Disney's Weird and Spooky Halloween Movies

[00:00:04] [SPEAKER_05] It's time for the show that brings the magic right to your speakers. EarzUp! Hey, what's up everybody?

[00:00:15] [SPEAKER_03] Hello, Jason.

[00:00:17] [SPEAKER_05] Hi, Taryn.

[00:00:18] [SPEAKER_03] How are you?

[00:00:20] [SPEAKER_05] I'm confused. I'm perplexed and flummoxed. How are you?

[00:00:24] [SPEAKER_03] I'm great.

[00:00:26] [SPEAKER_05] Alright, great. What's going on, great? How's it going? What's up everybody? This is the EarzUp October show. So, Halloween edition. Normally, this time, we do our news show and do all that kind of thing, but we realize we haven't really done anything for Halloween and we always do. Of course. Of course. Usually, it's the spooky stories.

[00:00:48] [SPEAKER_03] By usually, I think you mean like the last 10 years.

[00:00:50] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, right. Oh, wait, we're not doing that?

[00:00:53] [SPEAKER_03] Well, you are.

[00:00:55] [SPEAKER_05] Oh, Eric, I'm sorry. I didn't tell you that. There we go. Your noise gate is too good. It's too good. Oh, you're dripping paper. That's terrible. But maybe in your recording it'll be better, yeah. So, we're not doing spooky stories this year, folks. We're either taking a year off or just not doing it ever because it's a lot. I think we're all just sort of like creatively bereft of anything new about like,

[00:01:21] [SPEAKER_05] I have a feeling it would just be like, the churros are full of zombie guts and they're going to make you a zombie if you eat them. And then everybody goes and eats Bob Iger's hair and gives it to Bob Chapek. And then everyone goes, ah, in the end. You know what I mean?

[00:01:39] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, I don't know.

[00:01:40] [SPEAKER_05] I feel like we could still come up with stuff. I'm not saying we can't come up with stuff.

[00:01:45] [SPEAKER_03] I think we can figure it out and be unique and different than in the past years.

[00:01:48] [SPEAKER_05] I just don't think it was going to, I don't know. At least me personally, I was not in the mood to like sit there and try to like milk this one more time. It's like, ah, here we go. Let's, you know, I don't know. It's just, that's not my, it wasn't my thing. So instead, what we did this year is we bandered around a little bit of a few ideas.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_05] We kind of landed on talking about weird Halloween things that Disney has put out over the years that you might not know about. And, you know, it's not just like, maybe it's our favorites or whatever, but it's just weird, just weird stuff that maybe flew under the radar. No pun intended, you know, like a bat or a witch or something. I get it guys that you might not have, you know, have remembered or even known about.

[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_05] So it's sort of like a Buena Vista boys in that regard where it's like, you know, we're going to do a little bit of like history on the thing. But, you know, it's, it's fun. We each have three, you know, and some of them are going to be, what do you call them? Some are going to be maybe made for TV movies and yeah, something like that.

[00:02:58] Yeah.

[00:02:58] [SPEAKER_05] I think it'd be a good time. I'm excited about it. I like, I like this idea. And because it really, you know, and Eric texts us this morning. He's like, this is a great way to start the day. It's like watching weird.

[00:03:09] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. It kind of was fun.

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_05] Creepy show, creepy, like shorts and content and stuff like that.

[00:03:14] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. Things that you've never seen or heard of.

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. In a couple of cases. Yeah. Looking through the list of like all the sort of Halloween related, you know, content that Disney's made. Like there's some weird crap on there. Like stuff I've never heard of. And it's mainly because I never had the Disney channel really.

[00:03:34] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah.

[00:03:34] [SPEAKER_05] Um, so, you know, especially in like the early two thousands.

[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:03:39] [SPEAKER_05] Um, when a lot of this stuff kind of started to be pumped out.

[00:03:43] [SPEAKER_03] And remember when you would get that week free, like they would always have, they would, they would have like a week long where you'd get like seven days free of Disney channel. Like I would sit in front of the TV and like never change the channel.

[00:03:56] [SPEAKER_04] We would take so much.

[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_03] And there was like this one time where like it went for like eight days and then nine days. And it was like, you like didn't want to turn it off. It was like that. There's an episode of something. Oh, it's friends. Nevermind. I want to tell that story. Okay.

[00:04:11] [SPEAKER_05] Well, I wanted to get started here by, um, I think maybe doing a little history of Halloween that I figured out.

[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_03] Okay.

[00:04:19] [SPEAKER_05] And that I kind of wrote and stole and kind of, you know, whatever, because I think it's important. And I also, uh, you know, when I'm getting, when I get in the mood of doing research for dumb stuff, I go like, well, I got to do it all. So, uh, I learned a little bit about the history of Halloween and maybe you, you will too. And I think it'll kind of set us off on the right path here.

[00:04:38] [SPEAKER_06] Love this.

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. Well, we know as Halloween has evolved and shifted over the last hundred years or so celebrated by the ancient Celts of Britain, Scotland, Ireland, and Northern France. November 1st was a date with a few different meanings. It was the start of the new year. It marked the end of the harvest, the return of the herds of animals from pastures to prepare for winter. And it was also the festival of Samhain and which is actually, I guess it's Gaelic.

[00:05:08] [SPEAKER_05] So it's pronounced saw win or so win, but I'm not going to be doing that. I'm just going to call it Samhain because I am a metalhead and they're a good band. My apologies to the ancient Celts in the audience. On October 31st, the ghosts of the dead family and friends roamed the countryside, visiting their loved ones and either being chill and looking for eternal rest or being little turds and creating havoc.

[00:05:33] [SPEAKER_05] It was also thought that they could predict future marriages or deaths or prosperity. And so you would be wise to leave a little taste of home out for them to get on their good side, like food or, you know, drink or something like that. But if you weren't the forgiving type, you'd set large bonfires and carried hollowed out turnips lit with candles around to scare the spirits away from you.

[00:05:55] [SPEAKER_03] Oh, okay.

[00:05:56] [SPEAKER_05] The tradition of wearing costumes of animals and other spirits began here as well. Then the Romans came, that scourge of the Mediterranean, bringing with them their own harvest celebration on November 1st. Eventually, with Christianity being applied to Rome's territories, Pope Gregory III moved the Roman celebration of All Saints Day from its original date of May 13th down the calendar to its final resting place on November 1st.

[00:06:25] [SPEAKER_05] A classic, oh, thanks for celebrating the Roman stuff, guys. That's cool of you move that is repeated throughout history. So basically, the Pope was like, eh, we want more Christianity, but these darn pagans. So what we're going to do is we're going to make this celebration. We're going to move it from early to now. It's just so you guys can, you know, celebrate it at the same time. It's convenient, right?

[00:06:50] [SPEAKER_03] Okay.

[00:06:51] [SPEAKER_05] So it's because of this the night before on October 31st became All Hallows Eve or Halloween and a few things changed. The reasons for leaving food out stopped being about appeasing spirits and was more about offering soul cakes when poor people. So what poor people would do at the time, what they could do is this kind of started this tradition of going from door to door and begging for soul cakes. And then they would say, oh, we promise to pray for the dead of your family if you give

[00:07:20] [SPEAKER_05] us a little food, a little soul cake, you know, if you cake us up a little bit. So instead of dressing up as animals, the Romans would dress up as saints to kind of still, you know, so the tradition sort of blended together. The idea that Halloween comes from pagan rituals usurped by Christians originated with Welsh scholar Sir John Rhys. And he didn't back up his theory with a ton of evidence.

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_05] Some modern historians maintain that ties between Celtic celebrations and early Christian practices are tenuous. And medieval Christian festivals provide the real blueprint for the holiday. Medieval Christians celebrated All Saints Day and All Souls Days during the observance of All Hallow Tide, the time in the year dedicated to remembering the dead by holding community feasts, emphasizing dead souls and decorating skeletons. But they didn't apparently get that from the Celts.

[00:08:14] [SPEAKER_05] So there's a little bit of confusion. It's like where this originated from, the idea, the early idea of Halloween. But I think it's kind of like with anything, it's going to end up just being a hodgepodge, a melting pot of things that spontaneously kind of, you know, come up. And then also, you know, these early traditions of dressing up as dead people and thinking about where we eventually all go anyways. You know what I mean? Okay.

[00:08:40] [SPEAKER_05] So the Christian pagan chimera spread and was rumored to be one of the many church-related corruptions that a certain Martin Luther, father of the Protestant Revolution, had for writing his 95 thesis to a church door in 1517. In case you guys don't know, Martin Luther, he was like, oh, the church is straight away. We need to, you know, get all this crap out of it. We can get back to the Bible.

[00:09:07] [SPEAKER_05] And he wrote 95 reasons basically why to do that. And then he nailed it on a church door in 1517. But the date he picked.

[00:09:15] [SPEAKER_03] This is not related to the Martin Luther King Jr. Oh, because it's Martin Luther.

[00:09:24] [SPEAKER_05] Correct. There's no king. In 1517. No, I know. That's the big. I know.

[00:09:27] [SPEAKER_03] But like, I hear Martin Luther and I'm like, that's the only thing I think of. Correct. Yeah, absolutely. For sure.

[00:09:32] [SPEAKER_05] Okay. But the date he did, the date he chose to nail his little thesis paper on the church door, October 31st. Who knows if he picked that date specifically or if it was just when he was like done writing. But that's, you know, that's the date he chose. And part of the reason he was writing it is because of the sort of corrupted Halloween, you know, aspect of what he considered, you know, proper church religious stuff. I think it's interesting. But that's Europe.

[00:10:02] [SPEAKER_05] This is America. God damn it. Sure. And while there were some versions of Halloween brought over from England when the colonies were sort of being populated, it wasn't until a wave of Irish immigrants came across the sea in 1820, fleeing the Great Famine, that Halloween began to take hold. Irish girls peeled apples, roasted nuts, unraveled yarn, stared into mirrors, dipped their hands

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_05] into a series of bowls while blindfolded, cooked dinners in silence, and played with fire to find out whether and whom they would marry. I guess these were just little regional, you know, sort of farm things that you did to celebrate. Let's unravel the yarn, you know.

[00:10:44] [SPEAKER_04] Hooray. Siobhan, let's go. Hopefully it wasn't all in the same night because that sounds like a lot of stuff.

[00:10:49] [SPEAKER_03] That is too much fun.

[00:10:51] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. I can't. Sorry. I can't go churn butter. I have to dip my hands in series of bowls while blindfolded, please. While Siobhan unravels yarn.

[00:11:00] [SPEAKER_03] Too much. Too much for one night.

[00:11:02] [SPEAKER_05] In place of the turnips they had used at home. Now, I guess turnips, these are like larger turnips than what we would like, you know, consider like radishes or like, you know, they're decent size, maybe potato size. I don't know. But in place of the turnips they used at home, they would carve out indigenous pumpkins to light their way as they went from house to house. Instead of dressing up as saints in church parades and begging for soul cakes in return for prayers, these new urban Irish slipped into secular costumes and went from house to house soliciting handouts.

[00:11:32] [SPEAKER_05] But they would first perform a trick, a song or a joke, or they would do something after which they would receive a treat.

[00:11:42] [SPEAKER_03] It's trick and treat.

[00:11:44] [SPEAKER_05] Trick. Yeah. Something like that. Right. Another theory for the origin of costumes for Halloween originates with the late medieval French tradition of the dance macabre, the dance of death. Perhaps in response to the black plague ravaging Europe, 14th century artists would depict the personification of death surrounded by figures of a pope, an emperor, a king, a child, and a laborer, people from all levels of society dancing toward the grave.

[00:12:11] [SPEAKER_05] Live versions of the dance macabre were enacted at village pageants, no doubt to the delight and horror of all. The grotesque but comical performance reminded people that death would come for everyone, but also that we should have as much fun as possible before the inevitable. And there's nothing more Halloween than that. But it's all theory. We don't really know. In 1820, Washington Irving's short story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, became one of the

[00:12:38] [SPEAKER_05] first distinctly American ghost stories focused on Halloween. And then that sort of brought it into more mainstream, the idea of celebrating Halloween.

[00:12:49] [SPEAKER_03] Okay.

[00:12:49] [SPEAKER_05] Another tradition that came over with the Irish was that of Mischief Night. Typically celebrated the night before Guy Fawkes Night on November 4th. I'm not going to go into the whole Guy Fawkes thing, but, you know, Guy Fawkes Night, November 4th.

[00:13:03] [SPEAKER_04] Different thing.

[00:13:04] [SPEAKER_05] Mischief thing. Yeah, it's a whole different thing altogether. It was the time for the local lads and lasses to do some pranks and jokes around the town. Guy Fawkes Night does have a history of being celebrated in the States, primarily in New England. But so this wasn't really like a crazy thing to have Guy Fawkes, this, you know, distinctly English thing come over and, you know, sort of spark this, you know, in America. But anyway, again, whole different thing.

[00:13:30] [SPEAKER_05] On October 31st, young men roamed the countryside looking for fun. And on November 1st, farmers would wake up to find wagons on barn roofs, front gates hanging from trees, and cows in neighbor's pastures. You know, just fun pranks, dude. Okay. We're doing pranks. We're doing gags. We're doing a little bit of a jokery here and there because it's mischief night. We're creating a little mischief.

[00:13:53] [SPEAKER_04] Destroying people's livelihood.

[00:13:55] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, we're pissing off the farmers. Okay. Okay.

[00:13:58] [SPEAKER_05] I mean, the wagon on the barn roof is pretty good.

[00:14:01] [SPEAKER_03] That's got to be hard, too.

[00:14:02] [SPEAKER_05] Sure. Absolutely.

[00:14:03] [SPEAKER_03] And even harder to get down without breaking it.

[00:14:06] [SPEAKER_04] You could use your neighbor's cow.

[00:14:08] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, duh. Due to the sprawling nature of America as we were growing, every part of the states had their own little pockets of creepiness. Witches roamed among the Scottish and German settlers of Appalachia, and Halloween was their special night. In the South, voodoo customs associated with the holiday with witchcraft, charms, and deceased ancestors. South Westerners celebrated a joyous day of the dead by taking food, drink, flowers, and

[00:14:35] [SPEAKER_05] candies to the grave of loved ones at midnight on November 1st and staying until the sun rose the next morning. Eventually, thanks to the connectivity that the telegraph, magazines, and newspapers provided, the holiday became more stripped down, removing most of the cultural differences. Victorian society took it and gave it a romantic lean with traditions of looking into a mirror on Halloween, and you might see your future husband's face pass by because all you had

[00:15:02] [SPEAKER_05] to do, I think, was get mercury poisoning and sit in your parlor with a candle and like, what should we do now, Gloria? I don't know, Jessica. Let's look in the mirror and maybe, I don't know, just sounds really boring. As the popularity of the holiday grew, so too did the opportunity to make a buck. In 1897, one of the leading trade papers of the time, the dry goods economist, bemoaned

[00:15:26] [SPEAKER_05] those out-of-date entrepreneurs who still regarded holidays as an unavoidable nuisance, resulting in the loss of trade. You know, it's like, oh, we have a holiday, so now no one's going to be shopping and we're going to lose out. Three years later, the Dry Goods Chronicle urged its readers to, quote, never let a holiday escape your attention, provided it is capable of making your store better known or increasing the value of its merchandise.

