Scooby-Doo, the cowardly glutton of a crime solving Great Dane, has been around more or less continuously for roughly fifty years. He’s been in a lot of different series, some of which follow the classic formula of four teens and a dog discovering someone is wearing a disguise to take advantage of local legends in order to scare others away from some sort of criminal enterprise. Later series, particularly after the introduction of Scrappy-Doo, dealt with actual supernatural messes and lost the mystery angle. And in the middle of it all was maybe the weirdest of the bunch, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo.
13 Ghosts had Scooby, Shaggy, Daphne, and Scrappy, along with a pint-sized con artist named Flim Flam trying to wrangle 13 particularly powerful, evil ghosts back into the Chest of Demons after they had accidentally released the group to begin with. That series ran for a single season of 13 episodes, and since the first episode was about how the ghosts were released, only 12 focused on capturing the ghosts. Basic math shows they only caught 12 of the 13. As such, Warner Brothers Animation produced a feature-length sequel to wrap that up with the long title of Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost.
The movie starts with a flashback when Scooby and the gang’s old ally Vincent VanGhoul (voiced by Maurice LaMarche, replacing the late Vincent Price though sounding closer to LaMarche’s Orson Welles’ impression) going to find the last of the ghosts with a partner named Mortifer. Something happens, and though the ghost was captured, its minions appear to kill Mortifer as Vincent flees in a different direction.
Fast forward to the present day as Mystery Inc screws up a mystery by capturing an innocent man who wasn’t wearing a disguise and only ran because he was afraid of teenagers. Under pressure from the local sheriff, the group decides to quit solving mysteries and Fred even sells the Mystery Machine.
But then a crystal ball flashes, VanGhoul’s face appears on it, and Shaggy, Daphne, and Scooby know exactly what’s up and where they have to go. Fred and Velma, meanwhile, look very confused because they weren’t on that series and don’t know what to do.
The best parts of the resulting movie are Fred and Velma’s reactions to this sort of stuff. Daphne explains briefly the two were away at camp that summer (the same excuse given for Fred’s absence in the series Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated), and from there the two just try to keep up. Fred sees his place as team leader and the guy who drives the van supplanted by Daphne. Velma, meanwhile, refuses to believe in the supernatural and keeps looking for logical or scientific explanations for everything. She even does so successfully in VanGhoul’s house, proving the disembodied screams and such are produced by things like speakers in the walls.
The gang plus VanGhoul travel to the Himalayas to try and catch the last ghost, a particularly powerful entity named Asmodeus, a being who is also one of Vincent’s ancestors. Fred and Velma go their own way, find a more adult Flim Flam, and there are the usual clues that suggest Asmodeus may or may not a ghost.
But really, this was a decent ending for 13 Ghosts.. I’m not the biggest Scooby-Doo fan, but I do like it when they do things to play with the formula, and having the different characters assume different roles for this movie was just such an action. Velma and Fred’s frustration worked as a nice balance to Shaggy, Scooby, and Daphne’s general confidence in what they were doing. The movies tries to thread the gap between the typical Scooby-Doo case where the ghost is just a disguise and the supernatural-is-real 13 Ghosts setting.
That said, Scrappy is nowhere to be seen and only namedropped once. Fred and Velma don’t know who he is either, but c’mon. Scrappy was added to the original group when he first appeared. They know who he is. Is there a Scrappy moratorium that strong?
Mostly this is an above average Scooby-Doo movie. It was fun when it poked at Fred and Velma’s insecurities, but the rest of it was fairly rote. I liked it OK, but probably not enough to see more of it.
Then again, I saw this off the Boomerang streaming service, and they do have the original 13 Ghosts run on there…
Grade: B-
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