Tuesday 24 May 2011

05: Decoy For a Dognapper

We open with Scooby wandering happily through the Autumn leaves. He smacks his face on a random statue of a deer, and, whilst reeling from the pain, spots a sexy poodle being walked.

Poodles are automatically sexy to other dogs.
The Poodle then gets Dognapped. I sort of love the way the lady walking the poodle says Dognapped. Like, she doesn't say: "Someone's taken my dog!" Nope, Dognapped.

We then cut to the Gang who are partying back at the beach from A Clue for Scooby Doo. In fact I'm pretty sure it's the same animation. Scooby runs over to them and turns on their radio. Apparently the Dognappers have struck several times before, stealing prize winning animals. The owner of the origional dog stolen offers a Five Hundred Dollar reward. Fred peaks up at this, which I actually find pretty comforting, as it means there is a reason for this adventure. I just want to point out that in this scene it is night and in the scene directly before it, it is day. Now either Scooby ran for a whole day, or that beach is constantly bathed in moonlight, no matter what the time.

Same exact beach. Fred keeps taking them back there.
Upon meeting the original dog owner, who, and I could be wrong because the radio was pretty staticy, has a name something like Buck Nasty, the gang discovers that the reward is no longer on offer. For some reason they decide to help anyway. In the van Fred, seemingly possessed as his mouth stretches improbably wide here-

AGHHH!
-lets the rest of the gang in on the plan. They will use Scooby as a decoy, because he looks a bit like an award winning dog called Champion. Shaggy seems a bit wary of this plan, citing Scooby's drooping brow and disgusting touched-in-the-head expression, but the girls claim they can doll him up.

Good luck.
We then cut to Velma and Daphne washing Scooby, immediately Velma says: What're we doing? It ends up being part of a lame joke, but I really wanted to believe that Velma had somehow not noticed she was washing Scooby until now. Fred fits him with a collar and Shaggy and Scooby head out to play decoy.

Shaggy must have confused award-winning dog-owner with pedophile because he's wearing a trench-coat, possibly no shirt, and gumboots.

See, not even wearing a shirt.
There are some brief dog-walking hi-jinks and Scooby is finally dognapped. It's sort of horrible because he screams: "Ro! Ro! Roo!" as it's happening. Shaggy freaks out and forgets the plan, opting instead to steal some guys Motor Scooter and chase after the dognappers. The gang in hot pursuit.

And finally we get to the ghost. It's a terribly racist spirit of American Indian, Geronimo. He's squealing and slapping his mouth and swinging a hatchet around. It's awful.

I'm surprised no one referred to them as Redskins.
And now we get to see our villains: A Nazi general and some kind of Racist Demon. They open up a crate to reveal Scooby Doo, the Racist Demon berates the Nazi General for his incompetence. This whole scene is just too surreal.

Like, seriously, what?
Meanwhile the gang have forgotten about Scooby and are using their detective skills on the area the Ghost attacked. Velma finds a tomahawk and thinks she can carbon date all of a sudden. Fuck you Velma you don't know how old it is.

Fuck you Velma. Fuck you.
I don't know what's happening in this episode, it's completely unlike any of the others. It's like we sashayed into a parallel universe where Mystery Inc are high tech spies. They've got all these gadgets, it's sort of unsettling. I was hoping for a wacky misadventure with a Knight Mummy or something.

There's a wacky scene involving a Scooby stuck in a barrel on a train-car racing down a train track as the gang try and save him. It's not worth mentioning except for this image.

Wacky!
and this one

Jesus Christ what the fuck?
Also Shaggy and Scooby nearly get hit by a train, but they don't so it's just disapointing.

Scooby does a racist impression of an Indian, and the gang head to a place called Indian Ridge. Indian goddamit. Anyway, they take a train-car back up the track but are intercepted by Geronimo. They escape him and spy an Indian Village in the distance. Shaggy they worries that he will be scalped. No words.

They're after your womenfolk Shaggy!
They enter the Indian Village and are threatened by the Racist Demon, they just sort of stare dumbly at him and then he leaves. Then they are attacked by bats, but only Velma and Shaggy apparently, who do this kind of crazy dance. If I knew how to make GIF's I would. Velma's glasses get stolen by a bat, because that is something bats do. Like seagulls.

Fred and Daphne are inspecting a domed building in the village, somehow this exchange happens:

Fred: This looks like their ceremonial building, where they performed their special rites.
Daphne: A great place for a witchdoctor to live!
Fred: Yeah!

Inside is the Racist Demon, but he disappears pretty quick. Fred decides he's going to check out where it was standing, and in the process gets an awesome deformity.

That is not how heads work.
Daphne falls into a trap and no one is surprised. Shaggy and Scooby find a store room and Shaggy says: looks like those Pueblo Indians new how to eat. So now their specifically the Puebloan? Because that's an actual people. Look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puebloan_peoples why'd they choose them? Weird.

Scooby finds a secret door which leads to the Dognappers room. Daphne has been tied up against a pole, which is kind of creepy. Like, when you think about it, they would never just release her. They'd probably murder her really.

Like, to get her out of the way? I'm not being morbid, just practical.
Anyway, the whole gang eventually meet up and Scooby acts translator between them and the freed dogs. Which I guess means that Scooby is some kind of mutant, and can literally speak English. Disturbed! The dogs lead them on a chase to find the Dognappers, which involves sliding down a ladder on an angle, for, like, literally no reason.

Why not?
They capture the Racist Demon who turns out to be Buck Nasty or whatever his name is, everyone is traumatized by this fact for some reason. Look at Shaggy, he'll never be happy again.

And Fred is just livid!
There's some shoddy explanation for the ghost, and Scooby does whatever the Indian equivilent of blackface is.

Racist. Just racist.

Goodnight

Jackson Bee

2 comments:

  1. My favorite part was actually when Shaggy and Scooby nearly got run over by that train (complete with parts of the Santa Fe logo markings on the locomotive!)
    Another funny part was when they were riding the handcar back to the Indian village, before the Geronimo ghost attacks them, Shaggy's making train noises (just "Whoo-whoo!" sounds, not like in the previous episode's "Chug-chug-chug-chug NNNNNN! NNNNNN!" noises he did), and then Velma says "We can get along without the sound effects, thank you."
    That line is funny because the Hanna-Barbera universe is almost ALWAYS filled with wacky sound effects!

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  2. Man trust Shaggy to make train noises instead of worrying for his life, but I'm pleased that your favorite part was one where Shaggy and Scooby nearly died, mine too.

    I love Hanna Barbera's sound effects, they sell all their old cartoons.

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