Halloween, All Hallows Eve, Samhain, All Saints’ Day, Spooky Season, whatever you may choose to call it, has been a source of inspiration for cinema since the beginning.
Halloween is Celtic in origin. Known as Samhain (pronounced sa-win), it marks the death of the summer harvest season and the beginning of the ‘dark half’ of the year. It was believed that the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest during this time and that the dead could return for a brief period.
Celtic speaking countries such as Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, particularly their pagan and druid communities, dressed in costumes and lit bonfires to ward off harmful spirits. They believed the symbolic lighting of fire would protect them during the winter and appease their deities. Samhain was also a time of remembrance, and so communities gathered to remember those they had lost throughout the year.
Today, Halloween embraces all things dark and spooky. It celebrates the darker side of life through costumes, music, decorations, and trick ‘r treating. The iconic imagery associated with Halloween has inspired many filmmakers, including John Carpenter, Tim Burton, and Jim Sharman.
Walt Disney was no exception. Disney has produced some of our all-time favourite Halloween classics, including Hocus Pocus (Kenny Ortega, 1993),The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick, 1993), and Halloweentown (Duwayne Dunham, 1998), but they also have a variety of animated shorts that embrace the spirit of Halloween.
The Skeleton Dance (1929)
The Skeleton Dance is a Disney Silly Symphony short. Silly Symphonies was a series of animated shorts produced by Walt Disney that ran from 1929 – 1939. They were quirky and imaginative shorts accompanied by pieces of music, and they enabled Disney’s animators to experiment, refine their technique, and learn how to sync the animated material on screen with sound.
The Skeleton Dance is among the most enduring of the shorts. A modern example of danse macabre, medieval European art that explored the universality of death, The Skeleton Dance features four human skeletons dancing and having fun in a graveyard. It is full of classic Halloween iconography, including a full moon, a creepy church, black cats, and a hooting owl.
The sequence is creative in its humorous use of well-timed music and whimsically engaging with material that might otherwise be deemed horrific, such as using thigh bones as xylophone sticks.
The Skeleton Dance was voted #18 in animation historian Jerry Beck’s book The 50 Greatest Cartoons, and has been alluded to in various other media, including Cartoon Network’s The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy; when skeletons come to life during an old-timey cartoon sequence, Grim proudly joins the skeletons dancing and proclaims, “If we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do it my way!”, before teaching them how to dance like the Disney skeletons.
Mickey Mouse: The Haunted House (1929)
One of the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons, The Haunted House follows Mickey as he tries to escape a haunted house where he is forced to play music by the spooky residents. It was animated by Ub Iwerks, who also animated The Skeleton Dance, and it features Walt Disney as the voice of Mickey.
The Haunted House was the first of the Mickey cartoons to use a horror aesthetic and storyline, and it pathed the way for other spooky shorts such as The Mad Doctor in 1933.
The short uses a variety of scares we expect from a haunted house now, including creaky floorboards, bats and spiders, skeletons, and flickering lights. Its ghostly resident uses shadow to frighten Mickey, and its design may have inspired the ghosts in the classic Hanna-Barbara Scooby-Doo cartoon A Night of Fright is no Delight (1970),as they not only look similar but also move the same.
When the ghost forces Mickey to play the piano, the ghost and skeletons (and the grandfather clock) of the house dance together and make use of their bones to join in with the music. like the Skeleton Dance, it is whimsical and a lot of fun.
The Lonesome Ghosts (1937)
The Lonesome Ghosts was Ghostbusters before Ghostbusters existed! Available to watch on Disney+, this short follows Mickey, Goofy, and Donald as down-on-their-luck ghost hunters who are contacted by four lonesome ghosts who play tricks on the trio when they arrive at the old McShiver mansion to exterminate them. The three soon outwit the ghosts, however, by pretending to be ghosts themselves.
The Lonesome Ghosts is in colour and is more akin to what we expect of cartoons now; it is dialogue-heavy and incorporates a lot of gags. It features Mickey’s trademark leadership and take-charge persona, as well as Goofy’s slow-off-the-mark approach and Donald’s hot-headedness.
