Review #351: The Halloween Tree (1993)

October 2025 Holiday Horror Review #24 - The Halloween Tree (1993)

[This does not appear to be streaming anywhere for free, which is a real shame. But it should be available for just a few dollars on various streaming services.]

The Halloween Tree is an animated children's movie based on a novel by Ray Bradbury. It's about a group of four kids who find out their friend Pip has been taken to the hospital on Halloween night, and might die. But when they think they see him running through the woods near the old ravine, they assume this was all a Halloween prank- so they follow him to a creepy old mansion, where an enigmatic and creepy man named Mr. Moundshroud (voiced by Leonard Nimoy) has a tree with thousands of lit Jack-O-Lanterns hanging from its branches. But to their surprise, they see Pip- or, at least, a translucent form of Pip- climbing the tree to steal a pumpkin that looks just like his face, before he vanishes in a breeze. So Mr. Moundshroud takes the children on a whimsical and magical trip through time and space to teach them all a lesson about the history of our Halloween traditions. The children brave their fears to rescue their friend, but Mr. Moundshroud has more macabre motivations at heart...

I first saw the Halloween Tree when I was a kid, when it aired in October on network TV, and it enraptured me as much today as it did back then. The setting for this story (the parts that aren't in ancient Egypt or Mexico or Scotland or what have you) is clearly meant to evoke a 50s-era childhood, and it's drawn to look like it was taken straight out of the pages of a book. Obviously I should point out that this is meant for children and is quite different than a slasher or zombie film, but even when the Halloween Tree is giving a history lesson, it still manages to evoke creepy imagery and the dread that our customs were used to help avoid.

This film holds an incredibly special place in my heart, and to this day I still think about certain parts of it surprisingly often. But watching it for the first time in several years I'm shocked at how much it still affected me, even now as a jaded adult- without theorizing about whether this story is all a dream or not (that sort of speculation doesn't enhance the narrative in anyway), this is a story about children having to come face-to-face with the potential death of their friend, and them learning how to accept the darker parts of human existence with your head held high. Each of the kids tries to bargain with Pip's ghostly figure, reminding him (and themselves) of the impact he made on their lives, and bargaining with the figure of death to try and stave off the inevitable for as long as possible. This is a dark story, even if it's dressed up like a child on Halloween.

I also have to commend the production on this movie. I already praised the animation and artwork, with its rich hues of autumn trees and dark darks and warm glows of candles in pumpkins, but there's so much detail in here that you don't expect in something made for children. Like how Pip's Egyptian sarcophagus is decorated with baseball imagery (the things he loved in life, I imagine), or how the piñatas in the Dia de Los Muertos segment are animalized versions of the main characters (a skeleton, a mummy, a witch, and a gargoyle). Little details that didn't need to be there, but if you notice them it enhances the world they live in. I also love how accurate the history lessons are, despite the whimsical magical narrative- like how Mr. Moundshroud explains to the children that witches didn't fly on broomsticks or use magic, they were just people with knowledge that scared the rest of the populace (and of course this is right after he himself used magic to whisk the kids through time and allow them to fly on broomsticks).

I also think Mr. Moundshroud is a fantastic foil for the main characters in this film, and he's such a good villain for an educational children's movie. Even though his goals are always at odds with the protagonists' (he wants to get Pip's soul for himself, the rest of the kids want to save him), he never stops cooperating and encouraging them towards either end. Even when the kids all try to bargain with him at the end, he still acknowledges the benefits and drawbacks to the deal on both sides. I also love how subtle and ambiguous he is- a kid will probably watch this and just think he's some creepy old dude with magic powers, but if you pay attention to the details- like how he can't step into the shadow of a cathedral and he entertains a bargain for a man's soul- it's easy to piece together the idea that he's either A devil, or THE devil.

So, to reiterate: this is a movie where children cope with the mortality of their friend, they learn the truth behind witchcraft, and bargain with the actual devil. And this was on network TV on a weekday in the 90s!?

Needless to say, I love this movie. To this day it remains possibly my favorite piece of Halloween-based media I've ever seen, and I will take any opportunity to share this with everyone who will listen. If you haven't watched it yet, go watch it now (it's only like 70 minutes long, it's short and sweet) and feel yourself swept away into the childhood you may or may not have had, much like these children were swept away on a monstrous kite to learn about Halloween.

Overall Rating: 10/10 Candy Skulls

Goofy Gifts: When I showed this movie to my wife several years ago, she laughed out loud at the part of the movie where the kids go to Egypt and we're given a jump-scare of an extreme close-up of the face of a corpse one of the people has propped up at their dinner table (as per their customs of honoring the dead once a year). She made some comment about liking that shot of the corpse's face, so that year for Christmas I gave her a framed photo of that image and we kept it on our living room shelf for several years (though it is now part of our Halloween decorations rather than a year-round thing).