Into the Dark Forest

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Before someone asks, I must say that the amazing synchronicity between this post and THIS ONE is coincidental.  I had no inkling what the next Passport blog was going to discuss.  The post you're now reading has been "in the can" and pretty much ready to go for over a month!  

pic by Frank Ugarte; facebook 3.20.23

Did any of Disney's animated films play any role in the development of the Haunted Mansion?  The current consensus among orthodox Mansionologists is: "Why yes, certainly, but only two or three of them."

Raise the topic, and you'll hear about Ken Anderson's 1957-58 plans to build the attraction around the Legend of Sleepy Hollow as interpreted in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, as well as his plans for a "Lonesome Ghost" character, inspired by the Mickey Mouse short of the same name.  That's what you'll read at Doombuggies.com, in Jason Surrell's Haunted Mansion book, and in any number of magazine articles or video presentations dealing with the history of the attraction, and as a matter of fact we talked about those in our earlier treatment of cinematic influences.  Those two are mainly of historical interest, however, since neither Ichabod nor Lonesome left any mark on the finished ride beyond a few ambiguous and incidental details.

Sometimes a third film is mentioned: the Night on Bald Mountain segment from Fantasia.  We discussed that one earlier too.  The wispy spirits in the graveyard and perhaps also the wraiths flying in and out of the ballroom windows may owe something to the famous Fantasia segment.

(Jeff Fillmore Life by the Drop)

Here's Disney historian Ed Squair citing those three films in The Making of the Haunted Mansion, included with the DVD release of the 2003 movie.




The Fourth Film

It's odd, because there is definitely a fourth Disney animated film that influenced one of the scenes in the Haunted Mansion, but it's never cited as an inspiration.  Why is that?  Beats me, except that these narratives do tend to get stuck in the same old groove after awhile, and we're all too lazy to rethink them.  The fourth film is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and I'm thinking specifically of the sequence in which Snow White flees into the dark forest, and her terrified imagination turns ordinary trees into threatening demons.

This concept was recycled in the aforementioned Adventures of Ichabod mini-feature, and as we saw in the

earlier post on cinematic influences, one of the trees in that film may actually have inspired a few Mansion ghosts.

Okay, so where is the Haunted Mansion's own version of this?  Well duh, it's the short journey from the attic to the ground level in the graveyard, a passage through dark and threatening trees.  Seven of them, as a matter of fact.

Usually, when we embark on these excursions into Mansion backgrounds, we wander far and wide, but in this case I don't think that is necessary.  "The Dark Forest" as an archetype in dreams, myths, and legends is a rich topic, but in this brief scene I don't think the HM Imagineers went beyond the boundaries of Snow White any more than Ichabod did.  It's the Dark Forest as distilled through that one source.  I will cite one influence behind Snow White's scary forest, however, because it's quite possible the HM Imagineers were directly familiar with it.

Swedish illustrator Gustaf Tenggren was hired by Disney in 1936 and was a major influence on the look and feel of Snow White, bringing an Old World, fairy-tale storybook ambience to the film. Tenggren's influence on the Snow White forest scenes was particularly strong.  Compare this 1937 Snow White sketch to a sketch he did in 1924.

(Hat tip to Filmic Light for the Tenggren material)

This is probably as far back as we need to go for the roots of the scary trees in the Haunted Mansion.

Snow White's Scary Adventures

Between the film version of Snow White and the Haunted Mansion, however, came Snow White's Scary Adventures (that's the current name; it's had several), so in this case the animated feature had already been translated into a dark ride before the Haunted Mansion came along, and that ride in turn exercised its own direct influence on the future attraction.  Claude Coats worked on Scary Adventures, which was largely designed by Ken Anderson.

A comparison of the movie artwork with the painted flats and fully-dimensional trees in the original 1955 dark ride shows that the Imagineers wanted to preserve the look of the film in the forest scene.

(pix from The E-Ticket magazine, Summer 1992)

What did it look like in the dark?  We can't expect to find very many good photos of the original scene under show lighting conditions, but you can still get an idea by simply going on the ride, since this section of Scary Adventures hasn't been radically altered over the years.  In fact, there may be reason to believe that the trees that are there today are still the originals.  I base that conjecture on their appearance under regular light.  The trees in the now-defunct WDW Snow White ride looked, and the trees in the Tokyo ride still look, pretty good when the lights are on, but the DL trees?  Hideous, unrecognizable piles of what looks like melted plastic.

Walt Disney World:

(above and lower right: screen caps from video by Mousechat.net)

Tokyo Disneyland:

(pic by ywloop)

Now check out Disneyland:

Gross.  I don't know for sure, but it seems to me that's what fifty-plus year old mechanical trees might look like after being repaired and repainted over and over.  But even though they look like crap under regular light, they transform into the scary monsters we see in the movie whenever the show lighting comes on.  Such is the magic of black light.  Modern photography can better capture some of the feel.

UPDATE, July 2021: The Snow White ride at Disneyland is now "Snow White's Enchanted Wish" (no, really), and it has been jazzed up with cartoon projections and new sequences in order to make the ride recount the plot of the movie more fully and coherently. In fairness, it looked better than I was expecting, and some of the scary castle and scary witch stuff has been retained, but the haunted forest scene is now gone.

The Dark Forest Running Away from Snow White?

I think the most interesting discovery in examining the influence of Snow White—both the film and the ride—on the "dark trees" section of the Haunted Mansion, is that the Imagineers consistently drifted away from Snow White as time went by, whether by design or accident.

To start with, the physical layout of the dark tree sequence in the Haunted Mansion bears some similarity to the depiction of the dark forest scene in the Ken Anderson-designed mural that graced the exterior of Snow White's Scary Adventures from 1955 until 1982:

It may be coincidence, but golly, imagine going down that path backwards in a doombuggy.