[00:15:53] [SPEAKER_05] Advertisers took up the cry by promoting seasonal campaigns, and by the end of that century, it was so intimately associated with polite social gatherings and innocent, amorous pursuits that celebrants were hanging mistletoe on October 31st. So basically the marketing of Halloween made it more popular in kind of higher society, and then they're like, oh, well now it's just, it's more friendly where we're hanging mistletoe to kiss under or whatever people do under mistletoe on Halloween. Yeah.

[00:16:24] [SPEAKER_05] Halloween quickly became less about religious significance and occult practices and became more about community building and celebrating. And wow. Celebrating. Yeah. I am Stephen Toast. You are community building and celebrating with the very first Halloween parade being held in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1920. Wait, hold on a second. What did I just do?

[00:16:52] [SPEAKER_05] Anyway, so it's either, was it Allentown? I think I maybe miscopied something, but in 1921, let's just call it either Allentown, Pennsylvania or Anoka, Minnesota. I don't know. I kind of like merged two sentences together in a weird way. Okay. But this is around the time when children would be going door to door looking for sweets, much like the poor of Europe did with the soul cakes. So this is kind of like where trick-or-treating really kind of took root in America.

[00:17:19] [SPEAKER_06] Okay.

[00:17:20] [SPEAKER_05] 1920s. The phrase trick-or-treat first appears in Ontario, Canada in 1917. Tricks or treats, you could hear the gangs call out, was a headline printed in the Salt Daily Star in Salt St. Marie, Ontario on November 1st, 1917, which reminds me of, you know, it's the great pumpkin, Charlie Brown, when everyone says, tricks or treats? We can't go for tricks or treats anymore. I don't know if anybody ever noticed that, but like they kind of pluralize it.

[00:17:47] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah, it always sounded weird.

[00:17:47] [SPEAKER_05] It always sounded weird, right? And that's, I mean, that's what they were saying in 1917. That was kind of like one of the things they would say. These are like newspaper headlines. Treat or trick was printed in the Owen Sound Sun on November 2nd, 1917. Tricks and treats was printed in the Daily Standard in Kingston, Ontario in 1918. Trick-or-treating is the most well-known expression of Halloween, but despite historic examples of

[00:18:13] [SPEAKER_05] costume-clad holiday revelers and or people going door to door to beg for treats on holidays, there doesn't seem to be a direct link between any of these older practices and modern trick-or-treating. So they're basically saying like it's a little like souling going for soul cakes, but no one in America seems to have ever really practiced the soul cake thing. That wasn't really a thing.

[00:18:36] [SPEAKER_05] So, and they also, there's, first of all, I learned there's Halloween historians, people who just do this, which seems kind of fun, right?

[00:18:45] [SPEAKER_06] Okay.

[00:18:46] [SPEAKER_05] But apparently there's also no evidence of anybody wearing costumes for Halloween in the U.S. before 1900. Okay. And they, so some Halloween scholars are suggesting that American children developed trick-or-treating and costume wearing independently of any other tradition that might have come over like with the Irish or whatever.

[00:19:08] [SPEAKER_03] Interesting.

[00:19:09] [SPEAKER_05] So, which is kind of neat because it's like American kids made up Halloween from scratch kind of thing, but not really, but sort of, but alas, World War II put a stop to all that nonsense when pranks became anti-patriotic acts of vandalism, which kind of honestly sounded kind of shitty, but it seems fine when you learn that by this time in, you know, the 40s, kids were slashing tires and pulling fire alarms. That's a joke. Oh. Yeah.

[00:19:39] [SPEAKER_05] That's funny. Just funny. For example, in Queens, New York in 1939, a thousand windows were broken on Halloween night. Wow. This is jokes, man. You can't take a joke. Yeah. So that killed it. So World War II kind of killed all that nonsense.

[00:19:55] [SPEAKER_03] Okay.

[00:19:56] [SPEAKER_04] We need our windows to defeat the Nazis.

[00:19:58] [SPEAKER_05] That's right. Children. Save those rocks and donate them to the local VFW. Other headlines around this time, tricks or treats, money or eats has been cited in print since at least 1943. Another rhyming extension, which has been in print since 1964 is trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat. Another one is trick or treat, bags of sweets, ghosts are walking down the street.

[00:20:27] [SPEAKER_03] I never heard that.

[00:20:28] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. Huh. I know, right? Neither did I. But the earliest known reference to basically ritual begging on Halloween in English speaking North America occurs in 1911 when a newspaper in Ontario, which is near the border of New York, reported that it was normal for the smaller children to go basically to dress up and go around asking shops between the hours of 6 and 7 p.m.

[00:20:54] [SPEAKER_05] Visiting shops and neighbors to be rewarded with nuts and candies for their rhymes and songs. So the tricks and then they get little treats for that. And then there's one in Chicago. There's one in 1920 or there's another place in 1915. And it just makes it kind of started slowly in different areas of of the country of the country.

[00:21:16] [SPEAKER_05] And Ruth Edna Kelly in her 1919 history of the holiday, the book of Halloween, makes no mention of such a custom in the chapter Halloween in America. It does not seem to have become a widespread practice until at least the 1930s, with the earliest known uses in print of the term trick or treat appearing in 1934 in America and the first use in a national publication occurring in 1939.

[00:21:42] [SPEAKER_05] Hollywood also had a hand in kind of the drive to take Halloween from sort of like these little regional communal things to a much more larger, much more capitalist driven thing. Costumes made of crepe paper and featuring comic book characters became popular. Collegeville costumes was once the biggest costume manufacturer ever.

[00:22:08] [SPEAKER_05] In 1923, this family owned business who previously sold flags turned to costumes with the with the rising emergence of Halloween. Their switch was inspired by a client who requested several clown outfits for a vendor. They use leftover pieces from their flags to create costumes. Oh, so the war kind of stopped all this. But after the war, Halloween returned. But with more of a focus on being part of a community rather than being a little piece of shit throwing rocks and everything.

[00:22:35] [SPEAKER_06] That's good.

[00:22:36] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. Ben Cooper, Inc. was a family owned business founded in 1937. The Brooklyn based company is highly credited for the introduction of pop culture to Halloween costumes. From the 30s and the 40s, they began to license as many Disney characters as possible. They went on to license television shows, comic books and even musical artists as costumes. Much of their success was from their genius strategy of purchasing the license to many works before they came out.

[00:23:04] [SPEAKER_05] The most well known of these was Snow White. So we're going to make Snow White costumes, baby, before this movie even comes out. It was estimated that Ben Cooper, Inc. owned about 70 to 80 percent of the Halloween costume market by the 1960s. Wow. And of course, at this time, Disney's making stuff too. In 1929, he produced a highly influential, highly influential Silly Symphony called the Skeleton Dance. I'm sure everybody's seen that. It's a classic.

[00:23:33] [SPEAKER_05] Followed closely by the first Halloween Mickey Mouse short, The Haunted House.

[00:23:37] [SPEAKER_03] What year is this?

[00:23:39] [SPEAKER_05] 1929. So I don't know where that kind of was going, but I wanted to do a little history of Halloween in America. Yeah, I didn't. No idea. And pop culture and kind of how it sort of seems to come organically, but also how it was really driven a lot by the attempt to make money on it too. You know what I mean? The more costumes and cooler costumes are available, the more kids are going to want to go for it. And Disney helped a lot with that by making kind of weird, weird stuff.

[00:24:08] Cool.

[00:24:09] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah. Who was the first manufacturer to make the type of mask that just has the eye slits and the mouth? You know what? That's what I want to know.

[00:24:18] [SPEAKER_05] I know it was out there and I didn't put it because I thought-

[00:24:21] [SPEAKER_03] Garbage pail, kids. Yeah.

[00:24:22] [SPEAKER_05] You actually saw it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's a couple blogs that kind of go into the pop culture history of Halloween and that is, I think, part of it too. Neat.

[00:24:35] [SPEAKER_03] By the way, I had to look up soul cakes because I had to know what that was. It was like an actual cake. What is it? It is a cookie. There you go. Well, it's a biscuit. Oh, of course. It's what the British would refer to as a biscuit with a cross on top.

[00:24:49] [SPEAKER_06] Ooh.

[00:24:50] [SPEAKER_03] It looks very much like something that would be in church.

[00:24:55] [SPEAKER_05] Okay.

[00:24:58] [SPEAKER_03] Or the exorcist.

[00:24:59] [SPEAKER_05] We should make them. We should make them.

[00:25:02] [SPEAKER_03] We should. They're just a spiced cookie. It looks like it's like a, like from the recipe, it sounds like it's like a shortbread with cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and then a cross.

[00:25:11] [SPEAKER_05] There you go, man.

[00:25:12] [SPEAKER_03] Kind of like it. It feels actually as simple as it is. There's no frosting. There's no color on it, really. Some of them have raisins. But like, it's so simple. But there's like a very Halloween sort of like creep factor to it. Nice, dude. I don't know. I like it.

[00:25:29] [SPEAKER_05] Maybe we'll make them. That'd be fun. Yeah. Hand them out on Halloween. I also had a thing about, about made for TV movies. I don't know. I was on a roll. I was on a, I was on something. Again, basically the history of Disney doing made for TV movies. But it's not that long. But I don't know if I want to, I don't know if I want, I don't want to bore everybody with it.

[00:25:51] [SPEAKER_03] I don't know what it is about. I mean, I know what it's about, but I don't know. I can't tell if it's going to be boring or not.

[00:25:56] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. I don't know either. I don't know. Are you tired of hearing me talk? Because like you, you're doing a, you're doing a thing.

[00:26:03] [SPEAKER_03] I am. I've got three things.

[00:26:05] [SPEAKER_05] But you're doing a made for TV movie. And I feel like, I don't know, made for TV movies have like a negative context. I suppose.

[00:26:13] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, they can. I don't think, I think that they do more so now than they did. I think that they had a real, a real life in the, in the nineties and two thousands where, where they weren't looked down upon as much.

[00:26:31] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. I mean, maybe, well, you know what? Look, you have a made for TV movie. We're just going to do it. And you know what? If it's boring, you can tell me afterwards and I'll cut it out. What do you think of that?

[00:26:39] [SPEAKER_03] Sounds good.

[00:26:41] [SPEAKER_05] But when I think of Disney made for TV movies, I am firmly planted in the 1990s. Maybe you guys are too. Because that era to me like feels right. When you talk about made for TV stuff, I don't know. It's like cheesy made for TV movies. Yeah. That's just kind of what it feels like. But the Disney company actually has a long history of producing long form made for TV content. The first of which was the Davy Crockett miniseries in the 1950s.

[00:27:07] [SPEAKER_05] But you could argue that that's not really a movie so much as just a bunch of episodes, you know, shot for TV strung together and not separating the plot. You know what I mean? So it's just it's a miniseries. Yeah. The first movie length content Walt ever made for TV was the film Johnny Tremaine in 1957. Now, this one was weird because while intended for television, it was always meant to go to TV. Right.

[00:27:34] [SPEAKER_03] OK.

[00:27:34] [SPEAKER_05] But Johnny Tremaine actually saw a theatrical release prior to its broadcast, which in and of itself seems rather modern, kind of in today's world of streaming first. Especially Netflix came out and said, hey, the K-pop Demon Hunter sequel is going to get a theatrical release before it goes on our platform. And this is kind of the same thing now, you know, over, you know, 60, 70 years later, whatever it is. But this wouldn't even really meet the brief for what I would consider made for TV content.

[00:28:05] [SPEAKER_05] True to form, Walt chopped Johnny Tremaine up into several pieces, releasing some as educational content for schools on topics like the Boston Tea Party and others he had cut up into their own little tiny episodes. This was Walt, I think, just exploring the medium of TV. He was coming from, you know, movies. So it's like, wow, what can we do? How can we put the same content and just reuse it?

[00:28:27] [SPEAKER_03] OK.

[00:28:28] [SPEAKER_05] So what is a made for TV movie and why do we care for today? Well, we care because I wrote this and I need to use it. But also, we're going to be going through some weird and unusual content for this Halloween episode. And I was interested in the catalog of Disney TV movies we might not have ever heard of.

[00:28:45] [SPEAKER_03] OK.

[00:28:45] [SPEAKER_05] Since Disney TV content so often blurs with their theatrical stuff and TV was such a new technology, it seems natural to kind of hedge your bets and get as much out of your work as possible. Take the classic story of Gallagher. Now, I don't have to explain who Gallagher is.

[00:29:02] [SPEAKER_03] No, he's the guy with.

[00:29:03] [SPEAKER_05] No, he's not the comedian, Eric.

[00:29:06] [SPEAKER_03] Oh, I thought.

[00:29:08] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, I know you did. But in case you forgot, because everybody knows, Gallagher is the story of a newspaper copy boy who goes in investigative adventures. Oh, that Gallagher. Yeah.

[00:29:19] [SPEAKER_04] Oh, OK.

[00:29:20] [SPEAKER_05] Got it. In 1964, Disney produced a three-part miniseries about this boy, which led to another three-part sequel called The Adventures of Gallagher. And then a further four-part follow-up called Gallagher Goes West. And then another two episodes of something else after that. Oh, and a comic book. But you've never heard of this tiny little boy detective, which, you know, kind of just flash in the pan. But we're cranking content, baby. We got eight, nine episodes of whatever it is.

[00:29:49] [SPEAKER_05] But back to my original question of what I think makes a made-for-TV movie. I think low production value with the intent to simply fill allotted broadcast time. Since many of these things Disney made in the 50s and 60s aired on The Wonderful World of Disney and other weekly TV shows, they don't count as much. My apologies to fan of My Dog the Thief. Since many of the directors Disney used had come from television, these movies really looked like episodes of shows you might see at the time.

[00:30:17] [SPEAKER_05] We talk about this on Buena Vista Boys quite a bit, where, like, you're watching The Shaggy DA or Million Dollar Duck. And they just, or even Herbie, the love bug. They just, they seem like TV shows. The way that they're shot, the way that the sets are designed, the lighting, the sound. It just seems like a TV show. You got quick establishing shots. You got Dolly in the camera a little bit. Rapid cuts between medium shots of the characters talking. Instead of just, like, an over-the-shoulder shot like you would see in a movie. You get the idea.

[00:30:48] [SPEAKER_05] There's not much in the way of cinematic artistry as we might think of it today. Not to say they were bad because of that or that it didn't take talent to produce them. But the differences between fully, between full and targeted theatrical releases and the stuff going on The Wonderful World of Disney were measurable at times. Then, on October 9th, 1983, a very svelte Michael Eisner introduced a movie called Tiger Tales.

