Riding Home for Samhain: Halloween Challenge Night 11

So far, with some exceptional evenings attended by Mrs Simian (plus movie night at the Black Lagoon!) Halloween has been a somewhat solitary project, undertaken in the spare room while the rest of study and tamer televisual flair continues around me. But this night was different because I had Jet Jr in tow and a yen to return to the Disney Well.

We’d been here before, this month, with Something Wicked This Way Comes, but spurred on with the animated success of Trick or Treat I elected to go further back this time, both in studio time and in literary sources. Uncle Walt did the honours, guiding us through a bespoke animated and… worthy version of the author’s life – for it was quite a life, and the feature wasn’t quite to length. The author was Washington Irving, and the story?  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. A delayed production, and initially paired oddly with a Wind in the Willows adaptation, this 33-minute short (plus 14-minute biography!) is worth checking out on its own for the season.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1949, adapted from the short story by Washington Irving)

So. Much. Disney. DNA in this one! There’s music and songs, an avuncular voiceover (by the Bingmeister Crosby hisself), caricature of the characters, and a loose version of events - but faithful enough to the source material that it doesn’t go the way of Tim Burton’s version or, indeed, the TV series. The first twenty minutes or so go by well enough, being an introduction to our long-shanked, beak-nosed, chinless and twitchy ‘hero’ (the designers very much drawing on the waterbird for Crane’s profile) and his interest in lining his pockets the fair Katrina Van Tassel – plus his rivalry with town braggart and prankster Brom Bones.

It's the final ten minutes which really shine – rejected at a community dance, Crane sets off home on his horse Gunpowder, only to encounter the local bogeyman, the Headless Horseman during his travels home and to the safety of a covered bridge, the barrier which keeps the Horseman in. It’s a masterclass of classic cel animation, the design elements are there in spades, and the whole sequence itself meticulously choreographed with plenty of tension occasionally undercut by slapstick through the hapless hero. Junior and I laughed out loud several times and in all, good clean Disney spooky fun was there. The set-up may be a little long in the tale, but the resolution makes it worth it.

Halloweenometer. A classic, very much worthy of its reputation. Catch a nice clean print if you can, and buckle up for a good, safe, but chilling ride. Recommended – and would do well with Trick or Treat!

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