The ghosts have a lot of fun messing with the ghost hunters, including frightening them with cackling laughter. messing with the laws of physics, and the now-classic ‘copy what they do in the mirror’s reflection’ gag.
When the ghosts mistake the trio for ghosts themselves, they cry “ghosts!” and retreat into the night. Donald concludes the short by shouting after them, “so you can’t take it, you big sissies!”
Night on Bald Mountain (1940)
Night on Bald Mountain is a dark gothic sequence from Disney’s experimental 1940 episodic film Fantasia. The film features eight segments inspired by classical music, and it was conceived by Walt Disney as a way to introduce new audiences to this kind of music. Night on Bald Mountain was inspired Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky’s piece of music of the same name, who in turn was inspired by tales of dark Russian folklore, legend, and literature.
The animated sequence features the God of Evil, Chernabog, on Walpurgus Night, otherwise known as The Witches’ Sabbath, emerging from Bald Mountain to raise the spirits of his minions from their graves – ghosts, vultures, demons, harpies and hags – who dance as he throws them into the fiery pits of Hell. And yes, it is as dark as it sounds.
The colour palette is black and blue, the only light sources being the raging yellow of Chernabog’s eyes, the orange of the hellfire, and the ethereal white of the spirits. The music is bombastic and dramatic, and feels incredibly gothic. It was truly an experience.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1949)
Available on Disney+, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a half-hour short in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. It was inspired by the 1820 short story by Washington Irving and is narrated by Bing Crosby. It uses a musical format to tell the story.
Featuring a wealth of classic Americana gothic imagery such as dark, foreboding forests and cluttered graveyards, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow tells the tale of schoolteacher Ichabod, who moves to the small town of Sleepy Hollow and is tormented by a ghastly headless horseman. Bing Crosby opens the film by describing the town as “a quiet, peaceful place” that is “somehow foreboding”, abounded in “haunted spots, twilight takes and local superstitions”.
This short captures the mood of Spooky Season perfectly; it is abundant with rich and vibrant autumnal colours, Halloween iconography, and a sense of nostalgia for this time of year.
Trick or Treat (1952)
Trick or Treat is a Donald Duck short that features his nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, getting revenge on their uncle’s cheap Halloween tricks with the help of a friendly witch. This whimsical and hilarious short will fill you with all the Halloween love and nostalgia you need this year.
The friendly witch, Witch Hazel, sees Huey, Dewey, and Louie dressed up and ready to trick or treat, and she watches them with love and appreciation for their commitment to Halloween.
When she witnesses Donald play a cruel trick on the boys instead of giving them treats, exclaiming “bless their little black hearts”, she promises to help them get him back. It makes for a lot of fun, Halloween-themed gags, such as potion-making and witchy goings-on, and the music wonderfully encapsulates the whole spirit of the season.
This is my personal favourite Disney Halloween-themed cartoon.
How to Haunt a House (1999)
Part of Mickey’s House of Villains, a direct-to-video film where the Disney villains take over Mickey’s House of Mouse, How to Haunt a House is a Halloween-themed Goofy cartoon where an unseen narrator takes Goofy through each step to successfully haunting a house.
It is reminiscent of the older Goofy cartoons, where a narrator would try to help Goofy be successful at various things, including How to Play Football and How to Fish.
This amusing short opens with the narrator explaining that “the following presentation will demonstrate how to haunt the living” as Goofy leaves his house. The shot remains in Goofy’s house as the narrator says, “but before we begin, one must be…not living”. We hear a car crash, Goofy’s iconic scream, and he returns to his home as a ghost, ready for the presentation.
The narrator takes Goofy through various stages of successfully haunting a house, including choosing a house to haunt, selecting a hauntee, and being creepy. Goofy selects a challenge to scare – Donald. Throughout the short Goofy attempts all the hallmarks of a haunted house, including rattling chains, flickering lights, and opening doors so they appear to open by themselves.
Donald is unfazed, exclaiming happily, “automatic doors, how convenient!”. The short is an amusing deconstruction of the haunted house format and has a lot of laughs with the Goofy-Donald dynamic.