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Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island

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This article is about the film. For the DVD, see Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island (Home Media).

Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island is the thirtieth in a series of direct-to-video films based upon Hanna-Barbera's Scooby-Doo Saturday morning cartoons. It had its world premiere on July 21 at the San Diego Comic Con International 2019,[1] followed by Digital HD on September 3, 2019, and DVD on October 1, 2019.

It is a quasi-sequel to Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, the original direct-to-video film in the series. Notably, it was released during the 50th anniversary year of the Scooby-Doo franchise, making the film somewhat of an acknowledgement of that milestone, along with the previous DTV release, Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost.

Premise[]

The gang gets a tropical-themed vacation, which turns out to be on none other than Moonscar Island, where the gang run into more zombies and cat creatures. Could the gang have left the mystery unresolved all along? Velma seems to think so.

Synopsis[]

The movie opens with a dream sequence with the gang capturing villains dressed up in the costumes from Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! with the aid of the Mystery Machine. However, the sequence comes to an end with the Mystery Machine rolling away from Fred, who suddenly wakes up from his nightmare in the malt shop. When Fred told Daphne and Velma about his dream about losing the Mystery Machine, the girls reminded him that he sold it in Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost when the Sheriff banned them from solving mysteries.

After seeing a news report on the malt shop TV, Fred and the girls want to solve, but Shaggy and Scooby refused after being used for bait to capture the villains and taken for granted. Dressing up like judges, Shaggy and Scooby made Fred, Daphne and Velma to never ever solve mysteries or use them for bait ever again. After declaring Mystery Inc. closed for good, the Sheriff arrives and tells the kids to treat themselves to a vacation. The gang sees a TV show hosted by Elvira who announced Shaggy as the winner of a tropical vacation, much to Shaggy and Scooby's delight and Fred, Daphne and Velma's confusion.

While travelling to their vacation spot via ferry, Fred, Daphne and Velma try to keep their promise as Shaggy and Scooby relax on deck. Arriving, the gang were greeted by two frightened greeters who told them to get of the island, but the gang humorously ignored them. After boarding a van that will take the gang to the resort, a clawed figure slashes a palm tree in front of the van, blocking the road, forcing the gang to walk to the resort while the driver stays to repair the van. Arriving at the Moonstar Island Resort, the gang are suddenly reminded of Moonscar Island from the events of Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island. Inside the hotel, they meet the manager Alan Smithee and the staff who resemble Lena Dupree, Simone Lenoir, Jacques and Snakebite Scruggs,, named Mona, Linda, Jack and Bugbite Stubbs.

While Shaggy and Scooby are enjoying the accommodations, they encounter a few zombies in the spa and make a run for it. Hiding in a cabinet, the duo lands in a cavern full of cat statues and monuments. After returning to the hotel, Shaggy and Scooby barricade the door as a group of zombies approach and allows Fred and the girls to go back solving mysteries. As the gang set up a trap, the clawed figure, a black cat creature, knocks over a candelabra that sets fire to a curtain and the smoke activates the sprinkler system to douse the fire and melt away the zombies' faces revealing themselves to be the staff members in disguise, making the gang realize that they are on Moonscar Island, which is now a filming location, and Alan is the film director who came to the island to shoot a horror movie.

Alan explains that he looked into Velma's blog of unsolved mysteries and reveals himself to be the secret sponsor of the vacation that Shaggy won, and he had no knowledge of the cat creature. Despite everything, the gang agreed to help Alan complete his movie. As the filming continues, the gang meet Seaver, Fred's stunt double, who owns a monster truck version of the Mystery Machine. As the sun goes down, Velma heads into the forest wearing night-vision goggles, but she runs away after seeing a cluster of cats' eyes. After Velma tells everyone to run for their lives, they see a harmless looking beige kitten coming out of the bushes, scaring Scooby. But just as Shaggy assures Scooby that there's nothing to be scared of, the kitten suddenly full grows into a feral cat monster, scaring Shaggy as more cats attack.

After the film crew hide, three were-cats arrive. As the gang and Seaver ran to the ferry, they find Alan crazily burning the ferry, and Fred acting on impulse, rescues the Mystery Machine monster truck from being burned along with the sinking ferry. Fred quickly orders everyone to get in, but one of the cat creatures grabs Alan's medallion which was really Simone's cat pendant. The gang save Alan and the pendant, but the cats and cat creatures chased them to the resort. After their wild goose chase, the gang hide in the cabinet Shaggy and Scooby hid in before, leading them to the cavern where Simone and Lena tried to drain the gang's life force. After noticing lots of holes leading to the cavern, Velma gets an idea.

