10/10
Mickey's Horrible Adventure
31 October 2002
A Walt Disney MICKEY MOUSE Cartoon.

Brave Mickey tracks THE MAD DOCTOR who has kidnapped Pluto to a spooky old castle of horrors.

This fascinating little black & white film was considered so frightful and inconsistent with other Mouse cartoons, it was hidden away for decades in the Disney vaults. Heavily influenced by the horror films of the early 1930's, there are some truly eerie moments as stalwart Mickey searches the castle and must deal with the dangerous skeletons that follow him, while poor Pluto is strapped down in the laboratory and threatened with a hideous fate by the deranged Doctor. Besides the plot, the animation is excellent, with the artists getting to entertain the viewers with intriguing experiments in light & shadow. Walt Disney supplies Mickey's squeaky voice.

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.
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