Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra-Doo (2010) – Review

Illusions and trickery have been the bread and butter of the Scooby-Doo world since the very beginning, with countless crooks faking various ghosts and monsters as part of some elaborate crime, but with Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra-Doo, the art of illusions is taken up a notch when Scooby and the gang visit a school for stage magicians. Could an actual mythological griffin be terrorizing a transplanted castle? Does the Banshee’s wail spell doom for Mystery Incorporated? Only time will tell in this chilling mystery full of danger and destruction.

During the wrap-up of the “Mystery of the Chemical Creep” — this movie’s brilliant opening credit sequence — Velma (Mindy Cohn) gets a call from her mother asking that she check in on her younger sister Madelyn (Danica McKellar), who attends the Whirlen Merlin Magic Academy, a college for stage magicians located in an old Irish castle that had been transplanted to America. After almost being killed by the Mystery Machine’s new GPS (Dave Attell) — which constantly insults them while taking them on a lethal scenic route — the gang eventually arrives at the academy. Here they learn that many of the students and teachers have fled due to attacks from a griffin, who Madelyn explains was meant to protect the castle, having been brought overseas two centuries ago by the legendary magician Seamus O'Flannery, who had possessed a magic staff to summon and control the griffin.

 

Death from above!

Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra-Doo returns to the darker, more realistic style of animation found back in such animated features as Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island and Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost, with the added bonus of having the likes of Alan Burnett and Paul Dini as writers — these two guys being integral to the success of the Batman: The Animated Series. The interesting wrinkle this time out is the reveal that Velma’s younger sister has had a crush on Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) for years, and her devotion and belief in his nobility and courage is as charming as it is funny. Now, this isn’t the first time that Shaggy has had a potential love interest, he even once had the hots for an alien, but the chemistry between Madelyn and Shaggy is handled brilliantly here, and her blind faith in her “Knight in Shining Armor” is simply adorable.

 

Sir Shaggy and his trusty companion, Scooby-Doo.

So, who exactly is behind these griffin attacks? The Magician's Academy is owned and operated by Whirlen Merlin (James Patrick Stuart) — a character clearly designed after Vegas magicians Siegfried and Roy — but in his shadow is his older brother Marlon Merlin (Brian Posehn), who is responsible for creating the visual effects needed to perform Whirlen’s acts. Then we have Calvin Curdles, a powerful ice-cream guru who desperately wants to purchase the castle and turn it into a flagship restaurant. Next, we have Alma Rumblebuns (Diane Delano), the gruff school's housekeeper who used to date Calvin Curdles and wishes to see the castle returned to being a place of true magic. Then there is Amos the groundskeeper (John DiMaggio), who doesn’t seem afraid of the griffin and is also feeding information to Curdles about the troubles at the school.

That’s a pretty good suspect list, and as far as mysteries go, Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra-Doo is one of the more solid entries, but what makes this particular mystery stand out among the previous Scooby-Doo movies, is the level of peril on hand as well as a true sense of danger. The Scooby gang surviving multiple encounters with near-death is not something we see all that often.

 

Death is but a step away during this particular mystery.

The character designs and moody atmosphere are simply fantastic, and Warner Bros. Animation once again proves that a made-for-television animated film doesn't have to look cheap or half-assed. Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra-Doo is a good example of the studio bringing their A-game to the project, and the only real complaint I have is one that plagues almost every Scooby-Doo mystery, which would be the monster being revealed to be fake — in this case, the Griffin was a massive puppet suspended from a hot-air blimp that was hidden behind an artificial fog — as it’s not possible to reconcile its abilities with what we saw the creature demonstrating throughout the film. But at least they go the extra mile by adding additional elements to pull off the hoax, such as mechanical griffin claws that are activated by booby-traps. This film even gives us a second monster, in the form of a Banshee, which is later explained away as being either a puppet or a hologram at different times, so Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra-Doo gets bonus points for putting in a little extra effort in how this particular hoax was pulled off.

Note: Groundskeeper Amos informs the gang about the banshee, stating “It’s a hideous female ghost whose wailings doom whoever hears it.” That is not how banshees operate; their wailing actually heralds the death of a family member, it’s not some form of an attack.

Stray Observations:

• Danger-prone Daphne (Grey Griffin) ratchets her clumsiness up to eleven in this movie, but she tries to compensate by demonstrating amazing ballet and gymnastic abilities.
• Fred (Frank Welker) gets all hot and bothered over Whirlen Merlin's assistant Treena (Olivia Hack), causing Daphne to once again become jealous.
• Being this is a school of magic, we get the obligatory Harry Potter references.
• Shaggy faces off against the griffin on a bridge, “Like, you shall not pass, man,” Which is a nice reference to Gandalf and the Balrog in The Lord of the Rings.
• The elaborate hidden passageways and booby-traps in this movie are as good as anything found in the Indiana Jones movies.
• The banshee starts out looking “Kind of Pretty” as Fred points out, until it turns into a hideous hag to chase our heroes. This is very reminiscent of the spirits that came out of the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• Part of this movie deals with the gang trying to find O'Flannery's crypt so that they can retrieve his magic staff, the one that controls the griffin, which is kind of a narrative dead-end when you consider the monster is fake.

 

And it leads to grave robbing and Shaggy desecrating a corpse.

The return to the dark tone is more than welcome here — I could certainly do with less Hawaiian adventures and more gothic horror — and the mystery on hand is surprisingly intricate, with multiple suspects that manage to throw a few twists and turns into the proceedings. Animation-wise the complexity and shadowing for the characters and scenery makes Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra-Doo one of the best-looking of the Scooby-Doo movies, and the Scooby Gang themselves are back to true form for this outing. Then there is the fact that our heroes are supported by a vibrant cast of secondary characters, all with interesting personalities and motivations, leading to this entry being one of the best of the Scooby-Doo movies.