[00:31:14] [SPEAKER_05] The very first officially made-for-TV-only movie under the heading of Disney Channel Premiere Films. Half sports documentary and half after-school special, Tiger Tales has all the hallmarks of good cinema with none of the follow-through. The acting is bad. The sound quality is worse. But if you like baseball and Rob Scheider, you might enjoy this very much. But this starts to fall into what I think of when I think about made-for-TV movies.

[00:31:42] [SPEAKER_05] And this is also where you get a lot of sequels to theatrical releases, the Disney Channel Premiere film stuff. You get The Parent Trap Part 2. Anne of Avelina, the continuing story of Anne of Green Gables. You get Not Quite Human 2. You get Back to Hannibal, the return of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. You get Still Not Quite Human.

[00:32:02] [SPEAKER_04] Things like that. Oh, wow. So you're telling me that JPEG didn't come up with the idea of the cheaply made Disney sequel.

[00:32:11] [SPEAKER_05] Well, you know what? He might have. I don't know. I think a lot of these did start. I don't know. Who can tell?

[00:32:18] [SPEAKER_04] He was very proud of Return of Jafar if you didn't get it from the book. That's true. That's true. Yeah, he was.

[00:32:26] [SPEAKER_05] Where made-for-TV movies receive kind of a negative connotation, mostly for good reason, Disney did put in the work on their productions, turning out some pretty hefty IPs that kind of were able to take hold. And my opinion, sort of justify the made-for-TV movie concept. So at least maybe not hefty, but some recognizable ones. So you have Halloween Town, which is about a 13-year-old witch doing battle in a town where ghouls and whatnot are real or something. I don't know. But there's like a few of those.

[00:32:57] [SPEAKER_04] And Debbie Reynolds. And Debbie Reynolds. Is in all of them.

[00:33:00] [SPEAKER_05] You get Johnny Tsunami. Any old heads out there where we see Johnny Tsunami?

[00:33:06] [SPEAKER_03] I've heard of it.

[00:33:07] [SPEAKER_05] About a surfing boy forced to move from Hawaii to Vermont.

[00:33:11] [SPEAKER_03] Ooh, ouch.

[00:33:13] [SPEAKER_05] Twitches. Twitches. About, well, twins who are witches, I guess, or something like that. Okay. But these are all things that I have heard growing up in middle school. People were talking about this stuff. I never saw it, but I'm aware of the IP enough that it was like a real thing. Camp Rock. That was a thing. Oh, I remember that. The Cheetah Girls. Yeah. Remember The Cheetah Girls? That would be a big. My sister's age. Yeah.

[00:33:39] [SPEAKER_05] Upon release, this film was the number one rated basic cable telecast and premiered to six and a half million viewers, which is a record for Disney at the time.

[00:33:49] [SPEAKER_03] Dang.

[00:33:50] [SPEAKER_05] Then, of course, you have in 2015 The Descendants, which was spun off into several television series, short films, specials, including an animated short form series, followed by a sequel in 2017, Descendants 3 in 2019, Rise of Red in 2024, and a fifth film just this year on July 16th.

[00:34:13] [SPEAKER_03] Crazy.

[00:34:13] [SPEAKER_05] It was also a platform to transition some other TV shows into movies, kind of a little reversal, like the Even Stevens movie, which was based on the TV show, or Jet Jackson, the movie, based on the TV show, or Kim Possible movie, based on TV show, or The Proud Family movie, based on TV show, or Wizards of Waverly Place, the movie, based on the TV show, etc.

[00:34:37] [SPEAKER_05] But the whole thing kind of got more solidified and more, I don't know, I don't even know what to call it, more weight behind it, with the release of a little movie called High School Musical 2 in 2007.

[00:34:53] [SPEAKER_03] That was made for TV.

[00:34:55] [SPEAKER_05] It was. That's the segment I'm doing.

[00:34:58] [SPEAKER_03] No, I know. I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. So it was very surprising to hear that.

[00:35:04] [SPEAKER_05] Got it. Okay. It would be the 70th Disney Channel movie. High School Musical 2 generated 17 million viewers in its premiere broadcast, smashing the record of its predecessor by over 10 million, while the figure remains the highest the network has ever produced. It also ranked as the highest rated basic cable telecast at the time. So not all made-for-TV movies are bad, just kind of most of them.

[00:35:31] [SPEAKER_05] And as we talk about our favorite weird Halloween things to watch this year, just remember that.

[00:35:36] [SPEAKER_03] I love that.

[00:35:37] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah. Well, yeah. All these things that we've never seen.

[00:35:39] [SPEAKER_05] Yes, there's a lot of them. All these things we've never seen, man.

[00:35:42] [SPEAKER_04] I suggested for the listener, I suggested when we were going back and forth about topics here. Well, maybe as I'm looking at all these Halloween-related movies, most of them are made for TV. Yeah. And we've seen none of them. And maybe we need someone who's just a few years younger than us to be on the show for this episode.

[00:36:05] [SPEAKER_06] True.

[00:36:06] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah, dude.

[00:36:08] [SPEAKER_05] But we didn't get it.

[00:36:09] [SPEAKER_04] We just missed it.

[00:36:09] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, we were trying to get Matt in here from Buena Vista Boys, but he's doing something. Parent-teacher conference or something like that. All right, Taryn, why don't you go ahead and give us what you got, man?

[00:36:21] [SPEAKER_03] Okay.

[00:36:22] [SPEAKER_05] Give us all of it.

[00:36:24] [SPEAKER_03] Okay. So I'm going to talk first about the made-for-TV movie that I watched, which was called... It was from 2000, the year 2000. And it's called Mom's Got a Date with a Vampire. Now, how this movie has not become a cult classic, I don't know. Or maybe it is, and I'm just...

[00:36:45] [SPEAKER_05] You're so out of touch, you don't know.

[00:36:46] [SPEAKER_03] I was too 17 at this time, so I didn't know about it. But this movie involves essentially a 13-year-old Adam Hansen and his 16-year-old sister Chelsea, and they get grounded by their mother, Lynette, which ruins their plans to go to a concert and a date, respectively.

[00:37:04] [SPEAKER_05] Oh, no. Lynette is such a good name.

[00:37:08] [SPEAKER_03] It's a good name. So determined to get her out of the house, they set their mom up with a mysterious man named Dimitri.

[00:37:16] [SPEAKER_05] Yes, queen.

[00:37:17] [SPEAKER_03] And they do this in the most 2000s way ever. Okay. So the kid Adam, he's really into vampires, and he's really into monster stories and stuff. And he is really into this magazine called The Weekly Secret, which is this movie's version of National Enquirer.

[00:37:43] [SPEAKER_03] And within this magazine, there is a... Not wanted ads. What is it called? It's like the...

[00:37:51] [SPEAKER_05] Obituaries.

[00:37:52] [SPEAKER_03] Not the obituaries. But it's like classifieds. So classifieds. And there's a dating section. And so... And the sister's like, but that's going to take weeks. Like, how are we going to... That's just going to take too long. We have to get her out of the house tomorrow. Tomorrow. And he's like, no, we'll email him. It's like this concept is just mind-blowing.

[00:38:16] [SPEAKER_05] I'm surprised he didn't say electronically mail him.

[00:38:19] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. And so he very much, very clearly goes on to an AOL or prodigy type thing. Everything is very big on the computer. And he types this email to Dimitri.

[00:38:31] [SPEAKER_05] Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Yeah. So...

[00:38:36] Dimitri...

[00:38:36] [SPEAKER_05] Never mind. I don't want to, like, ruin your reveal.

[00:38:39] [SPEAKER_03] Oh. There... Okay. I mean, it's... It's called Mom's Got a Date with a Vampire. Okay.

[00:38:45] [SPEAKER_05] So I can... So Dimitri's the vampire.

[00:38:47] [SPEAKER_03] Yes.

[00:38:48] [SPEAKER_05] So you have a vampire who is advertising in the wanted section of a magazine about monsters.

[00:38:58] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:38:58] [SPEAKER_05] Okay. So he's not very bright.

[00:39:00] [SPEAKER_03] Well, he's just trying to, you know, look for a lady who...

[00:39:05] [SPEAKER_05] But I feel like, you know, you might as well be, like, advertising in a magazine about serial killers, too. It's like, now you know what to look for because you've read all the articles about how I might be real and how vampires might be real. But why don't you go date me? And then maybe... I don't know. Just, like, you want to get caught at that point.

[00:39:24] [SPEAKER_03] That's true.

[00:39:25] [SPEAKER_05] Thank you.

[00:39:26] [SPEAKER_03] So, but these two children, they do not know that this is a vampire, right? They just think it's, you know, classified, right? Of course. But their plans take a frightening turn when their eight-year-old brother, Taylor, which, by the way, his name is Taylor Hanson.

[00:39:40] Guys.

[00:39:42] [SPEAKER_03] Anyway.

[00:39:44] [SPEAKER_05] I don't get it. Yeah, I don't get it either.

[00:39:46] [SPEAKER_03] The Hanson brothers.

[00:39:47] [SPEAKER_05] And Taylor Swift.

[00:39:48] [SPEAKER_03] Taylor Hanson. No. Taylor Hanson is a Hanson brother. Oh, okay. And if this is the year 2000, like, I mean, this is awkward.

[00:39:56] [SPEAKER_05] Okay, I get it. Sorry, Eric and I don't know the first names of the Hanson brothers. I apologize.

[00:40:01] [SPEAKER_03] That's strange. Taylor was the cute one.

[00:40:06] [SPEAKER_05] I remember the joke in middle school was like, oh, man, those girls in Hanson are pretty cute. Yeah, whatever. Yeah. That's all I remember.

[00:40:13] [SPEAKER_03] Maybe the boys in middle school should have, like, taken note. Okay, yeah. Just saying.

[00:40:19] [SPEAKER_05] Sorry, Jimmy. Why don't you learn to sing and dance? Just grow your hair out a little. Yeah.

[00:40:24] [SPEAKER_03] Okay. Well, anyway, their plans take a frightening turn when their eight-year-old brother, Taylor, discovers Dimitri is a vampire. Now, after Adam and Chelsea. So, the way that he realizes it is after. So, they set up this. I'm just going to go through it. I didn't even write this all down. But they set this up so they're like, their mom is divorced and she just doesn't really go out.

[00:40:44] [SPEAKER_03] And so, they set up this scene where they're sitting to eat dinner and the kids go, gosh, I just, it used to be so nice when we were a family. Oh, yeah. One of those classics. Yes. It was so nice when we used to sit and wake up and have pancakes. That was so nice. I really miss that. And the mom's like, I can make pancakes. And they're like, but do you have chocolate chips? Because I really miss when there were chocolate chips. And she's like, I don't.

[00:41:14] [SPEAKER_03] But we can go to the store. And so, that was their way to get their mom to the store because that's where they told Dimitri to meet her.

[00:41:21] [SPEAKER_05] Oh, they were just guilting her?

[00:41:23] [SPEAKER_03] They were guilting her to get to the store at 8 o'clock at night so that she would meet, like, accidentally meet this guy.

[00:41:32] [SPEAKER_05] Okay.

[00:41:33] [SPEAKER_03] So, that's how they end up. But as they're leaving the store, the little Taylor kid, he sees Dimitri turn into a bat and fly away. And so, he's like, bro. But Taylor was already.

[00:41:46] [SPEAKER_05] The store did not have everything I wanted. I must leave now.

[00:41:49] [SPEAKER_03] But Taylor's already set up to be really scared of monsters. So, like, they don't believe him. But after Adam and Chelsea realize that Taylor is telling the truth, they team up with a vampire hunter, Malachi Van Helsing.

[00:42:04] [SPEAKER_06] Malachi.

[00:42:05] [SPEAKER_03] To rescue their mother who has fallen under Dimitri's hypnotic spell. Now, together, they must stop Dimitri before he can turn their mom into his next victim.

[00:42:14] [SPEAKER_06] Sure.

[00:42:14] [SPEAKER_03] Now, I'm going to pause here. And again, this isn't something I wrote down. But it was so. This mom is not having fun on this date. Like, she is not enjoying this. She is kind of. Like, he's kind of a. I mean, he's a vampire. So, he's creepy. And vampires are supposed to be really, like, charismatic and, like, alluring. And, like, he's kind of not. He's just sort of, like, really trying to cut to the chase. You know? Hey, man.

[00:42:42] [SPEAKER_05] He's a modern man. Leave him alone.

[00:42:44] [SPEAKER_03] And she is just sort of, like, not into it. The vibes are not there. But then, as they leave, they walk past this old rockabilly concert that's going on at this place that she seems to know. And she's like, oh, my God, we have to go in here. And he's like, no. Let's go back to my place. And she's like, no, we have to go in here. This will be so fun.

[00:43:08] [SPEAKER_06] Hell yeah, dude.

[00:43:08] [SPEAKER_03] And it's the most personality she's had to this point.

[00:43:12] [SPEAKER_06] Oh, no.

[00:43:13] [SPEAKER_03] But anyway. So, I'll get back to that. But, you know, I would say that by no means is this a great movie. Okay? It's not. But I did really enjoy it. The acting was abysmal. The only kid that was actually a really good actor was the main kid, Adam. So, he was the middle child. He was actually really good.

[00:43:36] [SPEAKER_03] But I, watching it and as being like a former actor myself, like, I felt so bad for this kid because he was basically by himself. Like, these other actors were giving him nothing to react to.

[00:43:52] [SPEAKER_06] Oh, man.

[00:43:53] [SPEAKER_03] Like, it was just, and that's why I was like, he is really good because, like, he's handling it.

[00:44:00] [SPEAKER_05] I think that's the other hallmark of, no pun intended there, of made-for-TV movies, where you have to have at least one character or one person who's a good actor.

[00:44:11] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:44:11] [SPEAKER_05] And then everybody else can just suck dog water. Yeah. You know what I mean? But it's, it doesn't matter because you got the one person, right?

[00:44:19] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. Well, and the other thing I liked about this movie is there was a lot of nostalgia. I mean, they kind of, at one point, like I said, the mom and Dimitri go to a Rockabilly concert, which if you are too young to know, that had a really big comeback in the early 2000s. So, like, this was, like, right on track to hit with, like, the younger audiences. Yeah.

[00:44:40] [SPEAKER_05] Just, oh, I hated that.

[00:44:42] [SPEAKER_03] Oh, it was so big.

[00:44:42] [SPEAKER_05] Our friend Kareem was super into that. I was like, you're such a dork, dude. We're gonna go swing dancing, bro. It's 1999.

[00:44:51] [SPEAKER_03] But doesn't have to be.

[00:44:53] [SPEAKER_05] I guess.

[00:44:55] [SPEAKER_03] There were also nods to the early AOL chat rooms. And then, of course, like I was saying, the earliest, like, versions of email. One of my favorite scenes. This is just so crazy. Okay. So, they send Dimitri the email. And the scene that you see is a very, very, very dark room. And there's a fire lit. And it's kind of like there's red. It's, like, dark, but you can see red. And it kind of zooms out. And all you see is, like, the glow of a computer and then a coffin.

