My personal affinity for all things spooky and scary came from two primary sources: first, my grandfather, who had an extensive horror movie VHS library and allowed me to watch the Universal Monster classics very early in my life (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man, and their numerous sequels); and second, from Disney movies and TV shows. This might seem like a surprising source, but when you look back at both animated and live action productions from the House of Mouse—from their earliest days all the way up to the present—there was a distinct embrace of darkness that modern-day movies and programs sorely lack.
And, I’m not just referring to cuter fare like “Lonesome Ghosts,” the 1937 short involving Mickey, Donald, and Goofy as ghost hunters investigating a haunted house (apparently an inspiration for Ghostbusters), or the 1952 short “Trick or Treat,” featuring a witch teaching trickster Donald Duck a lesson about generosity on Halloween. Disney produced some genuinely terrifying content, including “The Legend of Sleep Hollow,” the company’s take on Washington Irving’s short story, which begins innocently enough, but soon plunges into pure nightmare territory when the protagonist Ichabod Crane being pursued and, presumably, beheaded by the Headless Horseman. This segment—the moody, chiaroscuro lighting, the midnight blue, gnarled tree branches, culminating in the frantic chase by the figure with a flaming jack-o-lantern face atop a solid black horse with red, demonic eyes—matches the horror films being produced at the time, only with kids as the intended audience.
Consider also the segment from Fantasia (1940) “Night on Bald Mountain,” in which a craggy peak transforms into the winged, bat-like form of Chernabog, who conjures the souls of the damned to dance in a wicked whirlpool around his form, including the specters of hanged men who must slip through their nooses once again. In the now-iconic sequence “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” with its glorious high-contrast lighting scheme and Gothic setting reminiscent of The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari, Mickey Mouse, in silhouette, mutilates and dismembers his sentient broom creation with an ax. Director Edgar G. Ulmer and cinematographer John J. Mescall used similar effect on the 1934 Universal horror film The Black Cat, in which Vitus (Bela Lugosi) carves into the face of Hjalmar (Boris Karloff)—an effective means of showing graphic violence without actually showing it, i.e., allowing the audience to imagine the blood and gore, which is infinitely more disturbing.
Left: The Black Cat (1934); Right, Fantasia (1940)
How about Maleficent’s final form in Sleeping Beauty? The antagonist turns into a green-fire-breathing dragon that takes an enchanted sword straight to the heart (the penetration of steel and scaly flesh shown in full detail, complete with blood). Or, the haunting apparition of the Magic Mirror in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, as well as the Queen, disguised as an old woman, watches with maniacal, hand-wringing glee as the protagonist eats the poisoned apple and collapses onto the floor. (My young mind didn’t understand the problematic virgin-whore dichotomy inherent in both pictures.)
Let us not forget Pinocchio. In a piece for Bloody-Disgusting, Kelvin Cruz argued that the story of a puppet who dreams of becoming a real boy is basically a horror movie disguised as a light-hearted kids’ film. Here’s Cruz’s rundown of all the dark and creepy elements of Pinocchio:
• slavery, child abduction, and human trafficking
• a concept reminiscent of Saw or Seven where one pays for sins with physical pain and suffering
• a painful transformation sequence followed by a partial transformation sequence
• shadow people
• a giant sea monster
• a super intense final chase scene where the main character dies
That aforementioned transformation sequence, involving Pinocchio’s “bad boy” friend Lampwick turning into a donkey, is a highlight among horror fans. Many cite it as a pivotal moment, a turning point for their minds’ journey from “innocence” to an appreciation of the dark, the disturbing, and the terrifying. Lee Gamblin provides more details about the scene in an essay for ComingSoon.net:
The artistic design for Lampwick by Disney artist Fred Moore is extremely careful and intelligently conceived. He looks like a grown man in a child’s body and his transformation from impish kid to terrified donkey is completely frightening and is easily comparable to any werewolf transformation sequence in any lycanthropic themed film. Director Joe Dante quotes the sequence as being influential as well as genuinely frightening in this regard, and the image of hands turning into hooves and a face stretching out into the snout of a donkey in silhouette form can completely be attributed to his design and look for the Eddie Quist transformation in his iconic The Howling (1981).
Of course, these aren’t the only examples, as, throughout the decades, Disney continued injecting elements of darkness and horror into their animated content—children of the ’80s and ’90s will never forget Ursula’s death in The Little Mermaid), for instance, or the eerie medieval film The Black Cauldron, or the gut-wrenching tragedy of Mustafa’s demise in The Lion King. Live action films also proved to be a fertile breeding ground for horror. Standout titles include: Escape To Witch Mountain (1975), about kids with paranormal abilities fleeing from a nefarious organization (featuring Donald Pleasance!); The Watcher In The Woods, a true-blue Gothic ghost story, full of wonderful atmospheric dread; Something Wicked This Way Comes, an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s novel of the same name; and Return To Oz, a direct sequel to The Wizard Of Oz, which shows Dorothy undergoing shock therapy, creepy beings called Wheelers, and a headless princess with a gallery of noggins at her disposal.
While many films of the mid and late-’00s began to lean more toward the cute and fluffy (Tangled, Frozen, Moana, even Zootopia, though the latter does tackle xenophobia head-on), the studio still produced dark and potentially upsetting content as well. The Princess and the Frog, for instance, which dealt with Voodoo and spirits of the dead. Moreover, the Disney-affiliated Pixar released several films with elements identifiable as horror, including Toy Story, with the sadistic Sid and his mortifying toy creations, Toy Story 3, with the main characters nearly perishing in an incinerator, Brave, with its inclusion of the supernatural and its primary “man-bear” villain, and Coco, which isn’t scary per se, but leans into Mexico’s macabre-friendly Day of the Dead celebration and deals with death, the afterlife, murder, and revenge.
These most recent titles suggest that the relationship between Disney and Darkness won’t disappear anytime soon, ensuring that new generations will find their horror sensibilities within the (haunted) House of Mouse, just as previous generations did before them.
