It used to be that the Halloween “Season” was only a couple weeks before October 31st, but then it expanded into the whole month of October, and beyond (basically starting the day after the stores finished their Back-to-School sales, because they had all this empty space for Seasonal Merchandise).

But here’s one case where I don’t mind stretching it a little, since it’s only one day (and September 30th is my birthday, which is already plenty scary) and the fine folks at Need Coffee Dot Com have, for the last 3 years, started their “32 Days of Halloween” with an appropriately ‘scary’ cartoon.

In year one, it was Vintage Classic Early Mickey Mouse with “The Haunted House” (in ghoulishly glorious black and white), proving that Fleisher wasn’t the only old cartoon studio that could do dancing skeletons.

In year two, it was Not So Early But Very Classic Bugs Bunny with “Hair-Raising Hare”, introducing the Big Hairy Monster Later Known As Gossimer and featuring Bugs doing a Groucho walk better than Groucho.

And this year, hot off the presses is a masterfully-animated Mickey Mouse from 1995, “Runaway Brain”. That’s not a typo, that really was just 14 years ago, and I remember the enthusiastic-but-futile promotion campaign for this seven-minute thrill ride on film. It just goes to show you that, on rare occasion, they DO make ‘em as good as they used to.

Happy (Month-Early) Halloween!