after about 30 years of existence six to eight shows depending on who you ask and four television movies the Scooby-Doo franchise was struggling the formula of five friends investigating Mysteries and Monsters ending in a mask off human was behind it the whole time reveal was losing steam Time Warner had purchased Hannah Barbera to help populate Cartoon Network and a directive video feature film was proposed what happened next would change the course of the franchise as four of the most well-known Scooby-Doo features were released to great success due to the way they broke the formula the
monsters were real welcome to what I'm calling for lack of a better name scooptober where we'll take a look at Staples of my childhood the movies that are in my opinion the most nostalgic Scooby-Doo movies out there Buckle in and get ready for a month of monsters that can't be defeated by taking off their masks oh this just gets better and better maybe from where you're standing what up it's Terror time again this week as we finally take a look at Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island the first ever direct to video film produced for the franchise
released in Fall 1998. I was three years old when it came out and I was a big Scooby-Doo fan by the time I could talk this movie was so crucial to my childhood I was obsessed with it and I loved watching it despite it being one of the scariest pieces of media for kids that I was exposed to other ones I can remember include the Heffalumps and woozle sequence from Pooh bear and the return to slab episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog it truly was an amazing era of media to grow up in after watching
this movie again I have a few questions but I mostly just want to talk about what makes this movie so legendary among the many Scooby-Doo movies and shows I had a great time watching this movie again let's go doesn't anybody want a beignet what I want is a house that's really haunted I mean there must be one somewhere in Louisiana I remember the beginning of this movie being so surprising and novel when I first saw it because the premise is that the gang have gone their separate ways after getting burnt out on solving Mysteries over
and over just to find it's some guy in a mask Daphne is hosting a television series with Fred behind the camera Velma owns a mystery bookstore and Shaggy and Scooby are having trouble holding a job because they eat everything all the time and get fired for it but the job we see them at is TSA food sniffers man everyone else went in the directions of their interests and shag and scoob just became class Traders alrighty then Daphne's birthday is coming up so Fred contacts everyone else and the Gang to reunite for a road trip to
find a real ghost for the show many unmaskings later they sit downtrodden in New Orleans discussing their efforts when Lena Dupree overhears them and invites them to her home on moon scar Island which is supposedly haunted by the ghost of a pirate named Morgan Moon scar but this island with its expansive swampland beautiful hosts and plentiful cats has something very Sinister looking under the surface and the gang is about to be face to face with their scariest mystery yet there are so many things that I love about this movie I think it's the strongest of
the four made by mooc animation and the Zombie Island team the cell animation looks stunning the character and environment designs are really high effort and horror is truly cranked up to 11 relative to most Scooby-Doo media but what makes this movie Stand Out objectively though regardless of what you think of the story or the art is the way it truly saved the franchise in 1991 A Pup Named Scooby-Doo ended and Scooby-Doo disappeared from Saturday morning cartoons after almost 30 years it seemed like Scooby-Doo was finally set to retire other animation companies like Disney were pushing
the boundaries and dominating the scene with their works and Nickelodeon and fox were on the rise too that same year Turner Broadcasting System bought Hannah Barbera with the intention of using their properties to fill up the broadcasting schedule on their new animation focused Channel Cartoon Network this brought Scooby-Doo to the cable audience and and reruns were bringing in great ratings in 1996 Turner Broadcasting merged with Time Warner and the idea of a direct to video Scooby-Doo film was suggested the team assembled consisted of seasoned members of the animation industry Davis doy was at the helm
screenwriting with Glenn Leopold who had been working on Scooby-Doo since 1979's Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Jim stenstrom was set to direct having been on Scooby-Doo project since 1983's the new Scooby and Scrappy-Doo show rounding off what would become the Zombie Island team that we've talked so much about was Lance Falk who served as model coordinator and color designer the crew had complete creative freedom and basically no corporate oversight because it was thought to be a one-off experiment and new format for the franchise some of the script was actually taken from Glenn Leopold's work on an unfinished
