Disney Goes to Hell

What the hell? Disney has visited H-E-double-hockey-sticks more than a few times in animation, film, and even in theme parks, with varying degrees of horror and humor.

The first visit occurred in 1929's Silly Symphony short, Hell's Bells, in which the Prince of Darkness amuses himself with his menagerie of demonic animals.

The mythical three-headed guard dog Cerberus makes an appearance (although in this depiction, he's more silly than Satanous!)

The closest we get to genuine horror in this outing is this "udderly" bizarre dragon-cow, that gives liquid-fire instead of milk. Satan laps up a heaping bowl full.

Satan came back for more in 1934's The Goddess of Spring, where he erupts out of the ground to disrupt a pastoral scene and demand the Goddess join him as queen of his underground kingdom, Hades.

Even though this is no cause to celebrate for the imprisoned Goddess, the imp-like demons of the underworld throw her a reception party, with organ music and a fire-dance.

We get a dog's-eye-view of the not-so-sweet Hereafter in Pluto's Judgement Day (1935), when Pluto visits an afterlife dominated by cats looking for a little rough justice.

A loaded jury finds Pluto guilty of being mean to cats.

His sentence is being burned alive by the angry mob...

Of course, this visit to the hot-end of the Hereafter was all just a dream brought on by Pluto's guilty conscience, not unlike the brief glimpse of hellfire that greedy Uncle Scrooge tastes at the climax of Mickey's Christmas Carol (1983).

Although it's not on any park map, Disneyland guests have been able pass though Hell since day one, thanks to the final room of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, where the guests (as Mr. Toad's surrogate) are killed after colliding with a train and sent straight to Hell.

The event is not based on any scene from the ride's namesake film, The Wind in the Willows. Rather, it pays tribute to a classic dark-ride tradition of sending riders to the hot and steamy underworld. (Artist Kevin Kidney even created some artwork related to this portion of the ride that was subsequently banned!)

In 1979, Hell begins where everything ends... inside The Black Hole. The surprise climax to Disney's belated response to Star Wars sends evil scientist Dr. Hans Reinhardt to an alternate reality complete with ironic punishment (he is trapped inside the shell of his deadly robot sidekick Maximilian) that could only be interpreted as Hell itself.

We see Reinhardt's eyes peering out in despair from within his new robotic sarcophagus, in a shot reminiscent of 1961's The Pit and the Pendulum...

...before pulling back to reveal the full scale of the horrific landscape.

But Disney's most disturbing depiction of Hell has to be in 1981's The Devil and Max Devlin, in which a crooked landlord played by Elliot Gould goes to Hell after getting hit by a bus. He arrives free-falling amid other unlucky souls...

And we even get to experience a first-person, Max's-eye-view of the frightening plunge. Now there's a potential theme park ride... Soaring Over Satan?

The air is filled with the tortured cries of the damned as we watch Max land amid fiery lakes and rocky crags. And some of the mountain faces... have faces!

Satan and his minions have been reimagined as gruesome executives sitting around a conference table, with the Devil seated as Chairman. They rattle off a list of Max's sins, starting with cheating on a fourth-grade spelling test, and working their way on up from there.

When Max threatens to take soul-saving action that would deny him eternal membership to Club Hell, a demonic "Soul Manager" played by an unrecognizable Bill Cosby recites a litany of torments awaiting him for not complying.

"...Eternal damnation is yours! You’ll know the pain and horror of limbs being torn from their sockets! YOUR limbs! YOUR sockets! You’ll feel pain you never imagined in life. Flesh you’ll smell, burning! YOUR flesh! Rotting forever!"

Ouch!

The Chicken Heart That Ate Up New York City

Fat Albert and the gang have left their inner city junkyard to spend two weeks in the fresh forest air of Camp Green Lane. On their first night, sitting around the campfire, Bill tells the scary story of The Chicken Heart That Ate Up New York City.

(thump-thump... thump-thump...)
"The chicken heart was kept alive in a vat, in a laboratory, in a special solution."
(thump-thump... thump-thump...)

"One day a careless janitor knocked the vat over."
(thump-thump... thump-thump...)

"The janitor went to get a rag to clean it up. The chicken heart grew six foot five inches!"
(thump-thump... thump-thump...)

"He went out in search of things to eat. It went out the hallway and rang for the elevator."
(thump-thump... thump-thump...)

"It ate up all of the cabs."
(thump-thump... thump-thump...)

"Ate up the jersey turnpike."
(thump-thump... thump-thump...)

"It’s coming through the woods—he’s right behind you! Ahhhhh!!!"
(thump-thump... thump-thump...)

This telling of the Chicken Heart story appears in the October 1972 episode of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, "Fish Out of Water". If the whole thing seems more silly than scary, that's because this is a story that is meant to be heard, not seen. It's based on a sketch from Bill Cosby's 1966 album Wonderfulness.