When the three cat creatures enter the cavern, they found Simone's pendant and placed it on the pedestal in the light of the harvest moon, and the light reflects to the specific spot where the cats dig and find a chest full of gold coins. The cats were suddenly attacked by the gang, disguised as zombies, causing them to get scared and hide in one of the holes. The gang unmask the three cat creatures, revealing themselves to be the greeters and the ferry captain, and the "gold coins" in the chest are actually gold covered Scooby Snacks. The trio intended to find Morgan Moonscar's treasure, and they used cat whistles to control the island cats to deter anyone who were getting too close to the treasure, and the fourth cat werecat who attacked the van and nearly burn down the hotel remains at large. After the police lead the culprits away, Alan despairs that his movie doesn't have a finale.

The cats, now docile, enter the cave and dig a spot in the ground with help from Scooby, revealing another treasure chest. Alan opens it and sees the real treasure inside it and declares that he's done with movie business and is retiring with the real treasure. Glad to be back mystery solving, the gang declare that they'll keep solving mysteries, and Fred also declares if they're going back mystery solving, they're going to need the Mystery Machine, wishing that he should never have sold it in the first place, and Daphne assures him that they'll do everything to get the Mystery Machine back.

Just then, the sheriff arrives and begins to berate the gang for solving mysteries again, but after a few tears from Daphne and the rest of the gang, he relents and allows Mystery Inc. to return, while Shaggy, Scooby, and the cats eat the gold covered Scooby Snacks.

Elvira shows a trailer and outtakes of Zombie Teenagers and the Island of Doom in the end credits.

Characters[]

Main characters:

Supporting characters:

Villains:

Other characters:

Locations[]

Objects[]

Vehicles[]

Suspects[]

Suspect Motive/Reason
Suspect Motive/Reason

Culprits[]

Culprit Motive/Reason
Ferry captain and two accomplices as the cat creatures To find Morgan Moonscar's treasure.

Cast[]

Frank Welker Scooby-Doo
Fred Jones
Matthew Lillard Shaggy Rogers
Grey Griffin Daphne Blake
Kate Micucci Velma Dinkley
David Herman Sheriff
Janell Cox Sister Withers
Cat person
John Michael Higgins Alan Smithee
Dave B. Mitchell Driver
Ferry captain
Roger Rose Lead cat person
Narrator
Cassandra Peterson Elvira
Travis Willingham Seaver

Continuity[]

Notes/Trivia[]

  • The movie was screened at San Diego Comic Con International on July 21, 2019.
  • The first malt shop waitress's model is reused from Faith's from the DTV Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur.
  • Though Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island was produced using traditional hand-drawn animation, the flashbacks seen in Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island were recreated using computer animation to resemble the original sequences.

Cultural references[]

  • Cassandra Peterson/Elvira makes her first Scoobyverse appearance, hosting a similar program as she does in the real-world. Peterson also played a similar parody of herself called Drella Diabolique in the DTV LEGO Scooby-Doo! Haunted Hollywood. Numerous Scoobyverse productions in the 1980s had guest characters with Elvira-like qualities, such as Sibella in Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf.
  • The film Elvira was going to show after announcing the vacation winner, was called Predator Jones. While not specified, it may be a mashup of Predator (as in Alien versus Predator) and Indiana Jones.
  • The director's name, "Allan Smithee," is an inside joke to Hollywood directors who use that pseudonym to disavow their work/association with it.

Adaptations[]

Animation mistakes and/or technical glitches[]

  • During the intro, when Jacques was chasing Mystery Inc, his tail was missing.
  • In one of the flashback scenes, the Mystery Machine is not the news van that was used in the original.
  • While Alan was videotaping the cats attacking the crew, the cat before attacking him was brown, but was gray when doing it.
  • When the police comes to arrest the culprits, the female culprit's cat-hands/gloves are missing, showing her regular hands. But the very next scene shows her being handcuffed WITH the gloves on.
  • When the six cats enter the cavern, there were two orange cats, but not a brown one to be seen until the cats were gathering at the spot where Moonscar's treasure is buried. But, in the next scene, the Black cat switched places with the blueish one. Then, after Velma explained that the Cats were guardians of Moonscar's treasure, the Black, Blue, and Gray Cats were in different spots.
  • At the final scene where Scooby victoriously eat Scooby Snacks, the orange cat who was nuzzling Shaggy's knee in the previous scene, traded places with a blueish cat, who is sleeping.


