Hollywood Halloween Treats

Halloween is almost upon us, so Bijou Blogger Victoria Balloon performs the grave duty of digging up some Halloween DVDs for our viewers’ delight. In our grab bag of tricks and treats we have something for everyone, from little ghouls and goblins to Mummys and Daddies, too. So draw the curtains, turn out the lights, pop in any of these DVDs and relax... if you can!

First up is the cute and cuddly character named Casper, the Friendly Ghost, who is more about “Boo-Hoo” than “Boo!” Casper made his screen debut in a 1945 Paramount Noveltoon called The Friendly Ghost.

He appeared as the main spook in two more theatrical shorts before being spun off as the star of his own cartoon series. Far from being scary, Casper hated being a ghost and only wanted to make friends. This theme of unprovoked alienation dominated most of the cartoons in the series as again and again we witness Casper befriending a person or animal only to have them scream and run away when they realize he’s a ghost. In fact, Casper is so endearing that you’d want to hug him, if he only had a body.

The Best of Casper the Friendly Ghost – Volumes 1 & 2 each feature ten classic Casper cartoons along with two bonus cartoons produced between 1950 and 1959. The original Casper theme song is an added bonus on each DVD and the print quality is excellent.

If you’re looking for some monster fun but screaming at slapstick is more your style, then any of the “Abbott and Costello Meet...” movies are for you. All of the films are loosely built around classic horror legends and provide Bud and Lou with spooky backdrops for their classic sight gags and verbal exchanges.

The first of these films was Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). The two are a pair of delivery men charged with setting up the latest exhibits in a house of horrors — only the Frankenstein monster (Glenn Strange) and Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) turn out to be the real deal. Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) arrives from London to help Bud and Lou thwart Dracula’s evil plans, but Talbot would be a lot more help if he didn’t keep turning into the Wolfman!

Walter Lantz, creator of Woody Woodpecker, directed Dracula’s animated transformations. This was Lugosi’s second film in which he played the Count, but it’s a role he almost didn’t get — the studio didn’t realize Lugosi was still alive. Boris Karloff was offered the part of the Monster, but he refused; he thought a comedy was insulting to the character and the film would not do well at the box-office. It turned out that Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein became Universal-International's second highest grossing film of the year.

Abbott and Costello's last film for Universal was Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955). The pair find themselves accused of murdering a prominent archeologist and in possession of a sacred medallion linked with a mummy’s curse. Everyone wants that medallion — a gang of thieves wants it to find the treasure, an Egyptian cult wants it to revive the Mummy, and the Mummy wants what’s rightfully his — but Bud and Lou just want to go back to the States! This film contains the fast and funny “Shovel or Pick?” dialogue as well as Lou’s career as a snake charmer.

Although both contain original theatrical trailers and photo galleries (and the Frankenstein DVD contains a "making of" documentary with some production notes), the focus of both DVDs is the feature. Both are very clean prints and would be quite a catch for any classic monster fan.

If you seek “a hair-raising, soul stirring, nerve tingling story” or even just something to make “thy blood to creep and thy hair to stand,” check out Café Roxy’s Monster Mania (2009). Two hours of classic horror/sci-fi movie trailers from Universal, Hammer Films, William Castle and others results in a concentrated mix of B movie monster madness that will send “fangs of fear to rip reason from your mind!”

The clips contain creepy creatures, science experiments gone wrong, and undead favorites. It is a wonderful tribute to horror films from the classic to the camp, and with or without the sound turned up, running this DVD in the background will give any Halloween gathering the perfect spooky ambiance. Contains The Mad Doctor, the only Mickey Mouse cartoon in the public domain!

Grotesqueries: Ghosts, Goblins and other Magical Moving Picture Illusions from the Dawn of Cinema through 1934 is one of the finest collections of fascinating Halloween-themed short subjects on the planet! The DVD is loaded with a tantalizing mix of rare and  hard-to-find animated and live-action shorts, sumptuously presented in three acts, and concludes with a bonus chapter of special added attractions.

Some of the highlights include a pair of Felix the Cat cartoons: Felix Woos Whoopee and Felix in Sure-Locked Holmes (color-tinted with new scores); The Wizard’s Apprentice (1930), a Germanesque picturization of Paul Dukas’ descriptive tone-poem; Une Nuit Sur le Mont Chauve (1933) inspired by Modest Mussorgsky’s tone-poem, A Night on Bald Mountain. Although a difficult film to transfer to video, the results are stunning; the image is greatly improved, and the film classic has never been seen to greater advantage.

