Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase (2001) – Review

In the previous animated feature Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders, we saw Mystery Incorporated meet honest-to-goodness aliens, making it the gang’s first real foray into science fiction, but with Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase, the franchise ratchets the sci-fi element up to eleven. This time out, Scooby-Doo and friends find themselves digitized and sucked into a computer game, and if that premise sounds a tad familiar to you, that would be because it was pretty much ripping off Disney’s 1982 sci-fi movie Tron.

In this movie, we find the Mystery Inc. gang visiting State University to try out a video game their
old friend Eric Staufer (Bob Bergen) had developed, a game based on the Mystery Inc's past adventures. Unfortunately for Eric, his game has come down with a bit of a virus, or “Phantom Virus," if you will. While working in the lab late one night, Eric, along with Professor Robert Kaufman (Tom Kane) and Eric’s lab partner Bill McLemore (Mikey Kelley), were attacked by this Phantom Virus when the lab’s experimental laser suddenly activated, bringing this cyber creature into the real world.

 

Is this thing supposed to be scary? If so it fails miserably.

We learn that Eric and Bill were both vying for the quarter of a million-dollar prize being awarded at an upcoming science fair, but Professor Kaufman had chosen to enter Eric’s Mystery Inc. game and not Bill’s baseball video game — I'm a little fuzzy on what kind of science fair awards prizes to video game designers, but what makes no bloody sense is that these bozos have this experimental laser, which is able to transmit objects into and out of cyberspace as well as seemingly creating sentient life, and yet Kaufman is all for entering a stupid video game into the science fair instead of a device that would literally change the world as we know it.

 Setting aside the complete science fantasy of such an invention, this plot element is also about the dumbest thing I’ve seen in a Scooby-Doo movie and it’s simply introduced so that we can later have our heroes sucked into a virtual game world. Unfortunately, before the fun stuff can happen, we waste valuable time with the gang hunting for the Phantom Virus throughout the halls of the college campus. The only highlight here, and also the funniest Meta moment in the movie, happens when Fred (Frank Welker) goes into a take-charge mode and we get this delightful exchange.

Fred - “I think we stand a better chance of finding it if we split up.”
Shaggy and Scooby-Doo start heading off together.
Fred – “Hey, you guys, I didn’t say how we were going to split up.”
Shaggy – “Like, do we ever do it any other way?”

Note: Professor Kaufman outfits the gang with large magnets — the one thing that clearly harms the Phantom Virus — and so the only reason the villain is a threat is because our heroes constantly forget they have them. The villain has to accidentally step on one of the magnets just so Fred, Daphne, and Velma aren't killed. That’s just sad.

Twenty minutes into this 74-minute movie, we finally get Mystery Inc. being sucked into Eric’s game, after some mysterious individual activates the laser — gee, I wonder who it could be — so our heroes are left with no other choice but to fight their way through the ten levels of "mystery and adventure" to complete the game in order to escape it, with the goal of finding a box of Scooby Snacks to complete each level, all while fighting off the Phantom Virus at every turn.

Question: The Phantom Virus is shown to be able to not only manipulate electronic devices, but also shoot lightning from his fingers, so why would he not just fry our heroes?  I’m not saying riding a T-Rex isn’t cool, because it is, but what is with the stupid spear?

A major problem I had with Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase was not just how lame the Phantom Virus was as a villain, which to be honest he was really lame, but that Eric’s video game wasn’t even a very good representation of a typical Scooby-Doo mystery. Pretty much every level of his game simply has our heroes running from various monsters, with no real mystery solving at all, and when the last level is reached, we get the "classic villains" from the gang's past showing up, and they turn out to be “real” and not just guys in masks. How is that indicative of a Scooby-Doo mystery? The only interesting part of this whole movie was when the real-world Scooby gang run into cyber versions of themselves, who have seemingly obtained enough self-awareness to realize that beating the game just puts them back on Level 1, so they just hang out at the malt shop instead tangling with those pesky monsters.

 

“Nice ascot.”

But who created the Phantom Virus? Eric’s crappy game may not have had a mystery, but this movie certainly does. Sadly, the mystery behind Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase is about as weak as the Phantom Virus itself. Could it be Professor Kaufman, trying to steal the experimental laser to win the quarter-million-dollar prize for himself? What about the gruff security guard, Officer Wembley (Joe Alaskey), who Fred believes was the only one inside the lab when they were sent into the game? Or was it Bill, whose baseball game was passed over as an entry for the science fair? Of course it was Bill, and the movie doesn’t so much as give us clues to this as it instead hits us over the head with blatant finger-pointing; at the beginning of the movie we learn that Bill is proud of his baseball video game, then we get the Phantom Virus tossing out baseball terminology every two minutes, the Roman coliseum game levels had an inexplicable baseball diamond chalked in, and then in the final level the Phantom Virus is found in a batting cage.

Question: If you were to create a computer virus to scare away your rival why would you make it leave clues behind that clearly point in your direction?

Stray Observations:

• For a computer lab, this place had a surprising amount of beakers, test tubes and racks of chemicals, as well as radioactive enlarged tomatoes. Did the writers of this show not understand that “Computer Lab” does not mean mad scientist laboratory?
• The Phantom Virus taunts and laughs at our heroes in such a way that he kind of comes across like a cyber version of the Crypt Keeper from Tales from the Crypt.
• Daphne’s cheerleading skills helps her defeat a Samurai from Level 6’s Feudal Japan. A nice change-up from the “Danger-Prone Daphne” of old.
• We get the standard gag where Scooby-Doo and Shaggy (Scott Innes) put on disguises to fool the villain, but then in a nice twist, we have Daphne (Grey Griffin) and her Cyber Version doing their own take on that trope.
• We get a music montage that covers six of the games ten levels that last just three minutes, because who would want to spend more time with creepy mummies, awesome dragons and shrunken settings? Me, that’s who!
• The last level of the game is so hard that Eric, who designed the bloody thing, has apparently never beaten it. Which means Eric is a bit of a shit video game developer.
• It was nice to see some of the classic Scooby-Doo monsters making an appearance.

