Vampire Bats and Scaredy Cats is the first of four segments of Scooby's All Star Laff-a-Lympics. It was later repackaged as the second episode of the second season of The Scooby-Doo Show, and the eighteenth episode overall of the series.
Premise
The gang go to visit Daphne's friend, Lisa, for her birthday, which is at a very old hotel that Lisa would inherit on the day after her eighteenth birthday. Velma says that it is believed that there are vampires on the island, but she herself thinks it is nonsense. But when a real vampire shows up and Lisa is turned into a vampire herself, the vampire legend becomes very believable.
Synopsis
The gang, along with Scooby Dum, head to Great Skull Island to meet Daphne's friend Lisa, who is about to inherit her family's hotel. Before they arrive, Velma notes that Skull Island is rumored to be home to vampires. As soon as they arrive, the ferry captain asked them to take a box to the hotel for one of the guests. As Shaggy and Fred carry it, they drop it, revealing the package to be a coffin. Scooby Dum opens it and a bat flies out.
They arrive at the hotel, and give the coffin to Mr. Dracul, who needed it for an undertaker's convention. They meet Lisa and her uncle, Leon, and decide to turn in for the night. While they sleep, Daphne awakens and sees a vampire standing in front of her bed. She calls for help and everyone arrives causing the vampire to flee. They begin searching for clues, when Scooby Dum discovers a ventilating duct, explaining how the vampire got into the room. Shaggy, Scooby, and Dum crawl inside to search, while Fred, Velma and Daphne tell Lisa what has been going on. The phone then rings, and Daphne answers it, hearing only a high pitched bell. Meanwhile, Shaggy, Scooby and Dum search the room, and the vampire then appears and begins to chase them.
After escaping, the gang reunites and discover a dog whistle on the floor, a clue. Uncle Leon then arrives and reveals to Lisa that her grandfather was actually a vampire, who was determined to turn Lisa into one. The gang begins to split up and look for clues. Shaggy, Scooby and Dum stay to guard Lisa, who answers the phone, hears the high pitched bell, and turns into a vampire. She begins to chase them along with the vampire, who Shaggy has now dubbed "Gramp the Vamp". They escape and find Fred, Velma and Daphne, who have found a paper titled "Exo 6 Desmo". Shaggy and the Scoobies then see Gramp the Vamp lead Lisa into a coffin. They inform Fred and the girls about the situation and Velma smacks Lisa's face a few times. This causes Lisa to wake up, and she doesn't remember what happened after the bell rang.
They then devise a scheme to trap Gramp the Vamp. They succeed (but not in the way they intended), and the vampire turns out to be Uncle Leon. His motive was to get the inheritance of the hotel away from Lisa. He invented the story of Lisa's grandfather being a vampire, and somehow unknowingly hypnotized her, with the bell being a post-hypnotic trigger that would make her think she was a vampire. That way, she would be put away and would give him the hotel. The paper found by the gang was an order from Uncle Leon to "Exo", the local exotic petshop on the mainland, for 6 "desmo", vampire bats (whose Latin family name is Desmodontidae). He used the silent whistle to call the bats.
Characters
Main characters:
Supporting characters:
- Lisa Vanhoff (only appearance)
- Ferry captain (only appearance)
- Desk clerk (only appearance)
- Mr. Dracul (only appearance)
- Police officer (only appearance)
Monsters and other villains:
- Gramps the Vamp (only appearance)(disguise)/
- Uncle Leon (only appearance)
Locations
- Ferry
- Great Skull Island
- Dock
- Hotel
- Exotic pet shop (mentioned)
Objects
Clues:
- Super sonic whistle
- Slip of paper that said "Exo 6 Desmo"
- Bells
Food and drinks:
- TBA
Other objects:
- TBA
Vehicles
- The Mystery Machine
Suspects
| Suspect | Motive/reason |
|---|---|
| Mr. Dracul | Had an overly meaningful name and wanted a coffin (where vampires live). |
| Desk clerk | Strange manner. |
| Uncle Leon | He told Lisa that her grandfather was really a vampire. |
Culprits
| Culprit | Motive/reason |
|---|---|
| Uncle Leon as Gramps the Vamp | To stop his niece from taking over running the hotel. |
Cast
Notes/trivia
- This was the first Scooby-Doo Show episode to use a title card (pictured above). The title card would be reused in season 3, then re-used for most of the Scrappy-Doo era.
- This is the second of three known times that the gang has visited a place called "Skull Island". The first was in the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episode, Go Away Ghost Ship, while the second was in a later The Scooby-Doo Show episode, The Creepy Case of Old Iron Face.
- Scooby-Doo's Spookiest Tales featured a different cut of this episode with a few changes:
- The title card is missing, probably because the two episodes that this one airs in-between have no title card at all.
- Some of the blue lighting was changed to brown.
- After Fred says, "Next stop: Lisa's hotel!", the Mystery Machine's driving animation is more smooth, and the vampire materializes from its exhaust using a spacey sound. (In the original, the Mystery Machine had more crude animation, and the camera zoomed out to show the vampire.)
- Some more sound was added, especially to Scooby-Dum's reactions as he and Scooby-Doo try to load the coffin into the Mystery Machine.
- Mr. Dracul has a softer voice.
- When Shaggy and Dracul carry the coffin, the transition from light to dark is rougher.
- The scene where Shaggy and the Scoobies are blocking the door from the vampire (as Lisa gets her post-hypnotic trigger phone call) is flipped so that the door is on the left.
- When the Scoobies trap the vampire in the coffin, he doesn't keep bobbing up and down after he sinks.
Animation mistakes and/or technical glitches
- None known.
Inconsistencies/continuity errors and/or goofs/oddities
- The Desmodontidae family name appears to be deprecated. See the vampire bat article on Wikipedia for more on that.
- Vampire bats are found only in South America, and cannot be domesticated nor sold as pets (at least not legally).
- Fred calls Scooby-Doo and Scooby-Dum brothers, saying to Shaggy "you and the Scooby brothers stay and guard Lisa".
- When Lisa turns into a vampire and Scooby-Dum sees her, Shaggy and Scooby are pushing the bed to the left, but then when Scooby-Dum runs to them, they are seen on the right.
- The two moments Lisa turns into a vampire (in the present and flashback) are different:
- Present: When Lisa picks up the phone, she hears the bell ring and when she hangs up the phone, she is already seen as a vampire with a scary face and vampire teeth.
- Flashback: When Lisa picks up the phone, she hears the bell ring and when she hangs up the phone, her face is still normal, then she opens a drawer, takes out a pair of vampire teeth and puts them in her mouth, to which we then see a close-up of Lisa and right after the close-up comes and Lisa puts the teeth in, it's there that her face becomes scary.
In other languages
| Language | Name | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| French | Vampires, Chauve-souris et Chats noirs | Vampires, Bats, and Black Cats |
Home media
Scooby-Doo: The Headless Horseman of Halloween VHS released by Turner Home Entertainment on September 10, 1996.- Scooby-Doo's Spookiest Tales VHS released by Warner Home Video in 2001.
- Scooby-Doo's Spookiest Tales DVD released by Warner Home Video on August 21, 2001.
- Scooby-Doo! and the Vampires DVD released on November 6, 2012.
- Scooby-Doo! and the Vampires DVD released by Warner Home Video on January 14, 2014.
Quotes
Gramps the Vamp: It's time for you to rest, my dear. |
Gramps the Vamp: I WANT BLOOD!!! |
| Previous episode: | Series: | Next episode: |
| The Curse of the Viking Lake | The Scooby-Doo Show Season 2 |
Hang in There, Scooby-Doo |