SCOOBY-DOO! CAMP SCARE: I Know What You Did Last Friday the 13th

Scooby-Doo! Camp Scare (2010) – The 15th Direct-to-Video Scooby-Doo Movie – Starring Frank Welker, Matthew Lillard, Mindy Cohn, Grey DeLisle, Scott Menville, Tara Strong, Stephen Root, Mark Hamill, Dee Bradley Baker, Phil Lamarr.

I’ll be honest, I only watched SCOOBY-DOO! CAMP SCARE because it’s Horror Month, I felt like I needed to watch something Scooby-Doo related, and CAMP SCARE was the only thing Netflix had on demand.

I’m glad I did. While CAMP SCARE certainly doesn’t reinvent the animated wheel, it is a thoroughly enjoyable movie that sees the gang dropping by Freddy’s old summer camping grounds, where various campfire legends have allegedly come to life in order to scare the campers away. Freddy is devastated because his biological clock is apparently ticking rather loudly; he’s desperate to be a camp counselor in order to be a hero for the next generation of campers at Camp Little Moose. Perhaps Freddy has reached that point in his life where he’s looking around and can’t believe he hasn’t done more with his life, or that he’s still wearing an ascot, or perhaps he thinks it’s time for him and Daphne to settle down and start popping out the next gen of mystery solvers. Whatever the case, he’s definitely in need of some kind of hero worship from this summer’s campers, so when only three of them actually show up – Luke (a Next Gen Freddy), Trudy (a Next Gen Velma), and Deacon (a heavy, asthmatic kid who works as a Next Gen, Worst-Aspects-of-Shaggy and Scooby mash) – Fred whines incessantly. He’s convinces them to stay, but then gets all pouty face when Luke turns out to be even better at all the camping stuff than Freddy.

Of course, Luke isn’t as good as Freddy at catching the eye of Jessica, the hot counselor from Camp Big Moose, Camp Little Moose’s rival.

Camps have rivals?

Camps have rivals.

The dynamic between the two camps is that Little Moose is all old school camping, while Big Moose is all high-tech. Trudy, a gloomy, cell phone obsessed, purple-streak-in-her-hair downer, would seem to be a better fit for Big Moose, but her ultimate decision to stick with Mystery Inc. and solve the mystery has real narrative weight to it, serving as an affirmation of not only all of the good summer camp can do to you, but of the gang’s mystery solving lifestyle.

One doesn’t want to read too much into any of this, of course, except that I love reading too much into all of this, and if we take a look at the gang literally, they’re not just a group of pals driving around in a van solving mysteries. They’re helping people. They’ve always helped people and I’ve always loved that about the gang – for all that they’re doing this because they seem to be thrill seekers (especially Freddy, who drives them, physically and literally, into most mysteries) – there’s often someone who needs help getting out of a crazy situation. I mean, crikey, if the Miner 49er started showing up in the building I work in, I wouldn’t know what to do. If a group of kids in a big, green van just happened to be passing through town and wanted to help, I’d sure as heck appreciate it, and when Trudy decides she’s going to stick with Velma and help solve the mystery, it’s an affirmation of what the gang is doing with their lives.

I’ll be disappointed if we don’t see Luke and Trudy again. CAMP SCARE does a great job making these two kids real characters and not just one note, Next Gen analogues.

CAMP SCARE gently borrows and references from a bunch of horror movies, making it a perfect movie for people my age to watch with their kids. (I’m guessing here since I don’t have kids, but roll with it.) The camp setting brings to mind Friday the 13th, the Woodsman villain calls to mind the bad guy in I Know What You Did Last Summer, the Fishman is a nod to Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the town beneath the surface of the lake calls to mind … um … In Dreams, maybe? It’s certainly a nice scene for a horror story, and when Deacon turns out to be a gangster who’s the real mastermind behind the plan and blows the dam that keeps the lake in place, the town beneath the water becomes a ghost town (a literal ghost town, not a town full of ghosts).

What I like most about CAMP SCARE is how Fred and Velma are placed in mentoring roles, giving the movie a focus that’s not on Scooby and Shaggy. They still get their fair share of screen time; in fact, only Daphne isn’t given a whole lot to do, as she gets to play Jealous Female to Jessica’s interest in Freddy.

