Disney has an amazing ability to turn the old classics in literature into happy animated characters that become classics in their own rights. This pairing of stories is an odd match but seeing them back-to-back is just as natural as anything else with the Disney touch. The comical situations and the fanciful music that accompanies each of these stories are trademarks that we've all become use to over the years, but at this time they were segments of filmmaking that Disney was still perfecting. And without these earlier films there would never have been the likes of Little Mermaid, Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast.
Mr. Toad is from The Wind in the Willows and follows the adventure of Toad on his frenzied pursuit of a new fangled motorcar and the havoc that follows. Ichabod is an adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, where a schoolteacher is chased down one night by the Headless Horseman. The expansion of both stories is expertly done within the Disney format and we're given two fun and enjoyable tales. Willows is a whimsical tale to begin with, but the change of Sleepy Hollow from a horror story into a comedic children's fable is in it's own right the quintessential version. The other thing that Disney did with these two stories was to give both of them narrators, and in this role the audience is given another treat. With the talents of Basil Rathbone and Bing Crosby the narrators become another member of the cast that you just can't do without.
Wonderful animation and brilliant music are things that we've come to expect from Disney films but where this was just the eleventh animated film that they had put together and it showed us that even in the short format Disney was going to be an animation giant. I've grown up with these stories and their immortal in every sense of the word and now that this film is available on DVD it will be forever accessible to future generations to enjoy.
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