- It took us less than three minutes to get to a classic door sequence and even less than that for the Third Eye Blind-version of “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You.” Playing our hand a little early, aren’t we, movie?
- Velma and Daphne are both hanging over a crumbling castle moat and guess who Fred saves? Typical.
- 90s powersuit Daphne is kind of a vibe, but it will never be as iconic as that purple mod dress.
- Coast-to-Coast with Daphne Blake? More like Ghost-to-Ghost with Daphne Blake (is an actual joke in this movie).
- RIP Casey Kasem.
- Never forget that Scooby-Doo was once an airport drug dog.
- And bad at it.
- The fact that Velma is bored running a mystery-themed used book store is a bigger crime than anything the gang ever solves.
- How old are these people? Like I thought we were supposed to be mystery-solving teens, but Daphne’s TV show is on its second season, Velma’s a small business owner… and Fred has a cargo vest, so he must be at least forty-five.
- “The Ghost is Here” is going to be my first dance at any future wedding.
- Why is Daphne so insistent on finding real ghosts? Forty-five Scooby movies seems to suggest there’s good money to be made in fake ghost TV.
- Not very many Black people in Louisiana in 1998.
- It’s awfully convenient that the werecat errand girl happens to run into the gang right when they were talking about wanting to find a real haunted house. Do you think she has to run ghost tours to get people to the island otherwise?
- 10/10 classic sandwich gag.
- I don’t think that’s how you’re supposed to behave in an alligator attack.
- Shaggy, your dog is a menace.
- Now I’m no expert but what is this potpourri of accents? Lena’s got a Southern drawl, Simone appears to be from Transylvania, Snakebite Scurggs sounds exactly how you’d imagine a person with that name would, and everyone else is just generic American.
- Do you think this place does plantation weddings in addition to sucking out the souls of tourists? I’ll bet it does.
- Shaggy, you are a menace.
- “Could you enhance this image” on your 1990s camcorder? Sure.
- Hope there’s money in Daphne’s show budget for Velma destroying a historic house’s 150-year-old drywall with a spatula.
- Can we talk about the way that Frank Welker says the word “treasure?”
- Add “crop theft” to the list of crimes perpetrated by the gang in this movie.
- This pirate reincarnation sequence is great. Legitimately spooky and probably the best animated thing in the movie so far.
- Is that Cam Clarke starring as the grumpy gardener? Otherwise known as the voice of Kratos in Tales of Symphonia? My two childhood loves collide.
- The Scooby-centric humor in this movie is kinda unbearable. Like I know it’s for kids and all but so are a lot of less insufferable things.
- PUT THAT ASCOT BACK ON.
- Lena made you a crawfish boil on top of the gumbo for the whole group? And you’re just throwing the shells in the back of your car? You know that van is going to smell like rotten fish for the next six years, you menaces.
- “Tray-zure.”
- There are real-ass zombies in this movie. Like just scores of reanimated pirate, Confederate soldiers, and tourist attempting to kill(?) our heroes.
- Look, Cam, I know you’re upset about being treated like a suspect but someone has to be the red herring in this movie.
- Add “abuse of corpse” to the crime list.
- Change of plans, I want “It’s Terror Time Again” to be my first dance song.
- In all seriousness, though (she said, while watching Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island), zombies aren’t terribly conducive to the Scooby-Doo chase song format. They’re just too slow to match the tempo.
- How many people do you think own fursuits today because they watched this movie in the late 90s/early 00s?
- To summarize the lore of this movie: In the late 1700s, a group of “settlers” who worshiped an unspecified cat god were attacked by Moonscar the pirate captain, whereupon all of them except for two were driven into the bayou to be eaten by crocodiles. The surviving pair prayed to the statute of their god to put a curse on the pirates and then turned into werecats and murdered the entire crew. In doing so, they inadvertently cursed themselves and must now consume the “life force” of living humans during the harvest moon and have done so every year for the last two centuries. No wonder I loved this movie as a kid.
- Question: How does Lena lure people to the island? I know I brought this up before but, like, are there that many tourists willing to follow some lady that they met at the farmer’s market to a remote island to what, look at a nice old house? Or does she only entrap teenage detectives? Cause there can’t be that many of those running around the bayou, unless the Hardy Boys host an annual teen detective convention in New Orleans.
- Also, these women are actual murderers, which is pretty hardcore for a Scooby-Doo villain, most of whom are just running elaborate and bizarre real estate frauds. Even assuming that they only consume one person’s life force every harvest moon (and evidence suggests it’s generally more than that), that’s a body count of over two hundred people.
- Also also, after those people have their life force consumed, their drained corpses are doomed to shuffle about Moonscar Island for all eternity, which is where the zombies come from (turns out it’s a furries vs. zombies situation, not some sort of tag team deal). The zombies have repeatedly tried to scare the gang off the island (so that they won’t suffer the same fate) by leaving spooky signs and apparitions, implying they must still be at least a little sentient. Which is horrific, really.
- Why does Jacques the ferryman’s cat form have fur while Simone and Lena’s don’t? Are they some sort of hairless variety and if so, what’re the parameters for that distinction?
- NO WAIT THERE’S THE FUR.
- Zoinks is right.
- SHAGGY YOUR FRIENDS ARE BURNING TO DEATH VIA VOODOO DOLL. TURN AROUND.
- To be fair I would also question whether the zombie of a Confederate soldier was indeed “the good guy.”
- Fun fact: cats don’t have the correct taste buds to identify spiciness, but according to this movie, werecats do. I suppose this means that lycanthropes keep their human taste sensorium even in their transformed state. Further studies will be necessary to determine the breadth of this finding.
- Can you really reuse voodoo dolls like that? I was under the assumption that they were a very bespoke sort of product.
- Is this the only time that a Scooby-Doo character has died on screen? Because I just watched those cat people dissolve into skeletons like it’s Raiders of the Lost Arc in here.
- That ghost of a Civil War soldier sure did just thank the talking dog, who demonstrably did the least work, for setting its immortal soul free, didn’t he.
- Cam Clarke is the most useless undercover cop in the history of children’s television entertainment.
- Mark Hamill was in this movie. Mark Hamill was also in Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders. And Scooby Doo Moon Monster Madness. I mean I would be too if they’d asked but I’d have assumed he might have better things to do.
- They made a direct sequel to this thing? In 2019?
- …Excuse me for a minute.
Annaka Koster (’18) graduated from Calvin with majors in English and history and the University of Michigan a couple years later as a “master” of information science. She’s now a public librarian in her hometown. Outside the library, Annaka can be found doing a sundry of nerdy things, including reading comics, playing board games, and mourning her pet snail, Clive.