The mystery moves along at a good pace, with plenty of time to let the story breathe between the various subplots. As is usually the case with Scooby-Doo stories, the solution to the actual mystery is less important than the thrills derived from seeing ghosts/”ghosts” at play. The real joy here is in watching everyone interact with each other on top of a solid mystery with really nice visuals. CAMP SCARE is well worth a watch if you’re a fan of the old SCOOBY material, and well worth a watch if you know nothing of the Scoobyverse, too.

I’ll Take a Big, Fat Pass on THE NEW SCOOBY-DOO MOVIES

The New Scooby-Doo Movies (1972 – 1973) – The Second Scooby-Doo Television Series – Starring Don Messick, Casey Kasem, Frank Welker, Nicole Jaffe, Heather North, and a Boatload of guest stars, including Don Knotts, the Harlem Globetrotters, Batman & Robin, Jonathan Winters, the Addams Family, Dick Van Dyke, Sonny & Cher, Tim Conway, Josie & the Pussycats, and Speed Buggy.

It’s a Saturday morning in September of 1972. Kids are turning on their TVs for some weekend cartoon action. There’s a new Scooby-Doo series starting up and the gang teams up with … the Three Stooges. Were kids excited by this? When Dick Van Dyke showed up, were they like, “Oh my gawd Scooby-Doo is finally teaming up with Rob Petrie!!! No mom, I will not come to the table for breakfast!!! You bring my Pop Tarts in here!”

Well, maybe if I was a kid in 1972 I’d be defending THE NEW SCOOBY-DOO MOVIES but watching them now they’re dreadful. They released a 4-disc compilation DVD of the series but they couldn’t include every episode because they couldn’t get all the appropriate approval agreements. I managed to watch the first two DVDs but I couldn’t make it through every episode without hitting the fast forward button.

They’re really just that bad and I have no desire to watch the last two DVDs and you can’t make me.

There are two main problems with this series: the guest stars and the focus on comedy over mystery and horror.

Let’s start with the guest stars. I don’t even care that I don’t even care about seeing Jonathan Winters – if the episode worked it wouldn’t matter if I knew him or not. The episode doesn’t work because whenever there’s a guest star the show’s producers have decided to give the guest stars room to do their regular bits. It’s kind of clever that the Winters episode sees one of his comedic characters appear as an actual character, but the story is so bad that I could barely get through it.

There’s all kinds of “You’re Jonathan Winters” moments where he can do his funny voices and it just ends up turning SCOOBY-DOO into a comedy show. That’s not why I watch. I was even amazed at how little of these episodes I remember from watching them as a kid – the only guest stars that I could remember even being on SCOOBY-DOO was the Harlem Globetrotters and Batman and Robin. As a kid it was just cool that they were there, but now that’s not enough and the drive to give everyone a moment, with the story suffering as a result, just makes for a painful watch.

The second thing that’s wrong with NEW MOVIES is that it’s a comedy show. The gang barely gives any time to actual investigating because they’re too busy hanging out with their new famous friends and being chased by the bad guys. There’s so little mood developed that it really is like watching the NBA All-Star Game – famous faces half-heartedly doing what made them famous and no one really cares about it at all.

The Don Knotts episode – sorry, the FIRST Don Knotts episode – has a spooky house setting and ghosts running around but the show is far more interested in showing you Knotts performing all sorts of different roles (He’s the butler! He’s the maid! Look, here he is putting on make-up! Kids are gonna love this!) than it is offering an actual mystery. When characters act scared in NEW MOVIES it’s like they’ve become that annoying friend in your group who’s still doing the same funny bits that got old ten years ago. (WAAAASSSSSUUUUPPPPPPPP!!!!) I want some spookiness, some creepiness, some mystery solving, dang it.

I was looking forward to the Josie and the Pussycats and Speed Buggy episodes but after sitting through the wretched Batman and Robin episode, I’m not going to make an effort to see them. I’m certainly not going to waste a Netflix rental on them.

SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU!: How Can You Have Heads and Tails on a Slice of Bologna?

Scooby-Doo: Where Are You! Episodes 22-25 – 1970 – a Hanna-Barbera cartoon – Starring Don Messick, Casey Kasem, Frank Welker, Nicole Jaffe, Heather North.