episode of SWAT cats called The Curse of Cataluna Leopold wanted the villains to be unmasked but stenstrom and DOI wanted to try introducing real monsters and Falk suggested that they combine the concepts resulting in the store story we know and love I can't find the budget information for the actual production but the movie was given 50 million dollars in promotion featuring Partnerships with Campbell Soup SpaghettiOs Wendy's Legos and Cartoon Network which aired the film on Halloween in 1998 a month and some change after the movie was released on VHS it was also featured on the
NASCAR Winston Cup series number nine Ford Taurus for seven races in September and October of that year at the time this was the largest marketing push in the history of Warner Brothers and it paid off sales were much higher than expected despite the VHS tape costing more than was standard for the era at 1995 and critical response was very positive with the public perception of the movie over time only growing more affectionate the film is widely regarded as one of the best entries in the entire franchise and famous for its modernization of the characters and
self-awareness of the script the success of Zombie Island launched Scooby-Doo back into the mainstream at High Velocity by 2 2002 there were three more direct to video films released and the live-action Scooby-Doo film was hitting theaters as of the time of making this video since the release of Zombie Island there have been three theatrical films three live action films Five television shows with another one currently in production 11 specials 18 video games and a whopping 37 direct to video Scooby-Doo films released with at least one a year being released every year since they began except
for 2002 which I'm guessing is because of the live action release and the departure of the Zombie Island team which we've gone over already in my other videos this month if you don't already know what happened there just go watch those it's a shame that the team was not treated with the respect they deserved as creators because they literally brought this franchise back from the brink of death and whether you think the current releases are good or not it has certainly thrived in terms of funding since Zombie Island 1898 Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island it's Scooby-Doo's
first feature length available only on video from Warner Brothers family Pizza Loper from Wendy's that would excite anyone Scooby-Doo one Zombie Island toys you can discover the answer to the angel question where is Scooby-Doo with a little patience you can unravel this mystery at Wendy's now one screw it away and every Wendy's kid's new purchased you can collect all five all right sweet with the title of the video explained now let's get into the fun stuff the subjective stuff the art appreciation the questions Third Eye Blind did the theme song for this one and I
love its kind of drum and bass inspired instrumentation it's upbeat and carries the mood of the 90s but still fits the vibe really nicely of the chase sequence and the movie at large I also am quietly a Third Eye Blind fan as some of their albums really got me through high school and I hold them close to my heart still we've also got the ghost is here and it's Terror Time Again by skycycle giving us two really fun montage songs that are some of my favorites from the entire franchise another old favorite is the daydream
in Montage from Scooby-Doo Where Are You episode Jeepers it's creeper that song stuck with me since childhood anyway hearing it's Terror time again after so many years had me hyped as [ __ ] it's a banger I've had it stuck in my head all week but I think that sequence could have benefited from zombie sounds and some of the shots because it feels a little weird only just occasionally hearing them screaming and the music but not hearing any like zombie moaning you know it just seems like it should be there and it's not so something
interesting happened with the casting in this movie where almost all of the voice actors who had previously performed the mystery gang ended up not working on this film Casey Kasem I'm sorry if I'm saying his name wrong refuse to voice Shaggy because of his vegetarianism unable to compromise with the team on what Shaggy would be eating in the film since they had already started animating him eating crawdads he was recast with Billy West you know fry from Futurama Kasem was actually given the chance to redub his lines toward the end of the production but he
said no Scooby's voice actor Don Messick had passed away in 1997 so Scott Inez took over the role Mary Kay Bergman replaced Heather North as Daphne after only one day of recording Frank Welker returned as Fred and I found out an interesting tidbit about this the team kept telling him to raise the pitch of his voice because they thought his voice was too low when they were doing the recordings but it turned out that they were actually used to seeing reruns on Cartoon Network that were sped up to allow room for more commercials which actually
