Nightmare Fuel / Fantasia

The creatures of evil gather to worship their master^note and it's not Walt Disney.

Fantasia is the most "adult" classic full-length animated film Disney ever made. This makes it a bit different than most of their other full length animated films right off the bat. Almost all of the segments take place in the dark.

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• Toccata and Fugue in D minor
  • Near the end of the segment, three breaks in a black overcast are seen flashing, followed a strange shape (resembling a coffin) walking away from the camera into the background, accompanied respectively by frightening string/brass sections (originally organ pedals) and a haunting bass cadenza.
  • Leopold Stokowski himself during the first half of this segment. There is something about the sudden movements of his conducting style and how his commanding presence is causing music that at times can be quite dissonant and unsettling. Not helping matters is the fact that his nose is rather large and prominent, making it hard not to perceive as a Sinister Schnoz. It is only when he says congratulations to Mickey Mouse after the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment that you may realize that he isn't supposed to be a Disney villain!
• The Nutcracker
  • The start of the segment ("Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies") has an eerie atmosphere to it. Tiny little lights floating in a pitch dark forest. The music doesn't help much either.
  • The Mood Whiplash of contrast between the quiet fish dance ("Arabian Dance") and the loud Russian flower dance ("Trepak") can be startling.
• "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"
  • The wizard (Yen Sid) has a very eerie piercing stare in his big eyes. He also never ever speaks, which makes him appear all the more menacing.
    • Interestingly the opening scene with him sets up this trope, then subverts it—Yen Sid seems to be summoning some sort of creepy, disturbing skull imagery...only for it to blend together and become a beautiful butterfly.
  • The idea of something as inanimate as a broom suddenly walking around ... and then taking a will of its own!
  • Mickey chopping up the broom. A Deleted Scene (existing in pencil test form) had Mickey doing it onscreen. See it here.
  • The way the chopped up broom splinters slowly but surely comes back to life. First the splinters start twitching, then they transform into thousands of brooms. Mickey then hearing sounds from behind the door and taking a peek...
  • Mickey's desperate attempts to stop the brooms, while the room is slowly but surely filling up with water. Especially the disturbing part where the brooms are still emptying their buckets in the fountain while already in over their heads!
  • Mickey almost drowning in the whirlpool. If the wizard hadn't come back in time, he would surely have died.
  • Yen Sid providing a Jump Scare moment by suddenly hitting Mickey with the broomstick. While this is primarily a Funny Moment, it can be quite startling if you're watching it for the first time. Not to mention the Death Glare he's giving him the whole time. Thankfully, if you look carefully at the shot immediately prior to Yen Sid hitting Mickey, he has a tiny smirk on his face, meaning that he at least found Mickey's debacle Actually Pretty Funny.
• The Rite of Spring.
  • The music itself can be somewhat nightmare inducing, especially to a younger audience. Even though there were edits made to the music (including pitches, and tempo changes), it's full of Sensory Abuse.
  • The creation of the universe is very eerie, due to the threatening music ("Part I Introduction"). Especially when Earth comes closer and it seems as if the viewer will be crushed by the planet.
  • The never slowing down or stopping lava stream ("The Augurs of Spring", "Ritual of Abduction").
  • The scenes taking place in the deep ocean ("Part II Introduction"). The music itself is very spooky, especially during the first scene where organisms split up to form cells. What makes this scene particularly frightening is that most children have no idea what is going on!
  • The Pteranodon getting eaten by a Tylosaurus. This happens onscreen and ends that part of the segment. Worse still, the Pteranodon gets grabbed by the Tylosaurus's jaws head first and then slowly gets dragged into the water while struggling, in almost complete silence, no less. There's no blood or anything, but it's still pretty shocking.
  • The appearance of those Struthiomimus who head towards the river to drink ("Mystical Circles of the Adolescent Girls"). The music is eerie and they move like zombies, complete with glazed stare and jerky movements.
  • The brutal battle between the Stegosaurus and the Tyrannosaurus rex ("Glorification of the Chosen One", "Evocation of the Ancestors"). Stegosaurus had the bad luck that T-Rex wanted to eat it, and was running for its life. In fact, by logic due to the thagomizers and spines, it should be protected by being too sharp. Yet T-Rex bites it on the spines directly and then goes for the neck a few times while the horns are blaring. It's unclear if T-Rex paralyzed Stegosaurus or did a Neck Snap, but either way, it knocked Stegosaurus to the ground, where the creature mercifully died within a few seconds. Oh, and all of this is onscreen.
