and Elliott and the fishing grounds.
The teacher thinks Pete has a distracting imagination and she punishes him for it. To save Pete from corporal punishment, the invisible Elliott runs right through a wall of the school, to the amazement of the whole town. Seeing this, and anxious to make a profit, Terminus is hopeful that Pete will sell him Elliott. He plans to kill the dragon and cut him up for use in patent medicines.
Doc Terminus goes to the lighthouse the next morning to find Pete and Nora giving the lighthouse a fresh coat of paint. He makes Pete an offer, but Pete responds that Elliott isn’t his to sell. They are chased away by Nora's foghorn. Nora and Lampie tell Pete that they want him to live with them. He agrees, and they continue to clean the lighthouse.
The Gogans are still looking for Pete, and they come into Passamaquoddy. When they mention the dragon to some townsfolk, several people are scared, and the Gogans know they’ve come to the right place. Hoagie overhears the inquiries about Pete, and informs Terminus of these new developments. While Pete, Nora and Lampie are out fishing, the Gogans find them. They try to convince Nora that Pete is theirs by virtue of a bill of sale. Nora, a passionate, outspoken woman, refuses to hand Pete over. Elliott, invisible, knocks the Gogans into the water.
Terminus later visits the Gogans, convincing them that he will give them Pete if they help him capture Elliott. He gathers allies among the superstitious who take the dragon as a sign of misfortune, and prepares a trap.
Elliott, meanwhile, has located Paul and informs Pete of this. Nora, however, has received news to the contrary and refuses to co-operate with Pete's belief in Elliott any longer. Even Lampie begins to doubt he saw a dragon, but Pete is undeterred.
Terminus lures Pete to the town's boathouse, while the frightened Hoagie does the same to Elliott. When the dragon arrives, invisible, he finds that Hoagie's story is true; the Gogans have seized Pete and are holding him painfully. Elliott advances, but is caught in a net. In the fight that follows, Elliott throws away both his invisibility and his bonds, scatters the volunteer roustabouts, and searches for Pete. In a last effort, Lena Gogan shows Elliott the bill of sale that declares her Pete's legal guardian. Showing her what he thinks of that, Elliott sets the paper on fire, tips Lena Gogan into a barrel of creosote, and chases off her horse.
Terminus, desperate, brings his harpoon gun to bear. He is just about to fire when he realizes that a rope connected to the spear is looped around his ankle. He diverts the cannon, but is unable to stop it from shooting him through the ceiling. The harpoon lands embedded in a pole, leaving Terminus dangling. Elliott destroys Terminus's special vardo, with which the cheat had traveled.
Just as Elliott turns to go, an electric wire-pole falls, threatening to shock the mayor and the schoolteacher. Elliott, now visible, stops it from doing so, provoking the famous line "There really is a dragon!".
Off the coast, a ship is headed for the jagged rocks of a reef. The Passamaquoddy lighthouse has been hit by a monstrous wave that shattered the Lantern Room windows, drenching the oil-burning lamp, and Lampie cannot find a dry wick. Elliott arrives just in time to light the lamp with his own fire. As he is trying to do so, Nora comes in and is astonished by his presence. The light blazes, and the ship is saved.
In time, Elliott becomes accepted by the townspeople as a heroic figure or guardian. The economy prospers, and the mayor is humbled. Nora's love Paul returns, the sole survivor of the wreck Nora was informed of earlier. Paul was one of the sailors on the ship tossing about off Passamaquoddy, that was saved by Elliott relighting the lighthouse's lamp.
Elliott, however, has sad news. Since Pete is now safe and has a loving family of his own, the dragon must move on to help other children. Pete and Elliott say their goodbyes, and Elliott flies off to his next assignment.

Box office

The film did not do as well as hoped at the box office, and could not help bring Walt Disney Pictures out of its financial problems.

