Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island is a 1998 direct-to-video animated comedy horror film based on Hanna-Barbera's Scooby-Doo Saturday-morning cartoons. In the film, Shaggy, Scooby, Fred, Velma, and Daphne reunite after a year-long hiatus from Mystery, Inc. to investigate a bayou island said to be haunted by the ghost of the pirate Morgan Moonscar. The film was directed by Jim Stenstrum, from a screenplay by Glenn Leopold.
Popularity for Scooby-Doo had grown in the 1990s due to reruns aired on Cartoon Network. The channel's parent company, Time Warner, suggested developing a direct-to-video (DTV) film on the property. The team at Hanna-Barbera consisted of many veteran artists and writers. Much of the original voice actors of the series were recast for the film, although Frank Welker returned to voice Fred Jones. It was also the first of four Scooby-Doo direct-to-video films to be animated overseas by Japanese animation studio Mook Animation. Rock bands Third Eye Blind and Skycycle contribute to the soundtrack.
Zombie Island contains a darker tone than most Scooby-Doo productions, and is notable for containing real supernatural creatures rather than people in costumes. The film was released on September 22, 1998, and received positive reviews from critics, who complimented its animation and story. It became one of the bestselling direct-to-video films of all time.
Plot[]
The five members of Mystery, Inc. go their separate ways after becoming bored of mystery solving because culprits are always people in costumes. Daphne Blake, along with Fred Jones, starts running a successful television series. She is determined to hunt down a real ghost rather than a fake one. Fred contacts Velma Dinkley, Shaggy Rogers and his dog Scooby-Doo, and the entire gang is brought back together for Daphne's birthday. They embark on a road trip scouting haunted locations across the U.S. for Daphne's show.
After encountering a lot of fake monsters, the gang arrives in New Orleans, Louisiana, fed up by this time. They are invited by a young woman named Lena Dupree to visit her workplace at Moonscar Island, an island allegedly haunted by the ghost of the pirate Morgan Moonscar. Although the gang is skeptical, they decide to go with Lena. On the island, they meet Lena's employer Simone Lenoir, who lives in a large Southern home on a pepper plantation. They also meet the ferryman Jacques and Simone's gardener Beau. Shaggy and Scooby encounter the ghost of Moonscar, who becomes a reanimated corpse, and the gang gets several ghostly warnings to leave. Despite this, they stay overnight, still skeptical. Shaggy sees another ghost, one of a Confederate colonel warning them to leave.
That night, Shaggy and Scooby are chased by a horde of zombies. Velma suspects Beau while Fred and Daphne capture a zombie. They believe it is a mask until Fred pulls its head off, revealing that the zombies are real. As the horde chases them, the gang gets split in the chaos and Daphne accidentally causes Fred to drop his video camera in the quicksand, losing film evidence for their show. Shaggy and Scooby discover wax voodoo dolls that look like Fred, Velma, and Daphne in a cave. When they play with the dolls, they involuntarily control the gang's actions with the things they make the dolls do, leaving the gang confused. Shaggy and Scooby drop the dolls and flee when they disturb a nest of bats.
The rest of the gang and Beau discover a secret passageway in the house. Lena tells them that the zombies dragged Simone away. The passageway leads to a secret chamber for voodoo rituals, where Velma confronts Lena about her lie: the footprints in the passageway were Simone's; she had walked to the chamber as opposed to being dragged away. Simone and Lena use the voodoo dolls to trap the gang. They and Jacques reveal themselves to be evil cat creatures. Simone tells them that 200 years ago, she and Lena were part of a group of settlers on the island who worshiped a cat god. When Moonscar and his crew invaded the island, they chased the settlers into the bayou, leading them to be killed by alligators, but Simone and Lena escaped the carnage. They prayed to their cat god to curse Moonscar. Their wish was granted and they were transformed into werecats. They killed the pirates, but remained werecats permanently. Every harvest moon, they lure and exploit all the victims by drain lives to preserve their immortality. Jacques became their ferryman to bring them more victims as he wanted to have immortality. The zombies are actually their previous victims (pirates, Confederates, settlers, tourists) who awaken every harvest moon and try to scare people away in order to stop them from suffering the same fate.
Shaggy and Scooby disrupt the werecats' draining ceremony. The gang free themselves but the werecats surround them. However, it is too late; the time for the ceremony has passed. Their curse expires and Simone, Lena, and Jacques crumble into dust, allowing the zombies' souls to finally rest in peace. Beau reveals himself to be an undercover police officer who was sent to investigate the numerous disappearances on the island. Daphne asks Beau to guest-star on her show, and they all leave the island in the morning.
Trivia[]
- When the movie was advertised on titled Warner Brothers family video tapes in early 1998, there were scenes that are not featured in the film, like Velma holding a magnifying glass as the picture zooms back, Scooby is being carried by a zombie while unconscious (but responded quickly as freaked out), and Shaggy and Scooby were in an abandoned house as a zombie (shown from the back) is chasing them. Other scenes are from older Scooby-Doo episodes. This, however, was to avoid spoilers at the time before the release.
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