No bones about it, skeletons, ghosts, haunted houses, and mad doctors make great fodder for animated cartoon shorts! Perhaps that’s why in 1929 Walt Disney chose The Skeleton Dance as his first Silly Symphony. Another spooky scenario was the basis of the Mickey Mouse cartoon short Mad Doctor, released on this day in 1933.
Mickey’s haunting hallucination proved too much for the British film censor . . .
On a dark and stormy night when Pluto is captured by a mad doctor, Mickey must explore a creepy old castle to rescue his pup pal, despite an obviously growing pallor of foreboding on his face. Soon, Mickey himself is captured and seconds away from being sawed in half, when he finds himself bit by a mosquito and awake in his own bed. Alas, it was all a dream, and Pluto is in no danger at all. Mickey’s haunting hallucination proved too much for the British film censor, who felt the frightening short was too intense for children.