Note: The credit sequences were done by the animation studio Six Point Harness, and its unique style is not only amazing to look at, but it also gives us a fun and energetic opening, and the character designs were also quite cute and hilarious. I’d love to see an entire Scooby-Doo movie done in this art style.

Annabelle Comes Home (2019) – Review

The Conjuring Universe, created by James Wan, has put forth some decent entries into the horror genre, but it’s also released its fair share of cinematic duds along the way. With Annabelle Comes Home, we get an entry that falls in the middle of the pack. Director Gary Dauberman was the original screenwriter for 2014’s Annabelle, and 2017’s Annabelle: Creation — the first being a terrible prequel and the second one being a surprisingly good film for what was basically a prequel to a prequel — so with Annabelle Comes Home, we get a chapter that is kind of a mid-quel. Seriously, is that even a thing?

The movie opens with demonologists Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) taking into their possession the notorious Annabelle doll — as was already recounted in the cold open of the first Conjuring movie — where we learn again that the doll isn’t so much a possessed item as it is a conduit for demonic forces and a “Beacon to other spirits.”  On the way home, the doll does its best to use this ability to kill good ole Ed, using the restless ghosts of a roadside cemetery to push him into traffic, but Annabelle fails and finds itself securely locked inside a cabinet made of chapel glass. Sadly, Ed and Lorraine Warren are not the protagonists of this story, as that duty falls to a couple of teenage babysitters and the Warren's daughter, which kind of screams, “We could only afford Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga for a couple of shooting days.”

 

“We’ll see you all for Conjuring 3.”

Ed and Lorraine have to leave for a weekend trip (a demon hunter’s work is never done), entrusting their daughter, Judy (Mckenna Grace), to the care of responsible teenager, Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman). Unfortunately, her friend Daniela (Katie Sarife) invites herself over so that she can snoop around the Warren’s spooky house. Turns out that Daniela’s father died in a car accident, an accident she blames herself for, and she hopes that the Warrens will have something that will allow her to communicate with him, but instead she is tricked into opening Annabelle’s case, as one would do if you’d come across a case holding a creepy doll that had a sign clearly stating “Warning! Positively Do Not Open.” Once released, the demon that is “using” Annabelle as a conduit proceeds to activate and call forth all the ghosts and cursed objects found in the locked room.

Question: What kind of homeowner’s insurance would cover having a room full of cursed objects?

What follows is basically the movie equivalent of a fun-house ride, one full of spooks and scares that our heroes can traipse through, in what one could most charitably describe as a Haunted House Walkthrough. If you are looking for originality, Annabelle Comes Home is not the film for you, as it doesn’t have a plot so much as a series of horror clichés that it trots out as if on some sort of schedule — you could almost make a game of it.

Horror Cliché Bingo:

• Rocking chair rocking itself.
• Ghostly figures in the fog.
• Creepy ghost children.
• A knocking on the door that then reveals no one is there.
• Piano playing itself.
• A crucifix on the wall inverting itself.
• Hellhound or a werewolf appearing (the film’s not sure either).
• Figures standing spookily in the background.
• Spectral woman in white.

Note: The woman in white here is called “The Bride” and it has something to do with a cursed wedding dress that makes brides become psychotic.  So, a wedding dress then?

That all said, Annabelle Comes Home is not a bad horror movie; director Gary Dauberman clearly knows his way around the genre, having already written over a half-a-dozen horror flicks, and I will admit to having gooseflesh during several of the haunting sequences. Unfortunately, that’s all the film is; it’s just an assortment of scary sequences for our trio of kids to make their way through and not much else. It relies a little too heavily on scenes where a spooky figure is standing in the background, unbeknownst to our protagonists, and by the fourth or fifth time this happens you want to yell, “Just turn the fuck around!” Then there are the standard moronic actions of characters found in these types of films, who split up and explore the dark, spooky house on their own more often than members of the Scooby gang.

 

I just hope babysitters for the Warrens get hazard pay.

I had fun with Annabelle Comes Home, it had some decent chilling moments and, most importantly, it didn’t rely on jump scares, and it was certainly well above such deplorable entries as The Nun and The Curse of La Llorona.

Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword (2009) – Review

The globetrotting Scooby gang are no strangers to the Far East; they’ve faced the Dragon Beast in the episode “The Demon of the Dugout,” from the Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo run, and poor Shaggy became a 30 Foot Shaggy during an episode of What's New, Scooby-Doo? titled, “Big Appetite in Little Tokyo.” But their best Japanese adventure was in Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword — their 13th direct-to-video movie — and like the previous movie, Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King, our heroes would face actual supernatural threats.

Mystery Inc. has come to Tokyo so that Daphne (Grey Griffin) can participate in a martial arts tournament at a prestigious school run by Miss Mirimoto (Kelly Hu). Upon arrival, they are greeted by Daphne's friend Miyumi (Kelly Hu) who explains to them the difficulty of winning the tournament and entering the school as a student — don’t ask me what would have happened to Mystery Inc. if Daphne had won and stayed in Japan — and while flying our heroes to the island school, via a robotic plane, Miyumi comments, “Here in Japan, technology is taking over everything while many of the old traditions are fading away.” This would be the first of many tip-offs to the threat du jour and should have had the gang discussing the idea of picking up tickets for a quick flight home.

 

"I vote for a trip to the Malt Shop."

When they arrive at the tournament, Daphne gets to judo flip Miss Mirimoto’s immense bodyguard Sojo (Kevin Michael Richardson), which impresses Sensei Mirimoto, who then pits Daphne against Miyumi in an early combat demonstration. This leads us to tip-off number two, as Miyumi wins by pulling off Daphne’s hairband, briefly blinding her by her own long red locks, and when Daphne comments, “That was a dirty trick,” Miyumi responds with the school’s motto “The first rule of Mirimoto Academy: if you want to win, you must be willing to do that which others are not willing to do.”

