It may still be over two months until Halloween, but that hasn’t stopped Disney+ from getting in the holiday spirit. A batch of 20 family-friendly horror films have dropped on the streaming service recently, providing you with an abundance of frights to get you gradually geared up for the best night of the year, with a few stand-out entries worth looking out for.
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is one of many anthology pics Disney released in the ‘40s, and is best remembered as a Boomer equivalent of Watership Down, The Dark Crystal or The NeverEnding Story in the “movies that traumatized children” category. Its first segment is based on classic kids book The Wind in the Willows, but the second, more relevant half adapts Washington Irving’s famous short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, with its rich but dark animation and foreboding tone and music terrifying many of its young viewers.
Hocus Pocus, meanwhile, takes place in Salem, Massachusetts as a trio of witches executed 300 years previously are accidentally resurrected by a teenage boy newly arrived from L.A., and target his younger sister so they can steal her life force to sustain themselves.
Meanwhile, the four-film Halloweentown series sees all monsters living in the titular community in a parallel universe, having sealed themselves off a thousand years ago to escape the persecution of humans and are only able to travel to the mortal world through a portal that’s open one night a year.
And last but not least, Frankenweenie is a stop-motion animation where an aspiring young scientist uses galvanism to resurrect his dead dog, only for his subsequent experiments to spiral out of control as the townsfolk try to emulate them. Also available is the short from which the feature was expanded.
The full line-up of the collection is as follows:
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
Don’t Look Under the Bed
Frankenweenie (1984)
Frankenweenie (2012)
The Ghosts of Buxley Hall
Girl vs. Monster
Halloweentown
Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge
Halloweentown High
Return to Halloweentown
The Haunted Mansion
Hocus Pocus
Mom’s Got a Date With a Vampire
Mr. Boogedy
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Phantom of the Megaplex
The Scream Team
Twitches
Twitches Too
Zombies
Tell us, will you be checking out any of these movies on Disney Plus? As always, let us know down below.