Included also is Le Spectre Rouge (The Red Spectre), a 1907 fantasy by pioneer Ferdinand Zecca, featuring a rare glimpse of the famed French Music Hall artiste, Bretteau. (The rich colors are hand-stenciled onto the original film print); the original Tom & Jerry meet graveyard stiffs, coffin keepers, and a Siren of the Sarcophagus in double potions of musical madness in a pair of cartoon delights: Wot a Night and Magic Mummy; and Fall of the House of Usher (1928), an expressionistic, dadaesque retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s psychological thriller (color-tinted with a new score).

Grotesqueries is an entirely original programme complimented by an abundance of original graphics and new music accompanying the silent films. This spooky and surreal extravaganza was created and  realized by Rex Schneider, Chris Buchman and Steve Stanchfield - and is available directly from Blue Mouse Studio.

Once your littlest gremlins are tucked into bed, consider adding some zing to your sleepover with Monsters Crash the Pajama Party (1965). This devilish DVD celebrates the lost world of Spook Shows with 45 minutes of Spook Show trailers, 300 spooky print ads and tons of extras. Spook Shows were stage shows with real, live monsters (OK... guys in monster suits) that ran out into the audience when the lights blacked out. Young kids were genuinely terrified in those innocent days of the 1950s and 60s, while older teens knew what to do with their dates.

The 31 minute title featurette is the heart of the show. A mad doctor sets the mood for an invasion of nightie-clad damsels into his chamber of horrors. During the climax he tells his gorilla: “Big G, you go out there in the audience and get me another girl, and you other monsters go out to help him.” This cues real monsters onstage and into the theater. After much onscreen lightning and the audience blackout, the monsters return to the screen with a writhing victim. The film can be run twice more with commentaries by those who staged such Monsteramas years before today's’ haunted houses.

The Tom Stathes Halloween Cartoon Reel will raise the hair on your arms! The films are not restored and are presented “as found” — no music tracks on the silents, but many original prints were copied and there are a lot of true rarities. It includes Krazy Kat in The Awful Spook (1921, Bray); Felix the Ghost Breaker (1923, Sullivan/Messmer); Koko the Clown in Koko's Haunted House (1928, Fleischer) and many more, including the 1928 live-action Christie Comedy Goofy Ghosts. Most bizarre is Alice's Mysterious Mystery! (1926, Disney) in which dogs are kidnapped, jailed in a dungeon by a hooded captor and turned into sausages.

Finally, here’s a treat that’s full of delightful tricks: a high-quality, 50th Anniversary Edition of House on Haunted Hill, presented in widescreen by Johnny Legend, a video pioneer who released low-budget horror and exploitation films in the early days of Rhino Home Video. William Castle’s 1959 thriller still shocks and mystifies with ghoulish plot twists.

Vincent Price invites five random guests to stay overnight in a haunted house and get $10,000 if they survive. Not all of them make it. Are the ghosts real? How about that severed head? The bonus extras are true delights, starting with two trailers for House, one trumpeting the “Emergo” process (a skeleton flies over audience during the film’s climax), and trailers for Vincent Price and William Castle shockers: The Fly, Tingler, Macabre, 13 Ghosts, Mr. Sardonicus, Zotz, Straight-Jacket and more. Mr. Castle appears in many trailers to explain his latest gimmicks. Johnny himself discusses the “House” today and actress Carol Ohmart. The disc closes with Vincent Price on the Jack Benny and Red Skelton Shows and as persecuted missionary John Hayes on TV Reader’s Digest from 1955.

So many creepy classics we love, but alas, the dawn comes too soon! Many of these fiendishly fun DVDs and others are available for purchase at Movies Unlimited, or for rent on Netflix. And mark your calendars — Turner Classic Movies will be a chamber of horrors as they show a Boris Karloff marathon and back-to-back spine-tingling thrillers over Halloween weekend.
It promises to be a scream!

More Unforgettable Cartoons

We had such an enthusiastic response to our recent “Unforgettable Cartoons” post that we couldn’t resist doing a second round. Here are more remembrances from industry colleagues and friends. We invite our readers to contribute your own recollections in the comments section below.

Jerry Frebowitz is living his dream of being a full-time movie enthusiast as president of Movies Unlimited and heading up the exciting new Movie Fanfare blog. Here is Jerry’s choice:

One of my favorite old cartoons is a Warner Brothers' Merrie Melodies, Have You Got Any Castles? from 1938. Oddly enough, I saw it in theaters in the 1940s when I was a kid but it must have been a reissue since I wasn't yet a moviegoer back in 1938.

It's the kind of cartoon that once seen, can't ever be forgotten -- it's just that good and oh, so clever! From the opening, there are scenes of the town crier who wakes up the books in the book store. I had no idea at the time that the crier was supposed to be a caricature of Alexander Woollcott. The opening never did hit me probably because I wasn't "in" on the Woollcott joke but once the "scary" literary characters come out of their books and start dancing, you'll know instantly you are in for a treat -- and it just gets better and better from there.

