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Shirley Temple plays Heidi, an orphaned little girl (again?) who has been shuttled around since her parents died. As the film opens, Aunt Dete (Mady Chistians) has become her caretaker, but not for long, as she unceremoniously dumps Heidi on the steps of her reclusive grandfather, Adolph Kramer (Jean Hersholt.) After a few awkward months Heidi begins to bring her grandfather out of his shell, but then Aunt Dete show up once again, apparently broke and willing to do anything to earn some money. Dete has arranged to sell poor Heidi (again?) to an affluent family in Frankfurt. Once again, the forced slavery of Temple's character is a major plot point...

When Dete and a very unhappy Heidi finally arrive in Frankfurt, we are introduced to the mentally abusive Fraulein Rottenmeier (Mary Nash.) Rottenmeier has a grand plan afoot to guarantee her future employment within the Sesemann household. Klara Sesemann (Marcia Mae Jones) is the partially paralyzed daughter of Mr. Sesemann (Sidney Blackmer), and the Fraulein believe that if she proves that Klara can not get along without her, she'll become a permanent employee.

So, what's Heidi role in all of this? Essentially she's supposed to be the patsy should the Fraulein plans go awry. Meanwhile, the Grandfather has become distraught with the loss of Heidi and is determined to find her in Frankfurt. Is this sick or what? I found Heidi to be the most surreal, yet oddly the most enjoyable, of the three new Shirley Temple Fox releases. Weird, and surreal...

Video: How Does The Disc Look?

As with Fox's other Shirley Temple discs, the transfer for Heidi is a victim of the poor quality of the original source material. This film contains the most damaged print of the three, as sporadic frames are missing and there's an ample amount of physical scratches on the print. Worse, at about 69 minutes in, there a distinct line running down the left side of the frame. There are also problems with the focus at times, but since it happens within specific shots in a scene, it is likely due to the source material and not the actual transfer. On the plus side, the print is relatively free of grain when compared to the other Temple films released by Fox. This disc also probably has the best blacks and fairest contrast levels, but that's not saying much considering the condition of the other films. Edge enhancement is kept to a minimum, and I could not detect any major compression artifacts.
I have not wasted any time watching the colorized version of this film provided on the flipside of the disc, since it would likely only accentuate the flaws of the source material. On top of that, colorization is inherently a flawed process itself, isn't it?

Audio: How Does the Disc Sound?

Heidi has been given a new stereo 2.0 remix along with the inclusion of the original mono track, and both suffer from the same inherent flaws in the source material. There's an ample amount of analog hiss and dialog is strained (but intelligible), and you have you typical sync errors that occur with older musical numbers. The stereo track open up the soundfield slightly, allowing a limited amount of left and right field imaging. The only standout tweak was the echo of Grandfather voice when he is calling for Heidi, which sounded pretty neat. Once again, Fox has done the best they probably can do without a major overhaul of the elements, if that is even possible.

There are no additional languages, only subtitles provided in English and Spanish and English Closed Captions.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

Yes! An actual special feature on a Shirley Temple disc! Oh wait, it's just the original Theatrical Trailer, which looks like it's gone through a couple meat grinders.

DVD-ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you pop the disc in your PC?

No ROM extras have been included.

Parting Thoughts