10 Movies You Had No Idea Were Brought To You By Disney

We all know Walt Disney Studios. It's the Mouse House, an outfit that has specialized in U-rated animation and live-action family entertainment for almost a century now; the legendary studio that's been responsible for some of the best and most feel-good movies ever. For the most part, you're right to think of Disney as a family-friendly studio. You might be surprised to learn, however, that not all the pictures Disney has given the world have been made for general consumption. Yes, it's mostly been cartoons, adventure, comedy - but with a smattering of adult, and sometimes very dark cinema. Released under the names of various subsidies, just like the Disney-owned Marvel flicks and Star Wars films, you won't see the Disney banner popping up at the beginning of many of the movies listed here. But make no mistake about it, the Mouse House was behind all of them, and we bet you had no idea. 10) Enemy Of The State Just what the kids want: a Tony Scott-directed techno-thriller that culminates in a shootout wherein almost the entire supporting cast is massacre. A kind of The Conversation for the late 90s, Enemy of the State is a good example of what happens when Disney stumps up the money but then hands the reins over to Jerry Bruckheimer. There's swearing, there's blood and there's Will Smith running down a highway in just his underwear. It's one of Tony Scott's best works, an underrated spy movie for the post-Cold War world, and absolutely not something that you should be letting the kids watch. See it yourself though, if only for a reminder of how brilliantly grumpy Gene Hackman could be before he retired from acting. 9) The Fifth Estate Disney and Julian Assange, it's the perfect combination. Unusually for Disney, who actually released the film under their name (odd, because they often tend to distance the serious stuff from the Disney name), The Fifth Estate was a monumental flop both at the box and with critics. It generated just $8.6 million in ticket sales from a $26 million budget and reviews suggested it was a mere "data dump devoid of drama" (thank you, Wall Street Journal). Did The Fifth Estate deserve such a fate? Absolutely. Bar Benedict Cumberbatch, the film is a total washout, and even he has to deal with the indignity of wearing one of the worst movie wigs your eyes will ever see. The real Julian Assange hated the film, but then again, he hates anything establishment. And you don't get much more establishment than Disney. 8) 25th Hour Edward Norton and Spike Lee don't do many kids movies, and it's safe to say Philip Seymour Hoffman didn't make a great deal of them either. Lo and behold though, the 2002 collaboration between the three, 25th Hour, is a chilly, cerebral affair, a bleak, character-driven New York drama that has the potential to ruin your day. The film's focus is Norton's Monty Brogan, a man who parties away his last day of freedom before he's set to embark on a seven-year jail stretch for dealing drugs. Along with him is Hoffman's school teacher, who has a crush on - and ends up making out with - one of his 17-year-old students. Also, Barry Pepper beats Norton to a pulp. If you're looking for a fun time, this isn't the film. 7) Bridge Of Spies You'd be right in thinking the Cold War isn't exactly a topic, nor post-WWII East Berlin a setting, for a family-friendly movie. And you'd be right. Steven Spielberg's name might be attached to Bridge of Spies, but this isn't the happy-go-lucky Spielberg that made Indiana Jones and E.T. in the director's chair. Instead, Bridge of Spies comes to you from the historian and straight dramatist who delivered such 'mature' films as Munich and Lincoln. It has its thriller moments, but mostly you're just watching Tom Hanks talking intensely to shady men inside cold, dreary rooms. Despite how boring that sounds, the film is still incredible. 6) Quiz Show Contrary to popular belief, Robert Redford can be a good director. And he made his best film under Disney's Buena Vista Pictures banner; the oddball 1994 true tale of Charles Van Doren and Herb Stempel, two 1950s quiz show contestants. The former was a WASP-ish golden boy rigged to win, and the latter an awkward, ratings-killing Queens genius rigged to lose. Quiz Show isn't particularly profane or controversial, and it's not full of sex and violence like most of the others on this list. It is, however, pretty goddamn dry, and still very much aimed at an older audience, one that can appreciate the nuance of the drama, the tensions of the period and the standout performances from Ralph Fiennes and John Turturro. Lion King fans will hate it. 5) Good Morning Vietnam Good Morning Vietnam is many of the things Disney aspires to be: funny and musical with a vaguely exotic sense of adventure. Unfortunately for anyone hoping for a bit of U-rated fun, the film also happens to be about one of the biggest clusterfucks of 21st century foreign policy-making, albeit with a black comic edge, and Robin Williams doing his manic swear-y thing in the lead role. Made by Touchstone (Disney) and released by Buena Vista (Disney), Good Morning Vietnam is one of the (numerous) great Vietnam War movies made in the 1980s. It features possibly Williams' best turn ever and is about as feel-good as a film can get when the background is one of senseless bloodshed and terror. 4) Starship Troopers You can see how on the surface this might seem like a good fit for Disney: Young high schoolers-turned-hotshot military recruits ship out to the planet Klendathu, in order to fight space bugs after the Earth is extraterrestrially attacked. There's action, there's adventure, there's romance. Heck, it almost sounds like a modern YA movie. No. Starship Troopers is actually a Paul Verhoeven movie, meaning plentiful gratuitous gore and nudity, as well as a satire of America circa 1997, with a genuinely serious underlying anti-war message that betrays the bloody sci-fi trappings. Plus, Neil Patrick Harris in Nazi-inspired uniform! 3) Ransom Nothing screams family entertainment like 'child kidnap drama.' Directed by Ron Howard and starring the angriest man alive, Mel Gibson, Ransom kicks off with the son of Gibson's character being kidnapped by a dirty cop, at which point - obviously - Gibbo decides to take the law into his own hands. And with that, all bets are off. There are crosses and double crosses, bodies and ample shots of Mel Gibson looking sad and/or furious. Ransom is one of Howard's least friendly movies, a nihilistic cautionary tale that turns into a revenge movie, just so Mel Gibson gets a chance to kill a bunch of people. 2) Apocalypto What could be more intense than two hours of Mel Gibson? An epic, two-hour-plus chase movie set in the Central American rainforest made by Mel Gibson, that's what. Though granted, it, like Starship Troopers, could on paper pass for some good old Disney animation. Apocalypto is the story of young Jaguar Paw, who's captured by an enemy tribe and forced to flee in order to save his pregnant wife and child. This is no picnic, though: Apocalypto is all Mayan (the film is always in subtitles because, well, who even speaks Mayan anymore) and all bloody, bone-crunching R-rated violence, all the time. 1) Bad Santa Yep, Disney - via Miramax, which it owned at the time - made Bad Santa. The irony of the studio producing a movie like Bad Santa wasn't lost on critics (The Washington Times released a piece prior to the film's release entitled 'Bad Disney,' criticizing the studio for having anything to do with the film) or, for that matter, Disney executives. Execs were reportedly so upset that they had a film starring Billy Bob Thornton as an alcoholic and sex-starved fake Santa on their books that they considered severing ties with Miramax then and there. Still, the gamble resulted in one of the best cult comedies of recent times, so it's hard to get too upset.