“A Tale of Two Witches” is a weird special in that it involves Mickey telling the story that becomes the center of the entire short. There’s no reason why we have to keep jumping back and forth from Mickey telling Pluto the story, and getting to the story. I don’t know why this couldn’t have been just a stand alone Halloween tale. In either case, “A Tale of Two Witches” is a fun and simple Halloween special that has a good time celebrating the holiday.
On Halloween, Mickey tells Pluto a story about two witches-in-training, Minnie the Wonderful and Daisy Doozy, who must pass four tests to graduate from the Witch Academy in Happy Haunt Hills. While Daisy isn’t confident about passing, she and Minnie join forces, along with Count Mickula and the gang, to defeat a mischievous ghost. Minnie and Daisy learn that working together makes their magic and their friendship much stronger.
One of the highlights of “A Tale of Two Witches” is that the studio doesn’t try to mimic Harry Potter. There was a short period there where whenever they spoofed witches or magic they’d reference Harry Potter. Here it’s strictly the fun witches and magic and ghosts that we can actually have fun with. The characters are all brought to life thanks to the usual heavyweights like Bret Iwan, Bill Farmer, Tress MacNeille, Frank Welker, and my favorite: Jim Cummings. To name only a few. While I had a good time with the central plot of Minnie and Daisy trying to perfect their magic to get good grades from Clarabelle, I liked Mickey’s sub-plot so much more.
Here Count Mickula is trying to create a new song for the Halloween festival, but he has really bad writer’s block. With the help of Franken-Goof, and Mummy Donald, they race to find a new tune for the party. “A Tale of Two Witches” is a neat and breezy animated TV movie with great Halloween aesthetics, and light hearted comedy. There’s also some catchy music paired with the usual themes of friendship, and creativity, and what ever else. I always pictured Mickey more as a werewolf than a vampire, but hey, I don’t work for Disney.