Mickey’s House of Villains is a 2002 straight-to-video “movie” centering on all of the Disney villains joining forces to take on Mickey and the gang. Sort of. Not really. But that’s what it was sold as.
In reality, Mickey’s House of Villains is a repackaged collection of cartoons from Disney’s House of Mouse Saturday morning cartoon show, which was in itself a repackaging of cartoons from the far-lesser known Mickey Mouse Works. The big gimmick of House of Mouse was the nightclub setting where any and all Disney characters hung out together, as Mickey Mouse entertained them by showing cartoons starring himself. Generally, the villains behaved themselves (it was one of the club’s three rules), but in House of Villains, Jafar decides one Halloween night it’s time for the bad guys to run the show, so he leads a rebellion to overthrow Mickey so he can…entertain everyone by showing them cartoons. Huh. (Also, don’t take a shot every time I say “cartoons” in this header, since that would kill you)
It all sounds epic, but when it came out, House of Villains was viewed as pretty disappointing. The villains don’t even make their move until midnight on Halloween night (which technically means Halloween is over), and by then the film is nearly ready to wrap up. And once Mickey defeats Jafar by entrapping him in the wrong magic lamp (with help from Aladdin, who is just hanging out in the closet, as Aladdin is known for), all of the villains run away, even though the lamp has no power over them. End credits.
Ultimately, House of Villains only has about seven minutes of new footage (and that might be a generous estimate), with the rest of the runtime taken up by the aforementioned cartoons. Fortunately, all of them are really good. In fact, I’d argue that How to Haunt a House and Hansel and Gretel should be considered spooky classics, but unfortunately, I can’t share either of them with you, because good luck finding them in anything resembling good quality on YouTube.
That’s right, Mickey’s House of Villain is now considered a nostalgia favorite, largely because it was one of only two times House of Mouse got a home video release. And it’s not on Disney+, so you gotta watch this one any way you can (or you can buy the DVD on eBay). At least I can give you the song all the villains sing together, even though The Fates from Hercules and the Crocodile from Peter Pan aren’t “villains,” but hey, I guess they wanted to join in on all the fun.
Have a scary night, y’all!