How to Turn Off Voiceover on Disney Plus

Welp, buffer's run out again, and this time I don't have a bunch of shorter flicks ahead of me to use to catch up. Still, I managed to meet my self-imposed deadline! Even though I had to write about 4,000 words today to make it.

11. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

Background

I've heard of The Wind in the Willows, at least? Never read it, I don't think. Same for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS

RKO logo, rated G, tobacco, pretty standard stuff. There's the usual singing, but the lyrics aren't even trying and the subtitles don't bother. Ooh, Bing Crosby narrates the Ichabod part – and Basil Rathbone the Mr. Toad part! (Looks like Rathbone was well past the peak of his career by this point; the last of his Sherlock films had come out three years before.)

Zoom in on a stained-glass window showing book, quill, and candle to enter a live-action library. Seems in keeping with the Disney tradition. Rathbone's voiceover posits for us the question of "the most fabulous character in English literature". A number of options are proposed: Robin Hood, King Arthur, Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair, Sherlock Holmes, and Oliver Twist. I am amused to note that with the exception of Becky Sharp, all will eventually make it into the Disney canon, either as themselves or as animal counterparts. Rathbone himself of course opts for J. Thaddeus Toad, Esq., of The Wind in the Willows.

Much like Snow White's book or the last movie's paintbrush, the volume in question removes itself from the shelf and opens itself. Mr. Toad, it seems, is an inveterate adventurer, always getting harebrained ideas and chasing recklessly after the latest shiny thing. As the "Esquire" implies, he's gentry of some sort and travels in the expected social circles, but only has three real friends: MacBadger, a stuffy Water Rat, and a soft-hearted Mole. (Rat's character design seems to have been calculated to annoy Rathbone.)

Mr. Toad and His Manias

Our story begins with Rat and Mole sitting down for tea in Rat's riverside house, only to be interrupted by an urgent letter from MacBadger, summoning them to Toad Hall. The letter's delivered by a human mail carrier, marking this as a setting where humans and talking animals coexist comfortably, which we haven't really seen before even in Pinocchio. There's some neat visual details emphasizing the scale weirdness; here, Rat opens a doorknob above his eye level and below the mail carrier's knee, a compromise awkward for any species.

Rathbone introduces us to the ancestral Toad home, the nicest place on the river:

"The animals were tremendously proud of it. They felt it gave the whole community an air of, uh, respectability. To lose Toad Hall was, of course, unthinkable. And yet it was no secret that Toad's follies had brought him to the brink of bankruptcy."​

I feel like there's some English class politics here I'm not fully grasping. But in any event, we have stakes! MacBadger's at the place now, swimming through stacks of loose papers to try and put Toad's finances in something resembling order, made all the more difficult by the mob of angry creditors at the door. (One of the many bills for property damage is dated October 12, 1905, and the book was published in 1908, so there's a ballpark for our era.)

Oh hey, the old "shooing an unwanted visitor, hearing another knock, yelling as you open the door again, and startling someone actually welcome" gag! Does that have a name? Probably. Anyway, Rat and Mole are here, finally giving MacBadger someone to rant to about the need to rein in Toad's impulses. Lads, you're drafted. The man's off wrecking the countryside in a yellow wagon, with some horse named Cyril drawing it.

And now we meet the amphibian himself, striking terror in the hearts of presumably-non-talking livestock (as always, don't think too much about it) with the buck-toothed Cyril. They sing "The Merrily Song", proudly declaring that they have no clue where they're going and are determined to get there posthaste. The song rhymes "to nowhere in particular" with "though the roads are perpendicular" when Cyril races almost straight up a steep slope; I like that. Hedges are ripped up, drying laundry is scattered, and a greenhouse is dashed to smithereens before Rat and Mole find them.

Toad introduces Cyril, who speaks with a Cockney accent or summat. (Apparently his voice actor would later have the dubious honor of coaching Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.) Mole is easily swayed by Toad's invitation to a joyride, but Rat gets to business.

