"In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines,
Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines.
They left the house, at half past nine...
The smallest one was Madeline."

2/5ths a Halloween collection. Shout! Factory Kids has released Madeline's Halloween & Other Spooky Stories, a five-episode gathering of "chilling," "hauntingly fun" stories (the DVD box's words) from the 1993, 1995, and 2000 incarnations of the series (as Madeline and The New Adventures of Madeline), produced by DiC Entertainment, and shown on The Family Channel and The Disney Channel. Based on the best-selling children's books by Ludwig Bemelman, which focus on Madeline, an 8-year-old girl who lives at a French boarding school run by nun Miss Clavel, Madeline's Halloween & Other Spooky Stories is really suited for very small children who will respond best to this mild, sweet show. Let's look very briefly at the episodes.

In the disc opener, Madeline's Halloween, from 2000, Madeline and her friends are excited to receive an invitation from their pen pals in New York City to visit the city. However, once they arrive in the Big Apple, they're surprised and a little frightened by all the decorations put up for Halloween--a holiday they're unfamiliar with in France. Soon, their pen pals put the girls at ease, initiating them into the familiar American rite of trick-or-treating. Dividing up their candy, they discover that someone has dropped some expensive spider earrings in instead of a treat, and the girls set out to find their owner, who turns out to be the "Spider Lady," New York's most successful radio actress. In part two of this episode, Madeline and the Spider Lady, Madeline and the girls, after becoming friends with the "Spider Lady," visit her at her studios where they pretend to put on a radio play about giant ants invading New York City. Unbeknownst to them, a mistake by the engineer switches a mic on in the vacant studio they're playing in, and the "pretend" show becomes real, panicking the entire city. It's up to Madeline to calm the city down, with a party on the George Washington Bridge as a reward.

In Madeline and the Mummy, from 1995, Madeline and the girls are invited on a trip to Egypt with their next-door neighbor, Pepito, the son of the Spanish ambassador in Paris. Unfortunately, Pepito's mean, mischievous cousins come along, too. At the Egyptian Antiquities Museum, the girls learn about ancient Egyptian customs and rituals, and there they meet Pepito's uncle Pablo, who takes them to the Great Pyramids of Cheops. Once there, Pepito's cousins frighten the girls, but the tables will turn on them when the cousins become trapped in the dark pyramid...and Madeline must help. In Madeline and the Haunted Castle, from 1995, Madeline and the girls welcome their friend, Sugar Dimples, a big Hollywood star who's in Paris to do some location work for a film. Everyone is excited about her arrival, but when she becomes homesick not only for the States but for Halloween, the girls decide to throw a party for her. The French girls' approximation of the unfamiliar holiday, though, doesn't help Sugar, nor does a location-scouting trip to a scary castle out in the country, where Sugar becomes bratty over not getting her own way. It's up to Madeline and the girls to save the day. And in Madeline and the Mean, Nasty, Horrible Hats, a trip to Madrid with Pepito spells trouble for Madeline and the girls when Pepito's three horrible little cousins cause no end of trouble at the family's hacienda. But when a young bull is the object of their latest cruelty, Madeline and the girls step in to help.

As I wrote in my earlier review of Madeline shorts (they're from the same production years as the episodes in this collection), there's a breeziness to these gentle little stories that I particularly like. Plot points and connections in the scripts are secondary to little vignettes and songs and experiences that move briskly along, never boring the little viewers who get caught up in the primary designs and colors. Are they as delicate and well thought-out as the books? No; but they approximate that airy feeling the books give you, even if the sounds and the songs are a bit more brash, and the coarse animation not as graceful as the still, silent pages of Bemelman's story books. As for the marketing angle of gathering these together under a "Halloween" banner, only Madeline's Halloween and Madeline and the Haunted Castle specifically deal with the holiday...but for little viewers, they're not going to complain about that fudge on the releasing company's part. In fact, they're not going to concern themselves with any of the above considerations; criticism from a four-year-old boils down to a pretty simple set of options: watch it again, or forget about it. My four-year-old immediately asked to watch Madeline's Halloween & Other Spooky Stories again. You can't get a better recommendation than that for a disc.

The DVD:

The Video:
The newer shorts from the Madeline's Halloween & Other Spooky Stories collection look quite good in their full-frame, 1.33:1 transfers, with solid colors, a sharpish image, and little source damage. The later shorts, however, look like bad VHS dupes, with muddy, faded colors and a soft, soft image. I always used to write that kids don't care about this stuff...but with the big, big monitors and the crystal-clear digital transfers that are routine now for kids' releases, I'm beginning to wonder....

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English 2.0 stereo sound mix is entirely adequate for this kind of title. You're not going to get a lot of speaker action here, obviously, but all dialogue and songs are heard crisply and cleanly, with a solid recording level.

The Extras:
There are no extras for Madeline's Halloween & Other Spooky Stories.

Final Thoughts:
Innocuous, innocent fun for very young viewers, Madeline's Halloween & Other Spooky Stories may not exactly be chock-full of Halloween stories, but enough of an autumnal mood creeps in to satisfy a little DVD watcher looking for safe, secure scares...as long as Mom and Dad are sitting right next to them. I'm recommending Madeline's Halloween & Other Spooky Stories.