An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster is a 1999 American animated direct-to-video film directed by Larry Latham. It is the second direct-to-video sequel to An American Tail and fourth and final entry in the American Tail series. The film sees the return of Thomas Dekker as Fievel Mousekewitz, for which he was given a Young Artist Award, and featured performances from Candi Milo, Susan Boyd, Robert Hays, Jeff Bennett, and John Mariano, as well as returning actors Nehemiah Persoff, Dom DeLuise, and Lacey Chabert.
The film was released on December 9, 1999, in Europe and July 25, 2000, in North America. It was Nehemiah Persoff's final film before his retirement and was Dom DeLuise's final performance as Tiger before his death in 2009.
Despite retaining the rights to the film, Universal disowned any details to both direct-to-video sequels based on An American Tail as the studio has since pulled the plug on the franchise while moving on to work on sequels based on The Land Before Time in 1999.
Plot[]
As the mice of New York are being terrified by the mysterious Manhattan Night Monster, Fievel Mousekewitz, Tanya Mousekewitz, Tony Toponi, and Tiger the cat all get jobs at The Daily Nibbler, a mouse newspaper located beneath the New York World. There they meet Nellie Brie, a famous investigative journalist whose skepticism of the Night Monster's existence brings her into conflict with the paper's sensationalist editor, Reed Daley. Upon learning from Tony about a Night Monster attack in Chinatown, Reed assigns Nellie to the story, sending Fievel along as an illustrator. Along the way, Fievel admits to Nellie that he is suffering nightmares about the Monster, but Nellie assures him that fear is natural and that exposing the truth will help the fear go away. Arriving in Chinatown, the wife of the missing mouse describes an attack by a ferocious dragon, but Nellie finds a footprint that Fievel notes is too small to belong to a dragon. Upon returning to Fievel's neighborhood, the pair encounter Madame Mousey, a miniature poodle with a fake French accent who claims to be a soothsayer. The crowd is excited when Mousey claims that her magical herbs can repel the Monster, but Nellie remains unimpressed, declaring that she won't believe in the Monster until she has seen it with her own eyes.
Over the next couple weeks, mice continue to disappear. Mousey makes a fortune from her enchanted herbs while The Daily Nibbler sees its sales improve drastically, but Nellie can't make any progress on the story and Fievel's nightmares worsen to the point that he can't even sleep. Eventually, however, the pair get a break when one of the Night Monster's victims, a Scottish mouse named Haggis, manages to fend off the Monster. At the scene of the attack, Nellie and Fievel discover a cat's hairball, and their discovery is promptly reported in the Nibbler. This development angers Mousey, as the Night Monster is actually her mechanical creation, and she berates the cats she had recruited for their failure. The next day, Mousey gives Tony and Tiger a "hot tip" in order to lure Nellie into a trap. The Night Monster ambushes Nellie and Fievel in an abandoned house, but Tony, having followed them against Reed's orders, drops a chandelier on the Monster and drives it into a sewer beneath the house. Nellie finds a rhinestone of the sort found on dog collars and goes to Central Park to seek the help of Lone Woof, her contact among the Dog High Council. Lone Woof is reluctant to get involved, but he eventually points her to a poster of a missing poodle. Bringing it back to The Daily Nibbler, Fievel draws on the poster to reveal that the poodle is Mousey, while Tanya discovers that the house where the ambush had occurred used to belong to Mousey's owner. Armed with this new information, Nellie and Reed prepare a story exposing Mousey's connection to the Monster.
