Zoinks! The Spooky Folklore Behind Scooby Doo

 

Scooby Diving

Zoinks! The Spooky 
Folklore Behind Scooby Doo
By Mark Norman
Chin Beard Books and Oak Tree Books
ISBN 9781837916702

Well this was a pretty fantastic Birthday present for me this year, it has to be said. I originally saw it on BlueSky when one of the people I follow, Raskolnik highlighted it in a post and, it turns out Zoinks! The Spooky Folklore Behind Scooby Doo, pretty much does what it says on the tin, written by a leading UK folklore scholar who I will need to look into at some point in the future, for sure. 

The book is split into seven chapters, bookended by an intro and outro from figures behind the scenes of various of the many variants of the show through the years, not to mention a large appendix of episode guide style lists too. Right away from the start, I was hooked in by the author with Chapter One, Colleges and Cannabis - Scooby Doo Legends In The Real World. 

And this one is a little different from most of the other chapters in the book, in that it investigates the myths created by the show itself and its influence on the world around it... before diving into the other chapters which live up, in no uncertain terms, to the title of the book. This chapter was extremely illuminating for this particular reader, as I haven’t seen many iterations of the show over the years, it has to be said. For example I discovered that, while Scooby-Doo is written... well,  as I just wrote it... in the majority of TV and film properties of the brand, the original first two seasons from the 1960s and 70s correctly write it as Scooby Doo. This is because Doo is actually Scooby’s family name, with Scooby itself being a shortening of his real name, one Scoobert Doo.

Also, although she’s had occasional relationships with men in the series, it would seem that Velma is actually written as a lesbian. And did you know that the term ‘jinkies’ comes from a historical and less blasphemous version of ‘By Jove’? And, furthermore, ‘Zoinks!’ might well have derived from ‘gadzooks’, or rather ‘God’s hooks’. The writer also discusses how much of the folklore of various areas and times was either fuelled by... and in some instances completely created from thin air... various smugglers over the years, in order to keep upstanding citizens, or possibly just some ‘meddling kids’, away from their areas of operation, by scaring people off with the imagery and ‘cosplay’ of said myth. 
 
Chapter Two, Landscape And The Gothic looks at the visual tropes of the ‘state of being gothic’ such as run down crumbling architecture and the appearance of the full moon. Indeed, it even shows how a crescent moon on the show set in one night will suddenly become a full moon for events taking place on the next night, purely to fulfil that gothic vision and tone of the show, flying in the face of continuity. 

Chapter Three, Gh-gh-gh-gh-gh-ghosts is an interesting chapter also, with many stereotypes of ghosts from various literary wells explained, especially as to how they are visually depicted. For instance, in the mid fifteenth to eighteenth century, it was common for the recently deceased to be wrapped in a winding cloth or shroud and be placed in the ground wrapped in that... because only the wealthy could afford such luxury items as a coffin. Hence the depiction of ghosts as being seen as sheet wearing spirits. Reports of a ghost in Hammersmith in 1803 further fuelled this depiction. Also covered in this chapter... which I won’t go into too much here... are the origins of the visual variant of some ghosts being depicted bound in chains and also the variant of an empty, animated suit of armour. As well as such phenomena as mirror ghosts, curses, Crystallomancy, seances, psychics, spirit boards, Knockers in mines and Civil War ghosts.

Chapter Four, Snips and Snails, Witches in Scooby Doo, looks at such things as Tasseomancy and the derivation of the term hag coming from ‘Hægtesse’, which means witch in Middle English. While Chapter Five, Indigenous, Ancient and Non-Western Cultures looks at cryptids such as the abominable snowman, big foot, Japanese dragons, Chinese dragons, Jinn and even at places like Shangri La or communities such as the Mayan and Aztec Civilisations.

Chapter Six, Urban Legends and Folklore Motifs looks at exactly that, with such star performers as Spring Heeled Jack from Victorian times. It also accredits Richard Dorson as the person who first came up with the term ‘urban legend’ in 1968. Very interestingly, it looks at how familiar and reinvented modern legends are, in fact, not modern inventions at all but ones which have echoed down through history over the years. So the myth of alligators living and growing in the sewers saw its predecessor in Roman times, where it was believed that there were octopuses living in the sewers. 