 

I bet the second rule is, “You don’t talk about Mirimoto Academy.”

So by this point, my suspicions were duly aroused — as if a secluded martial arts training camp wasn't enough to arise suspicions — but before my thoughts had a chance to percolate, we get a ninja attack led by the Black Samurai (Kevin Michael Richardson), the ghost of an ancient warrior who, centuries ago, was tricked into drawing a cursed sword, which turned him evil and forever doomed his spirit. Only the Sword of Fate, wielded by the Green Dragon, was able to defeat the Black Samurai and imprison him in the "Sword of Doom." The Black Samurai needs the “Destiny Scroll” to lead him to the location of the lost Sword of Doom and free his spirit. Wait a tick, if he’s a ghost running around with an army of ninjas, isn’t his spirit technically already free? This would be tip-off number three.

 

What a Night for a Ninja.

The first 30 minutes of Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword looks to be your standard Scooby-Doo Mystery, as we’ve got plenty of suspects to look at. Along with Miss Mirimoto, Sojo, and Miyumi, there is also Mr. Takagawa, the curator of cultural history at a Tokyo Museum who came to warn Miss Mirimoto of the Black Samurai threat, but all that is put on the back burner when the movie takes a left turn away from mystery-solving and into Indiana Jones adventuring. Velma (Mindy Cohn) is put on point to solve the riddle of the “Destiny Scroll,” and with the help of Shaggy (Casey Kasem) and Scooby’s (Frank Welker) origami skills, she is able to do so, and the gang soon finds themselves, along with Miyumi and Mr. Takagawa, on their way to the South Seas. What follows is a series of mini-adventures through fog-shrouded islands and towering waterfalls, all the while dodging booby-traps and evading South Sea cannibals.

 

At least there is no sign of Short Round or Willie Scott.

The gang manages to retrieve the sword, though while doing so, Miyumi sets off a cataclysmic booby-trap; yet, all ends well with the capture of the Black Samurai, who when unmasked, is revealed to be none other than Miss Mirimoto’s bodyguard Sojo. But once the gang brings Sojo and the Sword of Doom back to Miss Mirimoto, she and Miyumi capture the Scooby gang. Jinkies! Turns out everyone but Mr. Takagawa was a bad guy and the Scooby gang had been lured to Japan for their mystery-solving skills in finding the Sword of Doom. In an interesting twist, we learn that Miss Mirimoto isn’t some two-bit treasure hunter, but that she actually plans to resurrect the Black Samurai from the Sword of Doom and to have him lead her robot ninjas — oh yeah, turns out the ninja army was a bunch of robots — “Against the ignorant forces of this modern age. Then the ancient world of the samurai and a new world of technology shall exist in perfect harmony!”

 

“Or check into a psych ward, whichever comes first.”

I found Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword’s sharp left turn into Japanese mythology rather delightful; we don’t get enough Eastern mythology in our movies over here, and the sequence of Shaggy and Scooby being trained to be a samurai — by a sushi chef/samurai warrior (Keone Young), no less — was especially fun, as was their eventual meeting with the Green Dragon (Brian Cox) and the final fight with the Black Samurai.

 

Crouching Doggie, Hidden Dragon.

Stray Observations:

• While watching Daphne and Miyumi spar, Shaggy comments, “Like meow, talk about a Kung Fu catfight.” Not only is this incredibly sexist, but Kung Fu is a Chinese martial art not a Japanese one, so Shaggy is a real asshat here in every way, shape and form.
• Fred (Frank Welker) doesn’t get to do much in this movie, other than to complain that he doesn’t have a cool catchphrase like “Jinkies,” “Jeepers,” or “Zoinks,” and Velma creates an EMP pulse to take out the robot ninjas, stealing Fred's trap thunder.
• The ninjas being revealed to be robots allowed this movie to have some nice sword fights without worrying about violating “Standards and Practices,” and is very reminiscent of the same thing done with the Foot Clan on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cartoon.
• Daphne's martial art skills are finally displayed in full; not quite The Bride from Kill Bill level, but still cool, but after her initial sparring match with Miyumi, she doesn’t really use them again.
• The plot of Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword is very akin to the one by Ben Ravencroft in Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost, where the gang was tricked into finding the Witch’s journal.
• During their earlier run-in with the Black Samurai and his ninjas, Shaggy and Scooby disguise themselves as geisha girls. Surprisingly enough this doesn’t work.

 

Another entry for my Nightmare Dream Journal.

Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword was the last Scooby-Doo film to use the bright animation style of What’s New, Scooby-Doo? and though I’ve been fairly critical of this flat and often saturated look, this movie at least has some quite amazing background designs and locations — a plethora of ancient lost temples, gorgeous South Sea Islands, and massive cave systems — all looked rather spectacular. It was nice to see this run of movies end on a somewhat high note.

Scooby Trivia: This was also the last time Casey Kasem would voice Norville "Shaggy" Rogers.

Leprechaun Returns (2018) – Review

What do you do if the villain of your franchise has hit a critical mass level of desperation that lands him in space? In the Friday the 13th movie series, after Jason got his “In Space” entry, the next film teamed him up with a fellow horror icon Freddy Krueger, but when that failed to rejuvenate the franchise, they tried the reboot route in 2009. That didn’t go well either, and thus we are now looking at getting Friday the 13th: The Beginning sometime in the near future. I just can’t wait. But today, we're not talking about the trials and tribulations of Jason Voorhees. Instead, we will be looking at how the Leprechaun franchise tackled that same law of diminishing returns.

In the Leprechaun series, we saw the titular character fighting space marines in its fourth outing before coming back to Earth to fight “In the Hood,” which led to an attempted reboot back in 2014 and what looked to be the end of the franchise, but then again, you can’t keep a good slasher villain down. With this entry, SyFy Channel took a cue from the latest Halloween movie by making Leprechaun Returns, a direct sequel to the 1993 original while gleefully ignoring all the subsequent sequels. I bet the studio execs celebrated over a five martini lunch after that brilliant idea.