[00:45:27] [SPEAKER_03] And the message pops up, you got mail. And the coffin opens a little bit. And a little hand. Hell yes! He clicks on it. And I was like, this movie is so great.

[00:45:41] [SPEAKER_05] Can I tell you, when you started telling me that scene just now, I knew exactly what was going to happen. And I almost called it. It's like, that's what it has to be.

[00:45:53] [SPEAKER_03] It has to be like that. It was so good. Oh, man. It was kind of perfect, honestly. Now, this movie, of course, was a Disney Channel original. And this aired on October 13th, 2000, on Zoog Disney.

[00:46:08] [SPEAKER_04] Zoog Disney. Wait. Uh-huh. I don't know about that.

[00:46:12] [SPEAKER_03] So, Zoog Disney was a defunct programming block that exclusively ran on Disney Channel from 1998 to 2002. And this was aimed at the pre-teen market. The block got its name from its mascots, the Zoogs, who lived in the Zether.

[00:46:32] [SPEAKER_05] It's okay. Ziff you say zo.

[00:46:35] [SPEAKER_03] So, the programming block's marketing gimmick was to get viewers to connect with its website, zoogdisney.com, which now takes you to disneynow.com, and submit content that would appear on the programming block.

[00:46:51] [SPEAKER_05] Hmm. I like that. That's very cutting edge. Yes, it was.

[00:46:56] [SPEAKER_03] It really was. Their longhand slogan was, It's not just TV you watch. It's TV you do.

[00:47:03] [SPEAKER_05] Oh, mom, I'm going to do TV tonight, brother. You can't deal with it.

[00:47:08] [SPEAKER_03] So, Zoog Disney was famous for airing Disney Channel original series such as So Weird, Lizzie McGuire, and the famous Jet Jackson, as well as music videos. So, this was, I can totally see this now. Like, I don't remember it. I don't remember Zoog TV, but, like, I can absolutely see this.

[00:47:23] [SPEAKER_05] Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

[00:47:24] [SPEAKER_03] So, after the film premiered on Zoog TV in 2000, Disney received many complaints about a single shot in which Dimitri licks his lips while looking at the family dog.

[00:47:36] [SPEAKER_04] Oh, wow.

[00:47:37] [SPEAKER_03] Now, presumably this is because he was interested in feasting on it. Sure.

[00:47:41] [SPEAKER_05] Of course. But vampires, well, I guess, yeah.

[00:47:43] [SPEAKER_03] It's a weird thing to be really upset about, to be honest. But people were so upset that the shot has been removed from all subsequent airings. And as of 2010, it is not available on any DVD or VHS release. It is not available on any streaming service. And I could not find any clips on YouTube of this one little scene.

[00:48:05] [SPEAKER_05] Let's recreate it. We'll recreate it. Wow. Insert it in. Do a fan edit. Put it on the torrents, dude. Let's go.

[00:48:10] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. So, Disney absolutely took that off. And it's like he's just licking his lips at the dog. Like, who cares? But I guess it was just like. Meanwhile. It was too much.

[00:48:19] [SPEAKER_05] He's about to kill a woman.

[00:48:21] [SPEAKER_03] Exactly.

[00:48:21] [SPEAKER_05] But a dog is, that's too far. There's no way. Yeah. But he's about to trick a woman into being dinner.

[00:48:30] [SPEAKER_03] It's pretty crazy.

[00:48:31] [SPEAKER_05] That's fine. That's okay.

[00:48:32] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. As for the cast, there's a couple of notable appearances. Matt O'Leary, who is Adam, who I thought was actually a good actor. He played Gary Giggles in Spy Kids 2 and 3. And he auditioned for Kevin in Home Alone.

[00:48:47] [SPEAKER_06] Oh.

[00:48:47] [SPEAKER_03] Which is interesting. It was interesting to read that because the whole time that he was doing this, I was like, he looks like a Culkin. Like, he. And I kept wondering if he was, like, related somehow. Because he just, he looked and acted like Macaulay Culkin.

[00:49:04] [SPEAKER_04] One of the lesser brothers. Yeah. Exactly. That's what we've all forgotten about.

[00:49:08] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. Exactly. So, then there's Chelsea Hansen, the older sister. She was played by Laura Vandervoort.

[00:49:17] [SPEAKER_05] Easy for you to say.

[00:49:19] [SPEAKER_03] And, honestly, she was sort of terrible. Actually, she was probably the single worst one in this whole thing. But, it was literally like she was, like, reading the lines on the script. Like, they were holding it up and she was reading it. She was very bad. But she apparently played Supergirl in Smallville. WB Smallville. So. Hmm. Hmm. The mom was played by Carolyn Ray, which I'm sure you guys would all recognize. She was Aunt Hilda in Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

[00:49:45] [SPEAKER_06] Mm-hmm.

[00:49:46] [SPEAKER_03] Um, she's pretty famous. She was a stand-up comedian as well. Um, Charles Shognasi is Dimitri Donatos. Um. Okay.

[00:49:56] [SPEAKER_05] So, he's a Greek vampire?

[00:49:58] [SPEAKER_03] No, he is Roman.

[00:49:59] [SPEAKER_05] Okay.

[00:50:00] [SPEAKER_03] Um.

[00:50:00] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah.

[00:50:01] [SPEAKER_03] And you know how I know that? No. Because his email address was .ro.

[00:50:05] [SPEAKER_05] Oh, because he's from Italy.

[00:50:07] [SPEAKER_03] He's from Romania.

[00:50:09] [SPEAKER_05] Romania. He's Roman. He's not. He's Romanian.

[00:50:11] [SPEAKER_03] Romanian.

[00:50:12] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. Romania.

[00:50:13] [SPEAKER_03] Um, he played the dad, Max Sheffield, in The Nanny. Um, and then finally, Robert Carradine. Does that name strike a bell? Yes. Carradine.

[00:50:24] [SPEAKER_06] Yes.

[00:50:24] [SPEAKER_03] So, the Carradines are just a big, giant, legacy Hollywood family.

[00:50:28] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah.

[00:50:28] [SPEAKER_03] Um, he was Malachi Van Helsing. And he had played Louis Skoglunik in Revenge of the Nerds. And he played Lizzie McGuire's dad.

[00:50:37] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

[00:50:38] [SPEAKER_03] He's also the brother of David Carradine.

[00:50:41] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:50:43] [SPEAKER_03] So, that, my friends, is Mom's Got a Date with a Vampire. And honestly, I recommend. Nice.

[00:50:50] [SPEAKER_04] Wow.

[00:50:51] [SPEAKER_03] It's an hour and 20 minutes, which I was like, oh, like, that's easy. Like, that's an easy watch. I did fall asleep. You did. It gets a little boring around the hour mark.

[00:51:02] [SPEAKER_06] Sure, dude.

[00:51:03] [SPEAKER_03] But then you go back and watch the rest and it's fine.

[00:51:05] [SPEAKER_06] Okay. Okay.

[00:51:06] [SPEAKER_03] Okay. My next one.

[00:51:07] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah.

[00:51:07] [SPEAKER_03] This was a short, a Mickey Mouse short from 1933, The Mad Doctor.

[00:51:13] [SPEAKER_05] Never heard of it. Okay. Never heard of it.

[00:51:16] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. So, The Mad Doctor is a seven-minute black and white Mickey Mouse cartoon and was directed by David Hand and produced by Walt Disney. This was released in January 1933. This short begins with Mickey discovering that his beloved dog, Pluto, has been kidnapped by a sinister scientist.

[00:51:34] [SPEAKER_06] Ooh.

[00:51:34] [SPEAKER_03] Now, determined to rescue his friend, Mickey ventures into a creepy castle filled with skeletons, bats, and all sorts of nightmare-inducing creatures. But the real horror is inside the laboratory. The Mad Doctor identified as Dr. XXX, which...

[00:51:54] [SPEAKER_05] Triple X, Doctor, baby. Let's go. All right.

[00:51:57] [SPEAKER_03] That's his name, though. Yeah. But...

[00:51:59] [SPEAKER_05] I have a scalpel that needs cleaning.

[00:52:01] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:52:02] [SPEAKER_05] Come on, man.

[00:52:04] [SPEAKER_03] Anyway, he has a bizarre plan. He intends to remove Pluto's head.

[00:52:10] [SPEAKER_05] Nice.

[00:52:11] [SPEAKER_03] Attach it to a chicken's body.

[00:52:12] [SPEAKER_05] Love it already.

[00:52:13] [SPEAKER_03] That's not all, though.

[00:52:14] [SPEAKER_05] Oh, okay.

[00:52:15] [SPEAKER_03] His goal? He wants to discover whether the resulting creature will bark or lay eggs.

[00:52:25] [SPEAKER_05] Both, I would imagine. Yeah. I can see that happening.

[00:52:29] [SPEAKER_03] This is why he stole Pluto.

[00:52:30] [SPEAKER_05] I love the era of, like, mad science for literally no reason.

[00:52:38] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah.

[00:52:38] [SPEAKER_05] Because we can. Like, even just the idea of that or, like, some of the movies from the 40s and 50s are like, why am I doing this? Put the science thing over there and inject the other science liquid into the other stuff and then we'll have bigger grapes.

[00:52:52] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. I don't know, man. It's so strange. And so as Mickey is kind of, like, going through this castle and, like, he's just getting berated by skeletons and he's trying to climb this ladder and then it turns into skeletons at the end and so he falls and, like, he just can't get through this castle. And there's one part where he's down, he's in this hallway and it's very reminiscent of, like, Alice in Wonderland,

[00:53:19] [SPEAKER_03] kind of just this hallway that looks never-ending and somehow he ends up, which is kind of the scariest part of this, he ends up in the laboratory and he lands on a gurney and then the straps strap him to the gurney.

[00:53:39] [SPEAKER_06] Okay.

[00:53:40] [SPEAKER_03] It's like weird magic cartoon stuff.

[00:53:42] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah.

[00:53:43] [SPEAKER_03] And so now Mickey is strapped to an operating table and a giant circular saw is coming down to cut him in half.

[00:53:52] [SPEAKER_05] Okay. Sounds very complicated. I love that for them.

[00:53:55] [SPEAKER_03] And just as, you know, he's sucking his stomach and just as it reaches his stomach, we discover that the entire adventure has been a nightmare. It's Mickey's just, he wakes up.

[00:54:06] [SPEAKER_05] I was about to say, I was about to say, once you're like, oh, he's climbing up and then he falls down and he can't get up. I'm like, oh, what is he, dreaming?

[00:54:12] [SPEAKER_03] Yes.

[00:54:12] [SPEAKER_05] But I didn't want to ruin your flow again and I should have because then everyone would know that I'm smart.

[00:54:16] [SPEAKER_03] They know you're smart.

[00:54:17] [SPEAKER_05] Okay.

[00:54:18] [SPEAKER_03] So, yeah. So Pluto is safe and sound. Oh, thank God. And that's great. But my first reaction to watching this was, like...

[00:54:26] [SPEAKER_05] Why is Mickey having dreams about triple X?

[00:54:29] [SPEAKER_03] Well, what is wrong with the people in the 30s? Like, what is happening in these people's brains? And so doing a little bit of, a small bit of digging, it turns out that the early 1930s were the golden age for Hollywood horror. Films like Frankenstein released in 1931. And this had audiences fascinated by mad scientists, dangerous experiments, and the frightening possibilities of, like, modern science. And, you know, what would happen if you mixed a chicken and a dog?

[00:54:58] [SPEAKER_03] Like, they were wondering these things, which I guess in a way kind of makes sense because they didn't know.

[00:55:03] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. I grafted the butt of a dog under the butt of a cat.

[00:55:06] [SPEAKER_03] Right. Right. And did I make a dog cat? I don't know. So the Mad Doctor essentially taps into these concepts, but it almost takes it, like, a step further because it's combining this kind of, like, classic horror with, like, animation where you can do anything. Where you really could mix up a dog and a chicken. And it would work. And it would work because it's a cartoon.

[00:55:29] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. We should do that now. I feel like science, I feel like we're at the point in science where we could probably make that happen.

[00:55:37] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. And find out if it is a bark or an egg.

[00:55:40] [SPEAKER_05] I think it'd be both. I swear to God, it's got to be both. It makes sense, right? Because the gutty ones are the same as, you know, that's what does the leg.

[00:55:48] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. And then the head would be barking. Yeah.

[00:55:51] [SPEAKER_04] Just get an eccentric billionaire interested. Ask that question. Just ask the regular question. I think somebody will be all over it.

[00:56:00] [SPEAKER_03] Exactly. Well, they may have pushed the boundaries just a little bit too far for the British because the British censorship authorities considered the cartoon too frightening for some time.

[00:56:10] [SPEAKER_05] Man, they're stuck up anyway over there.

[00:56:12] [SPEAKER_03] So, that was kind of neat. But what's really interesting to me is how the film portrays Mickey. Mickey, rather than kind of what we had seen previously in Mickey shorts, like this mischievous little troublemaker, we actually see Mickey being vulnerable. And he's trying to save his dog. But he is, like, genuinely scared. And he can't figure out how to get through this castle. And, like, these skeletons are moving in, like, these weird, bizarre, like, impossible ways.

[00:56:41] [SPEAKER_03] And they're literally lurking in every corner. Like, every time he turns around, there's a scary creature.

[00:56:46] [SPEAKER_05] Doesn't sound very alpha to me, though. You know what I mean?

[00:56:49] [SPEAKER_03] Well, it may not be. But for a film running only seven minutes, it does create, like, an impressively unsettling atmosphere, I thought. And then the Mad Doctor, a.k.a. Dr. XXX, he actually resurfaced in video games, including Mickey Mania and the Epic miniseries, introducing this villain, I guess, to a whole new generation.

[00:57:14] [SPEAKER_06] Nice.

[00:57:15] [SPEAKER_03] And another fascinating sort of detail is that the original 1933 cartoon is generally considered to be in the public domain of the United States. So it wasn't properly, the copyright wasn't properly renewed under the rules that, like, I guess were applied at that time. And so it actually is under public domain.

[00:57:36] [SPEAKER_05] All right. We're making T-shirts of Dr. XXX, baby.

[00:57:40] [SPEAKER_03] There is a part where it's the sign on his door, like, the door to the castle.

[00:57:45] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah.

[00:57:45] [SPEAKER_03] Love it. And to be honest, my millennial brain has sort of a tough time paying attention to these Disney shorts. So I really wasn't sure how this would go with having to watch a short and a black and white one at that. But overall, I think that this cartoon is definitely worth the seven minutes of run time.

[00:58:02] [SPEAKER_05] Like, seven minutes is still too long for you.

[00:58:05] [SPEAKER_03] It is.

[00:58:05] [SPEAKER_05] Like, I fell asleep twice and then...

[00:58:07] [SPEAKER_03] But I got through it. Yeah, but this one was actually really good. Like, okay, for instance, like the Dancing Skeleton one.

