Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island


 * "This time the monsters are real!"
 * - Tagline

Scooby-Doo On Zombie Island is the first in a series of direct-to-video animated films based upon the Scooby-Doo Saturday morning cartoons. It was released on February 20, 1998, and was the first Scooby-Doo movie to be produced by Warner Bros. Animation, though distributed by Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. It was the first movie to feature real monsters instead of simple 'bad guys' in masks. This was heavily promoted before its release including a tagline used during commercials stating, "This time, the monsters are real." This theme would be followed up in several subsequent direct-to-video Scooby-Doo animated films released in the late-1990s and early-2000s. Although real monsters had previously appeared in most of the 1980s Scooby-Doo series and features, this continuity was ignored with the characters said to be encountering real monsters for the first time. After Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase, the direct-to-video Scooby-Doo movies would not feature real monsters again until ten years later in Scooby-Doo! And The Goblin King.

Premise
The Mystery Inc. team split up to do their own thing but come together again to solve a real ghost mystery. The gang of sleuths get more than they bargained for when, on Moonscar Island in the Louisiana bayou, they find themselves amongst worshipping un-dead werecats and a swarm of zombies.

Synopsis
Mystery, Inc. are being pursued by a green troll-like monster. After a fortunate accident by Scooby, he is caught and discovered to be a counterfeiter. This is revealed to be a retelling by Daphne on her television program; after years of unmasking phony ghosts, the Mystery Inc. gang have gone their separate ways. Daphne and Fred go off to start a successful investigative TV series ("Coast to Coast with Daphne Blake"), Velma opens a mystery bookstore, and Scooby and Shaggy bounce from job to job, including work as customs officers at an airport, from which they are rather quickly fired after eating all the confiscated foodstuffs. However, when Fred decides that the next episode of Daphne's show should be about tracking down real ghosts, he reassembles the gang and brings them all to Louisiana.

After encountering many "men in masks" ("just like the old days"), such as a nerdy-looking guy in a lobster-man suit in a canned shellfish factory, an old man in a man-vampire bat suit at a graveyard, a ghost that turns out to be a hologram, and a zombie riverboat captain, that turns out to be a middle-aged woman, the gang arrives in New Orleans, and are invited by a cook named Lena Dupree to visit Moonscar Island, the home of her employer. The island, Lena claims, is supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a pirate named Morgan Moonscar. Although the gang is sceptical, they decide to go along with Lena and visit the island.

The gang arrives on the island and meets Lena's employer, Simone Lenoir, a beautiful Cajun woman, who explains about the haunting. En route to the island, the gang also meet Jacques, who runs the ferry from the island to the mainland, Beau Neville, Simone's hunky gardener and Snakebite Scruggs, a grungy fisherman.

The first two-thirds of the film play out like a regular Scooby-Doo cartoon, with the gang checking out clues and working to prove that the "ghost" is just a person in a mask. During the third act, however, it turns out that the island is home to real zombies. While trying to escape from zombies, Fred accidentally drops the camera and camera is swallowed by quicksand. The zombies, however, turn out to be the good guys: Simone, Lena, and Jacques are revealed to actually be werecats who drain the life force out of people to preserve their immortality and the zombies were their many victims and were just trying to warn them about the three villains. The gang, along with Beau, (who is revealed to be an undercover police officer) defeat the cat-creatures (when it seemed they were cornered, the time for the werecats to drain the life force had expired, ending their lives and skeletonizing their bodies) and free the zombies' souls to rest in peace. Daphne is upset for losing the camera, but the gang and Beau cheer her up and return to home.