Leprechaun Returns is set 25 years after the original movie took place, where we are introduced to Lila Redding (Taylor Spreitler), the teenage daughter of Tory Redding — who was played by Jennifer Anniston back in the day, but due to budgetary concerns, does not appear in this film — and from Lila we learn that poor Tory had become a crazy recluse, carrying on about monsters and such, until eventually succumbing to cancer.
Question: Is cancer the go-to remedy for removing a character from a franchise? Poor Sarah Connor was revealed to have died from leukemia in Terminator: Rise of the Machines, so is this just lazy or some kind of industry standard?
Now, the producers may not have been able to entice Jennifer Anniston back, but we do get the return of the dimwitted Ozzie Jones (Mark Holton), who if you remember was the one that originally freed the evil little prick in the first place, and who ended up swallowing a piece of the leprechaun’s gold. The Ozzie character fills the role of the “Harbinger,” for this entry and after he is brutally murdered by the returning leprechaun and will become Lila’s guardian spirit guide.

 

I guess this is better than dying off-screen of cancer.

There really isn’t much of a plot to Leprechaun Returns — not that we were expecting one — but, sadly, we don’t get much in the way of interesting kills or likeable characters either. Taylor Spreitler tries her best as the film’s protagonist, and she has a couple of good moments in the third act, but it all comes too late for me to care, and overall, I considered the entire cast to be nothing but a collection of annoying slasher fodder. The basic set-up to the film is that a group of sorority girls are turning the old Redding homestead into an eco-friendly sorority house, and their renovations somehow awaken the Leprechaun, which then causes him to go on a murder spree as he hunts for his pot-o-gold. Aside from Lila, the sorority members consist of the house’s neurotic leader Rose (Sai Bennett), the perpetual drunk Meredith (Emily Reid), and finally, we have Katie (Pepi Sonuga), who makes some serious errors in judgment when it comes to relationships. And because no self-respecting slasher film can do without some idiot male characters to add to the kill list, we are saddled with rock-stupid Andy (Ben McGregor), who is Katie’s ex-boyfriend, but clearly still on the “Friends With Benefits” list, and then we have Matt (Oliver Llewellyn Jenkins) who doesn’t know how to move out of the way of a slowly approaching drone.

 

“Why are you so sore, audiences love lots of gore.”

The film's kryptonite is the fact that the Leprechaun (Linden Porco) himself never comes across as even remotely threatening — even with the body count rising, I just couldn’t take him seriously — as the girls constantly punt the little bastard away at every turn. The only way this movie was able to reach its 90-minute run-time was because the little shit can regenerate from any damage he takes, even to the point of forming a little army of miniature leprechauns when he is blown to smithereens.
The leprechaun repeatedly states that without his gold, he is in a weakened state — his telekinetic power not having the oomph it had in the previous film — yet these bozos immediately plan to return the gold to him as soon as possible; how fucking dumb is that? That's like giving a sun lamp to an evil Superman. Worse is the fact that Leprechaun Returns seems to be nothing more than a collection of random gags and jokes from previous entries, with all the leprechaun’s standard puns and limericks making him come across as low-rent bastard child of Freddy Krueger and the Crypt Keeper.

 

"Maybe I should go torment Ash Williams for a bit."

Now, I’m sure many fans of the franchise will get a kick out of this chapter in the cinematic history of the leprechaun, as there is the prerequisite amount of gore and goofy antics, it just didn’t work for me, but even die-hard fans will have to admit that the CGI assisted gore found in this film is very poor and distracting, and the humor was more miss than hit. Leprechaun Returns doesn’t bring anything new to the franchise, the world-building is non-existent, and the slasher fodder was more annoying than entertaining. This film is a clear case of “Been there, done that,” making it all too predictable and even boring at times, and I sincerely hope that this series can be finally put to rest. But, more than likely, we will eventually be getting a leprechaun meets Michael Myers movie.

 

Or maybe he could get a job as the new mascot for Lucky Charms.

Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King (2008) – Review

Back in the late 90s we were treated to several Scooby-Doo movies where the fantastical creatures were actually real - starting with Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island and ending with Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase - but after those films the formula returned to the typical “Dudes in Masks” type of mysteries, that is until the release of Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King. Not only was the title threat an honest to goodness monster – the powerful ruler of Halloween World – but we also learned that pretty much all other types of monsters were real as well. How does such a shift in continuity work? Can this movie explain the supernatural world and how it fits into the Scooby-Doo universe? Sadly, the answers to such pertinent questions are few and far between within this movie.

Our story opens with the Scooby gang visiting the Coolsville Halloween Carnival, where we see Shaggy (Casey Kasem) and Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker) reveling in the fact that they aren’t afraid of “Any phony old frights” because “Halloween is the one night when you know everything is fake.” This attitude leads them to heckle a carnival magician named "The Amazing Krudsky" (Wayne Knight) and exposing him for being a fraud. This not only gets the gang thrown out of the carnival but it also turns Krudsky into this movie’s vengeful villain, but how can a third rate stage magician pose a threat to our heroes?

A rebellious Fairy Princess named Willow (Hayden Panettiere) enters Krudsky’s tent and through her clumsiness, she reveals her presence and the fact that an item called “The Goblin Scepter” could give Krudsky "Ultimate Power" over the Halloween World. The bumbling magician captures the Fairy Princess, absorbs her fairy magic, and proceeds with his goal of getting his grubby little hands on that scepter.

 

This is supposed to be our villain?

Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King is a rare Scooby-Doo mystery in that it isn’t a mystery at all, we know right from the start that the story’s antagonist is the magician Krudsky – sure, we do get the Goblin King later on but he’s not really the force that drives the plot – and it is this element that leads to the movie’s chief failing, because without a mystery there really isn’t much for Fred (Frank Welker), Daphne (Grey Griffin) or Velma (Mindy Cohn) to do. If you thought they were stuck in the background during the events of  Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! in Goblin King they barely have any screen time at all. Instead, we follow Shaggy and Scooby as they venture into the Halloween World to steal the scepter from the Goblin King (Tim Curry) before Krudsky has a chance to.

