Disney's fourth Technicolor "Silly Symphony", Babes in the Woods is a deft retelling of the "Hansel and Gretel" story. Two pint-sized Dutch kids, a boy and a girl, get lost in the woods, where they stumble upon a community of singing elves. The little folks invite the children to join in their merry dance, with some of the elves providing music by blowing into their little brown jugs (a portent of a similar sequence in the 1937 cartoon feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). But the festivites come to an abrupt halt when an evil witch swoops down on her propellor-driven broomstick, abducts the kids, and prepares to transform them into spiders. Fortunately, the elves arrive in the nick of time to buzz-bomb the witch with pumpkins, as the boy and girl turn the tables on the old crone in an amusingly grisly fashion.
by Hal Erickson
synopsis
