Halloween is coming, and is you don’t want to treat the kids to the more extreme horror films just yet, then this might be a suitably entertaining treat – and the very idea of 100 minutes of smurfing is enough to strike terror into the heart of any adult. This is the second Smurfs DVD I've reviewed (see what I thought of the Springtime Special here). Never let it be said that I don’t make sacrifices for you, dear reader…

As with the previously reviewed Smurfs collection, this is a collection of episodes from the 1980s cartoon series, all based loosely around scary stories. The stories are pretty basic and yet needlessly confused, but involve various unthreatening adventures.
In All Hallowseve, Lazy Smurf is turned red, while regular arch fiend Gargamel and wicked witch Hogatha argue over who will get to keep him for use in nefarious spells. Gargamel goes on a sleepwalking rampage through the Smurf village in Things That Go Smurf in the Night before being defeated by Snappy’s giant teddy bear Huggy. Monster Smurf sees our tiny blue heroes transforming themselves into real monsters for a Halloween fancy dress party, and Poltersmurf sees the village beset by ghosts.

Things get a bit heavier in Lure of the Orb, with hapless Smurfs seduced into addiction by evil enchantress Allura (it’s as realistic and hard-hitting as any 1980s TV show about drug addiction), and Scary Smurf has the smurfs visiting the land of the monsters.

The animation is basic, the storylines feeble and the cloying sentimentality and moralising are enough to cause diabetes, but I imagine younger viewers will find it all utterly entrancing, and just scary enough to be fun without being traumatic (it’s hardly a spoiler to say that good triumphs over evil very time). You might want to cleanse your mind with a viewing of Cannibal Holocaust afterwards though.

DAVID FLINT

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