    • Hell, the T. rex itself! Sure, it may not be outright evil, but it's still utterly terrifying, especially considering it took multiple thagomizer hits to the face and barely flinched.
  • The other creatures can only watch. Their expressions are horrified, waiting for either the end to come, or for the T-Rex to choose another form of prey.
  • The dinosaurs dying from starvation and dehydration is also very disturbing ("Ritual Actions of the Ancestors"). Especially the one who is trying to dig up something to eat and then slowly realizes there isn't anything there. While he sits there, tired of his fruitless search, the desert wind starts blowing against his back and you realize he is doomed.
    • The Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, and Stegosaurus drowning in the mud, and being harassed by the Ceratosaurus.
    • Those dinosaurs can do nothing but stand in the sinking mud and either starve to death or wait to be eaten by the Ceratosaurus.
    • If that's not terrifying enough, there's the T. Rex collapsing from the heat. Once it was a powerful creature feared by all, now even it is rendered powerless by nature's wrath and is forced to join in the march towards extinction.
    • There's also the silent panning over the footprint-covered landscape... revealing a valley littered with dinosaur skeletons and ending with a focus on a T. Rex's skull. The silence is just utterly chilling and the clear evidence that these creatures died of starvation and dehydration is unsettling to say the least.
    • For contemporary audiences, it must've brought up thoughts of the Dust Bowl, which was still occurring at the time.
  • The solar eclipse at the end of the segment ("Kiss of the Earth: The Sage", "Part I Introduction, Reprise"). It's just so eerie that something so familiar as the sun can be so frightening.
    • The brief pause of silence before an earthquake literally rips open the earth is quite chilling.
    • Followed by eerie, shrieking horns as huge rocks rip out of the Earth ("Dance of the Earth").
  • The grim reminder that our own brief time on Earth could end the same way.
  • The fact that what caused the dinosaurs' extinction in the first place is never shown, just the aftermath of it. Granted, this is likely due to there not yet being a consensus at the time of release on just what did cause the K-T extinction, but it still manages to be a shining example of Nothing Is Scarier. One minute the dinosaurs are frolicking in a lush floodplain, the next there's a cut to a lifeless desert with the surviving pockets of reptiles on a futile march for food and water, and the audience is left wondering just what the hell happened.
• "The Pastoral Symphony"
  • Although not a villainous character, the pitch-black pegasus with the glowing red eyes is a little creepy looking.
  • The sudden appearance of Zeus in the third segment, accompanied by storm clouds and a loud change in music. Then he decides to start throwing lightning bolts at everyone, just For the Evulz. Just be glad this isn't the same Zeus from Hercules; that'd be awkward.
• Night on Bald Mountain
  • Everything that ever went bump in the night, all rolled up in one burning Black Mass presided over by the colossal demon Chernabog, complete with Glowing Eyes of Doom, demonic leers of delight, and terrifying snarls. Do NOT watch this after dark with the lights off. It's one of Disney's highest points in animation, with stellar special effects... all aimed at making the night of the demons more horrifying. There is very good reason Chernabog is the current picture of Disney's Nightmare Fuel page...
  • The idea that this hellish feast is a recurring event near that quiet little city near Bald Mountain. You start to wonder whether the villagers are aware what happens on Walpurgis Night when they are asleep and if they specifically stay inside to not witness it? This is the Witches Sabbath, when nightmares walk the Earth.
  • Chernabog's completely pupil-less eyes that give off a nigh-incomprehensible evil god aspect and very hyper-realistic and massive arms that are able to raise the dead with their shadow.
  • The moment the segment starts, we see Bald Mountain - a colossal, intimidating mountain on a cloudy, dark night. The moon just comes into view, but the mountain is colored a sickly, unnatural green and blue. And the music is at first quiet, but as the camera pans in towards the top of the mountain, as it picks up with sinister, slowly more frantic strings. And slowly your attention is drawn towards the highest peak of the mountain, as something appears to be stirring. And finally, we get the establishing shot as the highest peak is revealed to be the wings of Chernabog, who opens up, his arms folded, as the iconic horns blare. Chernabog has arrived, and the night on Bald Mountain can begin.
  • Chernabog stretches his hands outwards, and the shadows magically race towards the town below to summon his legion of the damned, showing that he doesn't need to leave his perch to commit evil.
    • During this sequence, the town is dead silent and nobody is seen. The only living creature is a sinister vulture, who looks like it would fit right in with the demons given its glowing yellow eye and smirk as it senses Chernabog's actions when the shadows pass over it, and flies away.