Frankenstein, Phantom of the Opera, Fu Manchu and Dr. Jekyll do a soft-shoe routine, followed by The Invisible Man, and I guess while this Warner Brothers cartoon was showcasing invisible characters, it was only natural for Topper to show up, or not show up as the case may be. Because the invisible folks are tap dancing, it's only a step away to highlight a cartoon version of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson dancing his way up and down “The Thirty-Nine Steps.” In turn, Cab Calloway leads the way, delighting the audience with a mini-musical production of “The Green Pastures.”

The very funny references go on and on, from the classics to the latest novels of the day. Apparently at the time this gem of a cartoon was shown, “Gone with the Wind” was the latest. Although the cartoon is all about books, the movie references can't be hidden. "The House of Seven Gables" is of course, Clark Gable. Captain Bligh stepping out of "Mutiny on the Bounty" is Charles Laughton and dozens more glimpses of vintage Hollywood fun are everywhere. Eventually, the loud sounds caused by the singing and dancing and general frivolity of the proceedings awaken Rip Van Winkle and he is not a happy camper, cutting off pieces of Uncle Tom's hair which he uses for ear plugs. By the time Rip sends everyone scurrying for shelter by opening up a copy of “The Hurricane,” this cartoon ends -- but not before my favorite sequence appears. William Powell steps out of the pages of “The Thin Man,” so skinny when turned sideways, he practically disappears. However, after entering “The White House Cook Book,” he emerges very plump. Luckily, after the days of the Saturday Matinee, I was able to see this great cartoon on TV and it's been with me ever since.

Animator Sally Cruikshank has been creating fabulous surreal animation since her directorial debut: Quasi at the Quackadero (1976), which for many qualifies as an unforgettable cartoon! Some of Sally’s other cartoons may be enjoyed at her Website Fun on Mars.

Cartoons from the early 30s involving food or assembly lines (or better yet both) really made a big impression on me. I think "The Merry Cafe,” a Krazy Kat cartoon from 1936, is the first one that comes to mind. It's a wonderful automat cafe cartoon. When I finally got to an automat in NYC it was a disappointment. Food in 30's cartoons always looks so tasty.

From Joe Adamson; film archivist, filmmaker, author of "Tex Avery, King of Cartoons" and “Bugs Bunny: 50 Years and Only One Grey Hare” and “Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo” among others.

I was in the second grade when I saw King Size Canary (1947) at a Saturday Matinee. I remember liking the cartoon and loving the ending, but what impressed me most was the way Tex Avery managed to grab the attention of the restless Saturday Matinee audience, usually much too absorbed in chattering, yelling, and hurling popcorn boxes at the screen to give any film their full attention, and got them involved in his insane story so they were laughing exactly where he intended them to laugh -- particularly at the ending!

From John McElwee; film author, historian and curator of the Greenbriar Picture Shows:

Rock-A-Bye Bear (1952) -- I saw few cartoons in theatres growing up. Our Liberty just didn't use them -- too much expense I guess. This one, however, showed up quite unexpectedly in the early eighties as bonus with some dreadful Ursula Andress pic about love slaves in the Amazon (can't recall its title). The 35mm was faded, but Rock-A-Bye Bear was in otherwise clean shape for a print that must have been at least twenty years old by that time. It was also about the funniest cartoon I'd ever seen anywhere, and remains one of my favorites. How wonderful it must have been seeing all these great Tex Avery shorts when they were new! Television has been no substitute for that experience.

From Steve Fastner -- Comic art colorist half of the legendary Fastner & Larson Team.

I've always been attracted to heroic fantasy in comics, films or cartoons, so one early cartoon that stands out is The Underground World, from the Superman cartoon series. It was both scary and beautiful. I saw it on a black and white TV. The bird men were very menacing, the cave interior was mysterious, and the race to blow up the cave entrance was very suspenseful. The other Superman cartoons are great also.

Chris Buchman co-produced the Aesop's Fables DVD with Steve Stanchfield and Rex Schneider for Thunderbean Animation.

My initial exposure to animated cartoons was memorable and, in retrospect, highly significant. As a young lad in the late 1940s I was treated to thrice daily screenings of ancient animated funnies on television . . . the Bobby Bumps, Felix The Cats and entries from the Aesop’s Fables series from Van Beuren Studio, particularly the delicious musical romps Toy Time (1931) and Silvery Moon (1933). The former is about a pair of love-smitten mice having a midnight fling in a toyshop; the latter, the adventures of an enamored pair of kitties cavorting on the moon made of ice cream, candy and cake.

