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Scooby Doo on Zombie Island (TV)

Rating

Director

Jim Stenstrum

Screenplay

Glenn Leopold, Davis Doi

Length

1h 17m

Starring

Scott Innes, Billy West, Mary Kay Bergman, Frank Welker, B.J. Ward, Adrienne Barbeau, Tara Charendoff, Cam Clarke, Jim Cummings, Mark Hamill, Jennifer Leigh Warren, Ed Gilbert

MPAA Rating

TV-PG

Review

It’s hard to believe that it’s been over 30 years since Scooby Doo and company made their television debut. Since then, like “The Flintstones,” “Scooby Doo” has gone through several incarnations: characters left, new voices were added and the gang regressed to childhood. Three decades after the show’s beginning, it returns with a new, feature-length, direct-to-video adventure, “Scooby Doo on Zombie Island.”

The film opens with the crew having gone their separate ways. Velma owns her own mystery book store, Scooby and Shaggy continue working together as customs security, sniffing out smuggled food and Daphne works as a television reporter with Fred as her trusty cameraman and producer.

For her birthday, Fred decides that she’s too depressed to be without friends of old, so he gets the gang together and they set off in search of REAL ghosts, not the masked ones they’ve been chasing for years. They find what they’re looking for on a mysterious island in the Bayou where two young Cajun women run a pepper plantation where the islands dead have risen from the dead for an unknown reason.

“Zombie Island” features all of the old situations from the show, but twists them when the monsters are real. From a nostalgia stand point, it’s great seeing the gang together again, but with Frank Welker as Fred providing the only voice from the original series, it’s hard to put yourself back into the show at the beginning.

There are plenty of suspects from fish-hunter Snakebite Scruggs to suspicious gardener Beau. The plot keeps you guessing up until the clever finale featuring a classic battle between good and evil.

Famous voices lend themselves to the film. Former scream queen Adrienne Barbeau plays wistful plantation owner Simone, Billy West voices Shaggy, a part originated by countdown guru Casey Casem and “South Park’s” Mary Kay Bergman is the undaunted Daphne. Mark Hamill makes surprise, yet brief appearances as a lowly Cajun fisherman trying to catch a really big fish, but always being foiled by those pesky kids and their dog.

The crew’s reunion is predictable and the first 30 minutes provide a plethora of laughs, but also its share of slow events. The rest of the film plays like the old series with less camp than you would expect from Scooby and the gang, but provides lots of thrills and chills that you expect from a great mystery. It’s hard to believe that after 30 years, “Scooby Doo” still has a lot to give.

Directors Hiroshi Aoyama, Kazumi Fukushima and Jim Stenstrum add a touch of Japanese-style animation to the narrative. There’s also a lot of three-dimensionality that wasn’t part of the original series. It adds the right touch of realism and helps propel the movie in ways that cannot be done with older techniques.

“Scooby Doo on Zombie Island” is a wonderful little video that should bring back a bounty of memories of the old Saturday morning cartoon. Younger viewers will discover Scooby again and perhaps be drawn into the original series, which can be seen in reruns on many stations. Even though new episodes are no longer being made, films like this give you the opportunity to see the Mystery Machine in action one more time and perhaps restore your lost childhood.

Review Written

June 9, 2000