Horror movies come in all shapes and sizes, and there’s no time like October to explore beyond the standard slashers, gorefests, creepshows, and psychothrillers. And into…cartoons? That’s right – for the second year in a row, LA’s Cinefamily (a non-profit repertory cinema company) combined its month-long Halloween celebration with its monthly animation festival curated by animation historian Jerry Beck to present Cartoon Spooktacular. Beck is one of the authors of the excellent Cartoon Brew blog as well as several books on classic animated film, and he programmed an eclectic selection of ghost and monster-themed shorts ranging from highly familiar Looney Tunes to nearly forgotten Columbia cartoons to modern stop-motion. While introducing the second half of the program, Beck said this (paraphrased from memory): “I like to show stuff from all over, from every studio, even the ones that aren’t good, because I think you need to see everything. There’s something of value in all of it.” That statement held true – not everything we saw could be termed “good,” but to a sold-out audience of cinephiles and families alike, everything was worthwhile and if not exactly terrifying, at least Spooktacular.

Beck ran them roughly in chronological order, with the most modern ones breaking the mold by coming at the beginning of each segment of the program. I’m going to describe them in strict chronological order, though. Just makes more sense that way. Also, thanks to the wonders of the YouTube, I was able to find almost all of these shorts online – I’m embedding the ones that I liked the best/found the most interesting, but I’m including links to the others. There were only a couple I wasn’t able to locate.

Spooks
1931 MGM. Directed by Ub Iwerks. Character: Flip the Frog.

Flip the Frog was a popular recurring character in the early 1930s, much like Disney’s Mickey Mouse. In this one, Flip is caught in a thunderstorm and takes refuge in an innocent-enough looking house, where he’s beset by skeletons of all shapes and sizes – including a lady skeleton for Flip to dance with and the master of the house, who wants to add Flip to his skeleton collection. There’s a lot of expressionist influence in this short – really great use of shadows and angles.

The Mad Doctor
1933 Disney. Directed by David Hand. Characters: Mickey Mouse, Pluto.

It was good to see this one back to back with the previous Ub Iwerks cartoon; they’re similar in a lot of ways. Pluto gets kidnapped by a mad doctor and Mickey chases after him to try to save him, but only gets enmeshed in a series of skeletons that terrorize him. That in addition to the mad doctor trying to do who knows what to both of them! Again, the expressionist influence is strong. The end copped out a little, I thought, but hey. It is Disney.
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Betty Boop’s Hallowe’en Party
1933 Fleischer/Paramount. Directed by Dave Fleischer. Character: Betty Boop.

I’m not very familiar with Betty Boop shorts, except my impression that they’re gleefully pre-code. This one wasn’t, particularly. It had a few nice moments during its largely plotless collection of sight gags and music surrounding a Halloween party, but generally, there wasn’t enough here to make me want to rush out and get more Betty Boop stuff.
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Scrappy’s Ghost Story
1935 Columbia. Directed by Manny Gould and Ben Harrison. Character: Scrappy.

The nearly-forgotten Columbia cartoon character Scrappy here tells scary stories to his baby brother, only to have the stories turned back on him as a surreal group of ghosts and ghouls come after him. There’s a lot to like about this cartoon, especially how sweet it actually is underneath. The sound on the print was quite poor, though – thankfully most of it depends only on visuals.
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Jeepers Creepers
1939 Warner Bros. Directed by Robert Clampett. Character: Porky Pig.

I’ll admit to being terribly biased already toward Looney Tunes, so I was glad to see some pop up. This one I’m pretty sure I’ve seen before, but it’s definitely a lesser-known Porky cartoon, from back when Porky was the star Looney Tunes character (before Bugs and Daffy took over and relegated Porky to sidekick). He’s a cop in this one, dispatched to an abandoned house after reports of strange noises. Those would be coming from a jolly ghost, who sings a modified version of the title song about how happy he is to be scaring people. The ghost really made this one for me – his combination of aw-shucks amiability when he first appears (he seems almost like he’s going to be a Casper-friendly ghost) combined with the glee he takes in scaring the bejeezus out of Porky was great.
Full video (note: I could only find the colorized version online; Beck screened it in the original black and white)

Boogie Woogie Man Will Get You If You Don’t Look Out
1943 Lantz/Universal. Directed by Shamus Culhane.

A bunch of cartoon shorts seem to exist almost solely as a chance for animators to play around with sight gags set to music – in this one, the excuse is a convention of ghosts who are behind the times in their scaring techniques, so they bring in a couple of “hep” young guys to teach them the new boogie jive and spend the rest of the run time dancing. It’s certainly not what you might call a politically correct cartoon, but I always find it enjoyable on some level to see what the early 1940s considered hip. Largely jazz clubs, from what I can tell. Couldn’t find this one online.

Hair Raising Hare
1946 Looney Tunes/Warner. Directed by Chuck Jones. Characters: Bugs Bunny, Gossamer.

You simply can’t have a quality classic animation program without something directed by Chuck Jones. It would be sacrilege. Or something. And of all the Looney Tunes ghost-and-monster themed shorts, this is the one to pick. It’s got everything – Peter Lorre-inspired mad scientist, robot rabbit lovers, hairy sneaker-wearing monsters, Bugs pulling faces and giving manicures, self-reflexivity, you name it. Easily the best short of the night. I’m glad he played it, but I doubt there were many people in the audience who hadn’t seen it a dozen times. I almost didn’t embed it because it is so familiar, but I succumbed to my Chuck Jones adoration.

