«Frankenweenie» to «Coco» and everything in between: Here are our choices for the very best Halloween movies and shows on Disney Plus
When you think about where to head for Halloween favorites, Disney+ probably doesn’t immediately spring to mind. But just because Disney+ is free from blood-and-gore extravaganzas doesn’t mean it can’t scratch your spooky itch. In fact, far from it! There is a pretty robust amount of Halloween (and Halloween-adjacent) fair on Disney’s direct-to-consumer platform, including a bunch of new stuff that was recently added and so many classics, for every age group. Here are our choices for the very best Halloween movies and shows on Disney+. Unlike other Disney remakes, which start out in animation before transitioning to live-action, Tim Burton decided to remake his oddball live-action short film (one of his “after school projects” that kept him busy while animating for Disney) in the form of a feature-length stop-motion animated film. Talk about a curveball! One of his most emotionally resonant and overlooked films, the voice cast includes Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Martin Landau and Winona Ryder in the tale of a young boy named Victor (Charlie Tahan), who loses his dog Sparky and decides to bring him back – through science! John August’s script repeats familiar beats from the original (which you can also watch on Disney+) but deviates in some key aspects, most notably a superb final act that sees the other kids in Victor’s class resurrect their beloved pets, resulting in some truly wonderful, “Gremlins”-style monster mayhem. Serves as a perfect companion to Burton’s other spooky stop-motion holiday classic… You really should only care about the second half of this postwar package film (unless you’re a big Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride fan and want to see what that Disneyland attraction is based on), an adaptation of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” This wonderful film — narrated, sung and mostly voiced by Bing Crosby — tells the story of hapless New England schoolteacher Ichabod Crane and his encounter with the dastardly Headless Horseman. Luxuriously animated and legitimately spooky, the Disney version stays pretty close to the original story and is still the definitive filmed adaptation. (You can see it in Tim Burton’s “Sleepy Hollow,” which borrows considerably.) This might be short but it is essential. Is it even Halloween without a viewing of at least one of the annual “Simpsons” “Treehouse of Horror” episodes? Didn’t think so. From early classics like Season 5’s installment, which included the “Devil and Homer Simpson” episode that revealed Ned Flanders as the Prince of Darkness, and an iconic riff on “Bram Stoker’s Dracula;” to Season 31’s playful “Stranger Things” spoof – they’re all available on Disney+. (They are even collected in the app’s Halloween section.) Just remember to watch those earlier episodes in their original 4:3 aspect ratio. Losing jokes because the image has been reframed? Now that is scary. During the in-between years that followed “Toy Story 3,” there were a number of “Toy Story” shorts and a pair of exemplary holiday specials, the first of which was the Halloween-themed “Toy Story of Terror.” After Bonnie’s mom gets a flat tire, she and the toys are forced to spend the night in a creepy roadside motel where they start going missing, one by one… Written and directed by Angus MacLane, a Pixar stalwart since “A Bug’s Life,” who is directing next summer’s big screen “Toy Story” adventure “Lightyear,” “Toy Story of Terror” is extremely clever, even if its big reveal feels perhaps a little too similar to “Toy Story 2.” Still, it added a lot to the “Toy Story” universe, most crucially Carl Weathers as Combat Carl. And it serves as a perfect showcase for Jessie (Joan Cusack), who here is given a “Vertigo”-like fear of enclosed spaces, especially since she was so marginalized in the otherwise excellent “Toy Story 4.” “One Hundred and One Dalmatians’” iconic baddie finally got her own origin story in “Cruella,” and it wound up being the best of the recent crop of live-action adaptations of Disney classics. Emma Stone is perfect as the titular, dog-chasing fiend, who in this story is a far more sympathetic character – a Dickensian orphan who dreams of becoming a fashion designer and who, along the way, becomes a master criminal, pop culture provocateur and, ultimately, a very bad lady. (Emma Thompson chews the scenery with even more gleeful abandon as the Baroness, who is somehow more evil than Cruella.) Instead of being slavishly faithful to the original material, director Craig Gillespie and his screenwriters (including “The Favourite’s” Tony McNamara) give “Cruella” permission to play. Set in a grungy cool post-new wave, pre-punk London, the soundtrack is full of needle drops and it is so full of life and wickedness.