Rat: "This is serious. You've got to give up that horse and cart."
Toad: "Give up my… but my dear Ratty, ho ho, this is my career!"​

Rat harangues Toad, who just claps his hands over his tympani. When Rat and Mole resort to dragging him down by the trousers, he slips out of them and rides off in his underwear – only for a loud honk to bring Cyril screeching to a halt.

The duo goggles at the sight of two humans approaching in one of those newfangled motorcars. They back away from the dirt road to evade, so clumsily they wreck the wagon, but Toad doesn't care. He's found a new love, and in moments he's reduced to doing his best

Crazy Frog impression

.

Rat and Mole forcibly drag the new gearhead back to Toad Hall, into his bedroom, and into his sleepwear, then splashing him with water to put out his engine. The plan: lock Toad up in his room against his will, for however many weeks it takes for his latest passion to fade, because Toad Hall is more important than his bodily autonomy.

…I'm not entirely keen on this plan, but I'll allow it as a plot point.

"Now, there was only one thing wrong with Ratty's cure for Toad's motor mania: It didn't work."​

Toad uses the old bedsheet rope trick and sets out to get his hands on a motorcar by any means necessary. "Even if he had to beg, borrow, or…"

Mr. Toad vs. the Law

Cut to the front page of the London Journal, proclaiming "TOAD ARRESTED", elaborating that the charges in this case of "Speed Mania" are "theft of a motor car, reckless driving upon the public highroad, and failure to stop when called upon to do so", the trial to be held next Tuesday. Another paper shows a photo of Toad at the wheel, a bobby holding a revolver to his head; Cyril is named as an accomplice. (The rest of the news is random nonsense; I spotted one pair of paragraphs that was pasted in twice.)

Trial opens with some guy in a wig, look I don't know the names of roles in British courts, rattling off the relevant facts too fast to be intelligible. (It's August, I caught that much.) The Counsel for the Crown, who gets sinister music and a sinister character design, calls Rat and Mole as witnesses – simultaneously, for narrative economy. Everyone here is human but the characters we already know, so there's more fun scale silliness with the critters in a human-size court.

DID YOU OR DID YOU NOT LOCK TOAD IN HIS HOUSE TO KEEP HIM FROM GETTING A MOTORCAR?! Er, um, well, yesTHANK YOU, NO FURTHER QUESTIONS. MacBadger's next up, disgruntled as ever. Ooh, and we get his first name, Angus. YOU KNEW HE WAS A MOTORCAR NUT, DIDN'T YOU?! AND YOU CUT OFF HIS ACCESS TO HIS MONEY, DIDN'T YOU?! Well, uh THAT IS ALL, and the Crown rests. Kind of a weak case if you ask me. Hell, Angus didn't even get answers out, and the first could well have been a "no".

(Note: While it's been stated that there are charges against him for his antics behind the wheel, the narrative will treat the matter of theft as the only one of concern.)

Toad is unfazed; he seems to have a plan. From what we've seen, this is not reassuring. His counsel is called, and he puts on a wig and declares that he'll be representing himself. Fool for a client, I suppose. First witness, the horse, full name Cyril Proudbottom. Counsel and witness begin to discuss the defendant (in the third person, which I don't know if it's standard for this but it's amusing), but the Counsel for the Crown goes out of order and begins shoving his own questions in Cyril's face. Protocol notwithstanding, the question of how Toad got the car without his allowance is valid.

Cyril: "The only way a gentleman gets anything. The honest way."
Counsel for the Crown: "And what is the honest way?"
Cyril: "Ha, ha! I thought you wouldn't know that, guvnor."​

Laughter in the court; judge gavels, and testimony begins proper. Here's how Cyril tells it:

Toad picks up Cyril, strolls down the road, and before long the shiny red car crosses their path. Car pulls up to a tavern, and a bunch of shady-looking weasels pour out the former and into the latter.

