One of the most intense and memorable cartoons of all time, adapted from Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”. UPA studios produced this gem in 1953, utilizing an extremely abstract and completely unique style. There’s very little actual movement in the film, which centers on a man who kills his landlord mostly for the heck of it and then believes he hears the dead man’s heart beating. Instead, a sense of urgency and madness is conveyed almost solely through editing, chaotic stills, and James Mason’s frantic voiceover.

Let’s go back to the early days of Disney for our next Halloween cartoon – the Ub Iwerks-directed The Skeleton Dance is actually the first ever entry in Disney’s “Silly Symphonies” series. It’s a basically plotless music/dance cartoon (as most of the early Silly Symphonies were), but with enough interesting visuals to keep it worthwhile. I particularly like the shots at the beginning of the owl, and the wolf howling at the moon. Footage from the cartoon has been reused quite a lot by Disney and others. Another, slightly more plot-driven skeleton-themed cartoon by Ub Iwerks is Spooks (1932), starring Flip the Frog and produced by Iwerks’ own shop after he left Disney.