Tom's Toon of the Month April 08

This month we take a look at the Haunted House starring your favorite character and mine, Mickey Mouse.

This particular toon is a great example of Mickey's early inspiration from Charlie Chaplain. Disney worshiped Chaplain and I suspect Ub Iwerks admired him too. For good reason. Chaplain was a genious. He embodied comedy in Hollywood's halcyon days. He could be a foil for a gag, but you still liked him. You still rooted for him, even if he looked foolish sometimes. Mickey is here in this role. His roundness, his diminuitive size, and his vulnerability make him easy to identify with.

What stands out to me about this cartoon is that deep down inside, I find it genuinely scary. When I was a little kid I used to have nightmares that played out a lot like this cartoon does. The intimidating hooded figure, the horrifying revelation of walking dead, the nature of Mickey's predicament trapped and enslaved all add up to my worst childhood fears. This is all juxtaposed with goofy gags with dancing skeletons. There aren't a lot of belly laughs in this one, but there's the usual attention to quality and detail. The movements are fluid, weighty, and dimensional. I especially enjoy watching Mickey pump the pedals on that organ. The lighting effects are awesome. The scene where Mickey lights a match in the hallway is breath-taking to me.

For all this, Roy's cost-cutting measures are also evident. Some of the animation of the skeleton dances are directly recycled from a Silly Symphony entitled "The Skeleton Dance," a title I'll be featuring at a later date.

In classic Disney fashion, the nightmare ends and Mickey not only survives, but gets away. Mickey's fear seems to walk a line between the comic and the sympathetic. Whether we laugh at his fear, or share in it, we identify with it. That's the genius of Mickey Mouse as a character.

-Tom