Cyril: "Now, weasels, I know, are deceitful. And not to be trusted at all."​

Bit racist, there! Well, I guess in Disney logic they're land-vultures or something. Anyway, they stole the car, but Toad and Cyril don't know that yet. Toad, smitten, wanders into the tavern and asks the human tending the bar – bloke named Winky with a waxed mustache and a toothy grin – who owns the car, earning him about nine pistols pointed at his back, but when he explains that he's determined to buy it at any price, the weasels quickly decide to take the opportunity to fence their loot.

This is when Toad remembers he's not very liquid, but undaunted, he proposes an alternative, which the weasels quickly agree to. Some quick documentation drawn up, Winky witnesses, and the deed is done. On what terms, though?

I should mention that Cyril's been telling this whole story in rhyme. So when he starts wrapping up with this…

Now, the guvnor's not a bit stingy.
He never does anything small.
The weasels gave him the red motorcar,
And he gave the weasels…​

…you can guess how the line ends.

Yup, Toad's going for the Reynolds Pamphlet defence: "I am not a thief, I am an idiot!" The judge and Counsel for the Crown share a laugh; the latter refuses to believe it. (Angus does; he's fainted dead away.) Toad produces Winky as a corroborating witness, winking at him as he passes on the way to the stand. Winky responds in kind.

Toad introduces the bartender as "a citizen of substance and standing – a man of unimpeachable honesty". Somehow the judge seems to believe it. So what's his version of what happened on 12 August?

Winky: "Well, guvnor… you tried to sell me a stolen motorcar!"​

Toad is aghast. The courtroom erupts in chaos.

"TOAD GUILTY!", the London Tribune later says, Toad having been sentenced to 20 years in "the highest, most guarded tower of Old Billingsgate Gaol" as "a dangerous element in our society". The Star declares similarly; The Evening News reports on his friends asking for a new trial, claiming temporary insanity (MacBadger: "Well, more or less temporary."), but to no avail. They keep trying, appealing to the highest court, the lowest court, the rearmost court, and finally to any damn court that's willing. No luck, and eventually even the press loses interest.

(Also the papers consistently say "Mac Badger" for Angus's surname, for some reason.)

I like that at this point, we still don't know whether he actually did it.

Months pass; it's Christmas Eve. Nice snow animation, as expected with Disney getting back on track. Toad sits in his tower cell at night, a ball and chain fastened to his leg, lamenting all the recklessness and failures of judgment that brought him here, when a guard stops by to announce a Christmas visit from his grandma.

Judging from Toad's reaction, he doesn't have one of those. In walks in a figure much taller than most toads, concealed by a full-length dress, a muff, a bonnet, and an opaque veil, speaking in falsetto. And as soon as the guard leaves, the veil comes off to reveal Cyril's face. And he's not just here to pay a social call – he's got a Plan. Oh, dear.

From inside his own dress, Cyril produces a toad-sized one of the same design and explains what he's got in mind. Toad's new commitment to caution and sobriety turns out to last about 30 seconds, which in fairness may be a record for him. The guards, naturally, fail to notice the sweet old lady in the pink dress going from horse-sized to toad-sized, because why would they? The wardens don't catch on and sound the alarm until Toad's well clear of the premises.

(It didn't occur to me while watching the first time, but now I'm remembering how Weathering With You did this with elementary-schoolers. Bunch of other movies with their own variants too, I'm sure.)

Toad hurries through the streets in his disguise, desperate to evade the cops and their dogs. The tension mounts, and finally he's stopped in his tracks by a policeman's command – but fortunately, he sees only a harmless old woman. Toad makes the polite noises and walks away as casually as he can, finally starting to relax.

And then the ball and chain he's been carrying around under his skirt slips out, hitting the cobblestones with a clank.

Cover blown, the chase starts in earnest, but the iron ball gives Toad a fighting chance at the cost of his ability to control his momentum – it rolls toward a staircase and carries him down, crashing through a stone wall at the bottom in accordance with cartoon physics. When he regains control, he's put some distance from the police, and he just happens to be at the train station, with an engine ready to depart. Sneak on, pull the lever, and away he goes.

(Digging himself deeper with the law, you say? Nah, everyone knows that's not how it works.)

