Product Description

Somewhere in the dark and nasty regions where nobody goes, stands an ancient castle. Deep within this dank and uninviting place lives Berk, overworked servant of the thing upstairs. But that's nothing compared to the horrors that lurk beneath The Trapdoor. For there is always something down there, in the dark, waiting to come out. Don't you open that Trapdoor. You're a fool if you dare! The Trap Door contains 40 episodes of the popular children’s series.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #680 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-02-21
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 200 minutes

Customer Reviews

Hilarious! Never has a blue blob of plasticene had so much character!
I think the other reviewers have said it all. I just want to agree with them on how good this is. For some reason I remember this as being shown on Channel 4 in the middle of the night, or early hours of the morning! I think it used to come on after The Tube, which was on Channel 4 until 4 in the morning, and maybe The Trap Door came on after that or was on BBC and I had changed channels by then, I seem to recall that The Clangers, and The Moomins were also sometimes shown in the middle of the night, which I thought was strange for kids tv. But then it was probably meant to be classed as early morning television and I was still up! I only wish they'd made another series. As it is, it was interesting to see on the dvd, that the 2nd series was not quite as good as the first, and the set was remade with different plasticene and Berk looked decidedly different, as did Boney. (As much as a blue blob and a skeleton head _can_ look different that is! But they do nevertheless). I loved the theme tune and it would have been nice if each story was presented exactly as it would have been in its original tv broadcast, but I'm just grateful to have it on dvd at all, but maybe they could do another release along with some extras too, and make sure that each story is presented with the theme tune. They did it with "Willow the Wisp" and those stories are only very short, yet they still included the theme tune with each one, so they could do it with this one too for a future release.

Absolute classic
I remember watching this back when I was little and feeling the delicious shivers creep up and down my spine as the theme music started. I was overjoyed to see that it was finally out on DVD - more than that, it still holds up pretty well if you want to watch something that isn't too demanding and doesn't try to be adult like a lot of animation nowadays. Seems to have a bit of social commentary going on with the 'orrible Thing Upstairs having a blatant Cockney accent while Burk speaks with West Country vowels and Boney sounds like a baritone Kenneth Williams. But never mind that, revel in the joy of plasticine models, the sheer absurdity of Drut being male and having babies, and the wonderfully inventive monsters which come out of that trapdoor. It's a pretty good metaphor for the psyche, now I think about it: superconcious, ego, id.

Warning: as others have stated, this DVD does not include the opening and ending theme for each episode. The opening theme is included separately, which seems pointless as it is very much an introduction to the episode and doesn't really stand on its own. That's the only reason I gave this four out of five stars.

"Stay away from that trapdoor, cause there's something down there..."

An 80s Classic
When I added this to my wishlist I knew it was one I remember and would really enjoy. What I didn't realise was how much I would enjoy it! TV as it used to be, TV as it is supposed to be!

Stay away from that trap dooooooor... cos there's something down there!

Cannot recommend this enough!