You Can Now Watch The 1983 A Disney Halloween In HD Thanks To JLH Omnimedia!

Growing up in the 1980s, Halloween was always a big deal, and we didn’t have all the streaming options we do now. Holiday specials were always something kids looked forward to, and A Disney Halloween was one I especially loved.

A Disney Halloween debuted on October 1, 1983, and ran until the 1999s. The 90-minute special is the most known of the Halloween offerings. It combined aspects of Disney’s Halloween Treat (1982) and Disney’s Greatest Villains (1977.)

It’s hard to find a clean version of A Disney Halloween special

While not as hard to find as Disney’s Halloween Treat, a clear version of A Disney Halloween hasn’t always been easy to pull up on places like YouTube. But Joshua L. Harris from JLH Omnimedia has taken the time to reconstruct the special as much as he could in HD.

I got to ask him a few questions about his process and memories of the A Disney Halloween show!

1. Why was it important to you to restore the special?

JLH – “This TV special has been a cornerstone of my family since the 80s. It started as just an October tradition but in the past 15 years (as strange as it sounds), my mother has been using it as a sleep aid (or what I call “cinematic melatonin”) at least twice a month all year round (in particular The Old Mill segment).

After a while, I got disgusted with the quality of the VHS rips you can find on several YouTube channels. In 2014, I knew I could make it better by using the (then) latest restorations on DVD.

There were a few rare elements (such as The Great Cat Family excerpt and Magic Mirror interstitials) that left much to be desired (in so far as quality), but 80% improvement was better than zero.

Fast-forward ten years, and both my skills and the quality of most of the films used had radically improved and my 2014 reconstruction was now embarrassingly obsolete. I just couldn’t share/post something that was below my current standards another year, nor would I allow a year to lapse without sharing this beloved Halloween special with my followers, so I resolved in early September to (once again) reconstruct the whole thing.”

2. What is your favorite part of the special?

JLH – “My favorite parts are The Old Mill and The Great Cat Family excerpt from “Walt Disney Presents” (1956).
I just love that little “Tone Poem” of The Old Mill, and how even while living in the heat of Central Florida for 24 years it can instantly transport you into Autumn.
And the Great Cat Family is such a beautifully done and woefully underrated piece of animation. It’s amazing how well-produced those episodes of WDP were considering how ephemeral everyone thought Television was at the time. In particular, the scene where shadows are creeping over the town just before the storm IS Halloween to me.”

Here are comparisons for quality you find on YouTube vs what JLH has put together:

These are from The Great Cat Family.

Before

After

Before

After

3. How long did the process take you?

JLH – “It took around one week of planning and three weeks of full-time production. And that would not have been possible without the financial support of a few of my most faithful followers, who purchase the AI upscaling software and… let’s call them “procurement programs”  —need to acquire the highest-quality clips needed from the latest restorations.”

4. Do you have any favorite memories tied to the special?

JLH – “4A.  There are several segments of ADH [A Disney Halloween] that have not been touched/restored since their debut (at times) 70 years ago. The Great Cat Family and the Pluto Cartoons were particularly laborious. Even though the AI upscaling helped they had to be manually cleaned of dust and scratches frame-by-frame. It’s a process so mind-numbing that I nodded off more than once while doing it. 

Then there was the Magic Mirror footage which was its own mini-production. Originating from its TV special (1977’s “Disney’s Greatest Villians”), the best available version was a VHS rip from a 1987 rebroadcast. I ran it through an AI-upscaling software using a model that specializes in facial reconstruction.

This worked for Hans Conried’s face, but I knew the Magic Mirror, itself, would look horrible. Which was fine because I had stumbled across the original layout drawing created for the TV Special. After manually tinting it, I recreated the subtle shadow/highlight animation I then recombined the face and mirror with a few effects to increase the interaction between the filmed and animated elements.
Additionally, I had to color-grade Hans’ face for a consistent look as it unintentionally changed colors in every shot.

Before

After

4B. “A Disney Halloween” is one of almost a dozen similar TV specials Disney created in the 70s and 80s, and for many reasons (including its extended length), it’s my favorite of all of them. Some of my earliest memories of life on this planet are of my mother playing it for me, my little brother (and all our stuffed animals) after a night of Trick or Treating in our basement which could have been a set on Stranger Things.”

5. What was your favorite childhood Halloween costume?

JLH – “I was a sophisticate from birth. Even when I was a baby I hated “play clothes” and was most comfortable in suits. I’ve proudly never owned a pair of jeans. As a result, most Halloween nights I was Dracula (sorry Edna Mode, I did love capes, haha) and then I switched to the Phantom of Opera.”

6. I asked if there was anything else he wanted to share with us about his A Disney Halloween restoration, and he provided this “Bonus.”

JLH – “Being that this was a very faithful recreation, there wasn’t much of a chance to flex my own creativity. The only part I allowed myself was selecting a new font for the end titles and video thumbnail (which was originally the utilitarian Helvetica). I knew I wanted something that was period-appropriate to the early 1980s. I quickly thought of “Benguiat,” but as the cliché font for every Stephen King book and horror movie in the 80s, I was hesitant (thinking it was a little too obvious).

After searching through a few 1,000 others, I begrudgingly did a test with Benguiat, and sure enough, it was perfect! — in a world where creatives are always combatively “subverting expectations,” I guess sometimes it’s ok to be cliché 🙂

Also, the thumbnail itself is an AI extension of the final shot from 1952’s “Trick or Treat,” with the foreground elements taken from the opening multiplane shot.”

You can watch this amazing recreation by visiting the JLB Omnimedia site.

Each section is marked as to whether it is short or special, so you can watch your favorite parts!

I highly recommend this if you grew up watching and want to show your kids or grandkids.

Thank you to Joshua L. Harris for taking the time to answer my questions.

What do you think? Comment and let us know!