With four episodes included on disc 4 of the SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU! DVD collection, the first two seasons of Scooby-Doo’s existence have come to an end. Unfortunately, the episodes largely end with a whimper in four largely non-descript episodes that rely far too much on lame musical numbers. Anyone hoping for any kind of “final episode” are sure to be disappointed as there’s no discernible difference in how episode 25 operates from how episode 1 or 7 or 18 operates.

Season 2 (1970)

Episode 22: “Haunted House Hang-Up”
Monster: The Headless Spectre
Life Lesson: Honestly, if you go into a creepy, allegedly haunted house to get a bucket of water to cool down your overheating van, you pretty much deserve to be chased around by a ghost.

The gang is on their way to a rock festival when the Mystery Machine decides to crap the bed. Almost out of gas and overheating, the gang stops in at a haunted mansion to ask for some water. At this point it gets a little unbelievable that the gang doubts Shaggy and Scooby when they tell them they saw a ghost. Not that the ghosts every really turn out to be ghosts, but you’d think that Fred and Velma would welcome these pronouncements because they get off on solving these mysteries.

The silly musical numbers have run their course, too. I like Scooby-Doo for the mysteries much more than the wacky slapstick.

Episode 23: “A Tiki Scare is No Fair”
Monster: The Witch Doctor
Life Lesson: Villains like to exploit local legends for profit.

With this episode we’re back to a greater emphasis on mystery and for the one and only time all season long – NO MUSICAL CHASE SEQUENCE. There are, however, a whole lot of human skulls on pikes, which maybe isn’t the best visual for a Saturday morning, eh?

What’s most interesting about “Tiki,” however, is that it’s one of the episodes that leads you to think Velma has a thing for Shaggy. Moments like this pop up throughout the first two seasons of Scooby-Doo, and here we’ve got Velma both giving Shaggy a dig and then hula dancing right in front of him with a bikini top and grass-skirted bottom. At one point, Shaggy says, “I fell for that trick” in a self-deprecating manner and Velma replies with a curt, “Naturally,” with a tone that says she’s talking about Shaggy missing a lot more than that trick. At the end of the episode, Velma is totally presenting herself to Shaggy, but he’s too interested in eating food to notice.

Episode 24: “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Werewolf?”
Monster: A Werewolf … who’s also a ghost
Life Lesson: Wolves eat sheep. Werewolves stick them in barrels, float them down river, and then sell them on the black market.

Not that you expect a lot of serial storytelling in a Saturday morning cartoon, but it’s nice that after almost two full seasons Shaggy finally notices that Fred is always taking the ladies when he splits the group in two to investigate a mystery. Unfortunately, that’s all this episode has going for it as it contains the two worst elements of SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU!: the musical chase sequence and Shaggy and Scooby play dress up to trick the enemy. Here, they pose as barbers to give the werewolf ghost a haircut.

And then we find out that the pretend werewolf is a sheep smuggler, which I’m pretty sure even kids in 1970 was lame.

Episode 25: “Don’t Fool with a Phantom”
Monster: The Wax Phantom
Life Lesson: Dance contests at failing television stations are naturally going to lead to danger.

A rather blah ending to the series. The Wax Phantom is a nice enough villain and the television station angle is a nice one, but this episode never really comes together. The prime suspect is a creepy curator at the local wax museum but he’s so obviously a villain that he’s obviously not a villain. Fred and Daphne do their herky-jerky dancing routine but then Shaggy and Scooby enter the contest as a couple, leaving Velma on the outside.

Honestly, this series should have ended with Velma going, “You know what? F*ck you guys. I’m outta here!”

And that’s it for one of the greatest, most influential American cartoons of all-time. There’s a season 3 of SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU! but it was made 8 years later, after several other iterations of the show had been broadcast.

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SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU! Review Index:
Episodes 1-7: Let’s Split Up and Search for This Ape-Man Who Eats Hamburgers
Episodes 8-13, 15: You’re the First Clam Dog I Ever Heard Of
Episodes 14, 16-21: How was the Magic Show at the High School, Freddy?
Episodes 22-25: How Can You Have Heads and Tails on a Slice of Bologna?