 

The Creeper is definitely scarier than the Phantom Virus.

Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase is beloved by many, but to me I found the “mystery game” framework to be rather lazy, as if this movie was simply a 74-minute commercial for the actual video game, and then there is the bland colour palette and animation on display that doesn’t hold a candle to previous entries like Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island or Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost. Now, there are some nice moments on hand, such as the aforementioned montage where we bounce quickly through six levels of the game, and if they had focused more on that stuff — leaving out the bulk of the lame Phantom Virus element — we could have had a really fun movie on our hands.

Note: There is a post-credits sequence that includes the gang telling the audience what their favorite parts of the movie were. I’d love to have seen a whole movie done in this art style.

The Quake (2018) – Review

In 2015 the Norwegian film industry put forth their first entry in the disaster genre with a film called The Wave (Bølgen) by director Roar Uthaug, which dealt with a rockslide-tsunami incident that wiped out a small community, and now three years later Norway is back at it with its sequel The Quake (Skjelvet), where a major earthquake may be about to strike Oslo. This sequel is directed by John Andreas Andersen and though it does have some stunning visuals – as is required for a disaster film – it doesn’t quite capture the essence that made The Wave so good.

The Quake reintroduces us to Kristian Eikjord (Kristoffer Joner), the geologist who saved many lives when a tsunami devastated his home town, and though he is now being honored as a hero he isn’t much better off. We find Kristian living alone and suffering from a blend of survivor’s guilt and post-traumatic stress disorder, he even has a room dedicated to photos of the dead that would make a serial killer proud, and when his young daughter Julie (Edith Haagenrud-Sande) comes to visit – the family has broken up due to Kristian’s falling to pieces – he isn’t able to deal with her, so he quickly packs up her stuff and sends her back to mom (Ane Dahl Torp).

You have to give the writers credit for tackling the subject matter of PTSD and trauma stemming from surviving a disaster, and the bulk of this film is about Kristian trying to reconnect with his family and putting the past behind him. Unfortunately, Mother Nature isn’t quite done with Kristian Eikjord, and soon our plucky but traumatized hero is running around trying to warn people of their impending doom, but once again he is treated like Chicken Little and is completely ignored.

 

"Dad, are you tracking a quake or the Zodiac Killer?"

One of my bigger issues I had with the film Jaws 2 was in how the community of Amity Island basically turned their collective backs on Sheriff Brody, ignoring his warning that another killer shark had entered their waters, and they even end up firing this once hero of the day. Now in that film I can sort of understand the mindset of the islanders, their entire economy relying on the tourist trade thus the idea of becoming known as a killer shark way-station would be a bad thing, but in the case of The Quake you have a renowned geologist saying that a massive quake is about to wipe out the major metropolitan city of Oslo, so brushing him off as being a loon is a bit ridiculous. The hero being ignored by the authorities, to only later be proven right, is one of the oldest clichés in movies, and the fact that this trope was also used previously in The Wave makes it even more tired and unbelievable here.

 

"Sorry Kristian, saving lives in the last film doesn't give you credibility here."

The film tries to use Kristian’s questionable sanity as being the key reason for him being ignored, but there isn’t any evidence of Kristian running around prophesying doom, or even holding a “The End is Nigh” placard – maybe these moments hit the editing room floor – but what we do get is a frantic man logically pointing out the danger that threatens the lives of thousands of people, and then him being blithely ignored by government “expert” Johannes Løberg (Stig R. Amdam), who calmly informs Kristian that, “Our instruments have never been more precise” and that there is no evidence to back up Kristian’s theories. This all to set up the “I told you so” moment but this government stooge is just a two-dimensional idiot and any moment with him seems a waste of screen time, there isn’t even a real proper payoff for the character. Lucky for Kristian he encounters Marit Lindblom (Kathrine Thorborg Johansen), the daughter of an old colleague who recently died while investigating a highway tunnel collapse right outside of Oslo, and the two of them become unlikely partners as the disaster approaches.

 

"My kids kind of suck, can I adopt you?"

Now for the good stuff, as much as I disliked the trotting out of the “Hero Ignored” trope, as it was tired in The Wave and doubly tiring in this outing, when the shit finally does hit the fan - after about a 75 minute wait - and the earthquake shakes the city of Oslo to its foundations, I was not in the least bit disappointed. It’s quite clear that a good portion of this film’s budget was spent on the special effects – both practical and visual – and the ground rolling and collapsing as skyscrapers shatter and topple, it all looks simply fantastic, but what makes the film stand above many of its Hollywood contemporaries is the amount of fear and tension it manages to build. When you see The Rock trying to save his daughter during the ravaging earthquake in San Andreas, there is never any doubt of the outcome - he's The Rock could possibly happen - but in The Quake not only are we stunned by the awe-inspiring destruction but you actually fear for the lives of our protagonist. The film’s climax takes place inside a 34 story skyscraper, one that was hit by a neighbouring building and the begins to fall apart itself, where we find Kristian and his wife trying to make it out of an elevator shaft while Julie and Marit do their best to not slide off the building’s rapidly canting top floor.