[00:58:16] [SPEAKER_05] Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:58:16] [SPEAKER_03] I think that's so boring. Like, it's cute for, like, 30 seconds and then I'm over it.

[00:58:20] [SPEAKER_05] It's, it's, yes, it is. Because it's cute for what it's doing and it's cool because it's very historic. Right. It's a very historic moment for the company and for animation and, like, it's like, that doesn't happen. Like, these, that's never happened before kind of thing.

[00:58:36] [SPEAKER_03] And I kind of thought the same thing would happen with these. Yeah. But this one was actually really good.

[00:58:40] [SPEAKER_05] It was engaging.

[00:58:41] [SPEAKER_03] It was. Like, it kept me engaged for a whole seven minutes.

[00:58:45] [SPEAKER_05] That's a feat in and of itself.

[00:58:46] [SPEAKER_03] I know. So, it was definitely creepy. And there were a few, like, additions in this that were, like, truly out of my nightmares. Like, there's this one point where Mickey is walking upstairs. It's actually kind of a cool thing. Every step he takes, like, the staircase, the stair thing, like, opens and there's a skeleton in there. Like, laying in there like it's a coffin.

[00:59:07] [SPEAKER_05] Mm-hmm.

[00:59:07] [SPEAKER_03] So, he goes up, like, seven stairs and so there's, like, seven.

[00:59:10] [SPEAKER_05] You know, what's funny? That makes an appearance in one of the things I'm going to talk about.

[00:59:13] [SPEAKER_03] Oh, interesting. Yeah. Well, and then he gets up to, like, maybe the seventh step or whatever. And then that skeleton, like, makes all the stairs go flat and Mickey falls back down. Like, he can't get to where he's going in this thing.

[00:59:27] [SPEAKER_06] That's clever.

[00:59:28] [SPEAKER_03] I'm like, that is, those are my dreams. Yeah.

[00:59:30] [SPEAKER_06] That's a dream thing for sure.

[00:59:31] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. So, I thought that was kind of cool. I would definitely recommend this one. It's on, this one was not on Disney+, but it was really easy to find on YouTube. Yeah. Definitely worth the watch, although maybe not with super young kids because, you know, it was a little bit creepy. And then my final one is one that I think we may have talked on this show before. Once I watched it, I was like, this is a little bit familiar, but it's called Trick or Treat and it's from 1956.

[01:00:01] [SPEAKER_03] Hmm. Now, I learned from The Mad Doctor, which I just talked about, how scary the 30s were.

[01:00:08] [SPEAKER_05] Sure.

[01:00:08] [SPEAKER_03] Because they're whacked out, but I was not prepared for how mean the 50s were.

[01:00:14] [SPEAKER_06] Hmm.

[01:00:15] [SPEAKER_03] So, this is directed by Jack Hanna and produced by Walt Disney, and this short follows Huey, Dewey, and Louie as they head out trick-or-treating on Halloween night. Dressed in their costumes, a devil, a warlock. Wait, is a warlock like a male witch? Yeah. Okay, yes. Then I got that right. A devil, a warlock, and a ghost, the three boys arrive at their Uncle Donald's house expecting the usual Halloween treats. You know, ding dong, trick-or-treat.

[01:00:40] [SPEAKER_03] But instead of giving his nephews candy, Donald hands them each firecrackers. He puts firecrackers in each of their bags, which explode in their trick-or-treat bags.

[01:00:51] [SPEAKER_05] That's good.

[01:00:52] [SPEAKER_03] And then as if that weren't enough, he then follows up by dumping water on them in their costumes.

[01:00:58] [SPEAKER_05] Well, so that's the trick part, right? And if you remember back to my thing about the origins of Halloween, the mischief night up until like the 50s, people were throwing rocks at windows and lighting. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, they were- It was mean. They were gags, man. It was just a joke. It's funny. All your candy exploded everywhere, and you're deaf, and you're probably scared now, but it's fine. It's a joke.

[01:01:23] [SPEAKER_03] They don't have any hands either. Yeah.

[01:01:24] [SPEAKER_05] Like, those tricks were really mischievous and kind of, you know, crappy. Yeah.

[01:01:30] [SPEAKER_03] It's not cool. And then, of course, Donald's laughing the whole time. Of course. And the boys look really sad. But what Donald doesn't realize is that there's a witch that has actually been watching this whole thing. She's been kind of flying around.

[01:01:42] [SPEAKER_05] Of course, dude. What are they ever doing?

[01:01:43] [SPEAKER_03] First, she was looking at the boys, and she seemed mischievous. I thought she was going to be the villain. But she actually feels sorry for the boys, and so the witch teams up with the nephews and uses her magic to make Donald's Halloween miserable.

[01:01:56] [SPEAKER_05] Oh, my God.

[01:01:57] [SPEAKER_03] So, one of the best sequences involves Donald swallowing a key to his candy cupboard, which, like, then you can't have it either, idiot.

[01:02:06] [SPEAKER_05] Well, he can in about two or three hours.

[01:02:07] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. And the witch then puts a spell on his feet, forcing him to dance and kick uncontrollably and eventually causes the key to dislodge from his body back out of his mouth.

[01:02:21] [SPEAKER_04] Was it stuck in his throat, or did he?

[01:02:23] [SPEAKER_03] I don't know. I mean, I think it was in his stomach or something.

[01:02:26] [SPEAKER_05] I think the digestive system of waterfowl is a little different. So, maybe it would sit in the upper stomach for a little bit.

[01:02:34] [SPEAKER_03] It could. She kind of, like, makes him dance over to this one thing, and it kind of almost, almost dislodges it, but then he holds it in his, fuck, don't have teeth, but his bill, I guess.

[01:02:42] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah.

[01:02:42] [SPEAKER_03] And then she makes him dance over to the fire, and the fire taps his butt, and then that was too much, and then he spits it out.

[01:02:49] [SPEAKER_05] Oh, man.

[01:02:50] [SPEAKER_03] But anyway, the theme song for this short is definitely recognizable, and I sent it to you.

[01:02:56] [SPEAKER_05] You did, didn't you?

[01:02:57] [SPEAKER_02] Trick or treat. Trick or treat. Trick or treat for Halloween. Better give a treat that's good to eat if you want to keep life serene. Trick or treat. Trick or treat. Trick or treat. Trick or treat. Trick or treat. The whole night through. Little scalawags with fiendish gags can make it tough on you. So when ghosts and goblins by the store, ring the bell on your front door. Better not be stingy, or your nightmare will come true.

[01:03:28] [SPEAKER_03] So I think we've all heard that before.

[01:03:30] [SPEAKER_05] Absolutely.

[01:03:30] [SPEAKER_03] I think we've played that on this. I don't remember why or when, but I've definitely heard that song before. Um, so it's called trick or treat for Halloween. It was written by David. Nope. It was written by Mac David, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston, and performed by the Mellow Men. Um, and this helps establish the Halloween atmosphere, and it is a playful warning about being stingy with trick or treaters.

[01:03:53] [SPEAKER_05] Do you know who the Mellow Men were?

[01:03:55] [SPEAKER_03] Nope.

[01:03:56] [SPEAKER_05] Eric, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Paul Freese part of the Mellow Men, and then they did the, um, Grim Grinning Go?

[01:04:05] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah. Yeah, and Thurl.

[01:04:07] [SPEAKER_03] Oh, okay.

[01:04:07] [SPEAKER_04] And...

[01:04:08] [SPEAKER_03] I knew it sounded familiar, and I probably should have looked it up, but I didn't. Yeah. Thurl, Ravencroft, and Max Smith.

[01:04:14] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah.

[01:04:15] [SPEAKER_03] Okay.

[01:04:15] Cool.

[01:04:15] [SPEAKER_05] There you go.

[01:04:16] [SPEAKER_03] There you go. That's good to know. Okay. Doing research on the fly.

[01:04:21] [SPEAKER_05] Love it. Yeah, that's what that is.

[01:04:22] [SPEAKER_03] Um, I would say that this short is solid. This is a solid short. It runs eight minutes. It has all the classic Disney elements. Um, and I will be totally honest. I couldn't understand a single word in the film. There are words that are being said.

[01:04:38] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

[01:04:39] [SPEAKER_03] Um, I could not understand. You can never understand Donald, so that's a given. Um, I could almost pick out a couple of words from Huey, Dewey, and Louie, um, and then the witch could not understand her. Like, I don't know what anybody said, but I could understand what was going on, and so that was fine. And I would say that, honestly, this little eight-minute, is a definitely Halloween classic for me. I liked it. Love it. Okay, great. Those are my three that I had never seen,

[01:05:06] [SPEAKER_03] and I thought that they were all actually pretty cool.

[01:05:10] [SPEAKER_05] Excellent. Very good. All right, we're going to take a break, folks. We're going to take a well-deserved break. We're going to come back. Eric has some stuff, and then I have some stuff, and then we're going to get out of here. This is our Halloween show. So hang on, everyone. It's ears up. Don't be scared away, or something like that.

[01:05:25] [SPEAKER_06] Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo.

[01:05:29] [SPEAKER_05] Back to Ears Up, where the opinions never stop. Ever. All right, thanks for hanging on, everybody. We're back with a Halloween episode. Taren is gone to do mom stuff.

[01:05:44] [SPEAKER_04] It's just the boys now. All right. Let's talk more about that Dr. Trip. Yes.

[01:05:50] [SPEAKER_05] That's what I was saying. What do you think he's... How do you think you got his name? That is weird, man. I mean, I'm sure it wasn't... See, I'm actually not sure it wasn't something weird and sexual, too, because, like, you know, they're male animators in the 30s. You know, I don't know. I feel like those gags... I'm listening to this really great podcast called A History of Rock in 500 Songs.

[01:06:20] [SPEAKER_05] Huh. It's that... I mean, I love history. I love music. So it's like, oh, this is great. It's by Andrew Hickey. He's an English dude. English bloke. To be completely honest, it's hard to listen to because he's so slow. He talks so...

[01:06:40] Like...

[01:06:41] [SPEAKER_05] Brother, come on, dude. I mean, are we stretching it out to 26 minutes? Like, it's just... Because the... It sounds like Stevie from friggin' Malcolm in the Middle sometime. Oh, no. But it's thoroughly well-researched. He does a fantastic job breaking everything down and kind of, like, attributing a lot of, you know, early innovations in music and, you know, rhythm and blues and, you know, whatever to, you know, the appropriate artists. And anyway,

[01:07:10] [SPEAKER_05] what was I... Oh, my God. Why did I start talking about that? I'm not sure. I lost the whole reason. I lost... Okay. I don't know why I brought that up, but there you go. That's a good pod to listen to, everybody. Anyway, Eric, why don't you talk about... Can we talk about your... Your cool, weird things that you like to watch during Halloween

[01:07:40] [SPEAKER_05] or at least maybe after this show because I have completely lost the plot on mine.

[01:07:46] [SPEAKER_04] Okay. Hey, that was a great segue right there. Thanks.

[01:07:49] [SPEAKER_05] I'll keep all that in, too.

[01:07:51] [SPEAKER_04] Thanks for setting us up for the rest of the show. This is great.

[01:07:55] [SPEAKER_05] I'm a success setter-upper, baby.

[01:07:58] [SPEAKER_04] All right. Well, let's see. So the first one, the first... So I did three shorts because I didn't have as much... I didn't have a ton of time this morning, but it was fun to watch a good half hour of cartoons this morning. It reminded me of the... There you go. The good old days is when I'd wake up and watch DuckTales while eating cereal. There you go. And get ready for school. And the first one was one I've never even heard of, which is even weirder

[01:08:26] [SPEAKER_04] that it came out in 1995 and it's called Runaway Brain.

[01:08:32] [SPEAKER_05] Runaway Brain.

[01:08:33] [SPEAKER_04] I love this. Runaway Brain. All right. Let's see. So this is a Mickey Mouse short and in this one, it starts out with Mickey Mouse playing a video game. It's a fighting game. And he's... In the game, Dopey is fighting the evil queen. Okay. in her hag form

[01:09:02] [SPEAKER_04] and she's chucking poison apples at him. And he's really into it and Pluto's there and Mickey's house is a pigsty. This place is just wrecked.

[01:09:13] [SPEAKER_05] Classic gamer thing.

[01:09:15] [SPEAKER_04] Yes. Okay. But he is... The lights are out, his eyes are all bloodshot and weird. Nice, dude. And he's playing this game and like, even though it's hand-drawn animation, it's like pixelated. So some cool effects there. Okay. And not like full 8-bit, just kind of like exaggerated pixelated stuff. All right. And you, when they cut back at one point and you realize

[01:09:44] [SPEAKER_04] at the bottom of the screen there are there are seven or there are six headstones of all the other dwarfs and Dopey's the last one left. Oh, man. So, Minnie busts into the house and she starts talking to Mickey and he's like, you're ruining my game and she's stepping in front of the TV and then Dopey dies and the seventh headstone pops up. So, right from the start we've got bloodshot eye Mickey and the seven dwarfs are dead in a video game.

[01:10:14] [SPEAKER_04] Jeez. Conflict. Right. Friggin' Minnie. God, dude. Can't you let a guy

[01:10:20] [SPEAKER_05] just relax?

[01:10:22] [SPEAKER_04] So, Minnie is there because they're supposed to go on a date for their anniversary and Mickey has forgotten.

[01:10:30] [SPEAKER_05] How many, how many times has that been the plot for a Mickey and Minnie cartoon?

[01:10:37] [SPEAKER_04] I feel like several. Yeah. Definitely every era of Mickey. I'm pretty sure they had another one in the more, in the Paul Rudish shorts in the last decade and pretty much any other cartoon or sitcom ever. Yeah. I really thought it was going to be difficult to remember my anniversary when I got married.

[01:11:01] [SPEAKER_05] dude, isn't that the thing where you're like, you're sort of conditioned by Hollywood to be like, oh, the guy never remembers because guy's stupid. Guy only interested in car and food and sport.

[01:11:15] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah. I mean, I can't remember an awful lot of dates, but I do seem to remember my anniversary. Maybe I was conditioned. Maybe sitcoms prepared us for this. Ah, yes. We were like,

[01:11:27] [SPEAKER_05] that's not going to be us. It's reversed psychologically.

[01:11:31] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah. All right. Right. Exactly. Well, because Mickey has forgotten, he tries to cover up and he grabs a newspaper off the floor because his house is a sty and he sees an ad for mini golf and he goes, oh, mini, mini golf. Hey, this is great. And so he holds up the newspaper and says, look, I found the perfect thing for us to do and Minnie gets all excited because the bottom half of that page is an

[01:12:01] [SPEAKER_04] ad for a trip to Hawaii that only costs $999.99 for two people.

[01:12:08] [SPEAKER_02] Wow.