Not only that, but the trees in the HM were originally going to be animated, like the trees in the Snow White ride.  Note the references to "MECHANICAL TREES" on the blueprint.  This is from the spring of 1969, so that effect may have been scrapped pretty late in the game.  We don't know why.  Technical problems?  Cost overruns? Manpower shortage?  Or was it thought to be too obviously a Scary Adventures retread?

Then too, there may have been plans to put large and highly visible sets

of eyes on the trees, if that is the correct way to read this other blueprint:

"EYES IN TREE TRUNKS, 7 PAIRS," "EYES IN TREES."  There was something like this
in the Snow White ride, a further attempt to replicate what you find in the movie.

(Original pic from Davelandweb.  Enhanced by HBG2)

And for what it's worth, in a few of Marc Davis's
concept sketches, he puts faces on the graveyard trees.

But it is equally possible that the blueprint is referring to the eyes that were put into the seven trees.  I think most Disneylanders know that the eyes are there, but hey, how come you never see an organized photo spread with all seven identified?  Once again it falls to us at Long-Forgotten to perform a shamefully neglected task.  Here ya go, kids, and the numbers are even matched to the blueprint above for easy reference.

If the trees had been animated, and if the eyes had been made even more prominent than they are, then the debt to Snow White's Scary Adventures would have been hard to miss.

How Thick is that Thicket Out the Window?

The one for our doombuggy trail?  Since the scene is so dark, it isn't easy to come up with a photographic image of the Anaheim trees that replicates their look under show conditions.  The videos are generally hopeless. [But cameras keep getting better: check out the Ugarte photo at the top.]

There's a 2015 video HERE that actually captures the trees pretty well:

LGM videos

Here's a nice 3D image, if you can do the "magic eye" thing.

The twisty railings are supposed to read as pieces of random underbrush and branches.
You're passing through a dense thicket, you see.  (This is WDW, but Anaheim's railings are similar.)

The seven Disneyland trees are black and stout and have faces on them, resembling the Snow White trees.  Below, that's from the now-defunct Scary Adventures at WDW on the left, with Disneyland's HM on the right.

At Disneyland, they crowd heavily around you.  Some of the shrubbery between them extends up past the top of the doombuggies.  A few of the trees still have some foliage, further blocking the view.  Real twigs and branches have been incorporated, all dense and twisted.  Visibility through and past the trees is quite limited.  In a word, you're trapped.

Whoops, can't go that way.

That way doesn't look too good either.

Forget it.

Sorry.

The WDW thicket is a complete contrast.  The trees are thinner, lighter in color, utterly bare, and do not have faces.  Their twigs are thin and spidery, but they are arched and curved, never gnarled and twisted.  There is far less shrubbery, and it's lower down, almost at track level.

You see through these trees as much as you see the trees themselves.

These 3D's from the WDW Mansion may help you to get a feel for it.

Admittedly, I haven't been to the Orlando Mansion, but judging from backstage photos, on-ride photos,

and videos, it looks to me like a very different "dark forest" experience than the Anaheim original.

(From the Martin-Warren video, 2009)

Here's a side-by-side that shows the dramatic contrast

between the designs of the WDW trees and the DL trees.

Incidentally, that "eye" in the DL tree is actually an infrared light that invisibly illuminates the area for the night vision

security system.  I suppose there's some irony in that, since it's part of the system by which they keep an eye on you.

Heh.  Reminds me of Flowers and Trees.

It's difficult to say whether one is better than the other.  One is a dark cavern, the other seems more like a prison cell with bars.

The differences between the two sets represent further steps away from Snow White, but it's not possible to know if that was the motive.  It could all be coincidental; nevertheless the differences between the blueprints and the production figures, and even more so the differences between Anaheim and Orlando, consistently go in that direction.

If indeed the Imagineers were concerned that the HM thicket would look too much like a Snow White rip-off, they needn't have worried, since no one ever mentions the obvious Snow White correlations anyway.

Falling Off the Roof

According to the official WED summary of the ride, released in the summer of 1969, you exit the attic window, then you "suddenly 'fall' backwards off the roof," and then you "descend past grasping, demon trees."

(Collin Campbell's take on the attic exit)

Out you go.  Go on.  Scoot.  All it takes is faith and trust, and a little Omnimover track.

Some people have interpreted this as a fatal fall, so that you are now one of them as you make your way through the graveyard jamboree.  But the ghosts still ignore you, except for the popup ghosts, who are still trying to scare you, and nothing the Ghost Host says later on suggests a change in your condition.  Why you survive the fall unharmed is not explained.  One supposes that the same force that compelled you to move through the house (represented by the doombuggy) buoyed you up safely as you softly descended.

I only bring that up because there is yet another way to read this portion of the ride.  Normally, I am cool toward Freudian interpretations, but I have to admit that they work rather well here, so maybe this time there's something to that approach.  The house is the womb in which you have gradually been prepared for entry into another, different world.  You fall through the birth canal (and all that dark underbrush, heh heh) and miraculously land unharmed, borne up safely by invisible hands, and now you're in that other world big time.  Ta da, you've been born.  If you hold to the "death" interpretation of the fall from the attic, this Freudian interpretation plays right into your hands.

I'm not saying I fully buy into any of this, and I bring it forward with reluctance, because if you give them Freudians an inch they take a mile.  "Yeah, yeah, that's gotta be it!  And notice that the first person you see is a 'caretaker,' and why is there no bathroom or bedroom in the Mansion?  And...well, you KNOW what Constance and her hatchet are all about, don't you?  DON'T YOU??  And...."

Good heavens, wouldja look at the time?  We have to wrap this post up.  I'll see you all a little later.