And why exactly would our resident cowards take on such a perilous quest? The helpful proprietor of the magic shop Mr. Gibbles (Wallace Shawn), who is a faerie creature himself, tells the duo that if the Goblin King’s scepter falls into Krudsky's possession it would cause an imbalance in the supernatural order, but on a more personal note Krudsky will turn Fred, Daphne, and Velma into monsters.

 

“So, she’s a dog.

What follows is a collection of fantastical set-pieces that deal with Shaggy and Scooby on their quest to steal the scepter; they will have to bluff their way passed a werewolf bar owner (Tim Curry) – so we can get a pointless musical number – then visit the Grand Witch (Lauren Bacall) to get directions to the Goblin King’s castle - and also borrow a broom - but one of the larger  sequences involves our two dumb-dumbs teaming up with a talking Jack O'Lantern (Jay Leno) who needs their help escaping The Headless Horseman.  It has nothing to do with the plot but it sure was cool.

 

This is one of many nice if meaningless detours.

Stray Observations:

• The audience for "The Amazing Krudsky" seemed really upset that he wasn’t using real magic. Do the people in Coolsville not understand that stage magic isn’t real?
• During Shaggy and Scooby’s visit to a Halloween World bar we see many monsters from previous Scooby-Doo mysteries, such as Phantom Shadow from "A Night of Fright is No Delight" and the Creeper from "Jeepers! It's the Creeper" to just name a couple, and the sequence works as a nice Easter Egg Hunt for fans of Scooby-Doo.
• Velma is treated terribly in this movie when witnessing real magic she babbles “Rational mind, shutting down” and faints. Velma is my favorite character and this moment was just insulting.
• Shaggy and Scooby are given a deadline that they must retrieve the scepter before midnight or be trapped in Halloween World forever. This is basically forgotten as it seems that a simple broom ride is all it takes to escape.
• Gibbles gives Shaggy and Scooby magic cards that perform spells just by reading the inscription on each one, but none of them are really all that effective and just provide a random amount of sight-gags.
• The film gives us a surprise reveal that Fairy Princess Willow is the daughter of the Goblin King, but how in the hell is a tiny fairy princess the daughter of an all-powerful goblin? Was she adopted?
• Shaggy and Scooby disguise themselves as Daphne and Velma to get inside the Goblin King’s castle. Why this works is beyond me.

 

This is pure nightmare fuel.

As an animated film Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King has a very definite “Disney Movie” feel to it, what with the big musical numbers interrupting the “plot” - one particular song “Goblin Oogie Boogie” sung by Jim Belushi  went on forever - and even some of the character designs looked borrowed from the Disney Archives, especially in the case of the aforementioned Headless Horseman who looked lifted right out of Disney’s The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. Even the settings seemed cribbed from Disney animated classics, the Goblin King’s castle had a foreboding blend of both Maleficent’s castle and the abode of the Horned King from The Black Cauldron.

 

Disney’s lawyers were apparently asleep at the wheel.

The main failing of Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King is the lack of a central threat, both Krudsky and the Goblin King have very little screen time and seem mostly forgotten by the screenwriters - Krudsky is supposedly the main villain but he disappears for the bulk of the movie until the grand finale - and so we are left with is just a series of episodic adventures starring Shaggy and Scooby-Doo. Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing if handled well, as these are the kind of hijinks and shenanigans that most kids want to see, but with such a great cast of voice talent, and amazing if a little plagiarized character designs, it could have been so much better. The sidelining of Fred, Daphne, and Velma, as well as the lack of an actual mystery, prevents Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King from becoming a classic like Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island. It’s not a terrible entry in the Scooby-Doo lexicon but still a tad disappointing.

Note: Tim Curry, who provided the voice for The Goblin King, had previously played the villain in Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost.

Slaughterhouse Rulez (2018) – Review

A horror movie set in an elite boarding school is certainly nothing new – Dario Argento’s Suspiria and its 2018 remake being primary examples of this – but taking that horror setting and then blending it with a comedy element is a nice little twist - casting the likes of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost certainly couldn’t hurt - but it’s the additional serious issues brought to the table, such as closeted homosexuality, bullying, and suicide, that causes the filmmakers of Slaughterhouse Rulez to stumble a tad.

With Slaughterhouse Rulez director Crispian Mills brings us a dark teen comedy set within the walls of a prestigious private school, where future leaders will be molded and groomed for greatness, but once I realized that the name of the school was actually Slaughterhouse, and not just a nickname, I had a hard time understanding the thought process behind parents sending their kids to such an establishment. One would think the school’s board of directors would have at least thought about rebranding the place to keep the tuitions coming in, and once again we have one of your standard cliched movie schools that has found itself in financial dire straits, much as Disney’s Medfield College was constantly suffering from. In this film, the headmaster of Slaughterhouse, affectionately known as “The Bat” (Michael Sheen), has come up with a solution, one that involved selling the mineral rights of the surrounding land to an unscrupulous fracking company.

 

I can’t see anything going wrong here.

The film’s central character is new student Donald ‘Ducky’ Wallace (Finn Cole), who got this rare placement at this exclusive school because a spot opened up due to a suicide, but everyone, with the exception of dead boy’s best friend/room-mate Willoughby Blake (Asa Butterfield), would like to forget about the tragedy and continue the school year by upholding the Slaughterhouse status quo. This is of course upheld by head prefect Clegg (Tom Rhys Harries), a sadistic bastard who is a cross between Draco Malfoy and Joseph Goebbels, as he takes particular pleasure in tormenting Wallace and Blake but mostly against Wallace who has shown interest in posh upper classmate Princess Clemsie Lawrence (Hermione Corfield), who by school rules is untouchable by the likes of Wallace.

