It was high time to indulge in my love of Scooby-Doo. After making it #1 on my animated shows, and not talking much about it why not spend my birthday week to look at in my opinion the best Scooby-Doo movies made.
Zombie Island was the first of the direct to video Scooby-Doo movies I ever saw, which really ushered in the still continuing Scooby movies you see in video stores. And I was maybe 5 years old when I saw this movie and I took the supremely creepy movie entirely in stride, which is surprising for me cause I was damn near afraid of my own shadow at that age. And I gotta tell you, it has been a very long time since I saw this movie last and truthfully I appreciate it and think it's gotten better now that I'm older. The film starts surprisingly with the gang split up, this is a huge leap for this movie and series for that matter cause, the gang moved on. They got tired of not solving any real mysteries, and you know....it's true! Scooby-Doo had been on for 30 years at this point and the mysteries weren't exactly Agatha Christie, so it makes sense. The gang got tired of the boring, mundane cases and moved on, went their seperate ways but decided to get back together for one more case to try and rekindle that sense of adventure and joy they once had. So basically the gang almost has a mid-life crisis kinda. Whoa! I mean that's a big bold move to see that alone. So they travel down to the bayou in good ol' Louisiana in search of a true haunted house and get a lot more than what they wanted. I was surprised to learn that a lot of japanese animators helped out on this movie and it does show, the animation is very fluid and detailed and the movie looks great! Some shots are incredibly cinematic, and this was still a time when hand drawn animation was the norm so the animators must be applauded. The cast changed at this time and most of the cast for the gang still do the voices today. Frank Welker had to take the enormous task of voicing Scooby after Don Messick passed away, and this film was in memory of him, and I love Frank Welker and he does Don proud. And keep your ears open for two famous voice actors today, one is obvious and one is not. And the mystery is compelling and how the events unfold shaped the way future Scooby-Doo movies were made, where the mystery may be legit or not when it comes to the monsters. And oh, that reveal. I mean we as an audience know something is up, and the movie does good with lore building, but when the time comes to drop the hatchet to the characters, it is grotesque and great. The zombie designs are creepy and it just adds to that dark tone in this movie, yes it's still a cartoon but it does push that envelope for such a routine show like Scooby-Doo. In fact there is some true creepy and down right disturbing scenes and ideas, it's definitely the most creepy and scary of all Scooby-Doo media, except for that one short. The movies were just as impactful to me as the cartoon, and I still have all my old tapes, I've seen every incarnation of old Scoob and 90% of the movies both animated and (regretablly) live action. I can't honestly say when I was a fan, but this movie didn't exactly hurt my standing on it. In fact if you ask most people who saw this in the late 90s, they would generally tell you this is a good movie nostalgia or not. Timeless characters, very good animation, an interesting story, a good mystery, and the beginning of many more movies to come.
Tomorrow we take a slight turn back into time, and yet I believe it's in the same location with another one of my earliest Scooby-Doo movies, Scooby-Doo Meets The Boo Brothers.
No comments:
Post a Comment