 

Question: How many films have had characters trapped on a pane of breaking glass?

The film’s nail-biting final act is truly something to behold, and rivals anything the big studios have put forth, unfortunately, we still seem stuck with the theme of “Disasters will fix any relationship” though this film does provide a darker answer to that trope, and we are still stuck with Kristian’s idiot kids, with Julie providing the standard moronic child in danger moments – her running into the building when told clearly to stay out being insanely dumb – and then we have Kristian’s son, now dating and in college, who was completely useless in The Wave and has even less of a purpose in this sequel.

The only other negative thing I can say about The Quake, which is otherwise a nice disaster film, is that when the disaster hits, with the city of Oslo crumbling into dust, the scope of danger doesn’t move much passed Kristian’s family; these are the film’s protagonists, who we’ve become invested with, but we don’t see more than a couple of deaths during a quake that clearly would have killed thousands.

The Quake is an admirable entry in the disaster genre, and Kristoffer Joner, Ane Dahl Torp and Kathrine Thorborg all display serious dramatic chops in this outing, and I do look forward to Norway’s next natural disaster films, though I hope they give Eikjord family a break.

 

“How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?”

Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders (2000) – Review

Scooby-Doo and the gang have encountered many supposed supernatural threats over the years — though most of them were revealed to be hoaxes perpetrated by criminals — but fake or otherwise, they tended towards being ghosts or monsters with science fiction elements and threats being quite rare. Even back in the day, with the likes of the Spooky Space Kook from the original series Scooby-Doo, Where are You!, it was a ghost of an astronaut — albeit a fake one and certainly not an alien — so with Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders, it was kind of nice to see the franchise taking a close encounter in a sci-fi direction.

The movie opens with a trio of bored government employees of S.A.L.F (Search for Alien Life Form) receiving a powerful signal from outer space, with Laura (Audrey Wasilewski) and Max (Kevin Michael Richardson) being excited over this event, but when the signal abruptly vanishes, they are laughed at by their co-worker Steve (Mark Hamill), yet the scene ends with a mysterious “blip” approaching on their radar screen. Was that powerful signal from deep space? Could that blip be an invading alien spacecraft? Unfortunately, the events of this cold open are never clearly addressed, so we have to draw our own conclusions. Luckily for us, the movie quickly joins Shaggy and Scooby-Doo (Scott Innes doing double duty as the cowardly duo) as they drive the Mystery Machine down the dark desert highways of New Mexico, that is, until they are caught in a freak sandstorm that sends their van careening down a “Forbidden Access” road. Fred (Frank Welker), Daphne (Mary Kay Bergman) and Velma (B.J. Ward), who had been sleeping in the back, are jerked awake when the van is sent on its mad detour, but manic driving isn’t the real problem here as the group is suddenly buzzed by a UFO.

 

“Do you think they are looking for directions to Roswell?”

The Mystery Machine is crippled by a busted radiator hose, so Fred, Daphne and Velma head to the nearby town to find help, while Shaggy and Scooby — not wanting to venture through a dark and snake-filled desert — volunteer to stay behind and guard the van, that is until they see a mythical jackalope and decide to chase after it into the desert. Now, why would these two confirmed cowards chase after a mythical creature, venturing into the danger-filled desert that just moments ago they feared? Well, the jackalope stole their last Scooby Snax, so that checks out, but unfortunately, this chase leads to a cave and an encounter with a pair of nasty aliens.  And by nasty I mean they look like the Broccoloids from The Powerpuff Girls cartoon.

 

"Beat your greens!"

Scooby-Doo and Shaggy flee in terror — which leads into the show’s first musical chase number, with Jennifer Love Hewitt doing a nice cover of the original “Scooby-Doo, Where are You!” theme song — until they reach that nearby town and run into Fred and the girls at the town’s sole diner. Good ol' Fred is skeptical when told of this “alien encounter,” but Shaggy and Scooby’s story is backed up by a local kook named Lester (Jeff Glen Bennett), who claims to have been abducted and interrogated by aliens. Even the diner’s chef Sergio (Neil Ross) and waitress Dottie (Jennifer Hale) admit to seeing strange lights in the sky, as well as pointing out that many farm animals have gone missing. So it seems like Mystery Incorporated has a new mystery on their hands — even if Fred thinks it’s more a case of heat lightning and farmers forgetting to lock up their livestock — and things get even more interesting when later that night Shag and Scooby themselves are abducted.

 

Did someone say “Anal Probe?”

Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders is the third of the first four Scooby-Doo direct-to-video films to be animated overseas by Japanese animation studio Mook Animation, and while it doesn’t have the spooky atmosphere of Zombie Island, the character design for the aliens was rather cool — if also a little terrifying — unfortunately, cool designs aside, there wasn’t much else on offer here to make this movie stand out from the previous incarnation of the series. This installment fell back on the standard “Bad guys in masks” trope that has been a hallmark of the series since the very beginning, ditching the “zombies and witches are real” theme from the previous two entries — that an actual alien does make an appearance not lessening the laziness of a once again criminal hoax being thwarted by some meddling kids — and the mystery that is solved, by Velma of course, is even less believable than the reveal of actual aliens.

 

The writers clearly don't know how a helicopter's downdraft works.

