A Night on Bald Mountain: 1940

 
   So once upon a time I was sitting on my butt watching a move. It was called "Fantasia", and it wasn't what I was expecting it to be at all.  It wasn't even like I was eager to watch it.  I take one look at the title, and think to myself whether I had any "Asian Fantasies" to be taken care of by Micky Mouse.  Thinking of about three, I'm interested to see what this film had in store for me.  After a half an hour of dancing shrooms, fairies, Pegasus', brooms, hippopotamus' and alligators, I was ready to turn in.  That is until I heard the booming and thunderous bashing of drums and the slow and sinful slurs of the violin and the tremor-like glide of the cello, which replaced the dancing and the clapping and the learning and the hugging with, "The Night on Bald Mountain."  


  
   The place was where Satan and his followers lurked to lift the dead and drop the living into a spiraling  @#!*% hole of which there is no escape.  The devil, exists purely to reek havoc on the demons that have been resurrected, and merely mock their existence further by playing and torturing them. He can even smirk!  This is why this film is great!  Disney had the balls to put something as adult and scaring as this in a children's visual depiction of various classical music.  And they put in a film which is, simply put, about the devil torturing the dead!  That is awesome!  And when I saw this, I matured a little bit inside.  It was by far the most traumatizing thing I had seen so far in my life!  It's like a fight that breaks out on the sidewalk, that is too violent to watch, yet you can't look away.  And I was hooked!  I actually liked to be scared!


   This was an incredible experience for me.  It was the first horror related footage I had ever seen, and I couldn't get enough of it.  So, if you were ever wondering how my passion for the horror genre of film was ever born, now you do.  The film was mature even in message.  The devil turned beauty into filth and greed, and serenity into chaos.  He was the very being of which to control these terrible powers, and the world sort of needed it.  Because what is beauty without filth, or serenity without chaos?  There is no singularity.  No single solitary variable.

   And when all hope seemed lost, when the demons where tortured without mercy, a light calls out in the distance.  A solitary noise rings in rebellion to the chaos.  The light of serenity rings triumphant as the demonic mountain tries to continue.  But alas, he hesitates at the very sound of it.  It rings again, this time the light shines brighter, and he cringes.  Once more it rings even brighter, white against the devil's black exterior.  And as the demons slowly slither back under their headstones and soil, so does the puppet master coil back into his shell, transforming back again into Bald Mountain.  And finally, in the wee hours of the morning, and people start to stir, they watch the fog rise with the sun. And not one could ever recall those fateful evenings.  Those terrifying stirrings of the night-time.  And nothing so completely terrifying or demonic could ever amount to a night on Bald Mountain.  




10/10

        Next Review:  The Tales of Frankenstein (T.V Series)  1958