The seventh and final chapter, Thoroughly Modern Scooby gets very up to date with stuff such as the recent rise of the fear of clowns and the, perhaps not so modern, alien abduction phenomenon. Not to mention entering the somewhat dodgy realms of AI. 

And it’s an absolute joy to read, rendered in an entertaining writing style with lots of fun, informative facts. My one criticism would be in reference to the Scooby Snack. While noting that capsules made from psychedelic mushroom psilocybe cubensis are nick-named Scooby Snacks in the real life drug community, after the show, the writer informs us that said treat was not in the show until the 1980s... a relatively modern phenomena. However, this didn’t quite ring true to me and it glitched in my brain... so I went back to my CD recording of the original theme song from 1969 and found the Scooby Snack is definitely mentioned in the lyrics. Perhaps in a more general sense of a plethora of snacks in the show but, nonetheless, it’s right there. 

But it’s a minor criticism and, all in all, I’d have to say I was completely blown away by Zoinks! The Spooky Folklore Behind Scooby Doo and it’s a hard recommend for me. I might have to track down the original show I remember growing up with in the early seventies as repeats on the BBC if I can find a decent Blu Ray at some point. Although I have bad memories of canned laughter plaguing the show too. But, however that pans out, this is a truly excellent book by a very entertaining writer and shouldn’t be missed, if this is the kind of thing you are interested in. 

Happy Halloween, Scooby Doo!

Booby Doo

Happy Halloween, Scooby Doo!
USA 2020 Directed by Maxwell Atoms
Warner Bros DVD Region 1

Warning: Zoinks! There are a few very small spoilers here.

Happy Halloween, Scooby Doo! is the latest Scooby Doo Halloween Special, taking the form of a straight-to-home video format release for this year’s spook season. I’m not sure how much of a bite Halloween has in a world which is living through the first year of the horrors of Covid-19 but I guess people can get more comfort out of made up terrors as a counter to the current, real life ones.

I have to be honest, this film would not have been on my hit list at all if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s also the latest movie featuring Cassandra Peterson as the voice of her famous creation Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark. This was a big selling point for me and was pretty much my only reason for purchasing this. Other guests include Bill Nye playing himself (who is not well known over here in the UK at all, I had to look him up) and Dwight Schultz, who I’m guessing most people will best remember as Murdock in The A Team and Barclay in Star Trek - The Next Generation.

Here, Schultz plays Jonathan Crane, aka The Scarecrow. That’s right, the super villain from Gotham City has escaped from Arkham Asylum and I was fully expecting, after the not bad Scooby Doo & Batman: The Brave And The Bold (reviewed here), a little cameo from the caped crusader himself. Alas, that doesn’t happen but the way the writers use The Scarecrow’s appearance here, as a diversionary tactic to make the audience think that he is the villain of the piece, is kind of an interesting slant. Here, instead of being the main villainous lead, he’s used almost as a Hannibal Lecter character (as he was originally presented). That is to say, he’s the one Velma goes to consult with after she figures out he’s not the one behind a reign of terror caused by monstrous, animated pumpkins which are eating and terrorising people in a small town. And then we get to see a side of Johnathan Crane that I don’t remember seeing before but, I’ll leave it up to the Batman fans out there to figure out if this is a huge deviation from the canon of the DC super villain or not. I thought it was an interesting take on the way this kind of ‘established character’ is used, however.

Elvira is, of course, wonderful... although, it’s fair to say she doesn’t have the best lines in this. I know this is for a child friendly audience but, the character doesn’t seem to be firing on all cylinders in a way although, to be fair, it’s still a pleasure to hear her and she certainly doesn’t do anything to betray the spirit of her famous Elvira personae (I met her at the London Film and Comic Con a couple of decades ago, before it got more successful and crowded... she’s a really nice person).

The story is fine with the usual twists and turns of the regular Scooby Doo’s from yesteryear. The opening credits are nicely done although, I have to say, I was somewhat shocked as to why Shaggy and Scooby were cramming their mouths full of sweets before they’d bothered to take the wrappings off but, after all, it’s a Halloween special I guess. There’s a nice homage to, I don’t know, either Wacky Races or Mad Max 2 and 4 in terms of an overlong ‘pumpkin pursuit’ vehicle chase, which I’ve heard cited as a weakness of this feature but, personally, I didn’t mind it at all. Another referential scene was supposed, it turns out, to be a reference to the first Predator movie but, heck, I assumed it was a Rambo reference so, yeah, I guess my general unfamiliarity with the first Predator film (last time I saw it was the once, on its original cinema release back in 1987) made me miss it.

