Sorry, this movie sucks

Purely Joyful Movie!

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The first of Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies.There's no real plot or dialogue...just music. We see a "scary" graveyard late at night. We see an owl, a dog howling, cats fighting and bats with fangs flying around. Then four skeletons appear from a grave and start dancing to the music! It's basically a fun little cartoon with superb animation. There's also some mildly spooky stuff. Twice the camera goes into a skeletons open mouth and out the other end. That's pretty extreme for 1929! Disney had trouble getting this released in 1929. Many distributors found it too gruesome but he finally did get it out and it was a HUGE success. A 10 all the way.

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.

Skeleton Dance, The (1929) *** 1/2 (out of 4) A Disney Silly Symphony short has four skeletons getting out of their graves to dance, which scares the fur off two black cats. This is a very imaginative short that features some wonderful animation. Disney is credited with the direction duties but having seen a few shorts by Iwerks it really seems that he is directing it. The movie runs at an extremely fast pace as there's never a dry moment or a moment where something isn't going on. The highlight is without a doubt the scene where the cats loose their hair after seeing the skeleton. From what I've read it appears people in 1929 thought this was too ghoulish for children and I guess they were somewhat right for their time.

The night promises to be a scary one. Lightning flashes. The wind howls. A tree branch in the shape of a hand seems to grab for a frightened owl that spins its head around like a top. The clock on the church tower strikes midnight, sending the bats flying out of the belfry. Two cats on gravestones fight by pulling and stretching each other's noses like taffy. A skeleton rises from behind a gravestone, frightening the fur off the cats. But an owl's hooting scares it, and it retaliates by throwing its skull and knocking the bird's feathers off. It's time for the skeletons to dance; and they perform as no living creatures could.Less than ten years after this crude black and white cartoon, Walt Disney made "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Disney may have quickly surpassed this film in technical virtuosity, but no one has surpassed it in artistry. "The Skeleton Dance," with its spooky charm and ineffable strangeness, is one of the great animated cartoons.