Finally Walt Disney Home Video has got their act together and released "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" in its entirety (the two stories have been available in separate forms for quite some time). I'll admit that the clunky title doesn't inspire much more enthusiasm than it did back in 1949 (the film tanked, from what I've heard), but I hope some people will give this a chance just based on the Disney name. "The Wind in the Willows", narrated by Basil Rathbone, is a delightfully comic adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's classic novel, keeping the proper British tone (children may not get some of the UK slang used) while still remaining a lot of fun. The highlight is the courtroom scene, featuring a bullying prosecutor (voiced by Disney animator/voice artist John McLeish, who also narrated the Goofy "How to" shorts) going toe-to-toe with a wonderfully insolent Toad (a great performance by Eric Blore). "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", based on a story (not a novel, as the film suggests) by Washington Irving, is even better, making the most of its American colonial setting with some especially interesting layouts and backgrounds. The humor found in the rivalry between schoolteacher Ichabod Crane and local roughneck Brom Bones for the hand of the manipulative tease ("coquette", in the film) Katrina von Tassel is some of Disney's best. The Halloween sequence leading up to the Headless Horseman's appearance is the most skillfully directed piece of animation I have ever seen outside of "Fantasia", conveying a magnificent sense of dread through both sound (the chilling echo of whistling and laughter, crickets chanting Ichabod's name, frogs croaking "headless horseman" over and over) and image (fireflies inside a tree trunk forming the eyes of a shrouded ghost, Ichabod's sweaty, nervous terror, the subtle cloud effect of hands closing over the moon). This is far more frightening than any horror film I have seen. All in all, a smart (listen to the narration and learn some new vocabulary words) film in every way. One final note: I have not seen this film in years (I saw it plenty of times on The Disney Channel during the 1980s), and I noticed the many scenes involving both alcohol and weapons, particularly in "The Wind and the Willows" segment. I accepted the scenes back then as a child and had no problem with them now, thanks to the general tone of the picture. Although the concept of Toad being restrained from blasting a bayonet-wielding weasel with a shotgun and seeing Toad and his friends running from various flying knives, swords, and axes sounds like something to stay away from, it is all harmless fun. Give it a chance.