Another bizarre thing which I felt should have been a reference but, I don’t think it was, was a sound effect I heard used twice which basically matched the same sound effect that you would hear when Steve Austin (as played by Lee Majors) would do anything remotely ‘bionic’ in any episode of The Six Million Dollar Man. However, the use of this sound effect seemed to just be servicing the on screen narrative and, although it would certainly make someone of my generation leap up and take note, it seems to have been used in a genuinely un-ironic manner here. Very strange.

The animation is kind of ropey but it’s not out of place with the early Scooby Doo shows, with the standard Hanna-Barbera ‘xeroxed look’ where the main objects are just moved around almost statically in an uncomplicated manner... although the lighting and colouring is less flat and more interesting in places. Although, the fact that none of the characters had white eyes and, instead, had eyes which blended with their faces, gave me a creepy vibe, for sure. I certainly didn’t love the simplified look to Elivira with the de-emphasising of her boobs but, on the other hand, her final scene with the wig reveal and... all that comes after that... was genuinely bizarre enough that I didn’t feel too cheated by the way the character was handled here. So, yeah, as far as this main, feature cartoon goes, if you’re a Scooby Doo admirer then I’d have to say Happy Halloween, Scooby Doo! is not a bad attempt at a Halloween celebration.

The extras, on the other hand, are strictly for completists only, I guess. When I heard they were three more, 20 minute Scooby Doo Halloween specials from recent years (the 1980s to five years ago), I was quite excited. I kind of stopped watching the TV show a little while ago, in the late 1970s because, frankly, Scrappy Doo and the recorded laughter tracks finally got the better of me. So what these three extras ultimately mean to me is a look into where the show headed after I was done with it. The answer to that seems to be, headed to unwatchable cartoon hell... 

 The first of the three featured, Be Cool, Scooby Doo - Halloween (from 2015), has a nice enough story but the look of the characters is hideous, with everyone looking like they stepped out of a Rugrats cartoon. The second one, the 2002 What’s New Scooby Doo? - A Scooby Doo Halloween, has closer character design to the ones I used to watch in the 1970s (and you can see the whites of their eyes, hoorah) but had a simplistic, childishly simple story and a horrible laughter track. And as for the third one, the 1988 episode of A Pup Named Scooby Doo - Ghost Who’s Coming To Dinner, well... I couldn’t even get through the full opening credits. The whole thing, with all the characters rendered into young, kiddie versions of themselves (even more so than the 2015 episode) was just too much to take and I really felt offended enough by the lows of animated history that these three shows represented, that this third banality was the straw that broke the Great Dane’s back, as far as I’m concerned. So, as far as the DVD goes (why no Blu Ray?), Happy Halloween, Scooby Doo! is certainly worth spending some time with but, don’t look at the bonus cartoons unless you want your childhood memories compromised by the depths to which the show gradually stooped.

Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace

Bronzed Off

Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace
by Kenneth Robeson (Will Murray)
Altus Press 
ISBN: 978-1618271327

Warning: I’m sorry but, in order for me to talk about what I feel is a little “off” with this novel, it means I’m going to have to set loose some spoilers in here...

Hmmm. I’m going to level with you right from the start of this review and tell you straight up that, as far as Will Murray’s modern Doc Savage novels go, this one is so far the most distressing in terms of its departure from the tried and tested formula which has worked for the character since his inception.

Now I’ve always been a big fan of Murray, ever since he started writing new, additional stories in the 1990s which could be slotted in between various of the original 181 stories in The Man Of Bronze's long, initial 16 year career spanning the years from 1933 to 1949. I was sad when those new 1990s novels finished their run because, frankly, they were great Doc Savage stories and perfectly fit in with the originals written by Lester Dent (using the Street and Smith publications “house name” Kenneth Robeson).

