The Haunted House

One of the chief features of these early cartoons was dance. Take a piece of music and have an animate or an inanimate object begin to hoof it. In this one, Mickey is caught in a storm and seeks refuge in a spooky old house. It is inhabited by skeletons. They do what they can to frighten him, with great success. But it turns out they are looking for music. Mickey is placed on a stool and forced to play an organ. Then the dancing starts. Using bones as the motif, the undead do quite a good job. There are several surprises along the way. I enjoyed it very much.

Haunted House is a true Disney's classic. Mickey is that innocent,funny and sometimes naughty mouse that finds refuge in a old and of course haunted house. Several times Mickey appears to look at the camera when he finds himself in a difficult situation or when he gets surprised by an event. This short movie, made in 1929, has amazing special effects for such an early cartoon. I enjoyed the story simplicity but interesting. I consider this cartoon the best of Disney's black and white era. Also it prompts you to ask yourself how the current TV cartoons, like the horrible Cow and Chicken, has taken the minds of our children.

"The Haunted House" is a very good Walt Disney cartoon, though I wouldn't place it among the best of the era. On the positive side, for a black & white cartoon, the animation is exceptional and the print is very crisp. On the negative, there's a lot of dancing...too much dancing.

The story begins with Mickey Mouse being beckoned into a haunted house. There, he meets a bunch of skeletons that force him to play the organ for them...at which point they all dance about the place. There really isn't much more to the story than this.

The cartoon started great but the sheer amount of dancing really became a bit tiresome...despite some amazingly good animation considering it was 1929.

Haunted House (1929)

*** (out of 4)

Mickey Mouse is caught in a blizzard when he is forced into an old house, which turns out to be a cavern for skeletons. The main ghoul makes Mickey play the organ while the skeletons dance the night away. I didn't find too many things in this film to be funny but there's no denying the amount of imagination and creativity on display here. The look and atmosphere of the castle makes this a very good horror film and it fits perfectly into the genre more than a lot of non-Disney films. The skeleton dances are quite lively and amusing with Mickey's attempted escape even better. The best looking sequence of the film happens at the start when bats fly towards the screen. The films has a lot of connections with The Skeleton Dance from the same year.

When I first saw this Mickey Mouse cartoon on a VHS tape a few decades ago, the part I remember the most was when he was in the dark and his face looked like when Al Jolson put on his burnt cork makeup and he says, "Mammy!" I found that amusing then but I can understand why it wouldn't be so now. Moving on, this short is basically about Mickey entering the title place during a storm and encountering Death who makes him play the organ so the skeletons can dance. It's possible some of the animation was meant for the Silly Symphony cartoon The Skeleton Dance. Anyway, in both that and this, the numbers are pretty entertaining though Mickey takes a back seat here during that sequence. Still, The Haunted House is worth the look.