Golden Films (also known as American Film Investment Corporation) was an American animation company founded in 1989 by Diane Eskenazi. Its objective was to create non-violent, quality films. Most of their output, however, can best be described as Mockbuster versions of popular animated films but with very different developments. The most famous of their products are the Enchanted Tales, which most are Animated Adaptations of classical fairy tales. It also has adapted adult novels like The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo (which also just so happened to have a Disney adaptation around the same time) and The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas père and a pair of stories from The Bible.
Many of their works were distributed by and/or co-produced with GoodTimes Entertainment.
Since 2004 the company no longer produces new content, though it continues to license their existing works to various distributors and TV stations.
Filmography (in construction)
- Aladdin
- Alice in Wonderland
- Anastasia
- Beauty and the Beast (1992)
- Beauty and the Beast (1999)
- Camelot
- The Christmas Elves (with Studio B Productions)
- Cinderella
- The Emperor's Treasure (Also released as The Secret Treasure of Machu Picchu)
- The Great Easter Egg Hunt
- Gulliver's Travels
- Heidi
- Hercules (with Studio B)
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame
- Jack and the Beanstalk
- The Jungle Book
- The Jungle King
- The Legend of Atlantis
- The Legend of Su-Ling
- Little Angels: The Brightest Christmas
- The Little Mermaid
- Miracle in Toyland
- The Night Before Christmas
- The New Adventures of Peter Rabbit (or Reggie Rabbit, as they call it in later versions)
- Noah's Ark
- Pinocchio
- Pocahontas
- Princess Castle
- The Prince and the Pauper
- The Red Shoes
- The Secret Treasure Of Machu Picchu
- Sindbad
- Sleeping Beauty
- Snow White (I)
- Snow White (II)
- A Tale of Egypt
- Tarzan of the Apes
- The Three Musketeers
- Thumbelina
- Tom Thumb Meets Thumbelina
- Treasure Island
- The Wizard of Oz
Other things
- King Arthur & the Knights of Justice (with Créativité et Développement)
- The Nuttiest Nutcracker note
The company provides examples of (in construction):
- Adaptational Heroism: Surprisingly, Farmer McGregor in the Golden Films adaptation of Peter Rabbit no longer wants to eat rabbits since he mentions that he dislikes rabbit stew. He is later seen letting Peter's sisters out of his mailbox.
- Adaptational Wimp: Mopsy, Flopsy, and Cottontail end up as ditzy sisters in the adaptation "Peter Rabbit". Mainly since Peter's sisters appear to be more intelligent and wiser in the original Beatrix Potter stories. In the Golden Film's adaptation there are sometimes seen arguing with each other.
- Peter/Reggie Rabbit since he acts more whiny in this adaptation and has a lying issue.
- Adaptational Name Change: Benjamin is called "Benny" in Peter Rabbit. Peter himself becomes Reggie Rabbit in later version of the movie.
- Adaptation Inspiration: The Red Shoes. It just takes the concept of the red shoes instead of adapting the original tale by Hans Christian Andersen.
- Adaptational Species Change: For whatever reason, Tommy Brock is changed from a badger into a hedgehog in Golden Films' adaptation of Peter Rabbit.
- Anachronism Stew: BIG time.
- Their version of Tom Thumb and Thumbelina is supposedly set in a medieval fairy tale kingdom, yet in one song it mentions plumbers, electricians and other types of modern day construction.
- In Treasure Island, Long John Silver compares his crew to The Three Stooges.
- Animated Adaptation: Almost all their works.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Many of the movies have these, obviously inspired by the ones from Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Their sentience is often unexplained.
- Animated Musical: Most of their movies had songs in them. Some of them were surprisingly catchy.
- Animesque: Much of their earlier films were animated with assistance from Japanese companies like KK C&D Asia, with this in effect to varying degrees.
- Ascended Extra: Mr McGregor's cat has a bigger presence in "Peter Rabbit" and serves as the Big Bad
- Bag of Kidnapping: Mr. Tod captures Peter's friends with this method in "Peter Rabbit" after they leave him when they found out he lied to them, and in "The Legend of Atlantis" Belial kidnaps Princess Ilan to try to make her his bride so he can rule Atlantis.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Shirtless males often have this. Averted in Atlantis and in Aladdin.
