Overlooked Movies -- Sleeping Beauty

Probably no Disney animated movie really qualifies as an "overlooked" film, but this one was overlooked when it opened back in 1959.  It didn't do very well at the box office, and it wasn't shown for a long time afterward.  The reason I remember it is that it was shown at an Aggiecon sometime in the early '70s.  Too bad it wasn't show in Technirama.  It was, however, shown on a huge screen in an enormous theater to an appreciative audience of con-goers and a multitude of assorted Aggies, all of whom received it with glee.  I loved seeing movies with the audience for those Aggiecon films.  It was great fun.

You know the plot of this one, and Disney didn't really fiddle with the basic outline much at all.  I don't remember the dragon (and it's a great dragon) from the original story, or the three fairies, but who cares?  Maybe one reason for the movie's lack of success was the lack of anthropomorphised animals.  There are none.  Or maybe it was the dark nature of some of the scenes.  There's some frightening stuff here, and I can imagine kids being pretty scared.  The usual comic relief is provided by the bickering fairies, so the lightness is still present in a lot of the film.  I wouldn't mind seeing it again, but I'd like to do it under the same conditions as the first time, and that's not going to happen.