The Haunted House

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

When I first saw this Mickey Mouse cartoon on a VHS tape a few decades ago, the part I remember the most was when he was in the dark and his face looked like when Al Jolson put on his burnt cork makeup and he says, "Mammy!" I found that amusing then but I can understand why it wouldn't be so now. Moving on, this short is basically about Mickey entering the title place during a storm and encountering Death who makes him play the organ so the skeletons can dance. It's possible some of the animation was meant for the Silly Symphony cartoon The Skeleton Dance. Anyway, in both that and this, the numbers are pretty entertaining though Mickey takes a back seat here during that sequence. Still, The Haunted House is worth the look.

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.

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

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.