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Disney’s The Fox and the Hound opens with a young fox being chased by a hunting dog. It scrambles through the woods and finds a hiding place to ditch the baby fox it’s carrying in its mouth. Then it continues running… and is shot. And that’s just the beginning of the baby fox’s nightmare. A kindly widow adopts the fox and names it Tod. Not knowing any better, the fox befriends a young hunting dog that lives next door. But before long, the hunting dog is taught to hunt foxes and tells the heartbroken fox that their friendship is over. When the hound dog’s owner chases the fox into the woods and ends up getting one of his other dogs wounded, the hound dog goes one step further and tells the fox that if he ever catches him, he’ll kill him.

But this fox hasn’t been through enough just yet. Oh, no. Then the hunter goes to the kindly old widow’s house and threatens her, promising that her fox is going to be shot and killed sooner or later. Doing what she feels is best, she drives the fox far away to a game preserve… and abandons him.

So let’s recap. Mother dies, best friend betrays you, best friend threatens to kill you, surrogate mother abandons you. This shit is far more disturbing than any Friday the 13th or Human Centipede, but you all can keep subjecting your children to it if you really want to.

I cried a lot at The Fox and the Hound, and that’s a testemant to it’s pure, raw storytelling. The animation is not as polished as earlier or later efforts from the studio, the voice acting is unremarkable, the score is overwrought, and the songs — while brief — are fairly annoying. But none of it matters when your story works.

So watch The Fox and the Hound, children, and learn your lessons well. Your mother can’t be with you all the time. Your friends will betray you. Trust no one. And pray to God that a lady fox finds you cute enough to tolerate, or you might as well let the hound dogs of life rip you to shreds.

With the voices of Mickey Rooney, Kurt Russell, Sandy Duncan, Pearl Bailey, and Corey Feldman.