Disney and Horror - A Spooky Retrospective
A Look at Horror Media In the Disney Universe From Mickey to Boogedy
May 15, 2009
In 1934, media industry giant Walt Disney decided that the world was ready for a feature length animated film. Despite doubts from both backers and rival studios alike, Disney pushed onward with his plans, and "Disney's Folly", otherwise known as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, came to be.
In the film, Snow White is being pursued by a rival, a witch who used to be the fairest in the land, but who has been usurped of that title (albeit unknowingly) by the lovely Snow White. Disney felt that the character of the witch was one of the most important aspects of the film's success, and therefore strove to make her exceedingly creepy and callous. Toss in the wonderful voice work of an actress named Lucille Laverne, add a poison apple and a haggardly witch switcheroo, and Disney's first horror tinged villain is unleashed on the public.
Early Disney Horror Cartoons
From the beginning, there was no doubt that Walt Disney loved the imagery of the dark and fantastic. One of the first (and best) Disney shorts is the memorable musical piece The Skeleton Dance. Produced and directed by Disney himself, the 1929 "Silly Symphonies" cartoon has gained legendary status over the years. With it's strange animation and otherworldly style, it was named #18 on the all time Top 50 Animated Shorts list and continues to appear in modern media as a huge influence, most recently in the film Ghost Rider.
Decades later, when Disney decided to make Halloween compilations, the short inevitably appeared on a couple of them, bridging the gap from the 1920's to now with it's timeless appeal. It was colorized for the television special Disney's Halloween Treat.
Another noteworthy Disney short along those lines is the popular Mickey Mouse piece Haunted House. There have since been countless other Disney shorts with a horror genre influence, most notably Trick Or Treat, a short featuring Donald Duck that spawned a classic, instantly catchy Halloween theme with it's title song.
Disney Horror Through the Years
One of the most impressive of the Disney 'horror' films is the Washington Irving based The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Narrated by the great Bing Crosby, the atmospheric fable of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman has become a Halloween favorite. The animation is top notch and the imagery is unmistakably Disney.
Other Disney offerings include, among other notables, the Mr. Boogedy films (as of this writing, unavailable on DVD), Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Haunted Mansion, Hocus Pocus, the mega popular and influential stop motion animated Nightmare Before Christmas, and of course, Fantasia (1940).
Fantasia is a virtual wealth of animated imagery and genre chills set to haunting classical music and based around a Mickey Mouse idea, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which was originally conceived as a "Silly Symphonies" short. One section of the film, set to Night On Bald Mountain, boasts the amazing genre claim that Bela Lugosi (Dracula of Universal Monsters fame) himself served as the live action model for the main creature, Chernabog. It's a wonderful piece, and despite Fantasia's initial disappointing box office showing, the film is hailed as a classic of the form.
Disneyland, Disneyworld, and Disney Halloween
Since the inception of the Disney theme parks, horror themed rides have been a part of the parks' appeal. The most popular of these is probably "The Haunted Mansion", with it's ghostly singers and ghoulish hallways and surprises.
Also, the "Tower of Terror" and "Snow White'sScary Adventure" are two other rides with kind of similiar horror themes, and Disney has little creepy surprises scattered throughout both parks.
Every October, Disneyland hosts a huge Halloween themed event. The entire park is decorated to reflect the spooky season, and Disney characters wear Halloween costumes throughout. There are Halloween activities, and of course the Haunted Mansion recieves a makeover, sometimes transforming into a Nightmare Before Christmas style house, complete with Jack Skellington and his dog Zero.
Also in October, Disney showcases a variety of Halloween related TV shows and movies on the Disney Channel, culminating in the recent film series Halloweentown. In April, the Disney Channel trots out "Halloween in April", wherein Halloween films are show every night in primetime.
What began as "folly" for Walt Disney has turned into a much bigger reflection of it's creator's fantastic imagination, and Disney's creepy imagery and wonderfully chilling music and movies are destined to reverberate around pop culture for generation after generation to thrill to.
