Main cast: Andrew Sabiston (Dale), Frances Hyland (Aunt Melva), Don Dickinson (Frank Hancott), Stephanie Morgenstern (June), Chris Wiggins (Slim), David Hemblen (The Vault-Keeper), and John Kassir (The Crypt Keeper)
Director: Laura Shepherd
The Haunted Mine is one of those bizarre, incoherent episodes that don’t make sense in a “Why? WHY?” manner unless I’m to assume that it exists because kids are dumb and won’t think much about it as long as they are distracted by loud noises every few seconds.
In this one, the take home message is to leave your elderly family relatives to waste away in their homes instead of lifting a finger to assist them.
You see, Dale wants to bring Aunt Melva to stay in a nice apartment with swanky furnishing and good security, but this is presented as some kind of thoughtless thing ever because she won’t get to bring her dog along with him.
Mind you, it’s not like she is a benign relative. In this episode, she alternates between bullying Dale and patronizing him, so I can only imagine that Dale likely drew the shortest straw and was forced by the other family members to meet this old bag.
Oh, there is some haunted mine in here somewhere, hence the title of this episode, but really, it is more about Dale screaming and shrieking at not just the sounds and sights he sees but also even at dramatic utterances by Aunt Melva and other characters. This fellow is either the most excitable dingbat around or he’s as high as a kite throughout the whole episode. If it’s the latter, given how much of a pain in the rear end that old woman, I can’t really fault him.
Indeed, this episode seems to be written people high on something alright, as it’s just scenes after scenes of very lame shrieks and screams from Dale that are designed to be the equivalent of G-rated jump scares.
Considering that the animation and visual of this show are already pretty dismal in the first place, the lack of an even halfway good story here means that this episode offers no reason as to why anyone should waste any time on it.
