YMMV / The Old Mill

• Funny Moments: During the storm, the owl loses their balance while sleeping on one of the gears due to the wind activating the mechanism, and later gets water poured all over them when a roof tile falls over. Because these scenes happen during the violent thunderstorm, they also double as Nightmare Retardant, though they don't make the rest of the sequence any less terrifying.
• Fridge Horror: If you look closely at the moment where the lightning strikes the windmill, you can see a tiny bit of flames going out. Good thing the rain prevented a spectacular fire!
• Heartwarming Moment:
  • The two doves hanging tightly onto each other throughout the storm, and still together when it's finally over.
  • At the end of the short, the eggs the parent birds were hatching have hatched, giving birth to three little nestlings.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The owl won't be the only Disney butt-monkey owl to be drenched.
• Nightmare Fuel: The entire storm sequence, never has a thunderstorm seemed so god damn destructive and scary, especially from the point of view of the mother bird who nearly gets crushed in the millstone while protecting her nest. It gets worse when the storm intensifies with shots shown in increasingly rapid succession showing the animals fearing for their lives and the mill losing its structural integrity until it gets struck by lightning and almost collapses before creaking to a halt.
  • For that matter, it's purely happenstance that the millstone stops where it does. If it had stopped at the moment the mother bird was under the cogwheel, she would have been trapped there.
• Signature Scene: The part where the mother bird and her nest are almost crushed by the cogwheel.
  • For that matter, the entire thunderstorm segment, culminating in the windmill all but collapsing after being struck by lightning.

---