It took years for me to realize that a sequence showcasing the infernal judgment of Pluto’s crimes against cat-kind was actually an amalgam of three separate shorts, Puss Café (1950), Cat Nap Pluto (1948) and Pluto’s Judgement Day (1935). At the time, these were difficult to see and generally new to my young eyes. The greatest hits of Disney’s scariest moments continued with scattered sections and re-edits of some of their older theatrical shorts. Of course, when that scene is followed up by the iconic Night on Bald Mountain sequence from Fantasia (1940), with its flying skeleton warriors and giant, black demon presiding over the whole affair, it’s hard not to fall ever deeper into the Halloween spirit. But even that battle of various animal transformations takes place against a stark landscape of craggy trees and scattered bones, which serves as more than serviceable Halloween territory. In a time devoid of Disney Plus, there was no easy way to watch every moment from every classic Disney property, so a compilation such as this, distilling moments of the weird, unearthly and uncannily sinister was something special and even exciting.Īdmittedly, some of the bits selected hardly screamed to be included in a celebration of October the 31st, such as the wizard’s duel between Merlin and the Mad Madam Mim from The Sword in the Stone (1963). While I had seen some of what was being shown, many of these segments were new to me. It’s a Halloween party where the guests are demons, monsters, ghosts and ghouls, much to the chagrin of the Mickey Mouse crew.
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Voiced by legendary voiceover actor Hal Douglas, the pumpkin speaks in quips, puns and all manner of Halloween-isms as he shepherds the viewer from segment to spooky segment.Ī clip show pulling from the full spectrum of Disney shorts and movies, Disney’s Halloween Treat repurposes their eeriest moments and houses them under one roof. That’s when the talking Jack O’ Lantern puppet is introduced. The ever shifting imagery is all set against a song with a refrain that matches the special’s name as a chorus of voices sings about tricks, treats and spirits flying high. The peppy opening credits feature a slew of spooky clips, like the dancing skeletons from Silly Symphoniesand Huey, Dewey and Louie trick or treating in the Donald Duck short Trick or Treat. It may have been almost a decade in age when I finally found my way to it, but discovery has a way of making the old seem new. Somehow or other I had missed it for years, never stumbling upon it in syndication or finding the VHS tape it apparently had on one of my countless trips to the video store. It was aired periodically thereafter and eventually transformed into an altered special called A Disney Halloween. Originally airing on October 30, 1982, the special was a Halloween themed entry in the Wonderful World of Walt Disney series.
All I knew was that it was slated for an hour and seemed to be a celebration of all things spooky and fun. I had no idea what it was or what it entailed, but that hardly mattered.
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And as my eyes feverishly scanned the TV Guide, planning out my Saturday in thirty minute intervals, one title in particular caught my eye as a non-negotiable must-see: Disney’s Halloween Treat.
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This truth came into sharp focus one year in particular, when my family received word that our cable provider would be offering the normally costly Disney Channel for free for one full weekend in the midst of their October programming slate.
On occasion, however, the rewards could far outweigh the sacrifices so required. The dance could be a difficult one, fraught with painful decisions about which channel to choose, which special to leave unseen. As we didn’t have a VCR that could record, if something was on past my bedtime or while I was at school, that title was lost, swallowed in an analog void until my hopeful eyes might spot its cover at Blockbuster or catch it after dinner with a well-timed rerun. Still, it was the convenience (or inaccessibility) of any given program’s airtime that had the biggest impact of what I was or wasn’t able to see. Those were days devoid of streaming options, my viewing habits dictated entirely by the TV Guide and sporadic trips to the video store. Whether it be Charlie Brown, Garfield or simply a themed episode of a sitcom that happened to be on, regardless of my familiarity with the thing, if it was Halloween oriented, I was in. Chief amongst my October rituals was plotting out what nights I had to be planted firmly in front of our television set to make sure I caught all my favorites. While Christmas might have beaten out Halloween in sheer quantity of televised specials, in my eyes, it was always the latter that reigned supreme in quality.
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