 

The goddess of Slaughterhouse.

Rounding out the cast of characters we have Mr. Meredith Houseman (Simon Pegg), a lovelorn teacher who has been batting way out of class with former teacher Audrey (Margot Robbie), who herself is now giving medical aid to children somewhere in Africa, and most likely sleeping with one of the other Doctors Without Borders. This running gag of Simon Pegg mooning over his clearly lost love, him Skyping her and begging for her return, seems like it belongs in another movie entirely and it derails the central plot of the movie whenever it pops up. Next, we have Eco-Warrior Woody (Nick Frost), whose group has set up camp in the nearby woods, and from there they split their time between protesting the fracking operation and selling drugs, when they're not going on about, "The dangers below" that is. The character of Woody has a little more to do with the plot, as we eventually learn of his tragic backstory that deals with his days as a student back in his Slaughterhouse time, but once again he really doesn’t add much to the proceedings, other than the fact of, “Hey, that’s Nick Frost!”

 

“Wherever the frack Simon Pegg goes, I go.”

The first hour Slaughter House Rulez works as a dark comedy, dealing with the bullshit of attending an elite boarding school and the shenanigans within those hallowed halls, but as it’s also supposed to be horror movie we expect to see some horrific things going on as well - not that some of the stuff that goes on in this school isn’t horrifying though on a different spectrum - but we paid to see monsters. Where are the goddamn monsters?  Now we get hints dropped of something sinister going on – radar imaging by the fracking dudes picking up what appears to be a large mass of creatures moving deep underground – but before we get much into that we have to shift back to Wallace mooning over the beautiful Clemsie and Blake’s personal mission to make sure the death of his “friend” is not forgotten. Eventually, the creatures will make an appearance – at about the hour mark – and we do get a good amount of gore as these monsters, which look like a cross between the demon dogs from Ghostbusters and a giant naked mole-rat, as they start eating any poor human within reach.

 

The creatures totally ruin the student’s Latin inspired orgy.

When the film’s final act explodes, in a monster fueled bacchanalia of decapitations and chewed off limbs, it’s a lot of fun, and we also get some cool history of the school as we learn more about the mythology of the creatures, the tunnels beneath the Slaughter House and how they are all connected.  It’s at this point that fans of the genre are going to be more than pleased, even if they had to wait a bit longer than expected for the action and horror to finally kick in. The end result is movie that comes across as a mash-up of Harry Potter and Attack the Block, which isn’t a bad thing, and some of the social commentaries of Slaughterhouse Rulez was handled quite well, but much of the stuff with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost could have easily been trimmed so that we could have spent more time with our lead teen protagonist, and maybe given us a bit more monster mayhem as well.

 

“Carpe Diem bitches!”

Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! (2007) – Review

When it comes to creatures in the Scooby-Doo universe, the most common has to be the snow monster, having shown up in one form or another at least a half-dozen times, whether it be the Yeti from the episode, “That’s Snow Ghost” in the original series, or the snow monster Mister Roundy from the episode, “Be Cold, Scooby-Doo!” in the series Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! But today we are looking at one of their more infamous snow adventures, Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! the eleventh entry in the Scooby-Doo direct-to-video movies.

Fred (Frank Welker), Velma (Mindy Cohn), and Daphne (Grey Griffin) find their Parisian vacation cut short when Shaggy (Casey Kasem) and Scooby (Frank Welker) fail to show up at the appointed time.  It turns out that the cowardly duo were tricked onto an “All you can eat flight” by Alphonse LaFleur (Rene Auberjonois), a world-renowned hunter who wants to find and kill the legendary Abominable Snowman, and he thinks the best way to catch a monster is to have the very best bait, which apparently is Shaggy and Scooby. Now, it is true that Shaggy and Scooby-Doo have been chased by many a monster in their time, from Dracula to the Loch Ness Monster, but for the most part, those were criminals trying to scare our heroes away, with actual monsters being a rarity even in the Scooby Universe, so a hunter desiring to find a real monster could probably do a lot better than these idiots.

 

Not meeting real monsters is their true superpower.

With Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! we do get a plethora of suspects — unlike the previous movie. The person behind this particular hoax becomes pretty obvious early on, but let's round up the usual suspects for old times' sake. First, we have Professor Jeffries (Alfred Molina), a man obsessed with finding the fabled lost kingdom of Shangri-La, and he is aided by Sherpa guide Pemba (James Sie), who refused to take Jeffries further up the mountain into the forbidden lands. Next is Pemba's sister, Minga (Kim Mai Guest), who ignores her brother’s orders to evacuate the area because she wants to join the group on their trek up the mountain to the weather station, claiming she came to warn them of an oncoming storm, but her real motivation is that she has a huge crush on the station’s Disc Jockey. This DJ turns out to be Dell Chillman (Jeff Bennett), who we last saw in the Scooby-Doo and the Loch Ness Monster, but who has now given up on searching for Nessie and wants to find the Abominable Snowman instead. Finally, we have the High Lama (James Hong), who explains that the large crystals he keeps in his temple are there to protect the villagers from the Abominable Snowman's powers, a large crystal that Jeffries seems very keen on checking out.

 

"Gee, I bet a crystal like that is worth a lot of money."

Stray Observations:

• This is a very Shaggy/Scooby-centric movie with the rest of the Scooby gang taking a backseat to their “running in terror” shenanigans.
• The High Lama spookily floats along the ground much like David Lo Pan did in the John Carpenter film Big Trouble in Little China, and James Hong played both of these characters.
• Early on, Velma remarks that impressions in the snow left by the Abominable Snowman’s huge feet aren’t even as deep as Daphne’s boot prints. This clue immediately dismisses the idea that the monster is real, yet everyone will still react throughout the movie as if it is.
• Minga goes missing and is believed to have been abducted by the Abominable Snowman. If the Scooby Gang didn’t have the collective memory of a goldfish, they’d realize that anyone who goes missing at the beginning of the mystery is usually the monster.
• We get an impressive mine car chase that is right out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
• Shaggy briefly takes over DJ duties at the weather station and his “On Air Radio Voice” is Casey Kasem’s real voice, a nice nod to his other job of hosting “Casey Kasem's American Top 40.”

 

“Here we go with the top monster hits of the nation!”

When the mystery finally wraps up, it should be a surprise to no one that Minga turns out to be the Abominable Snowman — she did it to keep Del around because of her feelings for him — but we still have a villain to uncover as well, and that would be Professor Jeffries who was looting the mountain of its crystals. I have to give Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! points for having a monster hoax that wasn’t related to the criminal they end up apprehending, I just wish the story itself wasn’t as thin as the air atop Mount Everest. Our cast of characters are all fun and engaging, with the voice talent providing solid work and staying on point, but most of the movie’s short run-time is wasted on seemingly endless Shaggy and Scooby chase sequences with the mystery itself seeming like an afterthought. Worst of all, we get this moment where Shaggy and Scooby-Doo discover Shangri-La, and yet the writers do absolutely nothing with this amazing location, it’s a two-minute pit stop that is simply used for a backdrop to another lame chase sequence.

 

A Lost Horizon of potential.

Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! is another light and fluffy Scooby-Doo mystery, and the best thing that could be said about this episode is that the character designs were interesting — the design of the Abominable Snowman being particular good — and there was some really nice animation throughout, but overall, there isn’t much to praise or denigrate as the movie is fairly forgettable and the plot itself would have probably worked better as a thirty-minute episode and not stretched out to seventy-two minutes. This is an entry that only completists should bother checking out.

Joker (2019) – Review

A comic book villain headlining his own movie is nothing new, just last year we had the somewhat successful Venom movie, and the fact that Batman’s rogue’s gallery is one of the best in all of comicdom, with Joker being the top of the deck, makes this movie seem almost inevitable, but the real question here is, "Was an origin story for the Crown Prince of Crime really necessary?"

The very nature of Joker’s chaotic character is something that defies an easy explanation. Is he simply mad or could his crazed antics be part of some anarchist mission? And is this something audiences have actually been clamoring for?  In Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Heath Ledger’s Joker rattled of several origin stories, each of them sounding disturbingly plausible, but that film never tried to nail down which if any of them was true. Now, with writer/director Todd Philips’ Joker we get a somewhat clouded point “A” to point “B” origin story for this notorious villain, and I’m still left wondering if it was necessary.

 

Box office receipts not being a proper answer.

Taking place in the early 80s we are introduced to Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) a clown-for-hire sad sack who lives with his mother Penny (Frances Conroy), and through her and a social worker we learn that Arthur is on a lot of medication and that he suffers from a neurological condition that causes him to burst out laughing uncontrollably. This condition doesn’t seem to deter Arthur from his dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian, even though his mother questions, “How, don’t you have to be funny?” and so he persists with this delusion, one that centers around his idol Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) a late-night talk show host. Things take a turn for the worse when Arthur kills three rich assholes on the subway, who were drunk and harassing him, which not only sends Arthur down a darker path it also sparks a social movement against Gotham’s one percent.

 

Was Arthur a fan of Bernhard Goetz, perhaps?

It’s no secret that this film is basically a love letter to Martin Scorsese, with plot and character elements seemingly lifted whole cloth from Taxi Driver and King of Comedy, and the film's setting and cinematography by Lawrence Sher does its best give the audience a feel for that era and of those movies, but is Travis Bickle a proper role model for the Joker? That Joaquin Phoenix gives us a tour de force performance of a mentally unbalanced man, one who is becoming further unglued by the cruel ugliness of society is indisputable – his physical transformation is almost as impressive – but what exactly is Todd Phillips trying to say with this character?  Arthur repeatedly states that he’s “not political” but then he will go on these grandiose monologs about how rich and powerful people like Murray Franklin will step over the downtrodden, which sounds pretty political to me.

Then the film's second act seems all about Arthur finding out about his mother’s relationship to the Wayne family, a subplot that basically goes nowhere, and then we have this rather bizarre relationship with Sophie (Zazie Beetz), a single mother who lives down the hall from him, that leads to certain revelations that have one assuming that Philips is also a fan of David Fincher.

 

"You met me at a very strange time in my life."

One thing should be perfectly clear by now, and that would be that this is not a Batman movie nor was it ever intended to be, but I wonder if Todd Philips may have been better off just calling this a remake of Taxi Driver and dropped all this Gotham nonsense. This film clearly opens him up to comparison to those Scorsese films – and as good a director Philips is he is no Scorsese – and then he will also have many comic book fans wondering why we are getting a sympathetic Joker movie and why is Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) such a dick.

Now, I’m not saying that giving the Joker a tragic backstory is a bad thing – that idea is almost a given with the character – but this movie spends about ninety percent of its runtime doing just that, so we don’t get a lot of Joker in our Joker movie. As to the actions of Thomas Wayne in this film, having him a callous rich man, who ridicules the less than fortunate, did rub me the wrong way. Why even bring the Wayne family into this at all, if Phillips wanted a comic book references why not go with the Falcone crime family? The shoehorning of Thomas Wayne, young Bruce, and Alfred into this movie will most likely garner much of the hate from comic book fans as it was quite unnecessary, and if edited out would have barely changed the film’s plot.

 

Can we say, "Stranger danger."

Todd Philips was not making an entry in the DC Extended Universe, and Joaquin Phoenix’s stunning portrayal of a mentally ill man exploding into a new persona is a far cry from Jared Leto’s version of the Joker from Suicide Squad, but when the Joker’s closing credits rolled I was left wondering what the point of it all was. Joker is a well-crafted and superbly acted film, one that deserves to be seen, I just wish it had a little more substance of its own and not so much borrowed elements from other films. Todd Phillips described Joaquin Phoenix's take on Arthur as, "A guy who is searching for identity who mistakenly becomes a symbol. His goal genuinely is to make people laugh and bring joy to the world." If only this film had spent a little more time discovering its own identity.

Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! (2006-2008) – Review

There have been many incarnations of Scooby-Doo over the years but whether they were tackling dudes in monster masks or actual supernatural threats one thing has remained fairly constant and that would be the mystery aspect. When Scooby-Doo Where Are You! first aired back in the 60s kids were treated to the goofy shenanigans of a lovable dog and his loyal friends as they uncovered mystery after mystery, watching these teen crime solvers as they traveled the globe to expose a slew of nefarious schemes, but with this tenth incarnation of Scooby-Doo the creators of this show completely abandoned that format – as well as most of the Scooby gang – and turned the series into a weak-ass version of Inspector Gadget.

Right off the hop, it’s clear that show developer and writer Ray DeLaurentis wanted to break with tradition when it came to the many versions of Scooby-Doo that had come before - cause why not - the loose animation style being one of the more egregious examples of this as it is just so ugly and unappealing. The designs of the character were apparently an attempt to copy the look of the live-action movies – yet for some reason they cast none of those actors to provide the voices nor does the animation style even remotely resemble their movie counterparts – this is a massive failure on the creative end, as not only is the visual style of the show terrible but to me it looks as if nobody involved cared to put in even a modicum of effort into the show's overall design and aesthetic. Then we have the fact that poor Fred (Frank Welker, Daphne (Grey Griffin) and Velma (Mindy Cohn) are relegated to just a few scant cameos, and for me, a show without the full gang just isn’t a proper Scooby-Doo series. Now, I know this isn’t the first time the Scooby gang has been broken up - back in the 80s The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo had ditched Fred and Velma - but with Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! the brief cameos of the rest of the gang actually hurt the show as there is no plausible reason for them not being involved. If the cowardly duo of Shaggy and Scooby were in trouble why in the hell would they not be calling their friends for help?

 

“Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

And exactly what kind of trouble do Shaggy (Scott Menville) and Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker) find themselves in this time out? Well, the premise for Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! is that Shaggy’s uncle Albert Shaggleford (Casey Kasem) has disappeared leaving Shaggy as his sole heir and the inheriter of billions of dollars. Now, I’m not an inheritance lawyer but I’m pretty sure “disappearing” doesn’t equal “dead” so how Shaggy inherits anything is the true mystery here. Regardless of the legalities of Shaggy’s inheritance the real reason behind all this is so that Shaggy and Scooby can take on their uncle’s nemesis Dr. Phineas Phibes (Jeff Bennett) an evil scientist and tech pirate who wants Shaggleford’s Nano-tech formula so that he can become immortal and rule the world.  He's basically your boilerplate evil Bond villain, and even though the show’s writers named him after a Vincent Price character he has more in common with the Peter Sellers character of Dr. Strangelove, right down to the goofy accent.  The fact that every plot Phibes has is thwarted by a couple of idiots, and mostly by accident, makes this series a little too close to the formula of Inspector Gadget for my liking.

 

If they had given Phibes a cat he’d be Doctor Claw.

The show’s overall story arc involves Shaggy and Scooby getting messages from missing Uncle Shaggleford, detailing some plot of Phibes that needs thwarting, and then our two bumbling idiots whisk off to save the world. If this sounds a little out of character for Shaggy and Scooby you are not alone, I mean these are the guys that were normally found hiding in the kitchen while the rest of the gang were out building monster traps, and nothing in the show’s two seasons even remotely makes sense.

To add insult to injury the other “big” element to this run is that top-secret nanotech formula had been mixed in with Scooby Snacks, which, when eaten, causes a variety of day-saving side effects on poor Scooby. So whenever our two heroes are in danger they’d have Scooby munch down on a random Scooby Snack so that it’s deus ex machina power could save the day.  From invisibility to super speed these brief abilities undercut the very essence of what makes Scooby-Doo such a lovable character and perfectly illustrates how much these writers completely failed to understand what would make a good Scooby-Doo cartoon.

 

Who exactly was asking for a roided up Scooby-Doo?

Stray Observations and Questions:

• The show’s terrible theme song is a rip-off of “One Fine Day” by The Offspring
• For some reason, Shaggy’s voice is pitched up several octaves for this series, as if actor Scott Menville had been given helium.
• Why would Shaggy’s uncle think his nephew and a dog could take on an evil organization?
• Uncle Shaggleford’s hidden laboratory looks like a complete lift from the cartoon Dexter’s Lab.
• Shaggy has the Mystery Machine upgraded into a miraculous transformer that can turn into anything, from a canoe to a giant robot, an idea that would later be explored in the much better Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!
• And why exactly does Shaggy have the Mystery Machine? Doesn’t it belong to Fred?
• Dr. Phineas Phibes flies a dirigible that seems based on the Hyperion from Disney’s Island at the Top of the World.
• Two of the key henchmen working for Dr. Phineas Phibes are pretty much a carbon copy of the Monarch’s two main henchmen from The Venture Bros.

 

Agent 21 and 24 from Venture Bros.

 

Agent 1 and Agent 2 from Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!

As an animated adventure cartoon, Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! fails on almost every level from its godawful animation style and half-assed voice acting to a story arc that even for a Scooby-Doo cartoon was pretty damn ridiculous, but worst of all is that it’s not even bad in a fun way, it’s just too painful to enjoy. As a lover of all things Scooby-Doo, this is one series that felt more like a chore to plow through than anything else – this being my first encounter with the show, having not even heard about it during its initial run – and so I can wholeheartedly state that this show should be avoided at all costs.

 
Note: The show throws in several cute references to better movies. It doesn’t help.