resulted in the pitch of the reruns audio being higher nowadays when you speed something up you can preserve the true pitch of media so that was very interesting to me that they literally just raced the pitch of the entire broadcast just to speed it up um that makes me I don't even know if you can watch them now because I I doubt that you can buy specifically the broadcasted versions but if they're recorded somewhere I'm very curious to see what that looked like you know looking back at it to have entire episodes just sped up
to make more time for commercials oh my God now all of those voice actors I think did a great job but BJ Ward voiced Velma and while I've gotten some comments indicating she's a fan favorite voice actor for her I do think her delivery on some of her lines feels a bit unnatural after watching it again and there's just something about the way that she says some things that kind of took me out of the experience a little bit after re-watching all four of these movies I think the Zombie Island team was trying to take
turns focusing on different characters in the mystery gang in the movies they made Zombie Island places the focus on Daphne and Fred with their show Witch's Ghost focuses on Velma and her trying to help Ben ravencroft solve his mystery Alien Invaders focuses on Shaggy and Scooby falling in love with Crystal and Amber and then Cyberchase just loses that direction entirely because they didn't get to write for it as far as Zombie Island goes I enjoyed seeing Daphne in the lead given how often she's made to just stand there and look pretty in this franchise her
Mission leads the story in this film and she's even got some kick-ass self-defense moves so it's always weird to me that Fred doesn't want her to go with Bo The Gardener when they split up maybe he just won wanted to be with her like always I don't know Vilma and Daphne seem equally capable in this movie but whatever speaking of both The Gardener He's a nice little red herring in the story but the way they randomly nudge Velma romantically with scary white guys in these movies is kind of weird to me the pacing in this
one is better than the other three it's also the longest film at 77 minutes hey we should do a segment on Lena's pecan pie daft Supernatural you are so corny she was so fed up with him in this movie holy [ __ ] they're still just having dinner at Lena and Simone's halfway through the movie but they sprinkle in a few moments of horror and plenty of gags that keep things moving and true to the franchise before swiftly turning it on its head and ramping up the horror in the last 20 minutes or so first
with them realizing the zombies are real in a scene that truly disgusted and horrified me as a kid then with the zombie horde emerging from the swamp and them losing the camera and therefore all proof of the haunted island breaking it up with the voodoo scene that is somehow simultaneously creepy and seemingly intentionally slapstick humor and then to the Grand reveal of the movie which sorry but this part's weird so you're telling me that on This Island full of catfish and crawdads and Southern Hospitality there were also late 1700 settlers who worshiped a cat God
I'm guessing this part comes from glimly uphold SWAT cat script but it just diegetically seems a little out of place and it was a real head scratcher for me when I was watching it again regardless the shot of Simone's transformation into a werecat is scary as hell and so are those scenes of them sucking the life force out of Shaggy and Scooby and the scene of the rest of the gang melting truly horrifying I would also like to point out that the use of voodoo dolls in this film is highly inaccurate and aside from the
fact that slamming a voodoo doll against the wall shouldn't make the human Slam against the wall based on what I understand to be believed about these practices voodoo dolls are not used at all in Louisiana or New Orleans VooDoo and have actually been denounced and declared irrelevant to the voodoo religion by the high priesthood of Louisiana Voodoo so it's kind of like in Witch's Ghost where they just took an existing real actual religious practice of some kind and reappropriated it for their own story therefore teaching kids false information about a real thing not a huge
fan of that part foreign [Music] Adventure this time the monsters are real Cartoon Network's cartoon theater presents Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island tonight at 8 only on Cartoon Network I really like the costume redesigns in this film The Studio felt that Fred and Daphne in particular were way too 60s and needed a makeover and The Vibes they went with perfectly fit the southern atmosphere of the film and the more grown-up age of the characters Fred's redesign with the vest and no Ascot kind of gives him a fisherman vibe that works really nicely in the New Orleans
environment Scooby Shaggy and Velma retained their looks but I would love to see if the team had any ideas that didn't get used for updating velma's outfit further they changed her pleated skirt to a circle skirt or a mini skirt made her socks shorter and swapped her Mary Janes for loafers which definitely does update the outfit but she still looks a little dated to me when you see her next to the other redesigns without her headband and scarf Daphne at certain points feels slightly unrecognizable to me her design reminds me of the Retro Barbie movies