[01:12:10] [SPEAKER_04] Right. And when she says, oh, that's so romantic, I love it, Mickey, of course, can't back up and go, no, I totally forgot and I meant mini golf. So he decides he needs to get $1,000 real fast. So he uses that newspaper and he finds an ad for precisely $999.99 for an experiment. And he goes to a very

[01:12:40] [SPEAKER_04] haunted looking place and goes inside and finds Dr. Frankinale, who is a very thin ape scientist and he is voiced by Kelsey Grammer.

[01:12:54] Oh,

[01:12:54] [SPEAKER_04] nice. Yeah. All right. And so he very quickly straps Mickey into a chair and says that what he needs to do is swap his brain with that of his creation, a very large creature named Julius. Julius is basically Pete. Goofy's nemesis Pete. Oh, and Mickey's nemesis Pete. Yeah. But he's huge and he looks like Frankenstein's monster.

[01:13:19] [SPEAKER_05] Nice, dude.

[01:13:22] [SPEAKER_04] So Dr. Frankinale does this. He flips a switch and there's electricity and their brains swap and in the process the machine blows up and you see that Dr. Frankinale has been killed and turned to ash.

[01:13:39] [SPEAKER_05] Oh, man. Isn't that always the way, dude?

[01:13:41] [SPEAKER_04] Right. So Mickey's inside Pete and he reaches over and the entire skeleton falls apart and everything. And there you go. But Mickey's body is this feral creature still voiced by the guy who voices Pete. Well, actually voiced by Jim Cummings. I don't think always does Pete, but was doing it in this one. And yeah, so they set off on a chase because

[01:14:12] [SPEAKER_04] Julius is now aggressive and finds this picture of Minnie in Mickey's wallet. The other picture in Mickey's wallet is of Steamboat Willie and Mickey goes, oh, that's an old one. Jeez,

[01:14:30] dude.

[01:14:30] [SPEAKER_04] This thing is packed with Easter eggs.

[01:14:33] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, little gags here and there. Oh, yeah, all over the place.

[01:14:36] [SPEAKER_04] And so the, you know, messed up Mickey goes running off to find Minnie. He's in love. And Mickey goes running off after him in Julius's body. They crash through town. They smash up a bunch of buildings. They find Minnie. Mickey has his own voice inside Julius's body. So Minnie believes him and they go running off together to get away from the monster. And after

[01:15:05] [SPEAKER_04] funny things, they end up, um, both of them fall onto a power line and get shocked and their brains switch back.

[01:15:14] [SPEAKER_05] Oh, love the switcheroo back, dude.

[01:15:17] [SPEAKER_04] Right. And then Minnie accidentally pushes Julius off of the building that they're on top of and he gets wrapped up in a rope and he becomes a like big yo-yo as he bounces up and down from from the rope that wrapped around him. And then the short ends as they're sailing off to Hawaii, they're in a like tiny boat, but they've strapped Julius to the front of it with a picture of Minnie on, on a, uh, fishing pole

[01:15:47] [SPEAKER_04] in front of him. So he's swimming them to Hawaii at the end.

[01:15:50] [SPEAKER_02] Okay.

[01:15:51] [SPEAKER_04] Classic. So it's very fast. I mean, it's still a normal, like seven or eight minutes in length, but there's a lot of stuff that they pack in there. It's a lot of, you know, antics around town. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's a little weird. Like the whole thing, the color palette is very muted.

[01:16:09] [SPEAKER_06] Hmm.

[01:16:10] [SPEAKER_04] And I couldn't tell if it was the particular transfer that I watched because it said it was like restored, but then I watched a couple others on YouTube and they all had kind of the same thing. Yeah, it's that 90s animation style, but plenty of like stretchy, you know, cartoons where, where action, you know, they fall off a building and first the legs go and traditional throwback style animation.

[01:16:35] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah.

[01:16:36] [SPEAKER_04] Uh, some things that were Easter eggs. The, the mad scientists places at 1313 Lobotomy Lane. Okay. Um, he's named Dr. Frank and Ollie is a tribute to Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. Ah. Two of the, two of the nine old men.

[01:16:58] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:17:00] [SPEAKER_04] Julius is a reference to Julius the Cat, a character from Walt's on Alice comedies.

[01:17:05] [SPEAKER_05] Gee, that's a deep cut, man.

[01:17:08] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah. At that point,

[01:17:10] [SPEAKER_05] don't even put that in. I just, it's just weird that to me, those are those kind of like Easter eggs that just seem super performative.

[01:17:20] [SPEAKER_04] Oh yeah.

[01:17:20] [SPEAKER_05] Just to say it, just to say you did it. Like, it's like, like, like writing, like making a mention in a news article, just so you can hyperlink this old ass story, you know, from a blog you wrote 20 years ago. You wrote, yeah.

[01:17:32] [SPEAKER_04] I had to look that one up because I'm like, there's got to be some reason why they named him Julius instead of just Pete. Right, right. Zazu from The Lion King is in, is in the background a few times, just there. Okay. Yeah, this is a little bit of a controversial short, so similar to Terran's, there's a weird, weird, there was a weird

[01:18:02] [SPEAKER_04] kind of backlash because Mickey was not standard. He wasn't the super happy paragon of virtue and truth and niceness that you get in the 90s with Mickey, so it wasn't, it wasn't the average Joe watching and going, that's not Mickey, it was executives who were getting pissed off and watching this thing go through production, it's pretty much ready to go and they're upset

[01:18:32] [SPEAKER_04] that Mickey, when his brain gets swapped, is feral and has nasty teeth and he's slobbering and he's growling and running around and they didn't like that, so they had to go back and remove little bits where they had close-ups of his face and try to make him less scary. God,

[01:18:54] [SPEAKER_05] yeah, I mean, I guess they're trying to protect the, you know, the IP or whatever, but just get over it, man. Sometimes things can be cool.

[01:19:04] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah, yeah, I mean, and it was fun. I liked this. This was a good one. It did feel a little frantically paced, but that's okay. It would keep tearing the tension.

[01:19:15] [SPEAKER_05] Well, maybe. I mean, yeah, it's a short, you know, what are you gonna do?

[01:19:19] [SPEAKER_04] Right, and it was nominated for best animated short film in the 96 Oscars, but it lost to Wallace and Gromit's close shave.

[01:19:27] [SPEAKER_05] Classic, another classic. Yeah.

[01:19:31] [SPEAKER_04] It was released in theaters before a kid in King Arthur's Court. Yeah, okay. And was also released in 97 before George of the Jungle.

[01:19:42] [SPEAKER_05] Huh. Okay, so nice they played it twice, man.

[01:19:45] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah, and it has been on a couple of DVD shorts releases. All right. So, fun. Would recommend. Go for it. Nice. And you can find it's, you'll find a lot, avoid anything that says the banned cartoon Disney doesn't want you to see because that's just stupid crap about they just want you to watch their video. Yeah, basically. There are a few just watch the video. It came

[01:20:15] [SPEAKER_04] off a DVD or a VHS or something. Well, it's gotta be DVD because it looks pretty good. Nice. Next up, unless you want to swap here. I don't know, do you want to

[01:20:26] [SPEAKER_05] swap or you want to break? We can swap. I don't mind swapping. Okay, the first one I have, actually, you know what I should probably do is I found this list of official Disney horror and Halloween movies on IMDb and it's like just weird stuff that I've never heard of. Duck pimples, Mickey's Mechanical Man, you know, there's weenie I've heard of, but like, you know, the gorilla mystery. It's just

[01:20:56] [SPEAKER_05] the weirdest crap you've ever like. The titles are just so bizarre.

[01:21:00] [SPEAKER_04] Some of these I only know because of that story I did a few episodes or a few months ago about all of the shorts that have become public domain.

[01:21:09] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah, Mr. But girl versus monster, right? The scream team under wraps, invisible system. It's just a bunch of weird stuff, right? So I found this on that list and I was watching a few things to see what I wanted to talk about. And this one caught my eye. It's called Disney Singalong Happy Hauntings. Now, Disney did like a singalong kind of series for a while in

[01:21:38] [SPEAKER_05] the mid to late 90s. And this one was about kids going to the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland to have a singalong Halloween party. So of course I had to watch it because I wanted that sweet extra footage, you know, of like late 90s Haunted Mansion, right? And so it opens, first of all, it opens with six minutes of frigging commercials. Commercials for what's coming soon to Disney Home Video Cassette. You know, Winnie the Pooh's

[01:22:08] [SPEAKER_05] Huffleup movie starring Professor Triple X in a role the Shibari enthusiasts will love. I don't know, it seems like weird, it was weird. Here's how it's described. Children as young as two will have a ball when Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Daisy and other favorite Disney friends throw a party inside Disneyland's Haunted Mansion. There's plenty to do, pumpkin carving, bobbing for apples, cooking with Goofy, even trick-or-treating

[01:22:37] [SPEAKER_05] in Toontown. But most of all, there'll be lots of singing and dancing to silly, spooky songs of the season. So, and that's basically what it is. Mickey and Minnie are waving the kids and they're running up the direct path right to the Haunted Mansion. I'm like, wow, this is gonna be sweet. We're gonna see inside Haunted Mansion to be great. Curious to see what happens. It is not inside the Haunted Mansion. It is an entirely different set. It looks kind of like a colorized version of the Addams family or something. There's like

[01:23:06] [SPEAKER_05] oriental rugs and kind of wood paneling, so it looks like a Haunted Mansion-y thing.

[01:23:12] [SPEAKER_04] It's Mansion-y,

[01:23:13] [SPEAKER_05] but it's not, right? And so they have Mickey and Minnie, and then there are costumes. There's a wolfman, and a mummy, and a creep, and there's a bunch of kids running around, and there's songs. Here's a song. Here's one of the songs. I don't have the names for these things because they didn't say what they were, but here's one of the songs.

[01:24:05] [SPEAKER_00] You get the

[01:24:24] [SPEAKER_05] idea. It almost looks more like Tower of Terror than anything.

[01:24:28] [SPEAKER_04] That's a good point. Yeah, that could be an elevator back.

[01:24:31] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, it's just, it's, I mean, they, you know, they did a good job, I guess, but like, it's not the Haunted Mansion, and everyone's being real weird about it.

[01:24:42] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah.

[01:24:42] [SPEAKER_05] But that's okay. And hey,

[01:24:43] [SPEAKER_04] there aren't a lot of things that rhyme with candy, but dandy is a pretty good one. It's not

[01:24:47] [SPEAKER_05] bad, but like, I question the going on a pumpkin hunt.

[01:24:54] [SPEAKER_04] Is that a thing? I never heard of that. Sure, it's what happens when you don't find all the eggs. They grow up into pumpkins.

[01:25:01] [SPEAKER_05] That's true. Man, I forgot about that. And there is somewhat of a plot like, there's a kind of a narrator who turns out to be the magic mirror voice, you know, the voice in the magic mirror from Snow White or whatever. Snow White? Oh, okay. And he's like directing the kids like, now go and, you know, hang up ghost pictures on the walls and the curtains and they go upstairs for costume times and then they go upstairs and they get costumes and

[01:25:31] [SPEAKER_05] it's a whole thing. There's a plot to it. Well,

[01:25:34] [SPEAKER_04] that's cool. I mean, there's some these sing-along videos always had, like, I don't remember watching them too much but I remember seeing them in the video store all the time and I was always kind of like interested, kind of attracted to the idea of seeing them because it was the characters from the parks and that's kind of cool.

[01:25:55] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, well, and especially now because you can get, you know, little, it's like the nostalgia time capsule of like, what did Toontown look like in 1996 or 1998 or whatever? Oh, kind of the same but not really, you know, but they don't really show you, it's not like what I would want to see, it's like flashes of it, you know, because the camera moves and they got to maintain the pacing but it's still kind of fun. Here's another song and now this one is sort of almost like a music video where it's taking,

[01:26:25] [SPEAKER_05] clips of other kind of like Halloween themed Disney stuff and putting them to, you know, to one of these sounds. So in the one you just saw now, there's the kids dancing and all the costumes and there's, I think, Scrooge McDuck back there and, you know, there's the wolfman and the mummy and whatever and they're all dancing and singing and stuff.

[01:26:45] [SPEAKER_04] Dracula's got a pretty, pretty dope cape there.

[01:26:49] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, dude, he's like doing a head montage of like other animated stuff and in there is that the specific thing that Taryn was talking about in her segment where the Mickey was going up the steps and the skeletons come out of the steps like coffins.

[01:27:33] [SPEAKER_00] I mean,

[01:27:52] [SPEAKER_05] it's almost kind of like if it was just a couple more BPMs, it'd be almost like a ska song. You just need to, you know, pick it up, pick it up. Grim, Grim, Grim Ghost, pick it up, pick it up. Anyway, that's the kind of stuff that you'll be getting from Disney sing-along haunted, happy hauntings.

[01:28:12] [SPEAKER_04] All right.

[01:28:13] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. Here, let me close this. Let me, oh, I shouldn't have closed it. Oh, well, I'll leave it for a second. So let me tell a little bit about this. It was directed by Greg Gold, the award-winning director of many, many wonderful music videos that anyone above a certain age will have definitely seen. So you have definitely seen at least some of Greg Gold's work. The music video for How Am I Supposed to Live Without You by Kenny G.

[01:28:43] [SPEAKER_05] The music video for New Attitude by Patti LaBelle. The music video from the movie Dirty Dancing to I've Had the Time of My Life. Okay. And then, of course, Put Your Mouth on Me by Eddie Murphy.

[01:29:01] [SPEAKER_04] From his brilliant music career.

[01:29:03] [SPEAKER_05] He had one album, and this was the music, he did the music, this guy did the music video for it. Wow. So this Disney Sing-Along Happy Haunting was co-written by Charles Schneider, who has done what looks like mostly B-film work, but he did some writing on a couple of the modern Tom and Jerry stuff in the 2010s or whatever. Perhaps his biggest role, or the one that's coolest, I guess, was the uncredited hanging man

[01:29:33] [SPEAKER_05] from Beetlejuice as an actor. I think it's the guy on the noose that doesn't move and just drops papers to people below in the afterlife, like when the Maitlands are walking through, and you see the guy just on a rail or whatever hanging, and he just has a piece of paper in his hand, and he lets it go, and one of the ladies catches it and reads it or whatever. I think that's this guy. I think it's the director of this thing, because he did some B-acting work, and he's

[01:30:02] [SPEAKER_05] uncredited as the hanging man in Beetlejuice, and I think that's him, which I think is kind of neat, honestly. Only one kid seems to have made it out of this production with a career intact, and that is a guy called Tyler Hochlin. In 2003, he played Martin Brewer in 62 episodes of Seventh Heaven. In 2011, he was Derek Hale in TV's Teen Wolf series for 63 episodes, which is a pretty good series to be honest with you. Then he went on a run of

[01:30:31] [SPEAKER_05] playing Clark Kent slash Superman on things like The Flash, Supergirl, Batwoman, and then finally landing his own show, Superman and Lois, in 2001, where he is currently parked. So if you've seen any of those, you've seen little Tyler Hochlin dancing around singing with Mickey and Minnie.