And who exactly is behind this alien invasion? Could it be the trio of bored geeks, who Velma saw had dried mud on their shoes — deserts being rather dry, this is pretty unusual — and then there was Max loading up tons of oil into his van that he claimed was for the satellite dishes (though Velma informed the gang that the type of oil he had was not the kind used for the hydraulics found in satellite dishes), or could it be Buck, the town’s gruff auto mechanic? No, of course it's not Buck, it’s the bored geeks who we learn had stumbled onto a cave while searching for a new location for another S.A.L.F dish, a cave that led to an abandoned gold mine, one that turned out to still have lots of gold lying around. Since the cave was on government land, they decided to keep the secret for themselves, using alien disguises and two fake government agents to keep people away. And they would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for those … well, you get the idea.

Stray Observations:

• What was the point of abducting people? It doesn’t add much to the hoax and just increases the odds of being exposed.
• The whole alien hoax is libel to bring more attention — with tourists and such — so wouldn’t a fake toxic spill work better?
• The trio of S.A.L.F employees hire muscle to pose as Military Police to keep people away from the cave, but where are the actual authorities during all these abductions and livestock theft?
• If you are secretly exploiting government land, why invite a group of teenage mystery solvers to tour your office?
• And most importantly, where do villains go to get such amazing costumes?

 

Does Acme have a criminal costume division?

Now, about that actual alien, the one I mentioned earlier? Well, Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders does have something that previous versions of Scooby-Doo rarely include, and that would be a love interest for not only Shaggy but Scooby-Doo as well. After their unnecessary alien abduction, Shaggy and Scooby are awakened in the middle of the desert by a "hippie" looking photographer named Crystal (Candi Milo) and her golden retriever, Amber. It’s love at first sight for our heroes — Crystal having seemed to have stepped right out of the 60s, making her a perfect girl for Shaggy — and even her dog looks to be as intelligent or even more so than Scooby-Doo himself. But, easily the best part of this entire episode is Shaggy’s hallucinogenic dream sequence where he imagines a whole relationship with Crystal, even ending with them having a child together, while Scooby has pups with Amber. The sequence is quite brilliant, and Scott Innes’ pulls off the love ballad quite well, being touching as well as funny, and the 60s throwback animation style was beautifully rendered.

 

A love that crosses time and space.

The screenwriters try and throw Crystal into the pool of suspects — her retro attire and 60s slang being very counterpoint to the weird futuristic devices she has in her possession — but the identity of those responsible for the alien shenanigans is clearly the guys from S.A.L.F, so I doubt any viewer was even remotely fooled into thinking Crystal was involved. Also, it would have been a dick move to make Shaggy’s true love turn out to be a villain — we already had that happen with Velma in the Witch’s Ghost — so Crystal’s innocence was never really in question, but of course there is something more going on with her than simple nature photography.

 

Crystal and Amber are aliens, because of course they are.

I had no real issues with actual aliens popping up in this movie — the two previous movies would have lent anyone to believe this would be the case — but the problem with it here is that not only is this big revelation late in the game (Crystal and her dog reveal themselves to save Shaggy and Scooby from the fake MPs during the big finale), but it’s also quite irrelevant. The plot of Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders is that a trio of asshats creates an alien hoax to pillage a government-owned gold mine; Crystal turning out to be an alien has pretty much no bearing on the central plot. We learn that Crystal and Amber are from a planet 20 light-years away — which is why they are disguised as hippies, because the only information they had about Earth was from watching 1960s television broadcasts — which means her arrival during an alien hoax was one huge coincidence, or in proper Hollywood terms, “Lazy Writing.”

 

M. Night Shyamalan eat your heart out.

There is some good stuff to be found in Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders, but sadly even with a meager 72-minute run-time, the movie still seems a tad padded, and though the subplot of Shaggy and Scooby falling in love provided some of the show’s best moments — visually speaking, that is — it didn’t add much to the proceedings, so it’s as guilty of being as much padding as stuff like the introduction of Buck, the grumpy auto mechanic who apparently liked to press flowers. Fun, but goes nowhere.

Unfortunately, as a follow-up to the excellent Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island and Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost, this installment was less than remarkable, with obvious padding of the run-time and the use of the standard tropes of the series makes Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders a less than ground-breaking adventure. There isn’t really much to hate about this movie, but also not much to crow about — again the Shaggy love dream sequence was great but not all that pertinent to the plot — so, in conclusion, Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders is another cliché-riddled mystery that will entertain kids, but will have less of an impact on older viewers.

 

Also, what was the point of the jackalope in this movie?

Swamp Thing: The Animated Series (1990) – Review

Toy companies are always eager to launch new toy lines based on popular movies or kid’s cartoons but then we have cartoons like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe which were basically thirty-minute commercials for Mattel. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it didn't. In the early 90s, Kenner teamed up with DIC Animation City to put together a cartoon based on the DC comic book character Swamp Thing, one that would have the proper corresponding toy line to go with it. Unfortunately, the Swamp Thing cartoon only lasted a meager five episodes, with storylines that were certainly not ripped from the pages of the comic, but the toys themselves were somewhat successful and to date they are still the only marketed Swamp Thing merchandise out there. Now, two decades later and both the cartoon and the toys are mostly forgotten.

 The animated Swamp Thing series bears little resemblance to the DC comic book that spawned him, sure the character designs and origin story were somewhat similar, though the origin given here was more in keeping with the Wes Craven Swamp Thing movie than what comic creators Len Wein and Berni Wrightson had come up with back in the 70s, and aside from characters like Anton and Abigale Arcane making an appearance the show seemed more interested in its “environmental message” and it’s array of weird weapons and swamp buggies - which made this cartoon more in the vein of Captain Planet meets G.I. Joe - than something you'd have found in the pages of the Swamp Thing comic book. And yes, there were environmental themes throughout some of the Swamp Thing books, but it was primarily about a world of dark horrors, with Swamp Thing being a knight for the forces of good.

