"Danse Macabre" Film-Strip (educational archive visual, inc., 1963)

As my third-grade school year (circa late 70s) began to wind down, my teacher decided to eat up half a school day treating the class to a showing of the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Not on VHS (we didn't have that technology yet.) Not even on 16mm film. No, this presentation was in film-strip format.  

Imagine a seemingly never-ending store of stills from the film we'd all seen annually on television, each frame punctuated by an ear-stabbing alarm-clock BEEP! sounding every few seconds, even during the music segments. "Somewhere, over the rainbow..." BEEP! "...Way up high...And the dreams that you dream of..."  BEEP! "...Once in a lullaby."

What should have been a welcome reprieve from the regularly scheduled classroom curriculum had, by hour three, turned into something of an endurance test. A few kids tried to lay their heads down on their desks, but even sleep was no escape, because BEEP!

A much more pleasant grade-school film-strip memory was my music class presentation of  this 1963 illustrated interpretation of the Camille Saint-Saens classical piece Danse Macabre (illustrator is Harold Dexter Hoopes), screen capped below in its entirety from a transfer posted to YouTube by lostmediaarchive. 

I remember breathlessly describing the viewing experience to my Dad that same night, who suggested (mistakenly, but a good guess) that it may have been the Night On Bald Mountain segment from Disney's Fantasia.  

Dark Night of the Scarecrow soundtrack available now!

Somehow without my noticing, the creepy and haunting soundtrack for made-for-TV classic Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981, Glenn Paxton) has been quietly released as a download-only purchase, available at I-Tunes and Amazon.com.

Buy each song individually, or get the whole 17-track album for under ten bucks. Below is a full track listing (and a secret: the final End Credits track not only contains the signature nursery rhyme-like synthesized theme, but ends with nearly a minute of the isolated sound effect of cornfield insects chirping.)

1. Main Title (1:59)
2. Bubba and Marylee (0:52)
3. Dog Attack (0:41)
4. The Chase (3:27)
5. Vigilante Execution (1:53)
6. Bubba Didn't Do It (1:39)
7. Bubba's Not Gone (5:04)
8. The Scarecrow Appears (1:51)
9. The Chipper (3:16)
10. Hocker Dead (1:54)
11. Eye for an Eye (1:54)
12. Scared to Death (2:38)
13. Deadly Silo (4:15)
14. The Grave (1:08)
15. Truth Revealed (1:21)
16. Scarecrow Justice (3:33)
17. End Credits (2:30)

Story and Song of the Haunted Mansion post updated with images

I've updated my August 29th post heralding the arrival of The Story and Song of the Haunted Mansion on CD with scans of the packaging. See it here.

Words Every 6-Year-Old Should Know...

aura
force emanating from somebody or something: a force that is said to surround all people and objects, discernible, often as a bright glow, only to people of unusual psychic sensitivity

cadaverous
of corpses: suggesting death or corpses ( formal or literary )

decapitated
behead somebody or something: to cut off the head of somebody or something

etherealize
make ethereal: to make something very delicate or highly refined

manifestation
materialization of spirit: a supposed appearance in visible form by a spiritual being

pallor
paleness: an unhealthy-looking paleness of complexion

plaintive
sad-sounding: expressing sadness or sounding sad

requiem
commemorative music: a piece of music written to commemorate somebody who has died

supplication
appeal made to somebody in authority: a humble and sincere appeal to somebody who has the power to grant a request

Do these words seem a little advanced for a six-year-old? And yet I knew them (well, most of them), thanks to Xavier Atencio. He's the Disney animator-turned-Imagineer who wrote the script for the Haunted Mansion attraction at Disneyland, as well as the long-playing record that dramatizes it.

When I was six, my Dad surprised me one day with the album, titled "The Story and Song From The Haunted Mansion." It became my favorite possession, and despite literally hundreds of plays, survived into adulthood without a scratch.

Rather than write down to his intended audience of children, Atencio wrote some of the most elegant prose ever associated with a theme-park ride. If that meant a young listener had to check the dictionary, or ask their parents what a word meant, so be it. Check out this excerpt from the gallery scene:

Even in this flickering gloom, your cadaverous pallor betrays an aura of foreboding. Your trusting mortal eyes tell you that these walls are stretching. But logic says, "No, 'tis mere hallucination."

Or this scene just after the seance, when the ghosts, previously only suggested by sounds and moving objects, finally become visible:

Come now. We must leave this cozy little circle, for the spirits have received your sympathetic vibrations and are beginning to materialize.

"The Story and Song From The Haunted Mansion" has been very well documented at one of the greatest websites of all time, found here.

Word definitions courtesy of MSN Encarta.

UPDATE: This album finally saw an official release to CD in August, 2009.

Isn't It Cozy Here?

A delightfully creepy moment from The Daydreamer (1966), a Rankin-Bass feature that combines live-action with "animagic" (aka stop-motion animation), to tell four stories from Hans Christian Andersen. In one of the stories, Thumbelina, our protaganists must enter the home of Mr. Mole--a dark, dank cave crawling with spiders, bugs and bats, who treat us to the memorable musical number, "Isn't it Cozy Here?"


ISN'T IT COZY HERE

Isn't it cozy? Isn't it cozy? Isn't it cozy here?
Ten spiders, a-gaily spinning,
Nine bats a-hanging pretty,
Eight caterpillars here and there,
Isn't it cozy here?


Seven centipedes a-flitting,
Six ladybugs a-knitting,
Five busy beetles here and there,
Isn't it cozy here?


Four beez a-busy being,
Three fleas a-quickly fleeing,
Two flies right here and there,
Isn't it cozy here?




One mole is here to tend it,
No windows, thats to lend it
A very cheery, friendly air,
Isn't it cozy? Isn't it cozy? Isn't it cozy here?



The Daydreamer is available on DVD here.