[01:30:51] [SPEAKER_04] Wow. Well, he made it pretty well there. He did it. That's good.

[01:30:55] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, man. You know, not many of these people do. All right, Eric, give it to me.

[01:31:00] [SPEAKER_04] What do we got next? We've got a slightly more contemporary show. Short, that's the word I'm looking for. Yeah. This one is Mater and the ghost light.

[01:31:17] [SPEAKER_05] I didn't picture you as like a Mater guy. So this is surprising for me.

[01:31:22] [SPEAKER_04] Well, I haven't watched any of the Mater shorts and we just did an episode about Mater's Junkyard Jamboree versus Alien Swirling Saucers on the Supreme Resort. God,

[01:31:36] [SPEAKER_05] which one won or should I can't tell you? It hasn't

[01:31:39] [SPEAKER_04] come out yet. It comes out on it'll be out this weekend.

[01:31:43] [SPEAKER_05] Okay, out this weekend. Supreme Resort, baby, check it out.

[01:31:46] [SPEAKER_04] Supreme Resort. So yeah, shameless plug, that's why I picked this one. You know what? I have one of those two. Don't worry about it. Nice, nice. Well, yeah, so, but yeah, I've never seen any of these and hey, why not? And this one was pretty good. Mater, in this one, Radiator Springs is of course the setting and it's just after the first movie. Mater is playing practical jokes on everybody

[01:32:16] [SPEAKER_04] and he's annoying everybody with his practical jokes because they're, you know, it's Mater. Sure. They're annoying and so they get upset with him and when he, you know, when he, when Mater starts joking about a thing called the ghost light, a ghost on Route 66, the other cars,

[01:32:47] [SPEAKER_04] the other cars tell him it might be real and they, you know, he kind of goes, starts heading out and a glowing light appears in the darkness and starts chasing him. it turns out that, uh, that Lightning McQueen and Guido, um, got upset at Mater and Joe, you know, pranked him back by putting a lantern on his tow cable.

[01:33:14] [SPEAKER_05] Oh, Mater, when are you gonna learn? Everywhere he

[01:33:17] [SPEAKER_04] goes, the ghost is following him. Ugh. And when he, uh, when he finally finds out the trick, he, uh, he, uh, you know, he kind of confronts everybody and they're all laughing. It's all a great time. And Doc Hudson, the only car who dies in the course of these movies, he's still alive in this one, everybody, in case you're wondering. He mentions that there's another, another creature called the screaming banshee out on the roads

[01:33:47] [SPEAKER_04] of the, the road of Route 66. And, uh, Mater doesn't believe it's real now that he's been pranked before. And the light flashes and you see this horrific, uh, creature made out of car parts behind, uh, behind Mater and he doesn't notice it and everybody else does and it's a gag. Um, but yeah, it's, it's this giant truck or tractor with like

[01:34:17] [SPEAKER_04] the kind of wheels that like pound down dirt, like the one, the ones with the big like steel studs on them. Oh yeah. It's got a, it's got a backhoe for one hand and a, you know, a hook, like a toe hook is the other hand. Wow. Yeah. It's, it's big. One of its eyes is smashed out and it, it's cool. It's just a fun little gag and there we go.

[01:34:39] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah.

[01:34:40] [SPEAKER_04] Uh, yeah, it's, it's just, uh, you know, that, that's basically voices are there. It's all the people playing, playing their parts. So that's also nice. There are lots of references to, to the cars, movies, and nothing, nothing particularly amazing. It's like, oh yeah, the firetruck's watering flowers again. And Mater steals one of

[01:35:10] [SPEAKER_04] the flowers while, and keeps moving it while he's trying to water. What a great prank.

[01:35:17] [SPEAKER_05] classic Mater stuff, dude.

[01:35:20] [SPEAKER_04] Right, right. Uh, what is, uh, apparently, so apparently they, there have been, uh, legends of the ghost light on route 66. This is something that, that happened, um, that, uh, the directors kind of happened across when they were doing research for the cars movies. They drove along route 66 and talked to random people and shops and, you know, stopped in little towns along the way, much like Radiator Springs

[01:35:49] [SPEAKER_04] that were kind of left on the wayside when they put in the interstate system. And so they gathered a lot of stories, and one of them was near the border of Oklahoma, and, uh, the ghost light was a pretty common story around that area that they got from a few different places. So they decided for one of the shorts, they'd bring it in as a gag for Mater to, to play against. Huh. Uh, so of course this was directed by John Lasseter, everybody's favorite.

[01:36:21] [SPEAKER_04] Um, and, uh, there is a Brad Paisley song in it, Behind the Clouds. I don't know if that's a good Brad Paisley song or not, but it's, it's in there. It's in

[01:36:33] [SPEAKER_05] there. It sure

[01:36:34] [SPEAKER_04] is. Undeniable. And, let's see, it was released, the first release was with the Australian version, the Australian home video release of Cars. Cars.

[01:36:45] [SPEAKER_05] All right. I don't know

[01:36:47] [SPEAKER_04] why that's

[01:36:47] [SPEAKER_05] funny to me, but it is.

[01:36:49] [SPEAKER_04] It, it, I think it's odd that it just was released with, you know, in Australia first. Yeah. And then was put on a DVD release of Cars in America in, uh, later on in November of 2006. 2006. And it's been on a few different shorts collections. Um, really nothing, nothing crazy, um, uh, about the, the production, no controversies or anything like that. It's just fun little short and listen to the Supreme

[01:37:19] [SPEAKER_04] Resort. Please do, please do both of those things.

[01:37:23] [SPEAKER_05] All right. Love it. Well, like you, I picked something that we've covered before on another show called the Buena Vista Boys, in case anybody's never heard of it. Uh, but this movie is, yeah, I think it, while it's not overtly a horror movie, I think it does get labeled as that, or at least a scary, God damn it, my thing keeps breaking.

[01:37:44] [SPEAKER_04] Ugh. That's why I don't use that type of pop filter anymore. It never stays put.

[01:37:51] [SPEAKER_05] It never does. And I always have to throw it. And so, yeah, so now I'm going to sound a little extra poppy, but sorry, guys. Um, this, this movie is called the black hole and it's, it's, I wouldn't call it creepy or scary or whatever, but a lot of people who remember it go, oh yeah, that creeped me out. But then you watch it and it's like, it's just really kind of lame. Uh, it was, uh, it was, uh, hold on. It opened in 1979 and it was often billed as Disney's answer to

[01:38:20] [SPEAKER_05] Star Wars. The black hole deserves to stand and then trip over its laces all on its own. Now, we just covered this over on the Buena Vista Boys, so if you want an in-depth breakdown of it all, you can go search that episode out. But basically, the black hole is about one spaceship finding another spaceship in space, hovering near a black hole, and that one spaceship wants to go in it. That's kind of the gist of what's going on, really. This movie was a bit of a mess.

[01:38:50] [SPEAKER_05] Over its lifetime in pre-production, starting in 1974, when the idea of a space disaster movie began floating around Disney, the final project had seen seven writers take a crack at it. The controversial, bizarre ending wasn't even written by the start of production and was only finished weeks before filming wrapped. So these people shot three quarters or 80% of a movie and they had no ending written while they were doing it. So there was nothing to work.

[01:39:20] [SPEAKER_04] That makes a lot of sense.

[01:39:21] [SPEAKER_05] It makes a lot of sense, right?

[01:39:22] [SPEAKER_04] I've seen that movie so many times.

[01:39:24] [SPEAKER_05] But what it did do was launch new ways of making movies and burgeoning new technologies, including a fancy computer called Aces. The automatic camera effects system is the industry's first truly computer-operated camera system to be applied to film production. It consists of a servo controlled camera, carriage and dolly, model stand, process projector and other ancillary devices which can be moved through a complex

[01:39:54] [SPEAKER_05] continuous or stop motion shot with exact repeatability. So it made these shots that you can do maybe in camera so you have one thing on the left screen, one thing on the right screen. You can make camera movement to capture one. It'll reset and make the exact camera movement a second time allowing you to have these dual images if you needed to and stuff like that. And obviously they use it for stop motion so you didn't have to really do anything. You can just capture everything

[01:40:24] [SPEAKER_05] without having to touch the camera and reset it and measure and whatever. So that was the first movie to use something like this. They developed it specifically for the black hole. It was also Disney's first PG on purpose film because it used words like hell and damn. Damn. I don't know, man. You got to be careful with that kind of stuff.

[01:40:46] [SPEAKER_04] Wow. Oh, no, it's corrupted me already.

[01:40:50] [SPEAKER_05] One of the roles was played by an actress. I did not note her name, but her role is of Dr. McRae. Okay. She's like a psychic or whatever. And she was fine. She did fine. Her character was kind of lame, but she did pretty good job. Apparently Sigourney Weaver was up for that role, but Disney's casting chief thought that her name would be too unattractive for the movie theater marquee. So she was passed over for it.

[01:41:18] [SPEAKER_04] Too many letters.

[01:41:20] [SPEAKER_05] And then before this movie came out, Alien came out in 1979 and obviously launched her career. So talk about dodging a bullet because this movie, the black hole is a mess, bro. It is not a movie that is easy to follow or interesting at all in any way. There's a lot of great art that goes behind it, and there's a couple good acting moments in there. Peter Ellenshaw, who's a classic Disney

[01:41:49] [SPEAKER_05] background painter, Matt painter, did a lot of work. And so there's a lot to be said about this movie that's good. But he had seven different writers on this project, one after the other, and at least two different directors. It's just nobody knows what's going on with it. And it's very, very obvious in the way that the movie unfolds.

[01:42:11] [SPEAKER_04] Oh, gosh, yeah.

[01:42:13] [SPEAKER_05] So the director is Gary Nelson. He's the one who finally, you know, I guess, got saddled with it, for lack of a better term. And as I was mentioning

[01:42:22] [SPEAKER_04] together,

[01:42:22] [SPEAKER_05] yeah, and I was mentioning in the intro, a lot of these movie directors who got pulled into Disney from, you know, the 50s and 60s and 70s or whatever came from TV. And so Gary Nelson did a lot of TV. He did episodes of Gun Will Travel, Andy Griffith show, Gunsmoke, Gilligan's Island, Get Smart, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Right? He just did a bunch of TV. And, you know, I don't know if it shows or not.

[01:42:52] [SPEAKER_05] He also, the actor, or excuse me, the director, Gary Nelson, also makes a brief uncredited cameo as the drone who has its faceplate removed by Dr. Durant, who is played by Anthony Hopkins. Not Anthony Hopkins, Jesus. You know who it is, don't you?

[01:43:12] [SPEAKER_04] Well, now I, um, come on,

[01:43:15] [SPEAKER_05] you son of a bitch. God, your brain is so stupid and old. The guy who played psycho, Anthony Perkins.

[01:43:25] [SPEAKER_04] That's, I know, that's why I should know this, and you said Anthony Hopkins, and he's all I can think about.

[01:43:32] [SPEAKER_05] Anthony Perkins, right?

[01:43:34] [SPEAKER_04] Perkins. Yeah. There we go.

[01:43:35] [SPEAKER_05] So the director put himself in the movie, you know, a la Quentin Tarantino, but actually did a good job. But anyway, that's the black hole. It is not, it is not, uh, Disney's answer to Star Wars. That's what I have always heard too, but this movie was in production essentially since 1974. A lot of the sets were designed already previous to Star Wars being, uh, being, you know, debuted in 77. So like Peter Ellenshaw was doing an interview. He's like, no, I've, I designed these things way before Star Wars even came out. So it just happens to be

[01:44:05] [SPEAKER_05] very similar in some regard, but, you know, also very, very different. Um, slim pickings makes a good voiceover appearance in here as a, as a beat up robot. And it, and it made me think of Mater because, you know, slim pickings in this, I mean, he has a countrified accent anyways, but in this one, gee gum, he sure does talk like a stupid idiot because he got beat up as a robot. He got abused by Star, uh, because he beat him in a, in a vidya game. And so therefore,

[01:44:34] [SPEAKER_05] I don't even really know. Gosh darn it.

[01:44:37] [SPEAKER_04] He's got these big cartoony eyes. Yeah.

[01:44:41] [SPEAKER_05] And it just, it reminds me of Mater where it's like this stupid things are country accents, you know, I don't know about Tomator. You know, you order. All right. That's my second one. The black hole definitely worth a watch just because technically it's a good movie. Um, and if you watch it, let me know what you think of the ending is all about. Cause it is a bizarre ending.

[01:45:05] [SPEAKER_04] Oh, I've, I've watched. Yeah. I I've seen it. Uh,

[01:45:10] [SPEAKER_05] it's wild, but it, it, I think it does fit the vibe, the aesthetic of kind of a Halloween, a Halloween, a Halloween, um, kind of viewing party. You know, you can put it on, you don't have to watch it, but it's on, you know, kind of some nice aesthetics going on.

[01:45:27] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah, definitely. Definitely nice to look at. Yeah. All right. Number three for me, we're going to go, we're, we're also going to go old school here into the public domain realm. Um, this is Hell's Bells from 1929. Oh, man. Yeah, this one is available on YouTube and on Wikimedia Commons. Okay. Because it's free now. And, uh,

[01:45:57] [SPEAKER_04] yeah, this one begins in, in hell. Like you, like you expect in a lot of these cartoons from the 20s, the earliest stuff in the 20s and 30s. It's bizarre. There's a lot of weird stuff going on and the whole thing is just designed to have a bunch of gags. Um, it, it's not terribly, it doesn't have a huge amount of plot. There's a little bit of plot, kind of like Taryn was saying, where, where hers actually had

[01:46:27] [SPEAKER_04] Mickey doing something instead of just being a mischievous little, little jerk. Um, but Mickey's not in this one. that's because this is a silly symphony. Um, silly symphonies of course being the, uh, the, the other, so we had the Mickey shorts and then we had all these silly symphonies that went along around the same time where they would try out all these advanced techniques like sound and movies. Wait a minute,

[01:46:57] [SPEAKER_04] hold on, what? Yeah, and then color and all, all of that. So this one is, it's kind of in the middle of a lot of things. It's, uh, it's just weird. Um, but it's got basically all, all of this is set to, to music and, and synchronized with it, uh, with all the movements and gags and everything. So we begin in hell with, uh, lots of bats and spiders and demons

[01:47:26] [SPEAKER_04] running around. There, there's music and they're dancing because that's what you do in hell in a cartoon in hell. Yeah. Satan's watching everything going on. He's a big devil looking devil. Yeah. Makes, I guess, sense, I suppose. And, uh, there, some of the early gags are, are demons playing instruments using pieces of, like bones and pieces of skeletons and other

[01:47:56] [SPEAKER_04] weird looking things that they have found. uh, Satan wants something to drink. So his servants go to a weird dragon cow and they milk it. Uh, because what is it in these old shorts about cow udders? Like, these guys were, thought udders were hilarious. There's so many weird cow milking gags in these early cartoons. Yeah, that is interesting. That is a

[01:48:26] [SPEAKER_04] good point.