The cops immediately grab another train and take off after him. Train chase, woo! Toad's having the time of his life, though seeing ten police offers or so all shooting at him puts a damper on things. Only a little, though. And he manages to give them the slip when they cross a bridge, jumping into the river with them none the wiser. Escape accomplished! And sure, the iron ball's dragging him down, but being amphibious, he can take as long as he needs to get to the riverbank, right?

…Right?

Oh dear.

Mr. Toad Takes a Stand

At Rat's home, he and Mole are about to dig into Christmas dinner, when an unexpected guest shows up. Hey, Toad didn't inexplicably drown! Naw, he's not afraid of the fuzz OH SHIT THE FUZZ! Unmoved by Toad's pleas, Rat has Mole open the door, but it turns out it's just MacBadger knocking. (Not sure why they didn't recognize his voice, but okay.) And he's got big news.

The lights are all on in Toad Hall, and it's full of partying weasels – along with Mr. Winky, proudly carrying a deed to the place. So there's our answer, Toad was telling the truth! Of course, I'm not sure how Winky could actually have made use of the deed without exonerating Toad and implicating himself in perjury, but we'll overlook that for the sake of the story. Because now we're setting up new objectives: to clear Toad's name, they need to get their various forelimbs on that deed themselves.

Phase 1, get in through a secret passage, because it's an old house build by rich people, of course it's got one of those. This'll require rowing over without getting caught. Their first obstacle comes with a guardsweasel pacing a bridge – and then immediately, their first wrinkle, when Toad gets overexcited at the sight of him and fires their shotgun. Fortunately, the recoil gets them to the hidden dock, but there's at least one weasel now who's got to be a little suspicious.

They open the hidden door to find a room strewn with dozens of weasels sleeping off the booze. I like the one sleeping in the arms of a figure in a wall painting. Winky's sleeping on a couch at one end of the room, the deed tucked into his jacket. Phase 2 is self-evident: get it without waking him up. MacBadger's plan is to creep up the stairway and nab the deed from the balcony. Things are already getting complicated, though – unbeknownst to them, the guardsweasel has found the boat they just left.

Toad's old bedsheet-rope trick returns, with Mole rappelling down like Mickey in Fun and Fancy Free. Almost there… whoops, Winky's snore almost made Mole lose his hat… not quite far enough, MacBadger and Rat have to lower him a bit more… whoops, he just plopped onto Winky, is he gonna wake up? Not yet, but he's hugging Mole like a plushy now. And all the while, the guard's inspection continues, and he just found the switch for the hidden door.

Mole manages to get Winky to move his arm and grab the paper, but just as he's being pulled up, the guard comes in. Right before he can pass the deed to MacBadger, a thrown knife cuts the rope, and he lands hard on Winky, waking him up. Cover's blown. New plan: run.

Mole grabs the falling deed and dashes, but Winky wakes the weasels around him and goes to red alert only moments later. In a bizarre defiance of logic, Mole runs into a wall-mounted mirror that doesn't reflect him. A weasel grabs the deed from him, Rat grabs it from the weasel, another weasel grabs it and clubs him, Mole grabs it back, Mole runs into a sword-swinging Winky. Other way! Whoops, weasel with a club! Dodge him, and Winky gets hit instead.

Mole, still in possession, dashes into another room – and out, with weasels chasing him and throwing All the Knives. Fun cartoon logic, as Mole manages to stay just ahead of the knives, trading indignant pokes with the lead one. Whoops, crashed into a door, and this time the knives are pinning him and the deed to it. He barely manages to pull the deed and himself off, rolling backwards and knocking down the weasels like bowling pins.

Toad's open! Mole decides to fold the deed into a paper airplane to get it to him. The weasels fail to intercept! …But the deed swerves away from Toad and toward the lit fireplace. Toad scrambles to suck it out with the nearby bellows. Weasels tackle Toad, bellows fumbled, MacBadger stomps on it to shoot the deed out, weasels and Winky chase it under a rug and into another room.