Alternate versions

This film has had a difficult release history. In its original roadshow theatrical release, the film ran 134 minutes. Shortly after, the film was re-edited to 121 minutes. When it was first issued on home video as a rental title, the movie was cut again to 104 minutes, severely edited and time-compressed, eliminating the "Candle On The Water" number. When it was made available for sale in October 1980, the film was restored considerably to 128 minutes—the most notable change being an alternate version of the musical number "I Saw A Dragon", different from the one that was seen in the premiere version—this has become the version most widely seen today on video and DVD. For its 1984 theatrical re-release, the film was further cut to 101 minutes, and finally the network television version was cut down to just 94 minutes. It is not known whether or not the original 134-minute cut still exists in the Disney archives or if the complete version could be reconstructed.

Songs

★ "Main Title" - Instrumental

★ "The Happiest Home in These Hills" - Shelley Winters, Charles Tyner, Gary Morgan & Jeff Conaway

★ "Boo Bop BopBop Bop (I Love You, Too)" - Sean Marshall & Charlie Callas

★ "I Swear I Saw a Dragon" - Helen Reddy, Mickey Rooney & The Townsmen

★ "It's Not Easy" - Helen Reddy & Sean Marshall

★ "Passamashloddy" - Jim Dale, Red Buttons & Townsfolk

★ "Candle on the Water" - Helen Reddy

★ "There's Room for Everyone" - Helen Reddy, Sean Marshall & Children

★ "Every Little Piece" - Red Buttons & Jim Dale

★ "Brazzle Dazzle Day" - Helen Reddy, Mickey Rooney & Sean Marshall

★ "Bill of Sale" - Helen Reddy, Shelley Winters, Charles Tyner, Gary Morgan & Jeff Conaway

★ "Candle on the Water (Reprise)" - Helen Reddy

Trivia

★ The story was acquired by the Disney studio in the 1950s, originally intended for the Walt Disney anthology series on TV.

★ ''Pete's Dragon'' was the first Disney film to be recorded in the Dolby Stereo sound system.

★ The movie features an instance of the "Goofy holler," heard when Doc Terminus gets caught in a harpoon line.

★ ''Pete's Dragon'' was the first Disney feature film to be released on VHS home video, in October 1980.

★ The lighthouse for ''Pete's Dragon'' was built on a point above Morro Bay, California, substituting for Maine. It was equipped with a such a large beacon that Disney had to get special permission from the Coast Guard to operate it, since operating it during filming would have confused passing ships. ^[1]

★ Jeff Conaway, who played Pete's "brother" Willie, is better known for his role as Kenickie in the film version of ''Grease'', as Bobby Wheeler from the TV show Taxi, and more recently as Zack Allan in the science fiction show ''Babylon 5''.

★ Animators opted to make Elliott more of an oriental, rather than occidental, dragon because oriental dragons are usually associated with good.

★ Singer Helen Reddy, famous for the feminist anthem, "I Am Woman," made her second big-screen appearance as Nora, while screen veteran Mickey Rooney played her father, Lampie.

★ The song "Candle On The Water" by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschorn received an Academy Award® nomination for Best Song, along with a tune from another Disney film – ''The Rescuers''. The Oscar went to "You Light Up My Life," from the film of the same name.

★ The original story called for Elliott the dragon to remain invisible throughout the entire film.

★ The film is the first involving animation in which none of the Nine Old Men -– Disney's original team of animators –- were involved.

★ One of the movie's special effects involved compositing, whereby up to three scenes might be composited together -– for example, a live foreground, a live background, and an animated middle ground containing Elliott.

★ Third wave ska band Reel Big Fish recorded a cover version of the song "It's Not Easy" from the film for their "Duet All Night Long" split EP with Zolof the Rock & Roll Destroyer.

★ In an apparent nod to the film, Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz has at times adopted the name dragonspete to chat in online rooms.

★ Elliot the dragon and Pete appear in the Main Street Electrical Parade in the Disney theme parks.

★ A parody of ''Pete's Dragon'' can be seen in the season 5 ''Family Guy'' episode "No Meals on Wheels", with Ben Stiller (with oversized ears as wings) taking the title role.

External links

★

★ ''Pete's Dragon'' at UltimateDisney.com

★ Detailed info on ''Pete's Dragon'' including Don Bluth's involvement