A Spoopy Month #4: Hell's Bells

So the fourth Silly Symphony is set in hell. Let's watch it together, shall we?

This is, well, amazing. Of the first four Silly Symphonies, fully half of them are Halloweeny, with skeletons and demons and bats and giant spiders and whatnot. These days, when most people think of Disney, they think of safe, family-friendly pablum. (This obviously isn't completely correct; the current run of Mickey cartoons are hilarious and irreverent.) But 85 years ago, the company was just struggling to come up with interesting ideas, and they put out 75 Silly Symphonies over a ten-year period (when they were also making Mickey cartoons and, eventually, the world's first full-length fully animated film). They used the shorts as a testing ground to try out effects and storytelling techniques, and even new technology (like Technicolor and the multiplane camera).

So like "Skeleton Dance," this begins with some scary animals setting the scene before our more anthropomorphic protagonists take over. I like that hell seems to have all manner of demonic animals, which can change shape if they eat something different, or give fiery milk.

And speaking of changing shapes, I really enjoy this fella here, who these days I can only think of as an 8-bit demon:

I'm still a little suprised at this cartoon, for two reasons: Number one, the more obvious one, is that it's set IN HELL. The second one is a bit less obvious: I think Satan just died, y'all. At the very least, what we've seen here is an uprising in one particular cavern of hell, Way to go, tiny smart demon!

A Spoopy Month #1: Skeleton Dance

So let's try this again: I hope to post at least one thing every day this month. I'm planning to watch a lot of scary movies and read some scary books, and review everything. Here's my first spoopy review:

Walt Disney started his second great series of cartoons in 1929, with the idea that there would be no central character, but that the art would be directed by the use of synchronized music. (Disney, of course, pioneered synch sound in cartoons with "Steamboat Willie" just the previous year.) The very first Silly Symphony is horror-themed: "Skeleton Dance" begins at midnight, as various graveyard denizens set the scene, and then skeletons come out to dance.

I've never seen most of the Silly Symphonies before, and I'm slowly working my way through them all chronologically. A lot of them use recycled backgrounds and even repeat animation cycles, which you'll certainly notice here. The greatest weakness of these films to me (and it may just be my contemporary sensibility shining through) is that so much of them rely just on things dancing. I recently watched a lot of the Disney package films of the 40's and 50's, and things like Fantasia and Make Mine Music manage to synchronize sound and image without relying on funny dances quite so much.

With that said, the actual dancing of these skeletons is pretty good. If you haven't watched it yet, please go ahead, since I'm about to spoil my favorite jokes: I like the pogo-stick gag, and even the scenes where skeletons stretch and shrink their bones, which is so cartoony.

So the second thing a skeleton does is eat us, the audience, and we pass through its ribcage. The climax of this cartoon is when all four of our funny skeleton friends collide and form this hilarious monstrosity:

It's a perfectly queasy mix of laughter and horror, and a reminder of Disney's obsession with death and skeletons, and how all the great artists at that company transmuted them into light entertainment.
Stay tuned -- the fourth Silly Symphony is set in hell, and I'm definitely reviewing that one soon.

The Silly Symphonies are no longer commercially available (though some appear as special features on Disney discs), so the price on this buy link is, frankly, ridiculous. But I like to give you the option: