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) | February 20, 1998 |
| Running time | 77 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Followed by | Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost (1999) |
| Allmovie 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 February 20, 1998, and it was the first Scooby-Doo movie to be produced by Warner Bros. Animation in association with 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
The movie opens with a somewhat horrific chase scene involving Mystery, inc. being pursued by a green troll-like monster. After a fortunate accident by Shaggy, he is caught and discovered to be a counterfeiter. This is revealed to be a retelling by Daphne on her television program; after years of unmasking phony ghosts, the Mystery Inc. gang have gone 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, from which they are rather quickly fired after eating all the confiscated foodstuffs. 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"), such as a nerdy-looking guy in a lobster-man suit in a canned shellfish factory, an old man in a man-vampire bat suit at a graveyard, a ghost which that turns out to be a hologram, and a zombie policeman, that turns out to be a middle-aged woman, 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 Dennis Moore, 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, Beau, Simone's gardener 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 and were just trying to warn them about the 3 villains. The gang, along with Beau, (who is revealed to be an undercover police officer) defeat the cat-creatures (when it seemed they were cornered, the time for the werecats to drain the life force had expired, ending their lives and skeletalizing their bodies) and free the zombies' souls to rest in peace.
[edit] Cast
- Scott Innes as Scooby-Doo
- Billy West as Shaggy
- Frank Welker as Fred Jones
- Mary Kay Bergman as Daphne Blake
- B.J. Ward as Velma Dinkley
- Adrienne Barbeau as Simone
- Tara Strong as Lena
- Cam Clarke as Beau Neville
- Jim Cummings as Jacques
- Mark Hamill as Snakebite Scruggs
[edit] Comparison to Other Scooby-Doo Films
Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island featured real monsters instead of simple bad guys in masks. This was heavily promoted before its release including a tagline used during commercials stating, "This time, the monsters are real." This theme would be followed up in several subsequent direct-to-video Scooby-Doo animated films released in the late-1990s and early-2000s. Although real monsters had previously appeared in most of the 1980s Scooby-Doo series and features, this continuity was ignored with the characters said to be encountering real monsters for the first time.
In addition the film also makes no reference to Scrappy-Doo, restoring the original line-up for the show.
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?.
Out of each of the direct to video movies this one is argueably the darkest and most frightening out of all of them.