- Bittersweet Ending: Anastasia ends with Anastasia regaining her memories, but that includes the memory of her family being executed.
- Bowdlerise:
- In Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver puts out a fire by spitting on it instead of urinating on it like in the book.
- Later copies of Anastasia omit the sound of gunshots when the Romanovs are executed.
- Brainless Beauty: Beauty in the first "Beauty and the Beast", fittingly enough.
- Canon Foreigner: Pretty much the majority of new characters in Peter Rabbit, most notable being Hopsy.
- Compressed Adaptation: The 45 minutes format pretty much enforces this.
- Pinocchio is a big example. It is relatively faithful to the book in an overall way, but many of the challenges Pinocchio found in the original were omitted.
- Same with Gulliver's Travels, which only focuses on the Lilliputian story.
- Cute Kitten: The orange kitten from "Peter Rabbit"
- Civilized Animal: Most notable in the adaptation of Peter Rabbit which is an unofficial sequel.
- Color-Coded Characters: Mopsy, Flopsy, Cottontail, and Hopsy all wear different colored scarves to tell them apart. Mainly since Mopsy, Flopsy and Cottontail originally all wore red scarfs and the all looked the same.
- Cottontail = Green scarf
- Mopsy = Red Scarf
- Flopsy = Yellow Scarf
- Hopsy = Purple Scarf
- Cosmic Deadline: A few of the films, due to their short runtimes, end up having their problems quickly and suddenly resolved in the last few minutes of the film (Pocahontas and The Little Mermaid being the most blatant), which often leaves a number of other storylines hanging.
- Darker and Edgier: There is the odd film that can be called this in their library.
- Camelot is a notable example for featuring violence and having a Bittersweet Ending. It's Lighter and Softer than the myths, though.
- Thumbelina has a sociopathic villain in Mona, who is abusing Thumbelina and is willing to sell Thumbelina to Mr. Mole even if Thumbelina won't be happy again and her failure would cost a lot of lives.
- Miracle In Toyland shows two Red Shirt soldiers dying. On screen. One of them was in a dream, but yeah.
- Demoted to Extra: Mr McGregor in Peter Rabbit only has a few scenes while his cat gets more spotlight in the film.
- Disneyfication: They have adapted adult novels and some parts of the Bible.
- The Ditz: Flopsy, Mopsy, and especially Cottontail in "Peter Rabbit".
- A Dog Named "Dog": Most of Peter's new friends such as "Squirrel" and "Chipmunk" besides the female white bunny Peter meets in the film.
- Dumb Blonde: Beauty from the first "Beauty and the Beast" appears to be an unintentional example. She's always spacing out and extremely slow on the uptake.
- Expy: Some of the animals seen in "Peter Rabbit" act or even look similar to some of the other Beatrix Potter characters.
- The Squirrel - Squirrel Nutkin
- Everyone Loves Blondes: Most of the female characters are blondes. They're always paired up with blue eyes as well.
- Furry Confusion: While Mr McGregor's cat only meows, the orange kitten Peter befriends is able to speak.
- Flat Character: Pretty much the majority of the characters in "Peter Rabbit" especially the female white bunny Peter meets but is never given much character depth or a personality.
- Fat Comic Relief: Flopsy and Benny in "Peter Rabbit"
- Fanservice: Some of the male characters are muscular and shown shirtless.
- Historical Villain Upgrade: Like the Don Bluth version, their version of Anastasia does this to Rasputin. It portrays him as instigating the October Revolution and ordering the royal family's execution, when in reality he was completely loyal to the Romanovs and didn't even live to see the February Revolution.
- Hunk: Most of its attractive male characters are both handsome and manly.
- Innocent Blue Eyes: A majority of the characters have blue eyes. The real quest is to list a character that doesn't have blue eyes.
- Karma Houdini: Many of their villains don't receive proper comeuppance for their crimes.
- Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: One of the villains in the first The Prince of and the Pauper is Lord Panther, who is an anthropomorphic animal for no reason and he's the only one.
