Scary Godmother Halloween Spooktakular 2004 Horror Movie Review

Based on Jill Thompson’s graphic novels, this 47-minute Cartoon Network offering follows the travails of young Hannah Marie, who is tagging along with her older cousin and his friends on Halloween night. They meet for trick-or-treating at a graveyard, where the big kids devise a plan to scare the little cousin so they can ditch her. Like most mean-spirited schemes in children’s entertainment, it backfires with a vengeance. In this case, young Hannah in her fairy princess costume is rescued by the titular Scary Godmother and spirited off to the Fright Side, where she attends a Halloween party with a show-tune-singing skeleton, a gluttonous werewolf, a vampire family, and—most scarily—a many-eyed monster. The youngster overcomes her fears, and the spooksters return to the scene of the big kids’ crime to exact scary revenge. Fright content depends entirely on an individual child’s reactions to Halloween familiars. (Ages 4 to 12) —Kimberly Heinrichs