But the Chicken Heart story doesn't originate here. Rather, that sketch is the humorous telling of how Cosby first heard the story, as a frightened 7-year old, on the late night radio program Lights Out.

Lights Out was hosted by playwright turned radio personality (and later, film director) Arch Oboler. The show first aired in 1934, but was rebroadcast in reruns as late as the early 1960s. The stories were unique and scary enough to warrant several pages of coverage in Stephen King's non-fiction survey of the horror genre, Danse Macabre. The Chicken Heart story, according to King, exploits "the mind's innate obedience, its willingness to try to see whatever someone suggests it see, no matter how absurd" to force your imagination to confront the impossible, grotesque, hungry heart that eventually expands to cover the entire Earth. (thump... thump...)

Some of Oboler's Lights Out material wound up on a 1962 album Drop Dead (available as an Amazon download here).

You won't find the usual ghosts, vampires or werewolves here. Aside from the Chicken Heart story (played straight, with tongue nowhere near cheek), you also get Taking Papa Home, in which an elderly couple, driving home from a retirement party, finds their car stuck on the train tracks, the wife desperately trying to remove her husband, drunk from celebrating, as the train barrels toward them.

In A Day at the Dentist's, a patient realizes too late that the dentist about to apply sharp tools to his pearly whites is the husband of the woman he's been having an affair with.

If you aren't already squirming in your chair, try listening to The Dark, about a mysterious black fog, seeping from behind an attic door, that turns anyone it touches inside out--without immediately killing them!

"It's a man! But the skin is the inside, the raw flesh is the outside. Organs hanging... A man turned inside out, the way a glove is turned inside out."

The Dark may have inspired the final gag of The Simpson's Treehouse of Horror 5 (aka The Simpson's Halloween Special V) in which a fog turns the Simpsons family inside out before they break out into song.


Buy the Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids featuring the episode "A Fish Out of Water" here.
Buy Bill Cosby's album Wonderfulness here.
Download Arch Oboler's album Drop Dead here.
Buy Stephen King's Danse Macabre here.
Buy The Simpsons Season 6 (featuring Treehouse of Horror V) here.

Fat Albert's Halloween Special (1977, Filmation)

Fat Albert was a show I'd watch regulary every Saturday morning, and enjoyed despite the fact that I had no idea at the time who this "Bill Cosby" guy was, and why he was the sole live-action character in an otherwise animated series.

Fat Albert's Halloween Special premiered in 1977, and stood out from other Halloween specials of the day, not only because it featured kids wandering around gritty urban streets that were just a little threatening to this 7-year old kid from the suburbs, but also because their world seemed populated by adults who were hostile to kids.

From left to right: Bucky (cowboy), Mushmouth (robot), Russell (the world's smallest giant), Dumb Donald (ghost?), Rudy (clown), Weird Harold (matador), Fat Albert ("Super Fat"), Bill (one of The Warriors?)

It starts when the kids go Halloween costume shopping at the Root'n Rummage Emporium. The shopkeeper barks at them angrily from behind the counter when they ask for help.

But the kids, perhaps used to being yelled at, aren't even bothered. Further back in the store is the feared and despised Mrs. Bakewell, who glowers at the kids for no particular reason.

She lives in a spooky old house near the graveyard, where she can be seen looming ominously from an upstairs window later that night.

After being terrified by their friend Devery, who pounces out of a crypt costumed as a witch, Dumb Donald (whose identity is concealed EVERY night of the year, not just Halloween, by a stocking cap pulled over his face) announces their intention to spend this Halloween night "spooking old folks."

Fat Albert, forever the voice of reason, advises against it...

Next, the gang heads to the local movie theater for a twilight showing of "Space Squids that Ate Pittsburgh", where they encounter yet another hostile adult, "Searchlight" Johnson, who scowls at them and warns them to keep their feet off the seats and their lips zipped.

We soon understand why ol' Searchlight is such a sourpuss, when he has to chase Fat Albert and entourage out of the theater for causing too much commotion. Their next encounter is a baffling visit to Mudfoot Brown, an older man who lives out of a shack pieced together from the back end of a car, a rowboat, and an old refrigerator.

Mudfoot, who seems a bit out of it, proceeds to take the kids' Halloween candy while rambling incoherently about the good old days! The kids aren't bothered by his bizarre behavior, but I couldn't help but wonder if this guy was competent enough to be living alone, and should maybe look into an assisted living situation.

The climax of the night is a spooky visit to Old Lady Bakewell's mansion, where it turns out, of course, that she's really just a nice old woman, who welcomes their visit with soda and candy.

But there's one more scare waiting this Halloween night... Devery's brawny and agitated FATHER, who shows up out of nowhere to bring his grounded son home. I'm not sure what punishment awaited him once they got there, but I was sure glad he wasn't MY Dad!

Available on DVD here.