  • The bizarre appearance of the spirits and skeletons as they fly out of their graves. Rather than being animated normally, they appear as static, paper-thin figures which flutter disquietingly in the wind as they glide through the air. And slowly but surely, hordes upon hordes of the dead begin flying up towards Chernabog, who casts forth his arm once more to summon his legions. We see ghastly skeletal horses being ridden by their undead masters, other mounts such as giant boars, featureless ghosts which amount to just a pair of eyes underneath a hood, and disturbing, primordial looking witches on brooms.
  • When the forces of darkness meet Chernabog at the peak of Bald Mountain, they swirl around the mountainside in a massive ring, and Chernabog stirs them up as he begins flexing. Without even seeing his facial expression change (largely due to it being too dark to see anything but his eyes), we can still see from his body language that Chernabog has begun cackling evilly as the Psycho-esque strings really kick into high gear, and then he stretches his arms out into one of his iconic poses as if to say "alright, we're all here!"
  • Chernabog grabbing a handful of demons while he looks at them with an endeared smile. Then he just drops them into the lake of fire, as if he lost interest...
  • The harpy grabbing a demon but then accidentally or deliberately dropping him, causing him to plummet to his doom inside a seemingly bottomless pit of fire!
  • A particularly unsettling moment in that scene would be when Chernabog creates a trio of beautiful, fiery succubus-like creatures and watches them dance seductively as well as gracefully on his hand- an unexpected act of relative niceness from what was seeming to be a terrible boss to anyone that served under him...then suddenly, he places his other hand over them and they all suddenly transform into grotesque parodies of animals; a reddish goat, a greenish pig, and a bluish wolf. Their expressions afterward imply that the transformation isn't a fun experience for them, and their graceful dance continues as a grotesque mockery of itself, which causes Chernabog to smile dementedly compared to his earlier rather controlled demeanour beforehand. He then proceeds to transform them again into a larger group of misshaped demons, while maliciously twisting his hand around as they desperately move around to not fall down to their deaths, yet after seemingly managing to pull through the ordeal he crushes them in his palm as they're burnt in his grasp. He then reforms them from blue flame into very male horned bluish tint demons in his image, which causes him to undergo a Slasher Smile of fiendish proportions. All of which undermine the act of beauty he started off with demonstrating he is fully capable of creating something not hideous, but will distort it into something profane again and again until it's in his image For the Evulz.
    • Speaking of the bluish horned demons, unlike their prior forms, they're only shown from the back with only glimpses of their faces that seem to be beak mouthed, making them seemingly much more frightening than the other demons in Chernabog's gathering due to their lack of definite detail.
    • The lead-up to the Forced Transformation moment, the music that had been bombastically evil or sinister is suddenly eerie calm and peaceful as Chernabog elegantly plays with the fiery succubi, an act that's uncharacteristically odd compared to the Bad Boss tendencies he did beforehand. It's a sign of eerie suspense to what Chernabog might actually have planned.
  • Chernabog ends his night of horrors by bringing the mass of spirits, demons and fire together and producing a brilliant light while his arms stretch toward the sky◊. Given that Disney was intending this to be a stand-in for the Devil himself, and another name for Satan was Lucifer, or "Light Bringer"...
    • Following this moment, Chernabog brings to menacingly approach forward with his clawed hands outstretched, intending to do something horrific to the audience watching this film while the background is completely black. Thankfully, the church bells begin to ring and ward him away.
  • The half-formed and deformed imps and spirits dance convulsively, almost involuntarily, as if gripped with seizures. Some even start crawling on their backs halfway through their walk, only to get up again immediately afterwards.
  • You think what you see in the film is unsettling? Someone went through the effort of taking out the music for the scene, and instead, putting in their own versions of what sounds would most likely be occurring on that mountaintop. Holy Christ...
  • The 50th anniversary poster for the movie is also Nightmare Fuel. Chernabog is depicted reaching up against a dark, starry backdrop, as if his evil is able to spread into the heavens themselves; fitting given he is an incomprehensibly evil entity dating back to creation itself. And Mickey may not be facing him, but the poster sure projects the idea that he’s going up against the evil monster himself.

Fantasia 2000

See Fantasia 2000

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