There's a fun shot of a weasel's hat, gloves, and shoes continuing to chase the plane after Mole tackles their owner, and finally Winky catches the plane… only for another to fly past him. Toad's in the balcony, throwing as many paper airplanes as he can fold to misdirect his foes. The weasels are thrown into chaos, and even Winky's lost track of the real deed.

Knives thrown at Toad! He jumps for the chandelier and swings about, grabbing MacBadger, Rat, and Mole out of harm's way one by one. (Don't question the geography of how he swung as low as the floor.) But a thrown ax breaks the chain, and Toad, MacBadger, and Rat crash into the wall hiding the secret passage, stunned.

They manage to turn it, leaving them safely in the cave, but Mole's still inside, projectiles lopping off one slice of his hat after another. Flip the switch! He's safe now. They're not! Mole flips the switch himself, and now he's the one inside again. At the last moment, MacBadger manages to pull him out with the rest of them. The four run to their rowboat, where MacBadger laments the mission's failure – only for Toad to proudly pull the deed from his jacket. Hooray! Not sure when he managed to nab it, but still.

A week or so later, a New Year's edition of The Daily Express declares "TOAD EXONERATED – GOOD NAME CLEARED – COMPLETE EXONERATION ENDS FAMOUS CASE". Presumably the other traffic offences were dropped, and Winky found himself up on charges for perjury and possibly other matters, which maybe somehow annulled the sale of Toad Hall? I dunno, but anyway, Toad's back in it. His friends drink a New Year's toast, confident that he's learned not to get quite so carried away with his special interests.

Whoops, spoke too soon. He and Cyril just knocked a statue askew in their new biplane. Guess manic recklessness doesn't die that easy. But as Mr. Rathbone notes, even when we recognize his folly, many of us likely wish we didn't have to be so prudent ourselves. Toad's a sort of escapist figure that way. Even when he gets himself into trouble…

He still lives happily ever after.

THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW

Away goes The Wind in the Willows, and Rathbone with it, leaving our other narrator to take his place. Bing Crosby declares that while the English have come up with plenty of "fabulous characters", Americans have as well; he name-checks several of the ones we saw or heard about in Melody Time, plus a few others. Crosby's own focus will be on Washington Irving's character Ichabod Crane, a schoolmaster said to have worked in a New York village long ago – we don't get a date here, but Irving set his tale around 1790. His name is still often spoken in those parts, but apparently for darker reasons than his exceptional teaching skills.

Ichabod and the Villagers

Ichabod is a tall, lanky fellow with oddly proportioned features and shabby clothes, but a certain charisma. He arrives in the village of Sleepy Hollow one autumn day, attracting the attention of the locals, among them a group of young men called the Sleepy Hollow Boys, led by the beefy and beloved Brom Bones, who's "always ready for a fight – or a frolic", and happy to screw with people for a laugh. I get the sense that he's sort of a proto-Gaston. The villagers voice their curiosity about their new schoolmaster in the song "Ichabod Crane"; they're not sure what to make of him, but he seems polite and friendly.

(I'm digging the background art. Is this Blair's work?)

Ichabod loses some points with me when Crosby says he believes in "spare the rod and spoil the child", showing mercy largely to get the chance to eat at the homes of those students whose mothers are good cooks. Turns out he's quite friendly with the ladies in general, and his calendar ends up quite full – at least one engagement even makes him some extra cash, playing piano and singing with a women's choral society. (Crosby voices Ichabod here, showing off his own skills.)

Brom and his boys make fun of him, but he's getting the chicks and they're not, so he's not too concerned. And speaking of which…

Along comes one Katrina van Tassel, the lovely only child of the richest farmer in the county. (I don't think a character like this would be called "plump as a partridge" today.) She's quite the charmer herself, described by the song "Katrina" as a coquette whom no man can forget, but whom no man can hold down. We're shown a collection of admirers setting up a picnic at her direction, then moving it from place to place as she contemplates the perfect spot. For Ichabod, like countless others, it's love at first sight; at his own picnic, there's a funny moment where he puts a roast bird on his head and starts eating his hat.