Mystery in the Moonlight
1948 Terrytoons/Fox. Directed by Eddie Donnelly.

The other one I couldn’t find online, but I wouldn’t have featured it anyway. A mischievous kitten finds his way into a house and terrorizes the resident dog and mouse. The mouse is reminiscent of Jerry (from Tom & Jerry) and the dog is a lot like Looney Tunes’ Spike, and really, that’s what I got from this toon – it’s fairly derivative of things that Warner and MGM did better.

The Tell-Tale Heart
1953 UPA. Directed by Ted Parmelee.

Wow. I think I’ve seen this before, but that didn’t diminish my “wow” response at all. Very abstract, very creepy, very unusual, and very incredible version of Poe’s tale of murder and paranoia. There’s hardly any movement at all – mostly just cuts from one still to another, but the way it’s edited is extremely kinetic and jarring. That along with James Mason’s seriously off-kilter narration makes this one of the most striking animated shorts you’ll ever see.

Ghost of Honor
1957 Famous/Paramount. Directed by Izzy Sparber. Character: Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Beck namechecked Casper the Friendly Ghost when talking about the cartoons that weren’t good but were still worthwhile, but I have to say, I found this entry quite charming. Scary it isn’t, for sure, but I enjoyed it. This is kind of Casper’s origin story, at least his origin as a movie star, following him as he visits the studio to find out how animation works, scares everyone (just by virtue of being a ghost) and eventually gets cast in a film. The animation is clearly moving toward a more minimalist/angular 1960s style (you can foresee things like Saul Bass credits and the Jetsons in here), which I happen to like quite a lot.
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Milton the Monster: Ghoul School
1965 ABC. Character: Milton the Monster.

Now we’re into the TV era, and the three 1960s shorts in the program are all segments from television shows. This one was pretty weak for me, about a Frankenstein-like monster child who got a little too much kindness put into him by his mad scientist creators. Here he tries to join a club his “brothers” started, but they try to keep him out – until their demanding aunt comes to town and they need his help to get rid of her. Not terribly strong on narrative or animation.
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Roger Ramjet: Dr. Frank N Schwein
1965. Directed by Fred Crippen. Character: Roger Ramjet.

This one I quite enjoyed, though, and in my research found several other episodes of the show up on YouTube, so I’ll probably check some of them out. Yeah, it’s probably not GOOD, but it’s very similar to Rocky and Bullwinkle in both narrative and animation style, and I have a soft spot for that. Ramjet is a sort of superhero, long on patriotism and good intentions, but short on intelligence. This time around he has to stop Dr. Frank N. Schwein from creating a monster that will “destroy all kinds of everything.” It’s both crude and clever at the same time.

The Woody Woodpecker Show: Spook-A-Nanny
1965 Hanna-Barbera. Character: Woody Woodpecker.

The whole Woody Woodpecker universe turns up to celebrate Halloween with a catchy song-and-dance routine called the “Spook-A-Nanny.” Unfortunately, there’s not a lot else to the cartoon, and I’m sorry, but 1960s animators clearly don’t have as much of a penchant for making long song-and-dance numbers interesting with off-the-wall sight gags as 1930s and 1940s animators did. The link below only has the animated short itself; the version Beck showed actually included an intro and outro done in live action with studio head Walter Lantz, which was fairly painful to watch (though still interesting from a historical perspective).
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Runaway Brain
1995 Disney. Directed by Chris Bailey. Characters: Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse.

A modern Mickey Mouse cartoon has Mickey taking a quick job to try to get the money to take Minnie to Hawaii for their anniversary. Unfortunately, the job is to switch brains with a giant monster – and mad scientists don’t take no for an answer once you’re inside their labs. There are a few fun things, but in general I just can’t get into either modern Disney or modern Looney Tunes. They just feel really off to me – like wannabe imitators. Still, this one did win some awards and stuff, so it’s worth a look.
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The Old Man and the Goblins
1998 Screen Novelties. Directed by Mark Caballero and Seamus Walsh.

Now, modern puppet animations with original stories and characters and a wildly inventive yet retro aesthetic? Count me in for that! This is one creepy and weird film, yet it’s also darkly humorous. Very Tim Burton-esque. The animators were actually in the cinema, sitting right behind me, too, so that was kind of cool.
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Graveyard Jamboree with Mysterious Mose
1999 Screen Novelties. Directed by Mark Caballero and Seamus Walsh.

Another film from the Screen Novelties guys, this one’s a lot more pure fun and less creepy. A catchy song about, basically, the boogey-man who scares you as you go through graveyards or into dark cellars. This is completely different from all the other films in the program, and it added a great variety (especially as Beck played it at the beginning of the second half – made a nice break).

Dead Hearts
2009. Directed by and performed by Dead Man’s Bones.

An animated music video premiere, which was a great addition to the program. Dead Man’s Bones is a relatively new band, including, among other people, actor Ryan Gosling. The video follows the slow progress of a kinetic sculpture (by Arthur Ganson) through a village. Again, as much as I love the classic 1930s-1960s hand-drawn animation, it was great to have some more modern examples of stop-motion and puppetry animation thrown into the mix as well. There are a lot of ways to approach animation, and I loved that we got to see some of the more unusual ones.
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