Halloween Movies (Continued)  

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"Spooky Sooga Village"

I have completely fallen in love with the Pucca cartoon series, which tells the story of the love-struck Pucca, who chases a ninja in training named Garu, rescuing him repeatedly with her affections.

The Halloween collection "Spooky Sooga Village" might be the funniest one yet. It has 11 episodes, each of which is silly, surreal and the tiniest bit subversive.

In one episode, for example, Pucca scares the normally fearless Garu right out of his skin by dressing as a bride for Halloween. The rest of the episode, she carries his empty skin-sack around, kissing it, flopping it over the mailbox, and rescuing it from a friend who tries to use it as a candy bag.

One humorous highlight shows the sort of humor you need to have to appreciate Pucca: As skeleton Garu is making his way through town, a dog steals one of his leg bones. Then Garu digs up a replacement at the village graveyard. It's sick, twisted and guaranteed to tickle the funny bones of kids and grown-ups watching, provided they haven't taken too many of Casper's earnest lessons to heart.

The dark humor of Pucca is leavened by its look, which is like a Hello Kitty sticker collection come to life, full of hearts, puffy clouds, rainbows and the occasional electrocution scene.

This Shout Factory video retails for about $14. (And I can't wait for "Spooky Samurai Santa," which comes out later this month.)

"Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas"

It has been 15 years since this groundbreaking work of stop-motion animation made a moderate splash in movie theaters. Since then, it has done well in video, and Disney has released a couple of 3-D versions, and, more recently, a nicely packaged, two-disc collector's edition that stands as a reminder of how nicely made movies hold up, even as stop-motion technology has made leaps forward.

"The Nightmare Before Christmas" is rated PG, and is a bit dark for the very youngest of trick-or-treaters.

Truly, though, it's not that scary. It tells the story, mostly in musical form, of Jack Skellington, a disaffected pumpkin king who has grown weary of the sameness of Halloween year after year. Skellington is voiced by Chris Sarandon (Prince Humperdinck in "The Princess Bride"), and sung by Danny Elfman (of Oingo Boingo fame originally, and more known lately for his distinctive theme songs and soundtracks). He discovers portals to other holiday words and decides he'd like to be Santa Claus -- or Sandy Claws, as he calls him.

Though he's warned against his plan by Sally (Catherine O'Hara), the servant girl to a maniac duck-billed scientist, he goes through with it and delivers children all sorts of inappropriate gifts. Meanwhile, the real Santa is kidnapped and threatened. If any scene will bother kids, it's this one. It also bothered some adults, who found the bad guy to be an unpleasant racial stereotype. That said, it's still a nicely made movie.

It's also timely, given that we're just months away from "Coraline," another stop-motion feature film made by Henry Selick, who directed "Nightmare." If you want to whet your kids' appetite for this art form and also introduce them to the idea of an artist's distinct style, here's your chance. There are definite echoes of "Nightmare" in "Coraline," though the latter takes stop-motion into entirely new dimensions, specifically the one that requires 3-D glasses for proper viewing.

"The Nightmare Before Christmas" collector's edition retails for $34.99.

"Halloween Spooktacular"

My kids scream in terror when Barney comes on-screen, but that's because they've been trained by me to find him repellant. Plenty of kids adore Barney, Bob the Builder, Angelina Ballerina and Thomas the Tank Engine.

For those no doubt sweet and innocent creatures there is a new "Halloween Spooktacular," a completely nonthreatening, nonspooky collection from Lionsgate DVD. It even includes a jack-o-lantern fire safety lesson from Fireman Sam. (What, no flossing tips from Barney? Doesn't he care about teeth? The monster!)

The "Halloween Spooktacular" retails for $11.98

More Recommendations From the DVD Archive

"It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown": Does anyone talk about sincerity anymore? Or is that notion elitist? And if so, does that make the blanket-toting Linus a future socialist?

Oh, but I kid -- sort of.

In this 1966 classic, Linus waits all night in the pumpkin patch, hoping the mysterious Great Pumpkin will appear and reward sincerity. It never happens, which is probably as big and depressing a statement as you can make in children's programming.

But what do you expect from the dark creative mind who found repeated comedy in the spectacle of Lucy yanking away Charlie Brown's football? Even darker, Charlie Brown gets a rock instead of candy at every house he visits.

"Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit": Oh no! A giant, vegetable-sucking rabbit is terrorizing the town where Wallace and Gromit live. Wallace and Gromit start their own private-vegetable-protection service (called Anti-Pesto). Meanwhile, a brain-washing goes horribly awry, and the daffy inventor Wallace falls in love with the lovely Lady Tottington, who's pursued with equal ardor by a wicked hunter named Victor Quartermaine. It's really funny, especially the melon scene. This G-rated, stop-motion animation movie won an Academy Award in 2006.

More Casper: A young Christina Ricci stars in the PG-rated, 1995 "Casper" remake, which is about a ghost hunter (Bill Pullman) and his daughter who move into the haunted Whipstaff Manor, where a trio of nasty ghosts guards a treasure. Their nephew, Casper, is a friendly sort and apparently a tad hormonal, as he and Ricci kiss. This isn't a great movie by any stretch, but it's cute nonetheless.

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Read reviews of all this weekend's movies 

 Martha Brockenbrough is MSN's Cinemama, for the Parents' Movie Guide. She is also the author of Things That Make Us [Sic], a guide to funny bad grammar published by St. Martin's press. She also blogs about family life for Cozi.com, and writes an educational humor column for Encarta. Check out her Web site.

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