It was one of Walt Disney\u2019s great disappointments that Fantasia<\/i> (1940) under-performed during its original release, and when it did find an audience, in the 1960s, it probably wasn\u2019t the one Walt would have imagined: people on drugs. <\/span><\/p>\n Critic Danny Peary documented this strange phenomenon in his landmark 1980 book Cult Movies<\/i>: \u201cFantasia <\/i>has become an enormous hit in re-release, particularly in the sixties with the pot-smoking, acid-dropping Woodstock generation, which caused great embarrassment to the straitlaced Disney organization.\u201d But, after all, money is money. Is it possible that, with its 19<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> animated feature, The Jungle Book <\/i>(1967), Disney intentionally but slyly courted substance abusers? Consider the evidence.<\/span><\/p>\n The Disney company is well known for anticipating what viewers want to see and in a movie, and the studio\u2019s adaptation of Rudyard Kipling\u2019s The Jungle Book went through many changes during production to ensure it would be a crowdpleaser. The original drafts of the screenplay were reportedly dark and mysterious, but Walt insisted on a lighter, more carefree tone, dismissing composer Terry Gilkyson, ditching most of his song score, and replacing him with Robert and Richard Sherman.<\/span><\/p>\n The Sherman Brothers, who\u2019d written \u201cIt\u2019s a Small World\u201d and the songs for Mary Poppins<\/i>, ended up producing one of the catchiest, most distinctive song scores in Disney history. The one Gilkyson song that Walt kept was \u201cThe Bare Necessities,\u201d and it seems to have been the template that the Shermans followed for their own Jungle Book<\/i> compositions.<\/span><\/p>\n Simply put, The Jungle Book <\/i>is the perfect movie for the late 1960s because nearly every song in it corresponds to some kind of drug abuse. No matter your intoxicant of choice, this movie has you covered. The story is essentially about an innocent child surrounded by substance-abusing adults of every variety. By interacting with them, the kid gets to see what effect these chemicals have on the body. That’s the real jungle that little Mowgli is navigating.<\/span><\/p>\n