User Reviews

On August 29, 1929, Walt Disney publicly screened the first film in his "Silly Symphonies" series, 'The Skeleton Dance (1929).' Needless to say, it was a rousing success, and ensured a further decade of similar musical short films. 'Haunted House (1929)' was released on August 1, 1929, and is similar in many ways, not least because a lot of the footage originally intended for 'The Skeleton Dance' was instead recycled into this Mickey Mouse musical horror short. Though this recycling is rather obvious in the film's second half, in which our mousy hero disappears for a while, I nonetheless enjoyed the film for its vivid imagination, and, especially in its opening minutes, eerie atmosphere. This was one example, at least, where Disney's work benefited from black-and-white animation {the studio's first outing in three-strip Technicolor was 'Flowers and Trees (1932)'}, and the creepy shadows of the haunted mansion bear the sinister atmosphere of a 1930s Universal horror, with the whistling wind providing an ominous air, at least until the music starts up.

Truth be told, 'Haunted House' is the first Mickey Mouse cartoon that I can remember watching, though a reasonable portion of my childhood would no doubt have been occupied in a similar manner. I wish that less of the film had been concerned with dancing skeletons, because Mickey's initial exploration of the dark mansion is stylistically creative and almost genuinely frightening. A lingering trace of the silent era is noticeable when the house's lighting goes out, and Mickey is illuminated only by a circular ring of light that calls to mind the camera iris favoured by so many early filmmakers. A scary Grim Reaper then enters the room, points to an organ against the wall and instructs our hero to "play." Mickey doesn't really know how to, but he nonetheless obliges, and soon the army of skeleton are tapping merrily across the room, using their bones as musical instruments. This Mickey Mouse short could have been better, but it has some good atmosphere, and is well worth watching.

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

This animated short is cute but lacks the fun of The Skeleton Dance (1929). In fact, The Haunted House borrows quite a bit from The Skeleton Dance.

In this short we have Mickey who enters a house during a storm only to find out the house is haunted. A ghoul commands Mickey to play the organ while the skeletons dance. It's a fun watch for Halloween.

8/10.

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

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

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

Haunted House (1929)

*** (out of 4)

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

Finally, a Mickey mouse film that doesn't look outdated. Might very well be the best Mickey mouse film from the '20s.

Earlier, they were like: bears and cats dancing with no context. In this short, they have added ghosts. They don't look scary, but their dance is creepy and weird. The only problem is that it could be shorter. It's 6 minutes long but could have been shorter by 2 minutes. Ghosts dance for too long.

I wouldn't say it's a great film though. But one needs to see this to see how cinema used to be back then.

I have always loved the Silly Symphonies and I do have a soft spot for the Mickey Mouse ones. While not my favourite, Haunted House is one of Mickey Mouse's better earlier efforts. There were moments where you can tell there was a Skeleton Dance influence such as a skeleton playing himself like a xylophone, but this didn't put me off at all. The animation very much adds to the atmosphere especially with the effective mix of light and dark shades, the opening is wonderfully eerie and the light-match sequence in the dark hallway is also a masterstroke, showing a depth to Mickey's face and emotions in a way that not many cartoons since have done so well. The music is both energetic and haunting, the story is swift and fun complete with a relevant and interestingly-choreographed dance routine and the gags are imaginative and well-spaced out. And I loved that Mickey is given more to do than usual here, he is a great character but can be bland if with a character like Donald. This is also one of two cartoons where I have seen so much depth to Mickey in terms of animation, the other being The Mad Doctor. The skeletons are wonderfully kooky. All in all, one of Mickey's best. 9/10 Bethany Cox

This is a nicely done black and white Mickey Mouse cartoon, where he stumbles upon a haunted house after finding shelter from the pouring rain. Mickey runs into a few live skeletons who demand that he plays the piano to entertain them while they dance. What results are some delightful and characteristic moves with music matching sound effects.

There's some harmless creepy moments when skeletons appear in the dark and scare Mickey as he lets out a loud screech; this reminds me of a Disney screensaver I had that used clips of this cartoon's images and sounds.

The short has plenty of Halloween related things as well, from skeletons to bats, and from spiders to clawry trees. Even the haunted house itself sports a fierce-looking face image. Fun stuff here!

Grade A

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

Mickey Mouse finds himself in a blizzard, so he seeks shelter in a creepy old mansion. It comes to no surprise (if one would read the title of this short cartoon) the mansion is haunted.

The several skeletons first scare the heck out of Mickey, but it turns out they only want him to play the piano. Once he does, the skeletons start out a little dance.

This dance is way too long to be remotely interesting, as this whole cartoon is just, well, plain boring to be honest.

Could be scary for the little ones as well. To be fair, I couldn't think of one reason to watch this... 3/10.

I remember seeing just a scene from The Haunted House, one of the early Mickey Mouse shorts from 1929, when I was a really small child, and it may have been the first time I ever laid eyes on the Grim Reaper: it was just a segment in a short documentary that preceded VHS collections of Disney cartoons in the 80's, and it was about the origins of Mickey Mouse (of course in a 5-minute bare-bones version, i.e. mice were there early on for Disney, then came Steamboat Willie, and the rest is history). It was meant to illustrate the first time Mickey Mouse ever spoke; it's arguable if this cartoon really was it - there was also The Karnival Kid, which may have come out earlier that year, where Mickey says 'HOT DOGS' - but it made an impression on me for sure. The Grim Reaper shows up, points a finger and declares that Mickey play. "I c-c-can't play," Mickey responds. "PLAY!" "Y-y-yes, ma'am," is all Mickey responds.

Not exactly Shakespeare, but this wasn't about any dialog exchanges in this carton anyway; the plot is that Mickey needs shelter from the storm, goes into a house, and there the Grim Reaper and many skeletons are hanging about. They need music, so Mickey plays, and they dance about. Oddly enough this was right at the same time as one of Disney's iconic shorts, The Skeleton Dance, and here he has the same thing going on. I'd say that the Skeleton Dance may be better overall, but there's still a lot to enjoy here, including some beats where it's just skeleton legs that dance, and where the Reaper is basically snapping his fingers and stomping his feet (or is it *her* feet?) It's a memorable short from the classic black and white Disney Mickey Mouse, where in this case, unlike some of the other shorts, Mickey can't really give many of his wisecrack antics. All he can do is play, ma'am.

Cartoons are tough to assign as genre, but this is one, with actual dancing skeletons and other tropes. Enjoyable if repetitive, but it's only 7 minutes or less. Great animation... FREE ONLINE.

It should go without saying that "The Haunted House" - most banal title ever, right? - is easy to like when you're young. Indeed, the scene where the skeletons dance is impressive (how often do you get to see a grandfather clock have the chance to party?). Now that I'm old enough to analyze it, the cartoon comes across as creepy. Not in the sense of scary, but in the sense that it gets shown around the world and pushes US culture on other cultures.

Yes, I know. That's just conjecture, but it's what I imagine now that I'm old enough to know about the rest of the world.

PS: some of the animation got borrowed from "The Skeleton Dance".

A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.

Mickey takes refuge one night in a spooky HAUNTED HOUSE and soon finds himself captured by the skeletons that live there.

This little black & white film has some genuinely creepy moments, especially when Mickey first enters the house. The second half of the cartoon bears a striking resemblance to the first Silly Symphony, THE SKELETON DANCE, both released in August of 1929. Walt Disney, who was probably strongly influenced by silent horror films, also contributed Mickey's quavering voice.

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.