 

The only horror here is in the poor animation on display.

For those not in the know, the animated Swamp Thing followed the story of scientist named Alec Holland (Len Carlson) who while working on a biogenetic formula was attacked by Anton Arcane (Don Francks), an evil scientist who obsessed with gaining immortality, and during the struggle Alec was doused with the experimental formula and was transformed into the creature known as Swamp Thing. As mentioned, this origin story is closer to the Wes Craven movie than what was to be found in the original comic, as Anton Arcane in the comic had nothing to do with the creation of Swamp Thing, but instead, Swamp Thing met up with Arcane later while traveling around the mountains of Europe.  Upon their meeting, Arcane wanted to use his scientific and magical abilities to transform his body into Swamp Thing's form, while changing Swamp Thing back into Alec Holland, and thus Arcane would gain immortality. Things go wrong when Alec overhears Arcane’s evil plans, which of course involve taking over the world once he has the power of Swamp Thing, and soon our heroic Swamp Thing is battling for his life against Arcane’s army of Un-Men. During the ensuing struggle, Arcane fell to his death, only to be resurrected later by his ever-faithful Un-Men, in a new body.

 

Anton Arcane by artist Berni Wrightson.

 

Arcane as he first appears in the cartoon.

 

Arcane after some time in something called the Transducer.

The cartoon version of Anton Arcane bears little to no resemblance to his comic book counterpart, instead of being found living in a Bavarian castle high up in the mountains, he is now living in a rundown southern plantation in the heart of the swamp – once again a location featured in the live-action movies – and his army of monstrous biogenetic experimentations called “Un-Men” have been reduced to three mutant looking dudes who Arcane occasionally transforms into monsters – well more monstrous than they already were – with the use of a machine called the Transducer, which is totally not the one from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Living with the mad scientist is Abigale Arcane (Tabitha St. Germain), who in the comics was Anton’s niece but now, for some reason, she is his stepdaughter, and her motivation for hanging around with a crazed supervillain is because she hopes to learn the secret of turning Swamp Thing back into Alec Holland. Of course, if they were going by Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing run this would be impossible, as in the comics it was revealed that Alec Holland actually died during the lab explosion and after his subsequent plunging into the swamp it was the plants in the swamp that somehow absorbed Holland's memories and personality, which created a being that only thought it was Alec Holland.

Note: It was Alan Moore’s run of Swamp Thing that first introduced the ecological elements of the character, him becoming a guardian elemental for the Green, and is the basis for this show turning him into a mossy version of Captain Planet.

In this cartoon Abigale Arcane is not Swamp Thing’s only ally, he is also aided by a Native American Rambo knock-off named Tomahawk (Harvey Atkin) and Bayou Jack (Philip Akin) an African American Vietnam veteran, and their sole purpose seems to be operating all the cool backpack weaponry and swamp buggies that Kenner would be stocking the local toy stores with. Swamp Thing is also either rescuing or being helped by a couple of local teens, because you can’t have a Saturday morning cartoon without an annoying teen or two hanging around, and for the five episodes produced this group of heroes thwarted Arcane and his minions as their various villainous plans involved trying to level the Rain Forest, steal a downed nuclear-powered satellite, find the Fountain of Youth and even teamed-up with shady government operatives. Needless to say, Arcane and his Un-Men were no match for Swamp Thing and Friends.

 

"And knowing is half the battle."

Final Thoughts:

• I simply love this show’s theme song, which is basically spoofing Chip Taylor's song "Wild Thing" with such clever lyrics as "Swamp THING! ...You are amaZING!"
• Anton Arcane’s desire for immortality is the only surviving character trait from the comic book, cartoon Arcane is more Cobra Commander than a foul sorcerer.
• Before being mutated Anton Arcane looked a lot like a white version Brother Voodoo.
• We see Swamp Thing travel through the Green in much the same way Bugs Bunny travels.
• Swamp Thing now has the ability to temporarily turn his enemies into trees.
• In the comic books, Abigale Arcane and Swamp Thing were lovers, which was clearly something that was not going to fly in a kid's cartoon.
•  

 

No chance of “Fronds with Benefits” like in the comics.

With the character of Swamp Thing going in a much darker direction, becoming a flagship title for DC’s Vertigo line, it’s not too surprising that this cartoon got canceled, and though it wasn’t a terrible animated series - it had an element of goofy charm and certainly deserved more than a five-episode run - it was also not something fans of the current run of the comics would have found all that engaging. The animated Swamp Thing series will forever remain a small and somewhat forgotten footnote in the history of one of DC’s more interesting heroes.

Note: The playsets and action figures for this particular Kenner toy line were pretty neat, what with their glow-in-the-dark eyes and rubbery BioMask accessories being particularly cool.

Scooby-Doo! and the Witch’s Ghost (1999) – Review

Following up the successful direct-to-video release of Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island Warner Bros. Animation once again decided to blend actual ghosts and magical powers with the mystery-solving world of Scooby-Doo, but with Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost fans were also introduced to the Hex Girls, the popular eco-goth rock band who later become semi-regular guest stars in the further adventures of Mystery Incorporated. Can the power of rock save our heroes from the forces of evil?

