In just a year’s time,Steamboat Willie, who was last seentormenting ferry passengers in an upcoming horror movie, will have to move to the side because there’s going to be another Disney creation entering the public domain space, and it’s eerily going to remind us all about a highly grotesque horror trilogy that was made in the not-so-distant past.
We’re going to be thinking – is this where the infamous body horror idea forThe Human Centipedecinematic trilogy actually came from? A Disney short that was made way back in the late 1920s? While the Dutch writer, director, and co-producer Tom Six has gone on record stating that the original idea for the first of his three movies actually came from a joke that was made between him and his friends regarding criminal punishment, we can all see that the House of Mouse might have been the first ones to go about the idea of combining bodies together in a nightmarish manner (well, skeletons that is).
Years before thefirst Disney movies, includingDumbo,Pinocchio, or evenSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs,were ever originally released, Walt Disney himself and Carl W. Stalling (who was a composer, arranger, and voice actor for melodies in many animated films) put their heads together in 1929 to create amusing theatrical productions that would help showcase the latest in sound technology.
TitledSilly Symphonies, this series of seventy-five fantastic shorts ran for about ten years and explored all different kinds of new techniques, innovative film processes, and so forth. When considering the fact that Disney created these cartoons, innocent fables were highlighted, and the series title was in itself a child-like alliteration, one could assume that nothing would be outright creepy in these fantastical shorts. On the contrary, enterThe Skeleton Dance, the very first entry ofSilly Symphoniesthat will become freely available to the public in 2025.
A Classic Disney Short That Has an Eerie Ending
The music accompanying this Walt Disney-produced black-and-white animated short is very whimsical and playful. At first, cats lackadaisically awaken from their slumber and then jump out of their bodies when a reanimated skeleton leaps from a grave with what can only be described as soulless black eyes. After throwing its head at a crow for making too much noise, the same set of living bones jumps behind a headstone, reappearing with a few more of its friends. They all start performing a choreographed dance together that gets wilder with time.
The four bone-men move and jive all around, along with thegreat upbeat Disney soundtrack. At this point, the structural experimentation of their bodily anatomy begins. Not only do they use one another’s heads (once again) like pogo sticks to bounce off the floor, but then they join in twos and form giant wheels, rolling around the graveyard.
The lead skeleton then takes the musical weirdness one step further and breaks off the leg bones of another dead friend. With these sticks in his hands, the undead musician uses the other one’s spinal column as an impromptu xylophone – beating each piece of the spinal column to make music. The best of this eleven-minute spooky scene is not when a cat’s tail is suddenly used as a harp, nor when a mouth comes gnawing at the screen; it is actually at the end when a rooster declares that the sun is rising.
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In a rush to return to their resting places before living beings step onto the cemetery, all four skeletons clumsily collide into one another and rearrange themselves into something synonymous with what is feverishly represented in one of themost disturbing horror movies of all time,The Human Centipede.
A black-and-white, amalgamated monster hastily combines human anatomies to form something very disturbing. Four heads are attached to one another vertically. Curving down and to the left, the four corresponding spinal columns, as well as the legs and arms of each, mishmash into something resembling a giant skeletal centipede. After walking back from where they (or better yet, it) came, the fiendish fusion dives into a casket of sorts – grabbing a severed leg on the way out.
Sick Doctors and Skeletal Monstrosities in The Human Centipede and The Skeleton Dance
Only time will tell if this short will be creatively exploited as much asSteamboat Willie’sversion of Mickey Mouse. Ambitious directors and writers could very well use the same dance in their own films as a sadistic trance in order for the horror-bound victim to act inhumanly or viciously towards unsuspecting victims. The footwork could be replicated in a tortuous setting in order to mash people together into monsters that would terrorize horror fans (either on the big or small screen). As opposed to the cinematic production methods that limited us years ago, The Skeleton Dance can be interpreted and adapted in a great number of terrifying ways.
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Something likeThe Skeleton Danceis humorous and entertaining for children, as it should be. The story is simple, too. Eerie things bump in the night, but at the same time, they have a party. But for adults, the last sequence in this nightly tale of fantasy and the macabre could remind us of something much more wicked. Something much more sinister. If only Disney knew what they were setting the groundwork for.The Human Centipedeis available to rent on Prime Video.