[01:48:26] [SPEAKER_05] I don't, I don't know. I don't know, man.

[01:48:28] [SPEAKER_04] I don't know that we want to end up where that could go. Uh, but yes, the dragon cow produces fiery milk and they bring it to Satan who, um, grabs a small demon and throws it at, at Cerberus, the three-headed dog from Greek mythology. And, uh, he tries to grab another demon and throw it to Cerberus and this demon gets away. So the rest of this short is Satan chasing this

[01:48:58] [SPEAKER_04] demon around the underworld. It ends after a bunch of gags and the, uh, uh, the demon ends up knocking Satan into, off of a cliff and into flames.

[01:49:11] [SPEAKER_05] He defeats Satan.

[01:49:13] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah, he defeats Satan. Wow, there we go, the end of Satan in 1929, folks. Right, right, that, and it's

[01:49:19] [SPEAKER_05] been great ever since. Yeah, everything's just, yeah, right? It's just, it's the end of, uh, Who Framed Roger Rabbit when Toontown spills in, you know, there's rainbows and birds and everyone's smiling. Darn you,

[01:49:31] [SPEAKER_04] smile.

[01:49:32] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah.

[01:49:33] [SPEAKER_04] Uh, so the cartoon finishes, fire, uh, envelops the screen, and there's the closing title. It's the end. Uh, some things that go along, lots of bouncing and bending and elongating animation as, as you do at the time. lots of rubbery hose arms and everything. Oh yeah, dude, yeah. Uh, there, there are some, some weird things that were kind of revolutionary at the time.

[01:50:03] [SPEAKER_04] Like one of the spiders just walks right at the screen and gets bigger. So like walking toward you. So there's a sense of depth instead of everything just kind of being in the background, like a, like a side scrolling video game. Right. And, uh, like I mentioned at the top there, it, it is interesting that there's a little bit of a plot and, uh, yeah, you've got this little demon that stands up to the devil. And, uh,

[01:50:33] [SPEAKER_04] it's, it's actually narrative in a cartoon instead of just, just things. Um, yeah, some other gags, a snake eats a bat, uh, and then it grows wings. Okay. It flies away. Hell sounds crazy, dude. Right, right. There's a, uh, a shadow that, while, let's see, so one of the, so like the shadows start dancing independent of their,

[01:51:02] [SPEAKER_04] of their demons and things like that. Lots of fun, just fun stuff. It's, it's definitely worth a watch. Seek it out. You'll find plenty, plenty of it. It was not hard to find. Um, this one was directed by Ub Iwerks. Walt Disney is listed as its, uh, its co-director, but that's probably just because Walt got his name on everything back then. Um, some of the old school animators, um, Wilfred Jackson

[01:51:32] [SPEAKER_04] and Les Clark were involved, and, uh, music was by Carl Stalling and the music was really, uh, it was some classic, um, classic music, um, like, uh, in the Hall of the Mountain King, uh, March of a Marionette, which is, you would recognize as the theme to, um, Alfred Hitch, Hitchcock presents. Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-da.

[01:52:01] [SPEAKER_05] Oh, okay, yeah.

[01:52:02] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah, and some other, some other songs that you would recognize as classical music that works out well and is kind of Halloween-y. It's not really a Halloween sort of thing, but hey, we're in hell, the devil runs around and crazy things happen.

[01:52:19] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

[01:52:20] [SPEAKER_04] Uh, it's, like I said earlier, it's not necessarily the most groundbreaking thing. Um, it reviews at the time just said, hey, come see the newest Silly Symphony. It's there. You can watch it.

[01:52:34] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, I don't think everything has to be groundbreaking to enjoy it, you know what I mean? If it has a good aesthetic and it fits the mood of the season, man, why not?

[01:52:42] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah, and it's fun. I keep saying it's fun. That's a great descriptor. There's a lot of, there's a lot of flame animation that looks pretty cool. And, yeah, just another one that you probably haven't seen because I, I had only, like I, it only came up when I was looking at those, that list of, of shorts a few months ago. Got it. Yeah, there you go. Love it.

[01:53:08] [SPEAKER_05] All right, man. Well, you know, um, on the backs of, uh, not being a groundbreaking one, I have a groundbreaking one kind of, it's the short released in 1982 called Vincent. I don't know if anybody's ever really heard about this. I think Tim Burton, like serious Tim Burton heads would probably, but for most people, I don't know that it's anything, um, anybody's ever heard of, but I hadn't seen it in, God, I don't know, 20 years or whatever. It's amazing. It holds up, dude. It holds up. It's so great. Yeah,

[01:53:38] [SPEAKER_05] let me tell you about it. It's a animation, animated stop motion short by Tim Burton based on a short poem that he wrote while toiling away in the depths of the Disney animation department, Disney executive Julie Hickson and head of creative development, Tom Wilhite were impressed with Tim Burton enough to help him fund 60 grand to make this short. Two months later, Vincent was created. It's only like a five minute, five and a half minute thing

[01:54:07] [SPEAKER_05] considered to be the first major use of claymation and the first use of both 2d and 3d animation together at the same time later perfected for films like nightmare before Christmas. While not Tim Burton's first short film, it was his first foray into stop motion. So the movie is basically this Vincent is a kid is a seven year old kid. He imagines himself in numerous scenarios inspired by Edgar Allin Poe and Vincent Price, both of whom had a severe effect on

[01:54:36] [SPEAKER_05] Tim Burton as a young child. He welcomes his aunt into his house while envisioning dipping her in hot wax for his wax museum, a callback to Price's House of Wax movie. He also imagines doing experiments on his dog, Abercrombie, including turning him into a zombie. This would later serve as the inspiration for Frankenweenie. At the end of the short, Vincent collapses on the floor in an imagined death scene. This ending was deemed too dark for Disney, who wanted Burton to end on a happier

[01:55:06] [SPEAKER_05] note. After Vincent, Burton would make Frankenweenie another short about a dead dog and was fired shortly thereafter for making content Disney deemed too dark to actually be seen by anyone. Burton was actually able to get Vincent Price to do the narration for this short, and of course he did a wonderful job. The pacing and emotion that Price is able to convey and transition from one sentence to the next is nothing short of amazing. I have a clip of it too. Yeah, here it is right here.

[01:55:36] [SPEAKER_05] So just the way that Vincent Price sets up the tone of, so, okay, if I didn't do such a good job, it's basically this character, seven year old boy Vincent, who imagines himself as Vincent Price. That's who he wants to be. And so he imagines all sorts of like, you know, dreary, it's like he listened to the Smiths and it just lives in a world of Edgar Allan Poe and like everything is just crazy and he's going insane and the, you know, he's like his wife is

[01:56:06] [SPEAKER_05] buried alive and he had to dig her up and it's just really his mom's like flowerbed. And so he's, he's very much like Calvin in that regard, you know, where he's like spaceman Spiff and then it just, and then reality kicks in like, oh yeah, I'm actually like doing something, whatever. Right. So, uh, the, the way that Vincent Price kind of portrays that energy and then instantly can just go into like, bring it down a little bit when his mom comes in, it's pretty good.

[01:56:34] [SPEAKER_01] He knew he'd been banished to the tower of doom where he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life alone with the portrait of his beautiful wife. While alone and insane encased in his tomb, Vincent's mother burst suddenly into the room. She said, if you want to, you can go out and play. It's sunny outside and a beautiful day.

[01:57:04] [SPEAKER_01] Vincent tried to talk, but he just couldn't speak. The years of isolation, it made him quite weak. So he took out some paper and scrawled with a pen. I am possessed by this house and can never leave it again. His mother said, you're not possessed and you're not almost dead. These games that you play are all in your head. You're not Vincent Price. You're Vincent Malloy. You're not tormented or

[01:57:34] [SPEAKER_01] insane. You're just a young boy. You're seven years old and you are my son. I want you to get outside and have some real fun. Her anger now spent, she walked out through the hall. And while Vincent backed slowly against the wall, the room started to sway to shiver and creak. His horrid insanity had reached its peak.

[01:57:55] [SPEAKER_05] I mean, just bring it up and then, and then down and then immediately right back up again. I know there's, it's editing involved, but just like the, the range that price had.

[01:58:05] [SPEAKER_04] Oh yeah.

[01:58:06] [SPEAKER_05] You always think of him as just that classic, the Vincent Price sound, but he can bring it down when he needed to. And it was just amazing.

[01:58:13] [SPEAKER_04] And wasn't this, what was this his last performance?

[01:58:18] [SPEAKER_05] I don't believe no, because, well, you know what? I don't know that to be honest with you. I don't know. I know that they, uh, him and Tim Burton like were buddies after this for like 10 years later. So I can't imagine that this is Vincent Price's last gig, but, um, you

[01:58:33] [SPEAKER_04] know, still it's cool that he got Vincent Price involved in this.

[01:58:36] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, and so talking about the poem and the pacing involved in, in what he wrote, Burton says, I think it probably had more to do with being inspired by Dr. Seuss. The rhythm of his stuff spoke to me very clearly. Dr. Seuss's books were perfect, right number of words, the right rhythm, great subversive stories. When Vincent Price was asked what he thought of the short, he said that it was quote, the most gratifying thing that ever happened. It was immortality

[01:59:06] [SPEAKER_05] better than a star on Hollywood Boulevard. So some people say that there are some Easter eggs. So, okay, this short, obviously Tim Burton Nightmare Before Christmas, all the kind of thing, you know, Beetlejuice, that classic art style that carries through. You can see sort of proto versions of a lot of this stuff in, in Vincent, especially some of the shots that are made in the way he uses lighting. you know, there's a point where Vincent is walking up these long steps and it's very reminiscent of Nightmare.

[01:59:36] [SPEAKER_05] But there is, some people can say you can see an early form of Jack Skellington in the upper left corner of a screen at like the 445 mark of this short. I looked, I didn't see, it's a, it's a rounder skull. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's, it's Jack. There's another version or not another version, but there's another character in there. It's kind of a bigger, you know, I don't know what it is, freaked out person, but she kind of looks like Sally. She has like a fright wig going on.

[02:00:06] [SPEAKER_05] So she's reminiscent, maybe, I guess. The sandworm from Saturn in Beetlejuice and later Nightmare Before Christmas, that's the, the prototype is kind of there as well in this movie. Which is really interesting because he had a certain style, a certain art style that carried through and just got refined and refined. And then I watched it again to pull clips for this. And there were a couple

[02:00:35] [SPEAKER_05] of the skulls like around when Vincent is, is really kind of in his, you know, psychosis, I guess. I don't know. They look like some of the skulls that the doctor, the scientist in Nightmare is like picking a head for his, you know, his wife that he makes. Right. And like what they, they look very similar. So he's carried through a lot of these same designs, you know, intentionally or otherwise.

[02:01:03] [SPEAKER_04] Because he's, he's working out his style kind of. He's working out his style. At this stage. Yeah, exactly.

[02:01:08] [SPEAKER_05] The character Prince Vince from the Beetlejuice animated cartoon, which would premiere seven years after this, is named after and bears a strong resemblance to Vincent Molloy, both in appearance and mannerisms.

[02:01:22] Hmm.

[02:01:23] [SPEAKER_05] Tim Burton was only 24 years old when this animated short was, was released. And it's kind of just basically in the vault. It's kind of a, it was submitted to a few film festivals locked away in a vault, basically in the Disney vault. Thanks to chape. And it was released as an extra on one of the Nightmare Before Christmas DVD releases, but that's kind of it.

[02:01:46] [SPEAKER_04] I think that's the only time I've ever seen it.

[02:01:49] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, me too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's all over YouTube. It's all over the Internet. You can find it. It is horrifically amazing. It is such a good, I shouldn't have done that. It is such a good movie. It's great. It's such a great short, dude. I loved it so much. That's all I had to say about that.

[02:02:11] [SPEAKER_04] All right. I have messed up on a good one there.

[02:02:13] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, I've messed up our screens, but that's okay. Oh, no, not our screens. Yeah, we're done

[02:02:20] [SPEAKER_04] anyways.

[02:02:22] Anyways.

[02:02:23] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah.

[02:02:23] [SPEAKER_04] Spookier that way.

[02:02:25] [SPEAKER_05] That's right. Well, anyway, there you go, dude. Yeah, Vince is. Yeah, Vince. It's such a I don't know, man. You can you can just you can see it and it's so complex and it's so it was made with a couple of the a couple of Disney animators and stuff. So, you know, it was made while he was still working at Disney. and in two months, I mean, he made this amazing little project that was so good and you can really see the complexity that he had for directing and and and kind of

[02:02:55] [SPEAKER_05] that gothic style of light stark lighting, you know, straight lines and peaks on roofs and just kind of that, you know, whatever. Very excellent. I can't I can't actually convince you to to to watch it enough. It's so good.

[02:03:11] [SPEAKER_04] And it's it's amazing. They gave him that much money. I never heard that part that they gave him this check. Yeah. Yeah. You say sixty five thousand dollars.

[02:03:20] [SPEAKER_05] Sixty grand, man. Sixty. And he said he made that for sixty grand. It was it was him and two other animators. And I think someone else did the sound like that's it. And you just that's all. And then just there you go. You did it. And Disney thought kids can't see this. We're not we're not hitting our target audience. So you got to go. Yeah. There you go. All right, everybody. Thanks a lot for tuning into the show. I hope you enjoyed our Halloween episode.

[02:03:50] [SPEAKER_05] I had a lot of fun doing it. I like doing stuff like this. I'm a little bit of history nerd, so I like researching stuff and figuring it out. And, you know, it beat it it it beat beating my brain against the wall to try to figure out a scary story trying to be

[02:04:05] [SPEAKER_04] creative.

[02:04:05] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, man. That that it's always I always like doing the spooky stories. I think it's fun and I have a good time doing it and listening to what other people have, you know, to come to contribute to it. But I hate the process of doing it. Because it's so hard. It's so hard, man, because you never the pacing is different. It's so hard to figure out if you're going too far or not far enough. And if you're getting your point across at all and it's just I'm

[02:04:35] [SPEAKER_05] always thankful to take a break for that for for at least a year. All right, everybody. Thanks for tuning in once more for any of the shows that you're looking for. If you want a little bit of extra stuff to listen to, go to ears up hyphen podcast dot com. And there you can find all the most up to date shows for the Supreme Resort and Fantasyland Draft League and Bantha Milk and all the buddies that we have over there on the ears up podcast network doing shows cranking shows out.

[02:05:04] [SPEAKER_05] White Info boys is on a break. We just finished our 10th episode for season three. So we're going to come back probably in 2027 with season four. And there you go. If you want to support the show and other shows like this and the whole entire network, please go to patreon dot com slash ears up support us for five bucks a month. You get a whole bunch of bonus content that you can't find anywhere else. And it helps us keep the lights on and stuff. All right, everyone. Thanks a lot for tuning in. Have a great Halloween. And until next time, we'll see you in the parks.