As the new “Kenneth Robeson”, Murray started yet another batch of a projected eight further novels a few years ago and I’ve been reading them as soon as I’ve discovered each one has been released. However, the first of this new batch of releases, The Desert Demons, has kind of a crimp in it for me because the extraterrestrial origin of one of the elements of the story kinda knocked one of the guiding principals of the Doc Savage series... that everything could be explained away by science. Speculative science, perhaps, but Dent was very much a gadget man so when he talked about stuff ahead of his time (like microwaves) then he was pretty sure that it would come into being.

In other words... apart from the very last of Dent’s original stories, and I believe there were good reasons for that particular exception at the time... the endings of the Doc Savage stories always had what I would nowadays call a Scooby Doo ending. The real villain would be unmasked, that is to say, discovered and revealed, and the frankly often outrageous plot mechanisms would all be explained away by Doc, quite rationally and convincingly, with the aid of known scientific knowledge. There were no arguments because Dent rarely strayed too far from the realms of the possible or “almost possible” of his time.

And that’s the big problem with this new Doc Savage adventure too.

The plot deals with a house which perpetually vanishes in one plot line, a plot line which follows Doc and his crew, and with a group of murderous mind readers in another story, with a different bunch of characters... the action cross cutting from one set of characters to another in alternate chapters. This in itself is quite rare in the writing style of the Doc Savage novels. Rarely would an entire half of a story be following a group of previously unknown characters and, although the inevitable happens and the two groups of characters come to together as the two stories interpenetrate and mesh for the finale... it’s not really what I believe Lester Dent would have done structurally with this tale. I’m not knocking it in terms of entertaining and riveting writing... this is another great read by Murray... but I do think it’s lacking in terms of following the formula.

So, as I was saying, we have a vanishing house and a bunch of mind reading criminals posing as a bunch of religious workers. The house, it turns out, can go back in time and then return to the present day of the novel (sometime in the mid to late 30s) and that would explain why the murderous crew of mind reading antagonists are after the original Christopher Columbus. And that’s the set up...

Now, I was kinda worried as I was reading this one because, frankly, Murray was spinning the yarn with seemingly no room for the intervention of the kind of scientific invention needed to explain what was really going on here and, as it turns out, I was right to be worried.

The problem with this story, narrative structure aside, is that the house “really can” go back in time and the crew of murderous thugs “really can” read people’s minds... with the aid of their powers of extra sensory perception. Frankly, this sucks.

It’s not what I expect, or want, from a Doc Savage adventure. He was, after all, a “science detective”. Now I know there was some trepidation on the part of the author, or at least the publishers, on how Murray’s portrayal of the Doc Savage character would be perceived in the previous published adventure, the King Kong VS Doc Savage story Skull Island (reviewed here) but, frankly, I had no problem with that one. In the terms of the chronology of the development of the character, the things Doc did in that particular story made a lot of sense. The Miracle Menace, however, unsettled me far more and got me kinda outraged at the liberties which had been taken with the character. But, if that’s what the writer wants to do then that’s his call. I’ll moan about it once, here, and move on.

Asides from those two sticking points, though, being the scientific impossibility and the narrative structure, I have to say that Murray has done it again in delivering to us a full blooded, entertaining as heck, Doc Savage adventure... with Doc and his aides, asides from being in a scientifically confounding situation, all staying true to their characters and Murray’s even laid on some nice surprise guest appearances for people who are familiar with certain of the original stories. Fast paced, vivid action laced with colourful metaphors and pulse pounding suspense which will have you turning the pages faster than your fingers thought they knew how. If you’re a lover of this kind of pulp entertainment, and you don’t mind the odd liberty or two being taken with the tried and true Doc Savage formula, then The Miracle Menace would be a good one to put on your reading list. If you’re an absolute “Doc purist” however, you might be better off abstaining from this particular entry in the series.

The Woman From The Sea (Kaitei Kara Kita Onna)

Watered States

The Woman From The Sea 
(Kaitei Kara Kita Onna)
1959 Japan
Directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara
Seen at a screening at the National Film Theatre

Warning: Slight spoilers swimming around the depths this review...

This is a movie which I had a bit of a strange reaction to when I finally saw it. I went to an NFT screening with JamesDevereaux of The Great Acting Blog and after the film was done he asked me what I thought of it and, in all honesty, I felt little disappointed but ultimately wanting to take another look at it... which is unlikely at the moment since the movie has never been made available on video in a country which would necessitate a subtitled print of a relatively (for Western audiences) obscure film. I said I’d need to sleep on it and, after a few fitful attempts at sleep (my personal life at the moment is a wreck) I have come to the conclusion that it’s a film I’d very much like to rewatch and let grow on me. Which must mean I kinda liked it, right? My feelings will probably be more apparent to me as I finish writing this review.