The centerpiece of each cartoon is a sequence, constructed on a solitary melody, in which the characters perform the theme on instruments; in Toy Time the instruments are toys; in Silvery Moon they are candy. The character animation is identical in both sequences. What a wonderfully-exciting discovery to have made before I was seven. The sparkling melody, which eluded me until attending the Ringling Brothers - Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1954, is “The Siamese Patrol” by Paul Lincke (he composed “The Glow Worm”). The piece was a favorite of Ringling Maestro, Merle Evans. (You can enjoy both cartoons, along with the comparison of the animated sequences as a bonus on Thunderbean’s Aesop’s Fables DVD.)

Bob Campbell is co-creator and producer of the original Matinee at the Bijou series on PBS, and continues working with a dedicated coalition of classic movie professionals to find a network home for the sequel series:

I’ll never forget seeing the great Chuck Jones masterpiece One Froggy Evening (1955) in a packed theater when I was 10 years old. I recall the audience falling out of their seats with infectious laughter. The cartoon opens with a construction worker discovering a box embedded in the cornerstone of a building undergoing demolition. When he opens the box he discovers a living frog that suddenly dons a hat and cane and begins performing a rousing rendition of “Hello! Ma Baby.” Thinking this his ticket to fame and fortune he tucks the box under his arm and quietly steals away. His first stop is the Acme Talent Agency, but upon presentation the little frog just sits there and croaks. When alone again with the frog, it belts out “The Michigan Rag” among other showstoppers - prompting the undeterred construction worker to dole out his life-savings on rental of a theater to present his discovery to the world.

During rehearsals the frog performs brilliantly until the curtain rises on the packed theater and, you guessed it, the frog just sits there and croaks. Driven insane by the frog’s continuing one-man performances, and learning of a new building under construction, our fortune-hunter plants the box and frog in the cornerstone of the new building. Fast-forward to 2056 AD and we witness a worker for the “Acme Building Disintegrators” discover the box with the performing frog -- and the cycle begins anew. Wouldn’t it be great if they started showing the best classic cartoons ever made once again as part of today’s movie-going experience.?

Marianne Richardson is a longtime fan of the original Matinee at the Bijou series and an occasional contributor to The Bijou Blog:

Ub Iwerks’ Balloonland (also called The Pincushion Man) from 1935 is the cartoon that I can never erase from my brain. I’ve tried. But my dad and I saw it once, on Matinee at the Bijou, and it has stayed with me for nearly 30 years. It begins sweetly enough, with a town of balloon people working together and singing a little song you don’t internalize until you hear the line “ A single pin/Would rip your skin!” Yet, despite this grim foreshadowing, when a little boy and girl balloon are warned about the dangers of the forest, what do they do? They make a beeline toward it!

Suddenly there’s the villainous Pincushion Man (with his peculiar and unfortunate anatomy) laughing evilly. Sitting in our darkened living room and watching him threaten the balloon boy and girl was like watching a mugging at knifepoint. The Pincushion Man essentially goes into the town and kills people until he is thrown, screaming, over the edge of the world. So much for nostalgia of a kinder, gentler age! Even at twelve years old I thought, “Wow. This is messed up.” When the cartoon was through, my father turned to me and said “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore!” — which is my father’s way of saying, “Wow. That was messed up.”

If I’d been only five or six years old, I think I really would have been upset. Judging by the comments on YouTube ( a few of which follow) I wasn’t the only one who thought this cartoon could net you some hours in therapy ~~~

“Oh my god, when he pops the little stupid balloon, that part like devestated [sic] me when i was little!”

“The pin cushion man ruined my child hood.”

“Why would they put such an incompetent man to guard the only door into balloon town! WHY!”

“Sadistic. Horrendous. Terrifying. Typical Saturday-morning fun!! Actually, I see worse in today's toons all the time...”

“This video gave me nightmares for most of my life...”

“I always wondered why the pinman didn't just stick a pin in the floor and bedone with the whole world.”

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Here on our Bijou Blog screen is your chance to check out Balloonland for yourself. While you may not find this eccentric cartoon “unforgettable,” we’re sure you’ll agree it is bizarre and surrealistic.

(Note: Several cartoons in our “Unforgettable Cartoons” series, including Have You Got Any Castles?, One Froggy Evening, I Love to Singa and Slick Hare are included in one DVD super collection called: Looney Tunes Golden Collection – Vol. 2 and on sale now for $14.95 at Movies Unlimited. Also, a super DVD collection of all 17 of the original Fleischer Superman cartoons, including The Underground World, is on sale at Movies Unlimited for only $9.99.)