Fade to the schoolhouse, where the boys have lost all semblance of discipline. Ichabod pays no attention (with another good sight gag of him faking his presence behind the book at the lectern), fantasizing about Katrina's beauty, her charms – and most of all, the lucrative farmland she stands to inherit. Well, can't say he isn't thinking about practicalities.

Ichabod Courts a Lady

Ichabod thinks he stands a good chance against Katrina's other suitors, but he hasn't realized that it's not a free-for-all, but a one-on-one against Brom. And she's the sort who likes the competition, and is quite happy to play referee; there's traces of Lulubelle, Slue-Foot Sue, maybe even the girl from "Once Upon a Wintertime" here. In the opening round, Ichabod plays the classic gentleman move of laying his coat across a puddle for Katrina to cross, only for Brom to race in on his horse and splash him with mud (somehow Katrina remains spotless) while giving her a ride. She has no objections to this, though she does toss Ichabod a handkerchief to encourage him.

Round 2: Ichabod dashes ahead of Brom's horse to return the handkerchief, then escort Katrina by hand as before while Brom's left carrying her shopping. Brom tries to follow them, but can't see over the bags and trips over the gate to her property. It becomes clear that while he can dish out the practical jokes, he can't take them, and quickly falls prey to a good deal more slapstick. Ichabod wins the faceoff handily, making it inside Katrina's house with her, even daring to gift her her own flowers as a bouquet. When she sees Brom trying to peek through a window, her response is to rile him up by putting one of the flowers in Ichabod's lapel.

Yeah, I think Crosby's right. This courtship doesn't seem like the wisest course of action.

Though it does give us the sight of Brom looking very much like a Minecraft character after Ichabod throws a door open and smacks him into the wall. And when Brom's about to throw a punch, she's willing to distract him from her window long enough for Ichabod to get away. In the end, at least Ichabod walks away happy and unscathed, and Brom has suffered only a lengthy sequence of slapstick pratfalls. Still, he's determined to make up for lost ground, and now he's angry.

Ichabod gets a letter from Katrina's father! It's an invitation to a Halloween "frolic" at their place that night. Interestingly, though New York hasn't been a Dutch colony for over a century, he uses the honorific "Mynheer" for himself; not sure if that was a thing at the time, but Irving's story has it, and this was the time and state of his childhood, so he'd probably have known. Also both the salutation and the signature end in "Esq.", which is probably just to be polite, because in 18th-century America, nobody has any clue what it actually means.

Katrina herself adds a PS saying "please come", just to make sure things stay exciting. (I imagine Brom's invitation has the same.) Ichabod sets forth on an old draft horse he's borrowed, fully convinced he's on the brink of victory.

At the party, Brom glowers from the sidelines as Ichabod happily and skillfully dances with Katrina, even lighting her father's pipe without missing a step for bonus points. Brom looks away, meeting the eye of a short, stout woman we've seen a few times before; she's also been left alone on the bench. She bats her eyes, but Brom shudders and looks away. Which, c'mon, rude. You could have a perfectly good time with her.

Brom gets an idea that's rather less kind to the short woman: get her dancing with Ichabod, leaving Katrina free for him to snap up. At his first inviting gesture, she tackles him and begins dancing manically and whooping, her arms around his waist and her face buried in his belly. Rather than calm her down and walk her through the steps, he proceeds with the plan and maneuvers over to the other couple. She shows no sign of caring or even noticing when she's shoved onto Ichabod, who manages her fairly well, but still returns her to Brom first chance he gets. Brom eventually lifts her off the floor altogether and starts chasing Ichabod and Katrina, but still doesn't manage to repeat the switch, and she won't even let go of him when he plops her back on the bench. Her grip proves so enthusiastic he has to shove her through a door and bar it with a chair.

Katrina, meanwhile, is enjoying the whole process, regardless of who she's dancing with. Between her and the short woman, I'd say this story doesn't have the best portrayal of women.

