Unfortunately, Williams took such a long time to make the film that Warner’s began to panic. (In fact the project had such a lengthy history, over its twenty-seven years from its inception to its release (a world record), that several of the people doing voice-work – Vincent Price, as well as both Anthony Quayle and Donald Pleasence who did voices at one point but whose work didn’t end up on the finished print – ended up dying several years before the film ever saw the lights of theatres). Fearing that Thief’s thunder would be stolen by Disney’s Aladdin (1992), Warner Brothers panicked and called in the completion guarantors. With only 15 minutes of footage left to complete, Williams was fired and director Fred Calvert and a Korean animation-for-hire studio were assigned to turn the existing footage into something salvageable. Calvert took Williams’s print and added songs and this version was released internationally in 1994 under the title The Princess and the Cobbler (the version seen here), which is somewhat truer to Williams’s original vision. Disney-subsidiary Miramax then purchased Calvert’s print and substantially re-edited the film, adding voiceovers for the cobbler (whom Williams had originally intended to remain unspeaking) and the thief (who gets a particularly annoying babble of one-liners from Jonathan Winters), as well as substantially reworking the plot, including removing the character of the witch. This version went into US release in 1995 under the title Arabian Knight and met a dismal box-office reception. For a film that has occupied nearly the entire life of one artist, it was an extraordinarily vulgar treatment to be afforded such a work. Sadly to say, neither version of the film ended up being noticed and it vanished without a trace, although there is an internet campaign underway to see a restored version, which would be an awesome thing to see on DVD.

All of which is a shame as The Thief and the Cobbler is a mini-masterpiece. Even in butchered form, the dizzying joy of Williams’s imagination shows through. Williams adopts an eccentrically stylized look that seems like a collision between Aubrey Beardsley and M.C. Escher – the only near equivalent in animation might be something a little akin to the Pink Panther animated shorts. Williams delights in nonsensical visual play and optical absurdism for its own sake. The chase sequences are jewels of gonzo animation surrealism – the thief’s wacky ascent up through the zigzag plumbing system of the palace; the hysterical sequence where the thief attempts to steal the three golden balls off the minaret, which could almost be a silent movie comedy routine; and the thief and the cobbler’s madcap chase around the palace, which takes place in a dizzying series of zigzag optical patterns and eye-blinding colour contrasts. It all climaxes on a amazingly spectacular sequence with the thief flying all around a series of madcap mechanical inventions as they collapse everywhere as a single one of the cobbler’s tacks ends up destroying an entire army. There’s a wonderful eccentricity to Williams’s characters – Vincent Price’s evil vizier for example talks entirely in rhyme. Or else the thief who is perpetually accompanied by a swarm of flies circling around his head; the brutish bandits who are only drawn as animated sketches; and the maniacally cackling witch. In a delightful post-credits coda, the thief ends up stealing ‘The End’ and the film itself.