Meanwhile, Mousey's cats have grown dissatisfied with her leadership after the failed ambush, and their leader, Twitch, decides that they don't need her anymore. However, Mousey keeps them in line by pointing out that Nellie Brie is about to expose their scheme, which will cost them the element of surprise, and says that she has a plan to prevent this. They bring the Monster on a rampage across the city, abducting dozens of mice (including Fievel's parents and baby sister). Fievel sends Tiger to appeal to the dogs for help while he and Tony track Mousey into the sewers. They find Mousey's hideout and the missing mice but are outnumbered by the cats, so Fievel goes looking for Nellie. However, when Tony sees that Fievel's family are about to be eaten, he floods the sewers to drive away the cats and frees the captive mice. Meanwhile, Fievel finds Nellie, Reed, and Tanya cornered by Mousey's gang in The Daily Nibbler, where Mousey reveals that she created the Monster in frustration over being mistaken for a rodent, as well as for being turned away by the Dog High Council. Confronting his fear, Fievel realizes that the dreaded Manhattan Night Monster is actually just a machine, and he uses a stray wire to electrocute Mousey. The cats use the monster to chase Fievel into the offices of the New York World, but Nellie and Reed manage to destroy the contraption, and Fievel traps Twitch in the World's printing press. The other cats are scared away by the timely arrival of the Dog Council, and Mousey is captured by Tiger when she attempts to slip into the sewers. With their ordeal over, Reed confesses his love to Nellie and proposes to her, much to the disappointment of Tanya, who had a crush on Reed.
In the final scene, the Mousekewitz family, Tony, and Tiger spend the day at the beach, where they learn that Mousey had been returned to her overbearing owner. With the Night Monster vanquished, Fievel doses off on his towel and has his first restful sleep in weeks.
Cast[]
- Thomas Alexander Dekker as Fievel Mousekewitz
- Lacey Chabert as Tanya Mousekewitz
- Nehemiah Persoff as Papa Mousekewitz
- Jane Singer as Mama Mousekewitz
- Dom DeLuise as Tiger
- Pat Musick as Tony Toponi/Mrs. Abernathy
- Susan Boyd as Nellie Brie
- Robert Hays as Reed Daley
- Candi Milo as Madame Mousey
- John Mariano as Twitch
- Jeff Bennett as Slug
- Joe Lala as Bootlick
- Sherman Howard as Haggis
- John Garry as Lone Woof
Songs[]
- "Get the Facts"
- "Creature de la Nuit"
- "Who Will"
Animation style[]
The comparison with the characters shown from the distance between the third and fourth films
In comparison with the two theatrical features in the American Tail series, both direct-to-video releases falter in animation quality, as typical for direct-to-video cartoons. On top of that, Fievel's fur color was desaturated even though the rest of the Mousekewitz family have kept their original fur color. Which direct-to-video film has the better animation seems to be a matter of opinion, but this film did do a better job of the shots where the characters are tiny.
Trivia[]
- This is the second An American Tail media not to include Erica Yohn as the voice of Mama Mousekewitz. The first was Fievel's American Tails.
- This marks the last role for Nehemiah Persoff for voicing Papa Mousekewitz in a film before retiring from acting to become a full-time painter, long before his decease in 2022.
- It is the last role for Dom DeLuise as the voice of Tiger before his death in 2009.
- On the original trailer of this finale, it was titled An American Tail IV: The Mystery of The Night Monster. On the actual film, the Roman Numerals were dropped from the film's title at the beginning.
- To date, this is the only film in the series that stayed the way it was originally released.
Inconsistent issues[]
Unlike the divisive writing in the previous direct-to-video sequel, there are some faults regarding the mature storyline given to Tanya Mousekewitz owing to the use of her original design, including her experience of maturity, attempts of wanting to date an elder adult, and being disregarded by her parents, while Fievel and Yasha Mousekewitz, Tony Toponi, and Tiger are canonically correct. According to the Don Bluth filmography, Tanya was only 8 years old in An American Tail. Unlike her appearance in Fievel Goes West as the character is implied to be a young adult in a much later timeline in several sources, this film took place not long after The Treasure of Manhattan Island, meaning she’s still a child and is too young to escort such relationship with a grown adult, including Reed Daley. Contrary to this issue, this film was produced in 1999 as this period in filmmaking was notorious for subjecting little children of having attempted relationships with grown adults in films prior to the changing sensibilities in the 2010s, including the famous Arthur and the Invisibles (produced in France in 2006) as many scenes led to American censorship.