If like us, you’ve been missing the adventures of Woody, Buzz and Jessie, then this month, ABC and Pixar have a special spooky treat for you. Just in time for Halloween—well actually a couple of weeks ahead of the big night—ABC will premiere the new special Toy Story of Terror! at 8 pm. on Wednesday. Written and directed by Pixar veteran Angus MacLane (Small Fry), the half-hour special begins as a fun road trip for the gang, but quickly takes an unexpected turn for the worse when the trip detours to a roadside motel.
Offering a clever homage to horror classics like Psycho, the special finds one one of the toys missing and the others caught up in a mysterious sequence of events that must be solved before they all suffer the same fate. The voice cast includes Tom Hanks as Woody, Tim Allen as Buzz, Joan Cusack as Jessie, Carl Weathers as Combat Carl/Combat Carl Jr., Timothy Dalton as Mr. Pricklepants, Don Rickles as Mr. Potato Head, Wallace Shawn as Rex and the omnipresent toon actress Kristen Schaal as Trixie.
As a review in Variety pointed out, “At roughly 21 minutes sans commercials Toy Story of Terror! is about a quarter the length of the average animated feature, but everything else here could easily be mistaken for the bigscreen version, from the pacing and humor to Michael Giacchino’s score….There’s much to be said for exploiting such fare judiciously. Yet given that Pixar has the superior stable of titles and their shared parentage, one can hope that ABC will have a friend in Pixar — and be “Terror!”-ized a little more often.”
Here’s a peek:
