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ayellowbirds · 6 years

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Keshet Rewatches All of Scooby-Doo, Pt. 11: "A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts"

("Scooby-Doo, Where Are You", Season 1 Episode 11)

AKA "This Episode Contains No Ghosts Whatsoever, Except The Looming Spectre of Anti-Romani Racism"

As a wolfman watches from atop a castle tower, the gang drive up. In terms of establishing shots, it’s basically just Episode 2 all over again, but this time on dry land, with a growling werewolf instead of a telescope-carrying ghost.

Gee, i wonder which part of this background will be animated.

Fred identifies it as "Franken Castle. It's the only castle ever imported stone by stone from Transylvania." Leaving aside the mixing of obvious references to both Frankenstein and Dracula with a visible werewolf, this kind of castle-importing actually isn’t as outlandish as it might seem (unless you grew up watching Disney’s Gargoyles, in which case it seems perfectly normal and you probably also think it could go on top of a skyscraper).

In fact, during the early twentieth century, there was something of a trend for wealthy Americans to import medieval European architecture stone-by-stone, to be reassembled in the states. There’s some prominent examples of this not too far from my own home, at the Cloisters in Manhattan—they even have a “medieval faire” there. It's an under-utilized plot element, and if you’re doing a story involving things like haunted medieval castles or monasteries, i absolutely encourage you to set them wherever the fuck in America or Canada.

Although the rest of the gang is excited about the visit, Daphne is being superstitious.

The gang catch sight of a roadside fortuneteller, which they identify with the G-slur, though i seriously doubt the red-eyed woman in the little cabin on the back of a pickup truck is Romni, even dressed up as a horrible stereotype. In spite of Velma’s doubts, Daphne buys into it along with fearing lycanthropes, serving as a kind of middle ground between Shaggy and Scooby’s outright cowardice, and Velma and Fred’s stoicism.

The racially insensitive gang ignore the old woman’s warnings that the castle’s caretaker ran away in fear, and continue onward, witnessing lightning striking the castle in spite of a cloudless sky, and receiving a warning from a vampire at the gates.

If you’ve been on this hell site long enough, you know how Velma reacts.

The Dracula turns into a “vampire bat”, and as the gang is scared back, the drawbridge rises—but Daphne’s caught on top of it, and slides to the castle side of the moat. Now, a Frankenstein’s monster appears to menace her, wordlessly moaning and shambling forward.

Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman. I hope Universal doesn’t sue.

Scooby and Shaggy swing across the moat on a rope slung over a gargoyle, and narrowly dodge a zoinking alligator that leaps out of the moat to snap at them, which is never seen again and receives no explanation as part of the villain’s scheme. I guess moats just got to have gators. Shaggy tells Scooby to stand guard while he figures out the drawbridge controls, but the dog bolts as soon as the wolfman appears.

He hasn’t gone far, however, because as the wolfman chases Shaggy, a suit of armor against the wall sticks out its foot to trip the monster, and pulls off its helmet to reveal a triumphant Scooby.

So did Scooby just, like, pour himself into that armor? I can’t imagine his body comfortably fitting in there, nor how he got it on in the first place, but we’ve already established that he himself is some kind of unknowable horror.

During the ensuing chase scene, Shaggy abuses his powers of voice-throwing, and the infuriated wolfman throws a heavily-armed suit of armor (i’ll note that none of the castle’s interior decor looks Transylvanian—neither from when it was Hungarian nor the later Romanian dominion) and its axe demolishes the grand piano Scooby was hiding inside of. Peeking from the wreckage, Scooby notes with astonishment that the piano keys are real ivory, and instead of bemoaning the plight of endangered elephants, attempts his own scare.

A scene from The Beast That Destroyed the Refrigerator. The wolfman cautiously backs away, and Shaggy manages to restrain him by dropping a chandelier. Rather than trying to ensure the monster is held tight, Shaggy and Scooby book it.

Meanwhile, Velma and Freddy find a dining hall with a roaring fire, and encounter the Dracula once more, attacked by its bat form. Velma loses her glasses in the second bat-related incident this season, and fumbles her way into a secret passage that opens up behind the fireplace as the whole assembly rises up just far enough to let her crawl in.

