Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island
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| Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island | |
|---|---|
 Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island promotional poster |
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| Directed by | Hiroshi Aoyama Kazumi Fukushima Jim Stenstrum |
| Produced by | Davis Doi |
| Written by | Davis Doi Glenn Leopold |
| Starring | Scott Innes Billy West Frank Welker Mary Kay Bergman B.J. Ward Adrienne Barbeau Tara Strong |
| Music by | Steven Bramson Glenn Leopold |
| Editing by | Paul Douglas |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Home Video |
| Release date(s) | September 22, 1998 |
| Running time | 77 minutes |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Followed by | Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost (1999) |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island is the first of a series of direct-to-video animated films based upon the Scooby-Doo Saturday morning cartoons. It was released on September 22, 1998, and it was produced by Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. The Mystery, Inc. gang, which includes Scooby-Doo, Shaggy, Fred, Daphne and Velma, travel to Moonscar Island which is located in the Louisiana bayou. The film was directed by Hiroshi Aoyama, Kazumi Fukushima, and Jim Stenstrum, based on Glenn Leopold's unfinished Swat Kats episode "The Curse of Kataluna", and written by Leopold and Davis Doi. The song "It's Terror Time Again", sung by Skycycle, played after Scooby Doo and the others found out that zombies were real.
[edit] Plot
At the opening of the movie's first musical number "The Ghost is Here", the gang is shown unmasking several "old-time" style criminals:
- A nerdy-looking guy in a lobster-man suit, fought in an old tinned crustacean factory.
- An old man in a man-vampire bat suit, fought in a graveyard.
- A "witch's ghost" that turns out to be a hologram.
- A zombie policeman, that turns out to be a middle-aged woman.
After years of unmasking phony ghosts, the Mystery Inc. gang go their separate ways. Daphne and Fred go off to start a successful investigative TV series (Coast to Coast with Daphne Blake), Velma opens a mystery bookstore, and Scooby and Shaggy bounce from job to job, including work as customs officers at an airport. However, when Fred decides that the next episode of Daphne's show should be about tracking down real ghosts, he reassembles the gang and brings them all to Louisiana. After encountering many "men in masks" ("just like the old days"), the gang arrives in New Orleans, and are invited by a cook named Lena to visit Moonscar Island, the home of her employer. The island, Lena claims, is supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a pirate named Morgan Moonscar. Although the gang is skeptical, they decide to go along with Lena and visit the island.
The gang arrives on the island and meets Lena's employer, Simone Lenoir, a beautiful Cajun woman with a love for felines, who explains about the hauntings. En route to the island, the gang also meet Jacques, who runs the ferry from the island to the mainland, and Snakebite Scruggs, a grungy fisherman.
The first two-thirds of the film play out like a regular Scooby-Doo cartoon, with the gang checking out clues and working to prove that the "ghost" is just a person in a mask. During the third act, however, it turns out that the island is home to real zombies. The zombies, however, turn out to be the good guys: Simone, Lena, and Jacques are revealed to actually be werecats who drain the life force out of people to preserve their immortality and the zombies were their many victims. The gang, along with Simone's gardener Beau, (who is revealed to be an undercover police officer) defeat the cat-creatures and free the zombies' souls to rest in peace.
[edit] Comparison to Other Scooby-Doo Films
Like a number of direct-to-video Scooby-Doo animated films released in the late-1990s and early-2000s, Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island features real monsters instead of simple bad guys in masks. While some viewers dislike this aspect of these films' plots, others welcomed the change. The videos sold well and received generally positive reviews in the press, leading to a series of future direct-to-video Scooby-Doo feature films, and a new television series, What's New, Scooby-Doo?.