Brom's new plan: open the trapdoor behind Ichabod so he falls in. New plan fails; Ichabod has enough spatial awareness to no-sell it. And now the short woman's back and running after Brom, who falls in himself. By the time he climbs out of the cellar and gets back in the front door, the dance has ended, with the room applauding Ichabod.

Brom's scorecard is looking pretty pathetic, but he has an ace up his sleeve. Mynheer van Tassel includes in his Halloween parties a custom that round about midnight, his guests are invited to tell ghost stories. And Brom happens to have discovered that Ichabod Crane is a very firm believer in such matters.

Ichabod and the Headless Horseman

So with Crosby's voice Brom takes the stage, leading the guests in "The Headless Horseman", a number that warms up with grim descriptions of the various ghoulies and ghosties that get together around this time of the night to party, with the worst of it on Halloween night. And the most terrible of them all, frightening even other demons, is the Headless Horseman, who rides out that night to find someone whose head he can replace his own with.

The strategy proves quite effective. Ichabod flails in panic when a gust of wind opens the shutters, puts out the candles next to him, and blows a curtain over him. His hands shake violently as he pours a cup of coffee, failing to notice when it overflows for more than 20 seconds, and later repeats the performance when he's too entranced to realize he's emptied the entire pepper shaker onto his hard-boiled egg. He flinches in terror at fireplace sparks (usual kudos to the effects team) and a rolling pumpkin. And the whole time, Katrina just laughs.

Brom throws in a personal testimony to amplify the effect, like any good ghost story needs. He claims to have run into the Horseman last Halloween, and knowing that he couldn't be bargained or reasoned with, he rushed to the bridge that leads back to the village at top speed. Because like any creature of faerie, the Headless Horseman has his own rules: he can't cross the river. That's your one advantage. Good luck.

Ichabod heads home later, much too late at night for his liking, alone on his borrowed horse, whistling to stave off the dread. (There's a shot here that I recognize from the point I stopped at in the Animators React episode Eleanor linked in

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, not wanting to spoil myself on a later film.) The trees tower above; every chirping bird and moaning wind makes him jump. Clouds cover the full moon, seeming like a grasping hand to his eyes. I think the closest thing we've seen to this before is Snow White's dash through the forest, but this scene spends much more time building up suspense through the atmosphere.

Ichabod starts wildly when he's caught in one of those blowing-leaves shots we keep seeing. He does his best to calm himself, urging his far-too-slow horse on again. A wolf howls, leading him to panic as he almost rides into a specter, though it's only a tree on closer look. As he cowers behind the horse, the crickets' chirping and a toad's croak almost sounds like voices: Ichabod… Ichabod…

The voices of nature surround him, pressing in on him. When a branch brushes against him, he leaps off the horse and sprints forward, entangling himself in a spiderweb and getting terrorized by a crow before he climbs back on. He urges the horse through another blowing-leaves shot, but to no avail; we zoom out to see them stationary, the horse napping. When this filters into his consciousness, he stops.

And realizes that he still hears hoofbeats.

Ichabod frantically tries to push his sleeping horse forward, then pull. The reins snap, and he tumbles back into a log. But when he regains his bearings, he realizes the rhythmic sound is coming from right next to him – the wind beating a patch of cattails against the log.

He breaks down in laughter at his own silliness; even the horse joins in as it wakes. What was he thinking? An educated fellow like him, falling for a story like that? Surely Brom was just trying to get his goat. Nothing to be afraid of. The woods are just trees; the trees are just wood. He laughs and laughs until he runs short of breath.

Which is when he hears another laugh, a malicious cackle not far off.

Schoolteacher and horse alike break into a cold sweat. Trembling, they turn.

The Headless Horseman and his mount are not like them. They are painted largely in solid blacks, with traces of color outlining them – the purple of the Horseman's cloak, the white of the moonlight glinting off the sword in his right hand, the orange glow of the hair and grim features on the head in his left hand, the red of his horse's furious eyes and mouth. The horse itself is different in another way: Ichabod's is as cartoony all the other horses we've seen since Goofy the Gaucho's five movies ago, but this one has the proportions of a 3D horse. It is not of their world.

