La danse macabre

The Skeleton Dance is simply one of the most entertaining and imaginative animation shorts ever made. It features an amazing mix of both haunting and hilarious visuals. When the skeletons first appear you can somewhat see why in 1929 some people thought this was too gruesome for a cartoon. The fact that it is in black and white enhances the eerie graveyard setting. The animation of Ub Iwerks and music of Carl Stalling are a perfect mix. This should be required viewing for any fan of animation.n/x-comwu

This short film was the first of the Silly Symphony series, which ran under the Disney banner from a decade from 1929 and proved to be an excellent training ground for animation techniques which would become the springboard into Snow White and the later features.

Even though the distributor at the time dismissed 'The Skeleton Dance' with the terse telegram 'More Mice' (a reference to the Mickey cartoons which had just started a few months before), this film is inventive, extremely funny, marries action and sound perfectly (and remember, this was when talkies were still very much in their infancy), and is an absolute hoot even after all these years.

So what's it about? Well, it is about skeletons dancing. And that's about it. But you can see the influence this film had on later animators (there is a sequence in Monty Python for example which references this film quite closely) and there is no doubt that it is a lot of fun.

The Skeleton Dance was made over 85 years ago, but if you put it on at a Halloween party, not only will it make for some awesome ambiance, people will very likely stop what they're doing and watch it. This is Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, with assist from musician Carl W. Stalling, putting on something extremely simple, you might even say, ahem, bare-bones: what happens in a cemetery at night?

The movie has that truly awesome feeling, seeing it today, of the animators going 'hey, here's something we can try that has never been done before - skeletons dancing to spooky music (and the occasional Owl, who opens the short film in a great way by its eyes). There are some gags here and there; at the end, as the skeletons have to pack themselves back in their crypt, the little feet on one body has been left behind and they kick and kick at the crypt to let them back in.

But in reality, this is a fun-but-spooky little movie. It's amazing to see how much times have changed, as this was originally not allowed in a good many theaters as exhibitors thought it was "too gruesome". Today it almost carries some kind of profundity that I'm sure hipsters will latch on to. Take it on its own terms, in the context, and see how extraordinary it is: images repeated, real technique going on (mediums and close-ups, varied to create a spectacular effect), and an attempt to evoke a place and moment in the middle of the night. Or to put it another way, this is like Thriller's grandfather.

What a difference it makes to actually have Disney himself direct his cartoons. The Skeleton Dance is atmospheric, surreal, and visually eccentric to the point where I believe it inspired the Nightmare Before Christmas, to some degree, and even the works of Sally Cruikshank. I imagine that kids might have actually been a bit frightened of this cartoon back in 1929.

Apparently Disney had trouble getting it into theaters based on this notion.

The short features a gloomy churchyard overtaken by skeletons at night who go about dancing to various forms of mischief. A typically thin premise for cartoons from this era, but worth it for the atmosphere.

So much animation; so many skeletons. This is a film about what happens at midnight when all the skeletons of the dead pop up and start to have a good time. They create multi legged creatures. The do hoop rolls. They play the old xylophone thing with the spine of someone. This, of course, has been done a million times. The neat thing here is that this is very cleverly done with all kinds of creativity. There is still something eerie about the fact that what we are seeing is inside each of us. This also has a fun soundtrack that allows the skeletons to do dance routines and participate in the making of the music. A very well done early cartoon that has been copied a number of times.