Villains

 * Moat Monster/Mr. Beeman
 * Morgan Moonscar (redeemed; for his zombie acts)
 * Zombies (redeemed)
 * Lena Dupree
 * Simone Lenoir
 * Jacques

Locations

 * Louisiana
 * New Orleans
 * Bubba Joe's
 * Pierre's Poor Boys
 * Louisiana bayou
 * Moonscar Island

Notes/trivia

 * This movie features an all-new cast of voice actors for the adult Mystery Inc., save for Frank Welker who returns as Fred. This is the first Scooby-Doo production not to feature Don Messick and Casey Kasem as Scooby and Shaggy; Messick had passed away (the film is dedicated to him) while Kasem didn't like Shaggy's eating habits as the actor had become vegan so Scott Innes and Billy West replaced them, respectively. From the next movie Innes would voice both Scooby and Shaggy. Mary Kay Bergman and B.J. Ward replaced Heather North and Marla Frumkin as Daphne and Velma, respectively; Ward had previously voiced Velma in the Johnny Bravo episode, Bravo Dooby-Doo
 * This is the first Scooby-Doo production that alludes to a romantic relationship between Fred and Daphne which had been poked fun at in the Johnny Bravo episode, Bravo Dooby-Doo. They also get jealous of each other when Fred takes a shine to Lena and Daphne is interested in Beau. Velma also forms a friendship with Beau, but denies an attration to him.
 * Based on Glenn Leopold's Swat Kats unfinished episode "The Curse of Kataluna".
 * The film also makes no reference to Scrappy-Doo, restoring the original line-up for the movie.
 * The videos sold well and received generally positive reviews in the press, leading to a series of future direct-to-video Scooby-Doo feature films, and a new television series, What's New, Scooby-Doo?.
 * Out of all of the direct to video movies this one is argueably the darkest and most frightening out of all of them.
 * Also the only one where characters are killed: three on screen, dozens off.
 * It won an Annie and Golden Reel award both in 1999.
 * Simone was voiced by actress Adrienne Barbeau who is known for her roles as Catwoman in Batman: The Animated Series, and DJ Stevie Wayne the 1980 horror film The Fog, which deals with ghostly and/or undead sailors terrorizing a seaside town. Undead sailors (i.e. pirates) and cats are featured prominently in this film.
 * This was the first time a real monster was discovered by the original Mystery Inc. gang.
 * While this was the movie's tagline, the original Mystery Inc. line-up did encounter real supernatural monsters and beings in the episodes Mystery in Persia, A Halloween Hassle at Dracula's Castle and Ghosts of the Ancient Astronauts.
 * When Morgan Moonscar wrote the text on the wall with his sword, and when the dead soldier from the civil war appeared to Shaggy and Scooby, they were actually warning them about Lena and Simone, instead of trying to chase them off the island so they couldn't find the "treasure".
 * When Fred is trying to "unmask" the zombie pirate he yells "It's the ferryman!" While, Jacques is obviously not the zombie, he actually is one of the villains, and partly responsible for some of the events of the movie.
 * Morgan Moonscar's buried treasure does exist, as shown in the cutscene describing his demise. However, it is dropped from the story altogether as a red herring, but the treasure presumably is still there.
 * The cutscenes show his crew carrying the chest ashore and later beginning to bury it, so it appears that the motive of killing the colonists was (at least in part) to keep them from witnessing where he buried his treasure.
 * Morgan Moonscar can either be viewed as an anti-hero, or as redeemed altogether. He was partly to blame for Simone and Lena's curse. In his undead form, he attempted to warn and/or help the living escape Simone and Lena.
 * This movie premiered on Cartoon Network on October 31, 1998.

Animation mistakes and/or technical glitches

 * None known.

Inconstitencies/continuity errors and/or goofs/oddities

 * The chances of an undercover detective (especially one investigating a possible string of homicides) not carrying a gun or a dispatch radio are extremely remote, even in a cartoon.
 * How Simone and Lena got ahold of Velma's eye glass cleaning cloth and other articles of clothing and/or hair from Fred and Daphne was never explained. Beau already lived there so the two women could have taken something from him at anytime.

Home media

 * Scooby-Doo On Zombie Island VHS released September 22, 1998.
 * Scooby-Doo On Zombie Island DVD released March 6, 2001.
 * Scooby-Doo And The Alien Invaders / Scooby-Doo On Zombie Island double feature DVD released February 12, 2008.

Quotes
"Maybe it's... real!"

- Fred Jones

"The ghost is real; of course if you're too scared to go_"

- Lena