Like the previous movie this one also begins with a cold open, where we the viewer step into the last act of a Scooby-Doo mystery, but instead of Mystery Incorporated getting full credit for exposing a couple of disgruntled archeologists behind an Aztec mummies terrorizing of a museum, they are assisted by horror novelist Ben Ravencroft (Tim Curry). It also turns out that Velma (B.J. Ward) is a super-fan of said author, which then leads to Ben inviting the gang to visit his old hometown of Oakhaven, Massachusetts.  When the gang arrives in Oakhaven, which Ben had assured them was "A sleepy New England town" they find the place overflowing with tourists. It seems that since his last visit home Oakhaven has been transformed into a tourist attraction, complete with 17th-century replicas and attractions based on the alleged ghost of Sarah Ravencroft, an ancestor of Ben's who was persecuted as a witch and then executed by the Puritan townspeople back in 1657. But the tourists aren't flooding the town to see people in period costumes churning butter, or even to check out the local rock group the Hex Girls, everyone is eager to see the actual witch's ghost, who has been appearing ever since they broke ground on Puritan village exhibit.

 

Who could be behind this fire-ball throwing spirit?

Shaggy and Scooby-Doo (Scott Innes) are, of course, more than eager to pack up and leave town, while Fred (Frank Welker) and Daphne (Mary Kay Bergman) toy briefly with the idea that maybe they are "into each other" – Velma having pointed out that Fred seems to always team himself up with Daphne – and Ben Ravencroft looks to be more obsessed with finding Sarah's medical journal to prove her innocence than in what ghostly happenings are "plaguing" the town. Once again we have a plethora of suspects, could it be Mayor Corey (Neil Ross) whose town is now booming since the ghost has appeared? How about those eco-goth rock singers? Velma discovers flash-powder residue from the witch's fireballs that resemble what the Hex Girls use for their stage show, and broken branches at the flight level of the witch all point towards a more mundane explanation than there being a real witch. And then there is Ben Ravencroft himself, could his obsession with finding his ancestor's journal have a more sinister motive?

 

Could this band be made of actual witches? If so why the vampire fangs?

Well, it turns out that things are a little more complicated than your average Scooby-Doo mystery, we do discover that the Mayor, along with all the other leading citizens of Oakhaven, are behind the Witch's ghost hoax as a last-ditch effort to save their dying town, but then in a surprising twist it is revealed that Ben Ravencroft had lured Scooby and the gang to his hometown - the disgruntled archeologist having been paid off by Ben so that he and Mystery Incorporated could meet - and that he wasn't at all interested in proving Sarah Ravencroft was innocent, because she, in fact, wasn't. He needed Velma's detective skills to locate Sarah's journal, which was actually a spellbook that had been used by the good Wiccans to imprison Sarah within its pages. Ben's dastardly plan being to release Sarah and with her, at his side, the two could rule the world. Unfortunately, Sarah has no interest in partnering up with anyone and is more about destroying the world rather than ruling it.

 

"I'll get you my pretty and your little dog too!"

It's odd that the show would go out if it's way to explain to viewers that in the 17th century women who practiced Wicca, encroaching in on the field of medicine ruled by male doctors, and thus were wrongfully persecuted as witches, but then in the third act to reveal "Well, look at that, she was an evil witch after all" which is a little off-putting. The show tried to salvage the moral high ground by pointing out that it was good Wiccans who imprisoned her in the book, but this then implies that Wiccans were actually using spellcraft and that they had lugged around evil tomes that looked like the Necronomicon. Also weird is that Thorn (Jennifer Hale), the lead singer of the Hex Girls, is the only one able to use the spellbook to re-imprison Sarah Ravencroft because she has inherited Wiccan power, which rather odd because Wicca is a religion and is not something passed down through bloodlines. Why not just team-up Mystery Incorporated with Sabrina, the Teenage Witch?

 

"Klaatu, Barada, Nikto!"

Despite the dodgy ethical and historical elements of Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost this movie is still a lot of fun, Tim Curry looked to be having a ball voicing the character of Ben Ravencroft, and he even considers "Dreadful darkness, hear my cry. Bring back one who cannot die" to be his favorite line throughout his career" as he believed this to be an inside joke referring to Scooby-Doo, who entered the scene after the line was said. The evil witch theme continued the darker elements that had started with Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, but as cool as animated trees and pumpkins looked in this movie they still don't hold a candle to the zombie army in that film. Also like in the last film there is no arrest of the villain, and no moment of "I would have gotten away with this if not for you meddling kids" and though Ben doesn't die, as the cat creatures did in Zombie Island, he does find himself being pulled into the book to spend eternity with Sarah Ravencroft.

 

"It's astounding... Time is... fleeting. Madness... takes its toll."

Once again the humor is rather hit and miss – I assume younger viewers will be a little less jaded than me when it comes to watching endless scenes of Shaggy and Scooby eating – and the voice casting of Scooby and the gang for this outing left me rather cold, with Frank Welker being the only original voice actor to reprise his role from the original series, but those are just minor quibbles and would not stop me from recommending Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost to any fans of the world's best mystery-solving team.

 

Mystery Incorporated still rocks the horror scene.

Checkered Ninja (2018) – Review

What if Chucky from Child’s Play was a Ninja? That sounds like a pretty badass premise, right? And if the idea of a toy performing murderous martial arts hijinks appeals to you then there is a good chance you will loveThorbjørn Christoffersen and Anders Matthesen’s film the Checkered Ninja as that is pretty much the premise, but what is truly odd is the fact that it’s also an animated feature for kids. Yes, a movie about a revenge-seeking doll with murder on its mind is a family film from the wonderful country of Denmark. You just have to love the Danes.

