All Rise...

Judge David Johnson will not show you his fangs, no matter how nicely you ask him.

The Charge

Actually don't show us your fangs. That's kind of sleazy.

The Case

The good news: Mona isn't an actual vampire. That would have been pretty messed up. She's just a young girl with a big imagination who's going to grow up to be a creepy Goth that menaces the dreams of her elderly neighbors.

Mona and her pals power their adventures through that magical elixir of imagination. The scenarios they create for themselves tend to accentuate the supernatural (they square off with zombie-making scarecrows, mummies, skeleton cowboys, human spiders, robot babysitters, and phantom dogs) and once on a while the s—-- gets real, like when they put together a séance.

But…mainly it's all pretty vanilla. Thinking this was a show about a little vampire girl, I was all set to lay into it with many pointed and cleverly stated barbs about how fun it is for kids to be wandering around, drinking other people's blood (and the very fact that Mona kind of wishes she could do that and her dopey father happily goes along with her twisted fantasies is a tad weird, still). The reality is, Mona the Vampire is a standard-issue kids-pretending-about-stupid-crap cartoon.

Ten episodes on the disc, with each show made up of two, 12 minute stories:

• "Attack of the Living Scarecrow / Robot Babysitter"
• "Von Kreepsula Runs Amok / The Nefarious Computer Virus"
• "The Miserable Phantom Dog / Jurassic Parking Lot"
• "The Whirling Void / There's No Place Like Gnome"
• "The Dreaded Human Spider / Night of the Living Mannequin"
• "The X-Change Student / Princess Giant vs the Red Moon Monsters"
• "The Skeleton Cowboy / The Men in Dark Suits"
• "The Vampire Hunter / The Sounds of Sirens"
• "The Book of the Slimy / The Sam and Ella Infiltration"
• "Curse of the Mummy's Tomb / Freaky the Snowman"

Mill Creek's DVD is lean: an adequate full frame transfer, 2.0 stereo, and a bonus episode of Horseland.

The Verdict

No stakes or garlic needed. Mona might go away just because she's kind of a drag.

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