Ichabod and the horse narrowly dodge the Horseman's slashes, and the horse gallops off in terror. Ichabod scrambles to move his lanky frame, and sprints until he can grab the horse by its rear legs. He manages to get back in the saddle; sparks fly from horseshoes as the Horseman pursues.

The Horseman draws near, and Ichabod's panicked horse gallops even faster. Cartoon logic works against Ichabod as his horse pulls away from him, and he barely dodges another slash from the sword. A mad leap carries him forward again, but he misses the saddle, finding himself nose-to-nose with his horse, hanging underneath with his legs wrapped around its neck.

Ichabod and his horse skid down a steep slope, killing their momentum, while the Horseman leaps forward, leaving him in front of them. Still looking backward, Ichabod at first thinks they've lost him, until specter and mortal draw level again and the sword resumes swinging. Ichabod and his horse lose their footing again, skidding down another slope into a bond; the horse keeps running underwater, hitting a tree moments after Ichabod falls off again. It scrambles for shore the moment it can, Ichabod climbing back into the saddle.

There, up ahead – the covered bridge that means safety. But the Horseman cuts their path off, laughing hideously, and they scramble to reverse course and hang onto their heads. Wrong direction now, but Ichabod manages to dodge the Horseman and pull off a tight 180-degree turn by grabbing a tree trunk and swinging himself and his horse around it like bullets in a sling. The bridge is in front again, and this time the Horseman is behind.

Ichabod spurs his horse on, but just before the bridge they skid in mud, spinning in circles. When Ichabod's vision clears, he realizes the horse's panic has led it to keep galloping – in the wrong direction. They crash head-on with the Horseman, and Ichabod finds himself looking straight down into what ought to be the Horseman's neck, hearing its terrible laughter at point-blank range. Dodging, dodging, leading it in circles around a tree – Ichabod catches a low branch with his neck, and his momentum lifts him out of his saddle as he spins around it, landing on the Horseman's mount behind him. It takes him a moment to realize where he is and panic, whereupon he smacks into the branch again, switching back to his own horse.

The Horseman is right on their heels, but at last they make it back to the bridge, and across. The Horseman skids to a stop just short, and when they're finally across, they dare to stop and turn back, in hopes that they might have escaped.

But just because he can't cross the bridge himself doesn't mean he's out of tricks, and he throws his head – a blazing jack-o-lantern – across. It flies toward the camera, and our view is consumed by flames before we fade to black.

The next morning, all that anyone finds of Ichabod Crane is his hat and the remains of a pumpkin. Brom weds Katrina not long afterward. Some say Ichabod escaped far away and married into wealth.

The people of Sleepy Hollow know better.

The End​

Closing Thoughts

…God. Damn.

Best Disney movie of the package era? Yes, and I don't think it's even close. Man, those were some straight-up action movie climaxes. Not that I don't have quibbles – iffy gender stuff in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, some weird class stuff in The Wind in the Willows – but on the whole, this flick was a blast. The first story's plotting feels almost like an adventure movie from decades later, compared to Pinocchio or Dumbo, and I don't know how the hell Disney (the company or the man) was convinced to adapt Sleepy Hollow, with that kind of ending. Remember Peter and the Wolf being altered so Sonia lived? Yeah, we're not doing that. You could argue that the romance and slapstick drag on too long, but ending on as high a note as it did, I'm not sure I care.

For all that Disney has a reputation as the most purely crowd-pleasing of crowd-pleasers, with happy endings inevitable – and they've often been quite good at that – the sheer variety of the package era has produced some wild stuff. I don't think I can imagine going to a "Disney animated movie" in my lifetime and seeing the theater's lights go up on the note of Ichabod's disappearance, or Willie the Whale's death.

I don't think we'll be seeing anything else quite this out-there for a while. But still – Disney's back, baby.

How to Turn Off Voiceover on Disney Plus

Source: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/in-which-i-watch-the-disney-animated-canon.885155/page-23

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