TV treats: Halloween cartoons are sure to tickle your funny bone

It's Halloween. You've got little kids. And after you've takenthem trick-or-treating, perhaps you'd like to watch a video withthem.

Nothing as scary as that chiller the teens are watching in thenext room. Nothing that'll keep your little ones up all night. Butsomething they'll enjoy that you can enjoy, too.

How about a cartoon?

There are plenty of Halloween-themed 'toons out there, fromCasper the Friendly Ghost for the very young to a wide range ofspooky toons featuring classic Disney and Warner Bros. characters,along with myriad others.

The suggestions listed here are available on DVD, or you canwatch many of them for free on the Internet at YouTube or Hulu orCrackle or Fancast or other streaming Web sites. (Just do a searchat the site or Google the title you're looking for.)

All of the Casper cartoons are safe enough for small fry, eachwith roughly the same formula. There are witches and goblins andprankster ghosts -- but Casper himself is all about being kind andhelping others, a much better message for young children thandrinking blood or eating flesh. (Particularly if your kids arevegetarians.)

The beloved "Peanuts" TV special "It's the Great Pumpkin, CharlieBrown" (1966) is another soft cartoon, with storylines about CharlieBrown getting more tricks than treats and Linus waiting in thepumpkin patch for a visit from The Great Pumpkin.

Or how about the 1937 Disney short "Lonesome Ghosts"? This onecould have been the template for "Ghostbusters," as Mickey Mouse,Donald Duck and Goofy are "Ghost Exterminators" summoned to ahaunted house by a quartet of bored spooks.

Another Disney classic that is very funny and a bit scary is "TheLegend of Sleepy Hollow" (1949) -- about Ichabod Crane's midnightencounter with the notorious Headless Horseman. (Paired with "TheWind in the Willows" in the feature film "The Adventures of Ichabodand Mr. Toad.")

Or the Pixar/Disney feature "Monsters, Inc." (2001), whichhilariously spoofs every creature-feature cliche you can think off.

And, of course, there's always Tim Burton's "The Nightmare BeforeChristmas" (1993), which has become a modern-classic staple this fortime of year.

And for kids a bit older, the Simpsons' "Treehouse of Horror"episodes each feature an anthology of specific movie spoofs.

Other favorites include the "Night on Bald Mountain" sequencefrom Disney's 1940 feature "Fantasia," Popeye in "Fright to theFinish" (1954), Porky Pig's Jekyll-Hyde spoof "The Case of theStuttering Pig," Disney's 1929 black-and-white classic "SkeletonDance," "Betty Boop's Halloween Party" (1933) and many others.

And how about Witch Hazel? Remember her? And if you do, whichwitch do you remember?

There were actually four Witch Hazel characters used by fourdifferent animation studios in the classic theatrical-cartoon era.(The name is, of course, a pun on the astringent derived from thewitch hazel shrub.)

The first Witch Hazel to come along was in a 1936 MGM cartoontitled "Bottles," in which a pharmacist falls asleep and dreams hismedicine bottles have come to life -- including a jar of witchhazel, which naturally becomes a cackling witch.

In 1952 Disney released the Donald Duck cartoon "Trick or Treat,"with a different Witch Hazel teaming up with Huey, Dewey and Louieto teach Donald a lesson when he plays a prank instead of giving hisnephews candy.

Two years later, in 1956, Warner Bros. got into the act with"Bewitched Bunny," as Bugs Bunny rescues Hansel and Gretel fromanother Witch Hazel, and she decides that rabbit stew will do.

Finally, in 1958, Casper encounters yet another Witch Hazel, theroommate of his girlfriend Witch Wendy in Paramount's "Which IsWitch?"

And if your kids want something more contemporary, all thecurrent animated TV stars -- SpongeBob SquarePants, Scooby-Doo,Garfield, Dora the Explorer, etc. -- have also appeared in Halloween-themed cartoons of one kind or another.

e-mail: hicks@desnews.com