Maybe it’s just me, but that seems like a really bad place to put a secret door. You’re going to get ash everywhere, and if there’s an active fire, you might wind up with chunks of burning wood tumbling out onto that nice and flammable wood floor, never mind the costly complexity of ventilation with a setup like that.

Meanwhile, the requisite once-per-episode food antics are taking place as Shaggy and Scooby raid the castle kitchen. For once, they find themselves disgusted by the food options, showing that the villain of the episode is either really dedicated to his presentation, or is just a big damn goth.

Looking kind of like a Heinz product with the label style, there. Is this the legendary fifty-seventh variety?

It’s the added note of Chunky Style that really makes this.

What, no Frankensteinfurters? For some reason we get two wolfman-themed food items, but nothing for the reanimated. It might be because he’s raiding the pantry, which is exactly where Scooby finds him hiding behind the door, leading to another chase sequence involving some sort of wheeled hook on a ceiling-mounted track, ending at a helpfully labeled dumbwaiter. I guess it’s meant to be a system for conveying large quantities of food to the dumbwaiter?

Elsewhere, Velma has wandered into a “torture chamber”, that she mistakes for a “playroom” because of the “interesting toys”. Shaggy and Scooby slide in, watched by the moving eyes of an iron maiden—not eyes visible through holes in its steel face, but the metal eyes of the mask itself—and solve a mystery for the viewers by bringing Velma a pair of emergency replacement glasses. I wonder how many they keep with them? Velma seems to go through frames like the boys go through Scooby Snacks.

Rescuing Daphne from an oubliette, the trio are menaced by the Dracula, who Scooby attacks with the end of the rope not being used to raise Daphne out of the dungeon, binding and dragging the vampire into the very same pit. He swears they haven’t escaped, and the foursome flee into a secret tunnel hidden inside the iron maiden.

Although Daphne and Velma find Fred at the end of the tunnel, they’ve lost sight of Scooby and Shaggy in the darkness. They don’t seem too concerned, as Daphne prioritizes a clue—a message she found written on the dungeon wall, dated to 1668.

There’s a few problems with this. It can’t have been written when the castle was in the Americas, there simply weren’t the resources to transport that much stone across the ocean at the time. If it’s from the castle’s days in Transylvania, why is it in English? And the biggest problem of all...

Tutankhamun's tomb wasn’t rediscovered until 1922. Egyptology was an obscure field in the 1600s, and Tut wasn’t a historically notable pharaoh. There’s no way a 17th century European would have had knowledge of the boy pharaoh, much less his wealth.

Shaggy and Scooby have wandered into a mad scientist’s laboratory in the meanwhile, and after mistaking a dummy on the table for "old square-head”, they start goofing around with unlabeled chemicals. Scooby plays at “Igor” to Shaggy’s "Mad Scientist”—neither noticing the wolfman creeping up behind even as they casually discard an explosive chemical without looking back, sending him back into his hiding place.

No sense of lab safety, whatsoever. As Scooby switches to playing at “monster” and gets strapped down to a table, the actual (fake) Frankenstein’s Monster reappears, and another chase scene ensues. The gang reunite, and Velma suggests that they investigate the Franken family crypt.

That is a heck of a scene, zoinks. Completely bonkers architecture, but wow.

Finding that one of the sarcophagi has the same 1668 date as Daphne’s clue, they push back its lid... and find the Dracula. An attempt to capture it in a tapestry reveals that the Franken family jewels (not that kind of family jewels, you children) were sewn into the back of the wall-hanging. The vampire flees with it, leaving behind a clue that brings the gang back to the fortune teller, who is revealed to be the culprit behind all the monsters: “Big” Bob Oakley, AKA “The Actor”, a master of disguise wanted in seven states.

You know, as with the Great Bluestone, it’s kind of ambiguous what The Actor is wanted for, exactly. Burglary? Impersonation? Escaping prison? It doesn’t matter, because we finally get something like the “meddling kids” line! The gang explain Oakley’s plan, and he says, “Yes...”

So close, and yet, so far.

(like what i’m doing here? It’s not what pays the bills, so i’d really appreciate it if you could send me a bit at my paypal.me or via my ko-fi. Click here to see more entries in this series of posts, or here to go in chronological order)

#scooby doo #KRAOSD #gif

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