Inconsistencies/continuity errors and/or goofs/oddities[]

  • In Fred's dream of the "good old days," he and the gang are much more menacing than they are in "real life." Not only do they seem to get a perverse pleasure out of chasing down bad guys, but some of the culprits look like they actually fear the gang.
  • The ending of Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost strongly implied that the gang would go back and regain their reputation to prove the Sheriff wrong, all of which is ignored in this film.
  • The Sheriff says they should treat themselves to a vacation, which they do almost 100% of the time anyway.
  • It's unknown if Elvira knew the anonymous sponsor and was keeping it hidden to her audience, or her show actually accepts and provides vacations from people without making a background check on them.
    • It's never revealed what type of contest Shaggy was supposed to have entered, nor does he show any memory of having entered one. It seems like it just comes up out of the blue. The gang are also surprised by being brought back to Moonscar Island/Moonscar Mansion, as if they were given no previous insight to where they were heading. They just put their lives in the hands of some contest they just happened to see on TV.
  • In Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, Simone Lenoir's mansion wasn't a hotel open to the public, therefore didn't require a guestbook, but this film dictates the opposite, and that Alan Smithee reused it at Moonstar Island Resort, just with the pages having been ripped out, to further fool the gang into thinking they're not at the same mansion.
    • However, Simone might have run the estate like a bed and breakfast in order to lure victims to her, in which case an (off-screen) guestbook would suit the facade.
  • Flashbacks are shown of the gang's previous time on the island, but Velma regularly rants about not believing everything she saw and attributes the experience to hallucinations brought on by swamp gas. Moreover, this would mean that what they faced previously resulted in an unresolved/unsolved mystery. While she acted similarly in Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost, Velma's defiant ignorance is somewhat justified in that context as she did not witness the events that led to the hunt for the 13th Ghost. In this case, though, Velma was originally a witness to the events and this movie relies on flashbacks of Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island. This makes her appear overly irrational just for the sake of not wanting to face the facts of what really happened, which could've been used as character development in acceptance.
    • This timeline is further muddled by the Sheriff's references to Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost. Velma and Fred said the 13 ghost case was their first "real monsters" case, and here the gang remembers the events of Zombie Island. Yet Fred appears to have always accept the reality of the Island monsters.
  • During the flashback, Morgan Moonscar never had a scar around his left eye, Scooby was wearing his collar while his life was being drained, and when the Were-Cats died, they disintegrated into green dust instead of gray dust.
  • During the first reveal, the gang was soaking wet when they started explaining, and after the first flashback, they were completely dry.
  • Because the gang have regressed from adults back to teenagers over the course of other direct-to-video releases since Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, several plot elements in the original film must be retconned, including some fairly unconvincing changes. For example, Daphne being the host of her own show is changed to her being on a school project, which for some reason gained interest from Chris, the talk show host. Velma was also shown to have her own bookstore, and Shaggy was seen working as a customs officer and as high schoolers, Shaggy would've been able to work as a custom officer and Velma would've have own her bookstore.
  • There was a real black cat person among the fake ones which was left a mystery, as if to leave it open ended for the audience to make up their own minds if the cat people are real or not. However, it was clearly established in the original film that the cat people were real, thus making the addition of a mystery cat person both redundant and somewhat out of step with the prior film's events.
  • Beau Neville does not appear in flashbacks or have an actor counterpart, making him the only character from the original movie not to be in this movie in some way.

In other languages[]

Language Name Meaning
French Scooby-Doo ! Retour sur l'île aux zombies Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island

Home media[]

  • Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island DVD (Walmart exclusive) released by Warner Home Video on September 3, 2019.
  • Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island DVD released by Warner Home Video on September 9, 2019.
  • Scooby-Doo! Retour sur l'île aux zombies (Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island) DVD released by Warner Home Video on September 11, 2019.
  • Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island DVD released Warner Home Video on September 18, 2019.
  • Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island DVD released by Warner Home Video on October 1, 2019.
  • Scooby-Doo! 5 Film Collection DVD Box set released by Warner Home Video on November 25, 2020.[2]
  • Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island double feature Blu-Ray (with Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island) released by Warner Home Video on May 7, 2024.

Gallery[]

Videos[]

Images[]

Quotes[]


References[]

  1. ↑ NEWSDESK (July 1, 2019). "WARNER BROS. HOME ENTERTAINMENT PRESENTS WORLD PREMIERES OF BATMAN: HUSH, TEEN TITANS GO! VS. TEEN TITANS, LEGO® DC: BATMAN – FAMILY MATTERS, SCOOBY-DOO! RETURN TO ZOMBIE ISLAND AND A SHAZAM! DOCUMENTARY". The Fanboy Factor. Retrieved July 2, 2019.
  2. ↑ [1] 5 Film Collection

External links[]

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