What’s New Scooby-Doo? Vol. 3: Halloween Boos & Clues (2002) – DVD Review

Film:
DVD:

Series Created by William Hanna and Joesph Barbera
Starring the Voices of Casey Kasem, Frank Welker, Mindy Cohn, and Grey DeLisle

Features:

• Live-action haunted Warner Bros. backlot tour with Scooby and Shaggy
• Scooby-Doo’s Famous Foes
• Shari, the House of High Technology

Released by: Warner Brothers Home Video
Rating: NR (suitable for all audiences)
Region: 1
Anamorphic: N/A; appears in its original 1.33:1 format.

My Advice: Skip it if you’re a fan of the original.

Scooby (Welker) and the gang from Mystery, Inc. are back for some new mysterious adventures. In these four episodes they are faced with mysterious vampires that are hanging around the video shoot for Daphne’s favorite band, a spooky mummy that is haunting the ancient Egyptian pyramids, the dangers of technology scare the gang at the Omaha World Fair, and a giant serpent rears its ugly head in Hawaii. As usual, it’s up to Freddy (also voiced by Welker), Daphne (DeLisle), Velma (Cohn), Shaggy (Kasem), and, of course, Scooby-Doo to solve these mysteries.

It’s nothing like the original. Here at Needcoffee.com, we hopped into our own Mystery Machine (which is actually a ’74 El Camino with fuzzy dice) and decided to solve the mystery of The Crappy Cartoon Remake. Let me start with the theme song. It’s all new and it’s done by a bunch of Green Day wannabes. That was my first clue that I wasn’t going to like this series. The second clue was the fact that the writing sucks. I think this one was the one that really tipped me off. In this case, it was those meddling kids who were trying to revive a classic show that really screwed the pooch (figuratively, not literally…it’s not that kind of show).

The DVD is okay. At least it’s got some features on it. The first is a tour of the Backlot at Warner Brothers. It’s a little more in depth than the one you can get if you were to visit the studios. The catch to this one is that we are literally viewing it through the eyes of Scooby and Shaggy. It’s narrated by a live action tour guide. It’s a little hokey; Scooby and Shaggy are done in voiceover only. There is also a featurette about the villains the Mystery Gang have gone up against throughout the years. All it really amounts to is a practice in alliteration. The narrations are filled with cheesy alliterative comments about the villians. They have also created some biographies of what they have been doing since being uncovered by the Gang. Interestingly, none of the villains spent any time in jail. How progressive.

The final featurette is a look at SHARI, the house of high-technology from one of the episodes on the disc. It treats the house as yet another villain. In fact, the house actually had an affair with an alien named HAL. All in all, it’s pretty cheeseball stuff and not really worth watching. I guess some younger kids might actually like it, but I don’t see it keeping my kids’ attention at all.

If you are a fan of the original series, I would suggest you go about your daily lives pretending that these don’t really exist. You’ll feel better for it. Honestly, just go snag the original series on DVD instead.