My original intention for this introduction went something to the effect of, "You see what I mean? The third film in the Made For Halloween marathon is just a collection of clips from old Disney shorts and features, something I slotted in as a fun extra entry alongside Over the Garden Wall. There's really no way I can get a coherent review out of THIS!" Work an exasperated tone for mild humor, get into a quick little bullet-pointed summary of anything I found notable, call it a day on the shortest write-up in the series. Simple enough. Unfortunately, two factors got in the way of my plans. Firstly, I could not for the life of me find the originally planned special, Disney's Halloween Treat from 1982, anywhere online. The closest approximation, a fan-made reedit, is a janky, ill-flowing mess that fails to feel like anything beyond its station. So, we went with 1983's A Disney Halloween instead, which uses reordered segments from Halloween Treat, follows them with footage from 1977's Disney's Greatest Villains special, then finishes off with two mostly intact cartoons more directly related to Halloween-y topics.
Second, and far bigger a problem, comes from my browsing the Letterboxd review pages for these specials. What should I find there, but a review by user No-Personality that matches my usual standards for length and personal depth, for a program I honestly thought couldn't sustain any extended discussion. Not only for A Disney Halloween, but for Halloween Treat and the later DTV Monster Hits, with comparative notes across all three. Clearly, the bar on how much I have to try in reviewing these clip shows has been raised! Ergo, while I won't make an effort at totally matching what they've got beyond the link there (my own history with these specials begins and ends with "I think I may've seen one on TV when I was six or seven, even though I know they stopped airing with any regularity before I was born," and I'm not nearly big enough a Disney fan to provide meaningful or interesting commentary on anything here), I can at least expand my bullet-pointing idea out to discussing the special's whole structure, rather than just what jumps out at me most immediately. I care bout you folks, all six of you who regularly click on this space through twitter and facebook.
So!
- Goofy has slain Michael Eisner's alternate universe double, and fashioned his corpse into a meat suit. This is the second most horrifying thing in the entire special, right behind having to look at Michael Eisner.
- I'm fairly convinced Ted Turner's colorization process was such a big deal during the 1980s not due to fears he'd irrecoverably damage classic black-and-white films with his insistence on needless/gainless modernization, but rather because efforts to colorize old movies before turner looked like Cozilla or the attempts at adding splashes of color to The Skeleton Dance here. It's weak, weak stuff, to the point the colors only stay inside the decades-old celluloid lines on the very last shot before we cut to more montage footage of the shorts within. Nobody needed this.
- Starting with the Night on Bald Mountain sequence from Fantasia makes for a stronger opening than Halloween Treat's Mad Madam Mim wizard's duel, I should think. Can't exactly speak to this with any certainty, as we didn't watch Treat, though I can say the summoning of ghastly spirits by the hand of a great demonic figure is a better tone-setter than Fun With TF Fetish. At the very least, if Mim has to stay towards the special's front despite Hans Conrad having a full ranting speech dedicated to her from a few years back, it makes more sense for her to follow Chernabog rather than the other way's round.
- I wouldn't say The Old Mill makes a PERFECT Halloween-specific short for showcase when Disney made so many other more overtly spooky tales (no Mad Doctor, huh?). It's still an absolute 5/5 short, remarkably complex and artistic for the first film to feature Disney's multipane camera, and much of its charm and thrills pull through even the fuzzy resolution of the archive copy we watched. Glad to have it here, regardless of the expense to Pluto's Sweater and Mickey's Parrot.
- Donald Duck how many floors do you have in your home.
- Pink Elephants on Parade is a better song than Hephalumps and Woozles, and boasts stronger, more creative animation. Not the fairest comparative in the world, given the drastically different economic situations at Disney both on the macro scale of the studio operating at full strength before WWII really cut into their pocket books vs something originally intended as a stand-alone short during the relatively fallow 60s, and the micro scale of Winnie the Pooh stuff aiming for a gentler tone than anything in Dumbo. I can't help but think it disappointing they went with what I'd think of the lesser of two similar options, particularly since they kept the naked dancing fire spirits from the Fantasia sequence.
- OK, in this A Disney Halloween rendition of the special, I can understand cutting Pluto's Judgement Day in with a few other Pluto shorts to create a little thing about Pluto being tormented by cat devils in hell for chasing and bothering cats all day long. They've added in a segment from one of their 1950s TV shows about the history of cats and witchcraft, and moved up the Siamese cats segment from Lady and the Tramp to create an extended block of cat-related content. Makes sense, cats are a big part of Halloween iconography, and the whole "people used to be superstitious about black cats so ooooh, spooky!" thing makes a better bridge into Racism than slotting Si and Am in with Cruella de Ville and the Evil Queen like Treat did. However, Treat is the one that cobbled these Pluto cartoons together, and I can't figure out why no matter how hard I try. Pluto's Judgement is already structured around Pluto tormenting a bunch of cats and then getting his comeuppance in a dream - did we need to showcase Figarro so much that we slotted one of his Pluto shorts in here? I can just see some station manager storming around the office bellowing, "MORE CATS! GOTTA HAVE MORE CATS! CATS PLUS CATS EQUALS HALLOWEEN!" as the editing team scrambles through the archives and pulls out Puss Cafe of all things for their Halloween special.
- I love Hans Conried, as should we all. Terrific self-satisfied sneer of a voice, incredible screen-presence, one of the many reasons everyone should give The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T a watch sometimes, all-round great gentleman of stage and airwaves. Much a hassle as it was arranging to watch the longer special in spite of multiple sleep schedules, listening to him bemoan the lack of respect afforded to villains as the Magic Mirror is a total delight, and the biggest reason to watch this special. And of course he chooses the bad guy with whom he shares a voice for the first in his highlight reel, just an extra little touch to really sell it.
- Limited though they were by the restraints of what the '77 special contained, and much as Edgar is one of the elements in The Aristocats I wholeheartedly love, I'm sad we don't get any Cruella de Ville in here. There's nothing much Halloween-y about her (or many of the villains, come to think of it, beyond convincing children they make fantastic costumes for the following night), but they had a full segment for her in the original, and the already brief montage of Lady Tremaine, herself, and the Queen of Hearts was cut down to five-second flashes. I'm sure there was something they could've done with Hal Douglas to keep her in, if only for her song.
- The Maleficent segment was mostly an occasion for complaining about how dumb 2014's Maleficent was, and how badly it treated the fairies.
- I get finishing on Lonesome Ghosts and Trick or Treat. They're explicitly Halloween-focused shorts, they featured Huey, Dewey, and Louie in the opening song without giving them any real time in treat, and these two are practically the only shorts in the whole thing to run for close their originally intended length... but Treat ended with the Headless Horseman song and chase from Ichabod and Mr. Toad, and I can't help but bemoan its loss alongside everyone else who's done any kind of in-depth discussion of these specials. Go trick 'r' treating all you like, just don't deny me Bing Crosby singing the best song in any Disney animated film. Yes, I know I can just look it up on YouTube after. Yes, I absolutely did so, both before we watched, after we watched, and again a few times at work today. No, I shan't stop complaining, nor can you make me stop.
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