The film was screening as part of a season of old Nikkatsu studio films at the National Film Theatre and the curator of the event, Jasper Sharp, came out and did a little intro to the movie. Now bearing in mind the NFT staff always give out fact sheets containing an article about the movie you’re about to watch before the screening, I have to say that the gentleman in question was, for the most part, just underlining what I’d already only just read on the programme notes. However, I am grateful to this guy because he mentioned one insightful scrap of information in his opening spiel which, although I would probably have arrived at the same conclusion myself after watching the film, I have to give credit to him for because he pointed it out first and maybe I was looking out for it. That information was a comparison of this film and others like it to... Scooby Doo... and I’ll explain just why I agree with that proposition in a little while.

So the first thing I have to say is that it’s very much of its time, but for an American or British picture, in terms of cutting and editing. Even the shot set ups, although there were a couple of stand outs, were not what I was expecting from a Nikkatsu studio picture from this specific era (Nikkatsu are, of course, Japan’s oldest film studio). Most, not all but most, of the shots are a little less stylised and the space less artificially populated than I would suspect from some of the giants of Nikkatsu... people like Seijun Suzuki and his ilk. Instead, the movie relies on a more charming and comfortable feeling of community injected into the scripting and acting. The acting, by the way, was pretty matter of fact but stronger for it in this one, with special mention going to whoever the lady was who played the main male protagonist’s aunt.

The film took me by surprise because I was expecting something more serious and less lightweight for a picture that essentially contains supernatural elements mostly associated with the horror genre and, indeed, you can certainly see strong elements of that genre in this film but in a more “gee whiz” kind of presentation. Dealing with a beautiful (and HIsako Tsukuba really does have a searing presence in this role) fish-woman who attaches herself to our main protagonist Toshio (played by Tamio Kawachi) early on in the film, I was expecting something a little more haunting and poetic like a watery version of Kaneto Shindô’s excellent film about cat spirits, Kuroneko. Instead, we had a similar idea but with a lady who is a shark and who has been poaching and eating fish, not to mention feasting down on some of the locals as part of her diet too.

The strange bit is that the whole movie has been cross-pollinated with what I can only assume are the Japanese equivalent of the American beach culture movies of the time (you know, stuff like the Frankie Avalon/Annette Funicelli vehicle Beach Blanket Bingo). These were apparently (and again thanks to Jasper Sharp for this) known as “sun tribe” movies and this makes for a rather uneasy, if spectacularly interesting, blend to watch on screen because, on the one hand you have a threat to the community in the form of a hostile, aggressive fish-woman who lures her victims to their death and eats them and it’s all mixed in with the same fish-woman and Toshio getting all teenage romantic and starry eyed. It’s quite a stark contrast at times too, because the villagers who seek to slay this beautiful monster are really quite viscous in their intent and even Toshio’s brother is killed off by the titular monster.

And while all this is going on, the great Japanese composer Masaru Sato’s score is enhancing the shenanigans even further and this is where the Scooby Doo analogy really takes hold because one of the methods the filmmakers use to give the audience the message that this is a wholesome movie about a bunch of kids investigating groovy mysteries is to have Sato deliver a score full of weird jazz and percussion hits and, annoyingly, Hawaiian guitar stingers... all dropped in almost without structure, or at least quite randomly, within the underlying music. And thinking of it, although it’s been many decades since I watched an episode of Scooby Doo, an extremely similar method of scoring was taking place in those early cartoons and this does give the picture a very strong message that it’s all just a heady, teenage romp.

Except it’s not. People are dying in brutal fashion and even Toshio is in line to be the next meal of the young “fish themed maiden”. So it’s all very interesting actually.

At the end of the day... I was fairly entertained by this film and I would certainly pay out for a DVD or Blu Ray of this movie if it was available (I’m looking at you Criterion Eclipse!) An interesting experience and one that people who are into exploring different movies should all strive to seek out... or at least a movie in a similar vein. Time and money well spent.