- The Mockbuster: A lot. Especially of Disney films.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Rasputin in "Anastasia" leads a violent revolution under the pretense of championing the rights of Russia's people. In reality, he just wants to seize power for himself.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted in their second version of Snow White, in which all the dwarves are named Joe.
- Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Most of the couples involve the girls wearing pink clothes and the boys wearing blue.
- Pink Means Feminine: Most of the GF girls wear pink. Other times, they may fall under True Blue Femininity.
- Pinocchio Nose: Peter Rabbit's left ear goes down whenever he lies.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: Their films' scores often (over)use classical music, including pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven, regardless of whether it fits the situation or not.
- Related in the Adaptation: For Hercules, they changed Hercules' relation to Iphicles. In Greek mythology, Iphicles is the half maternal twin brother of Heracles and son of Alcmene and Amphitryon. Golden Films' Iphicles is the son of Hera and an unidentified father.
- Remember the New Guy?: Hopsy is Peter Rabbit's fourth sister in "Peter Rabbit".
- Reused Character Design: Many of their later films often reused the same character models from before, just altered or recolored.
- Skewed Priorities: In their version of Anastasia, Anastasia is thinking about Alexander while she and her family are being held by angry townsfolk of Russia. Instead of worrying about finding a way to get herself and her family out, she's daydreaming about her boyfriend.
- Spared By Adaptation: This happens to characters who originally died in the source material. Notable examples include GF's adaptations of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Treasure Island where multiple characters die.
- Spotlight-Stealing Squad: For some reason, this studio's movies focus on minor or supporting characters more than the main characters.
- For their second Beauty and the Beast movie, they focus more on the ghosts than Beauty or the Beast. Sure, the ghosts provide a backstory on the Beast and they know quite a bit of him more than the audience, but that isn't used to build up his character at all.
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Golden Films) is so much worse. They have talking instruments take up most of the movie instead of focusing on Quasimodo and Esmer-I mean, Melody.
- Same for their Treasure Island. Instead of the movie revolving around Captain Smollet, Long John Silver, Ben Gunn and even Jim Hawkins, they go with Silver's Pirate Parrot Flint, a cat, a mouse and a Jamaican monkey. Yes, you read that correctly.
- Talking Animal: Often, this is most notable in "Peter Rabbit".
- Time Skip: It appears that Peter and his sisters are older or at least in their teen years in "Peter Rabbit".
- Some of these movies like skipping around in the movie, mainly since they typically have forty to fifty minutes to fill for the runtime. This leads to some events coming out of nowhere and the movie kicking it into overdrive to tell the intended story.
- Title Confusion: They remade some of the films they made back when they were known as GoodTimes Entertainment and used the same title.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Peter Rabbit acts more like a jerk in the Golden Films Adaptation of Peter Rabbit.
- Truer to the Text: There are some cases where these adaptations follow the original source material closer than the bigger budget movie.
- In Hercules, Hercules' mother is Alcmene and Hera is the villain.
- In A Tale of Egypt, Moses' mother lives to see him grow up and is the one who informs him that he's a Hebrew.
- Uncredited Role: In the series of videos depicting fairy tales, famous novels, and the like, none of the voice actors are credited, although animation fans can identify well-known voice actors like Jeff Bennett, Corey Burton, Cam Clarke, Jim Cummings, Debi Derryberry, Tress MacNeille, Mona Marshall, Candi Milo, Rob Paulsen, and Kath Soucie in the casts.
- Unrelated in the Adaptation: In Hercules, Hera is neither identified as Zeus' chief wife nor his sister and Alcmene is never identified as his great-granddaughter.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: This studio has the habit of letting characters just disappear halfway through the movie, particularly villains, which leads to a lot of Karma Houdinis.
- In Anastasia, Rasputin isn't seen again after he takes over Russia. However, it should be noted that he didn't know Anastasia wasn't killed.
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: Near the end of "Peter Rabbit" Peter and his new friends meet an orange kitten who appears to have a French accent or a Spanish accent. Which is difficult to tell since the kitten never mentions what country he/she is from.
- Wicked Witch: One was randomly shoehorned into the first The Prince and the Pauper.
