A band of rabbits must leave their warren to find safety in a film that, even in a digital age, still has the bloody force to scare young minds

‘The field … it’s covered in blood!” This is the young visionary rabbit Fiver, voiced by Richard Briers, in the British animation from 1978 by Michael Rosen, based on Richard Adams’s classic children’s book. The rabbits’ warren, quite as important as Tolkien’s shire, is about to be destroyed by a property development, announced by the humans’ heartless wooden sign, which of course none of the rabbits can read, but twitchy, squirming Fiver can sense the disaster it represents.

So his brother Hazel (voiced by John Hurt) leads Fiver and a breakaway gang on a quest for safety to far-off Watership Down, a rumoured place of sanctuary foreseen by Fiver; they include hot-headed Bigwig (Michael Graham Cox) and later the once hostile Captain Holly (John Bennett), a traumatised survivor of the warren’s destruction. But the band of lapine brothers are to confront tyrant-warlord General Woundwort (Harry Andrews), a terrifying figure in keeping with the film’s 70s type post-apocalyptic atmosphere. Yet they find an unlikely ally in a squawking gull called Kehaar, voiced by Zero Mostel. The vocal talent in other roles is a roll-call of blue-chip character actors: Denholm Elliott, Ralph Richardson, Michael Hordern and more.