or Gem and the Holograms which isn't a bad thing but I can't think of any other instance including the other movies I've talked about this month where she looks like a Barbie character it's still a very pretty look for her my only actual gripe is the pink lipstick they gave her in this movie sometimes looks downright neon and it just doesn't really sit right with the rest of her face sorry I couldn't help it over here [Music] I think that says all I had to say about Lena the art in this movie is absolutely stunning
of the traditional cell animation era I think this might be the best Scooby-Doo ever looked the animation goes above and beyond in this movie and it really feels cinematic and like the animators were flexing their technical prowess the color design the line work it's stunning I watched it three times to make this video and I still wanted to keep watching it because it's just so incredibly pleasing to look at one of my favorite things about it is the moments where the shot seems to focus on the foreground or background as if it were being captured
on camera rather than animated which makes everything feel so real there are so many shots in this movie that do interesting things with perspective and panning that must have taken a butt load of work and I have endless appreciation for it because of the way cell animation works and especially so due to the efforts in this movie things feel like they really are behind and in front of each other and possess a dimensionality that I feel is lost in a lot of modern digital animation I do also admittedly really enjoy these slight wonkiness that occurs
in at times from hand drawing every frame rather than having things super rigged and standardized the line work is so soft and precise and the colors are so moody and beautiful Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island is a shiny example of innovation and storytelling for a franchise and the new heights that an old and tired property can be brought to if left in the right hands Davis doy Glenn Leopold Jim stenstrom and Lance Falk were a dream team of Animation professionals who did everything they could to create new and interesting stories for Scooby-Doo and their first effort
saved the mystery gang from early retirement Zombie Island takes the classic campy mysterious Paradigm and turns it on its head leaving the cast in the viewer shocked scared and entertained in a very fresh and exciting way even watching it 24 years after its release at my big age I was on the edge of my seat totally glued to the screen I consider it to be the strongest movie in the franchise it's truly a shame that as the Zombie Island team continued to work on the films their Artistic integrity was interrupted by corporate intervention outside writers
and pearl clutching parents by the time they got to Cyberchase their Innovative work had all but been erased you can't even stream these movies on HBO Max with the rest of the Scooby content Warner Brothers decisions as of late have been increasingly awful and when I see news about it all I can think about is the series of bad choices they've made across different properties I've covered on my channel this fall an omen of worse things to come it's a scary time to be an animator or an animation fan and I'm sending love to anyone
watching this who's had that on their mind lately creatives know best and should be left to their own devices when making things that's just like a general rule but not one that gets followed under capitalism very often I've learned so much about the Scooby-Doo franchise while making these videos this month it's ended up being about an hour of content now that this video is out it's definitely the most I've made in one month since I started taking this seriously and it's helped me fall back in love with editing and YouTube in general I'm having fun
with these now and I've gotten a lot faster with it my channel has seen a significant amount of growth and I've received so many cool and interesting comments from y'all watching every week I'm really appreciative of having so many eyes on my work all of a sudden and I don't take the stuff for granted even for a second I hope y'all will stick around for whatever I decide to talk about next for the rest of this year we'll probably talk about some more underrated and underrated properties and I'll do some passion projects that I've had
shelved for a while and yes if you're wondering I'd love to bring this gang back to the channel sometime this won't be the last time we hop in the mystery machine for an adventure I just want you to know how grateful I am for all of the support and for all of you sharing your love for Scooby-Doo with me as I remember it how much I love it too take care of yourself stay hydrated tell your friends you love them and I'll see you again soon happy Halloween thank you so much for watching [Music] in
the water [Music] can I ask you kind of a weird question [Music]
