Richard Adams book about the lives of a rebellious group of rabbits is hard to put down. not just because it is a thrilling adventure story, but also because it provides a great deal of detail into the private lives of rabbits, the way they survive, feed and live. Certainly some of these details are created rather than observed, the rabits religious system, for instance, but there is an authentic ring to everything in the book.

Martin Rosen's film manages to capture the humanity (rabbitry?) of the story, but avoids getting bogged down in technical or biological details that may otherwise confuse or distract viewers.

The imagery has deliberately been kept simple, the backgrounds almost appear like watercolours. At close inspection they are rather impressionistic instead of sharp, but the use of multiple layers (ala Fantasia) adds an incredible depth and you really don't notice the blur in the backgrounds until you look closely.

A very human story, that contains elements of the life that we humans live. Although it is a cartoon and will appeal to children, there is violence, death, companionship, lust (they raid another warren to get mates...), even a spot of bad language. I wouldn't warn children off, but be prepared for some somber faces from viewers here and there.

A cracking good adventure story, told in classic English style, with big floppy ears.....

As would be expected for a film that's a shade off being thirty years old, there are some artefacts on the print. Mainly small spots and scratches, but nothing that detracts from the image.

As mentioned earlier, the backdrops are deliberately faded in appearence. This has the effect of making the foreground objects, rabbits mainly, to look bolder than they really are. A clever effect and it comes across well on DVD.

Tell me, in a world centered around rabbits, doing what rabbits do in the English countryside, just what, precisely, are we going to do with a subwoofer. I will admin rear surrounds could have been used well, especially in night scenes when lapine predators are about. The rustle of leaves and the snap of twigs could be used to great effect to heighton tension.

Alas, this is 1978 and we are lucky to get Dolby Stereo. Most of the sound field is concentrated on the centre speaker with left and right being used predominantly for music.

Talking if music, I like to stick in a bit of trivia here and there in reviews, this one is a humdinger...

The music is composed by Angela Morely, not a particularly well known composer, she did a lot of orchestration work for bigger composers in the past. But only after 1972.

Why after 1972 you ask? Well before 1972 she wasn't Angela Morley, she was Wally Stott, best known as the orchestral conductor for the Goon Show... Wal' had a sex change operation in 1972.

If you've heard wierder trivia than that, I don't want to know....

Oh go on then, emails to al@dvdbits.com

The audio commentary is conducted as an interview between Martin Rosen and Chris Gore from www.filmthreat.com. Very interesting and informative, it in no way follows the film action, you could listen to it as a radio interview. I suppose that is to be expected, since you can hardly start saying "we had trouble with the rabbits in this shot", nor can you have lots of CGI gags that you can talk about ... Hand cell animators tend to be slow careful people, there aren't a lot of toga parties....

There is what is described a the Bright Eyes Loop which is in fact a jump to the song scene in the movie. An excellent song, but I'm very glad it didn't actually loop....

There's a little Rabbit Words Glossary which consists of six pages of text with a few images, explaining some of the terms used rabbits...siflay....hraka.... etc

There's an In Production Gallery with thirty black and white stills from the production of the film, a Premiere Night Gallery with six shots from the premiere of the film, and a Real Watership Down gallery where photographs of the real locatons are compared with the plates used in the film.

There are ten or so pages of text on Rabbit Religion explaning some of the more elaborate concepts from the book that had to be left out of the film for the sake of the narrative and a collection of Cast and Crew Biographies.

Last  and by no means least, the original Theatrical Trailer is on the disc too.

An excellent story told in a charming fashion.

A nice change from all this new fangled CGI malarky.

It's just a pity that they couldn't include a recipe for Lapin al La Cocotte on the disc too....

Come on, you knew I was going to do it....