When discussing the Checkered Ninja it’s important to first point out that this film is best viewed by a parent or guardian before plopping the little ones in front of the boob tube as this film consists of drug use, profanity and extreme acts of violence. Which is to say that this movie could seriously mess up younger viewers. Now, the film has none of the gore you’d find in a Chucky movie but I actually found some of the moments in Checkered Ninja more shocking and horrifying than from anything I’ve seen in a Child’s Play film. The first clue that you’re watching a very different kind of kid’s film is when the opening scene is revealed to take place in a Taiwanese sweatshop, where children are forced to manufacture cuddly stuffed ninja dolls.

 

This location doesn’t exactly scream Family Friendly.

Things then take a turn from dark to “What the fuck did I just witness?” territory, as we next see a millionaire Danish toy magnate – I’m sure that’s a thing – arriving to check on the progress of the ninja dolls being manufactured for his company, but then a sleep-deprived child accidentally uses the millionaire’s checkered cashmere scarf - which he had casually dropped on the kid's work station - to make one of the stuffed ninja toys, and so the Danish asshole beats the child to death. I’m not kidding, this movie begins with child labor and then within minutes moves to the brutal killing of a small boy. This heinous act is the catalyst for mystical forces to strike the checkered ninja doll with lightning and imbue it with the soul of a vengeful ninja, a warrior who centuries ago had been betrayed, resulting in his failure to save the lives of ten children under his protection, and now “when evil is done” his soul will inhabit dead things to avenge the fallen.

 

In this case a cute ninja doll.

The film then takes a bit of tonal shift as we move locations from Thailand to Denmark, where we are introduced Aske (Alfred Bjerre Larsen) a seventh-grade outcast who seems to live in a constant state of persecution. Aske lives with his organic food-loving mother, a shiftless idiot stepfather, and a stepbrother who is a fat slovenly bully. If home life seems tough for poor Aske school isn't all that much better as it too comes complete with the standard social clicks to shun him and his fellow nerds, and it also includes the obligatory psycho asshat bully, but the one little silver lining in Aske's tormented life is the lovely Jessica (Emma Sehested Høeg) an eighth-grader who Aske is deeply crushing on but who, sadly, doesn’t even know he exists. So what we have here is your typical coming of age story, where the shy and cowardly nerd will learn to stop being a punching bag, stand up to the bully, and then win the girl. So where does our checkered ninja fit into all this? Well, the doll ends up in Aske’s possession – given to him by his drunken uncle who worked aboard the cargo ship that the little ninja stowed away on – and the ninja offers to help Aske out with his bully problem if he can, in turn, aid him in finding the Danish toy magnate.

 

A classic buddy film in the offing.

The Checkered Ninja is easily one of the more bizarre movies I’ve seen in quite some time, just when you think you’ve got a handle on the movie, that the checkered ninja will train Aske to defend himself against the bully and win the girl, and the two of them do building elaborate Home Alone booby traps to take on the bully, but then the film dives back into the "Dark Side" when Aske learns that the little ninja doll intends to kill the Danish businessman when he finds him. Needless to say, Aske isn't all too keen on the whole murder thing. Unfortunately, the doll isn’t one to take no for answer and it even threatens Aske’s family if he doesn’t agree to help, which leads to the poor kid being locked up in mental hospital – saving his stepbrother from being smothered by the doll ends up looking like he was the one doing the smothering – until eventually Aske and the doll can come to some kind of understanding.

 

Survival Tip: Do not get in the Checkered Ninja’s way.

For a small budget film the animation in Checkered Ninja is surprisingly quite good – the playground showdown with the bully is a truly beautiful sequence – and the humor on display though not always kid-friendly I certainly found quite hilarious, such as Aske’s uncle singing about masturbation and his cavalier attitude towards women and drugs, and then there were moments like our “heroes” procuring cocaine from a drug dealer – don’t ask me why, it’d ruin the surprise - which all goes towards making this a brilliant yet bizarre film, but it’s also an animated movie that I can see some parents finding a little inappropriate for younger viewers. And as mentioned, this film does not shy away from the violence, and though the acts depicted aren't explicitly shown the implications are clear and frightening.

 

Note: The sequence depicting the origin of the spirit ninja was particularly gorgeous.

Checkered Ninja is an animated film I can't recommend enough, with the caveat that you are the kind of person who is okay with humor that drifts into R-rated territory – think Seth MacFarlane’s Ted but with less anal sex – and that its dark tonal shifts may not be for everyone, but I for one really got a kick out of this movie. So if you like trash-talking toys and kick-ass action sequences you should definitely check out Checkered Ninja, it’s a helluva ride and tons of fun.

 

Chucky, eat your heart out, there’s a new toy in town.

Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (1998) – Review

Back in the late 90s Warner Brothers Animation did something no Scooby-Doo series had ever done before, and I don't mean the purported marketing campaign that stated "This time, the monsters are real!" because Scooby and the gang had tackled real ghosts and monster dating as far back as the 1970s when the Scooby Gang met up with the likes of The Addams Family and Jeannie in The New Scooby-Doo Movies, and then in the 80s we got The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo where our heroes tackled a plethora of actual demonic creatures, so the idea real ghosties and beasties was certainly not a fresh concept, but in 1998 the direct-to-video movie Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island gave us a Scooby-Doo show with a much darker tone, an adventure that was genuinely scary.  Death and horror await those who visit this isle.

With Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island we discover that our gang of mystery solvers had decided to go their separate ways, decades of pulling monster masks off crooked real-estate agents having gotten old – this movie of course blissfully ignoring aforementioned shows like The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo where the ghosts were real – and now we find Scooby-Doo (Scott Innes) and Shaggy (Billy West) working as customs inspectors, which they are quickly fired from due to their eating of all the contraband food, while good ole Velma (B.J. Ward) is running her own mystery bookshop and Daphne (Mary Kay Bergman) has her own successful television series "Coast to Coast with Daphne Blake" and Fred (Frank Welker) is her producer and one-man crew. Now as good as Daphne's career is going, her show being picked up for a second season, she does miss the old gang, so when the next road trip involves visiting haunted houses in the Old South Fred secretly contacts the gang and before you can say "Scooby-Dooby-Doo" Mystery Incorporated is back in action.

Note: After decades of these guys roaming up and down the byways and highways of America this is possibly the only time they're on an actual paying gig.

Next is a quick montage of the group visiting various haunted plantations and riverboats where once again all the supernatural threats are revealed to be just human swindlers, with Daphne getting more depressed with each debunked ghost because her show promised the real thing, but hope is on the horizon when Fred is approached by a young woman named Lena Dupree (Tara Strong) and offered a visit to Moonscar Island, her employer's home, which is allegedly haunted by the ghost of the pirate Morgan Moonscar, and that the island itself has a dark history of people going missing. It's at this point the movie starts to roll out the suspects; we have Jacques (Jim Cummings) the avuncular ferry boat captain, then Scooby and Shaggy have a several run-ins with a grumpy catfish enthusiasts called Snakebite Scruggs (Mark Hamill), Velma has her suspicious eye trained on Beau Neville (Cam Clarke) the manor's hunky groundskeeper, this because he never seems to be around whenever supernatural shenanigans are happening, and finally there is Simone Lenoir (Adrienne Barbeau) the owner of Moonscar Manor and serious cat lady.

Note: In this movie Scooby-Doo seems to have an uncontrollable hatred of cats, destroying anything in his path in the attempt to sink his teeth into some fur, which is odd considering that Scooby-Doo has never shown anything but affection towards his fellow animals, cats included, so his mad-on against felines is very out of character here.

The quality of the central mystery to Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island is one of the key reasons for this movie's success, and the longer 74-minute runtime certainly helped with that as it gave the story some breathing room to properly outlay a good mystery, in between all the comedic shtick and ghostly troubles that is. When a ghostly presence carves the warning "Get Out" on the kitchen wall Velma later discovers that under the plaster is planking from Morgan Moonscar's pirate ship, then when the ghostly apparition of a Civil War soldier appears in a bedroom mirror, which sends Shaggy and Scooby running for help, it is Velma again who finds the inscription on the back of the mirror revealing that it once belonged to Confederate colonel. Simone does her best to explain why such artifacts abound in her home but with the spooky specters never actually seeming to threaten our heroes, and calling out "Beware" and "Get Out" rather than trying to eat their brains, suspicions start to mount, and when the dead actually rise out of the bayou things get even more tense.

Note: With Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island and the following three direct-to-video movies we get a much darker tone than is found the original animated series and the character designs of the zombies themselves could frighten younger viewers.

Then, in what is a rather interesting twist, we learn that zombies aren't the real villains here at all, instead it is Simone and Lena, who are practitioners of voodoo magic, and that they are, in fact, ancient and evil cursed were-cat creatures whose condition requires them to drain the life-forces of whatever hapless victims they manage to lure to the island so as to preserve their immortality. During Simone's evil villain monolog we learn that hundreds of years ago, she and Lena were part of a group of settlers who were devoted to a cat god – who knew Louisiana settlers included pagan worshippers – but then one night Morgan Moonscar and his pirate crew chased the settlers into the bayou, where the poor pagans were killed by alligators. A vengeful Lena and Simone, who had survived the piratical attack, called upon their cat god to curse Morgan and his crew, unfortunately, this curse also turned Lena and Simone into cat creatures, as well as the whole "vampire immortality" requirements.

 

At least these "Cat People" weren't required to sleep with their relatives to regain human form.

It's the horror aspect of Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island that may surprise some viewers, not only are the numerous zombies rather grotesque looking – certainly for a kid's cartoon – but this is the first Scooby-Doo mystery that has a death toll. In the flashback we see the poor settlers being hemmed in by killer alligators, which has got to be one of the worst ways to die, and then when the cat creatures' curse expires we see Lena and Simone dissolving into bones and dust. There is no "And we would have gotten away with it too, if not for you meddling kids!" nope, in this movie, the villains literally bite the dust. The one caveat I shall mention is that at one point Daphne exclaims, "And those zombies are just the poor souls you drained! They were just trying to warn us so that we wouldn't suffer the same fate they did!" Did she forget that some of those zombies were the pirates who murdered a bunch of settlers?  Even though the zombies weren't the chief villains to this story not all of them were exactly squeaky clean either.

 

I guess history is written by the dead?

What is never made clear is why this zombie army never attacked Lena and Simone before now. These were-cats had been killing people for over a hundred years – we see gangster zombies in 1920's garb as well as Bermuda short wearing zombies – and we are told that the dead arise every night, so what was keeping this army of the dead in check? Does the pagan zombie magic that raises them every night not allow them to attack the cursed cat creatures directly? Or are Lena and Simone simply so powerful that a zombie army is more of a nuisance than anything else? Regardless of the unclear mythology of Moonscar Island and its pagan history Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island is a solid entry in the Scooby-Doo canon, with my only real criticisms being that some of the jokes are kind of lame – the running joke of Scooby-Doo repeatedly being confused when someone calls him a dog being the most egregious example of this – and it's also a bit sad that the only original voice actor to return for this outing was Frank Welker as Fred Jones, and the replacements they found for the rest of the cast of characters ranged from the passable to the outright bad.

 

"They chose poorly."