I Still Know What You Did Last Summer

Year 13, Day 287 - 10/14/21 - Movie #3,955

BEFORE: I'm halfway through my Shocktober programming after today, but I have to take a 2-day break before proceeding further, I've got some shifts to work at my new job, after about a 2-week hiatus. (Can you even call it a job if you never go there?). It's cool, I've been sort of easing into it, you don't really just want to dive in to this sort of thing.  Plus I had to work at NY Comic-Con and qualify a short film for the Oscars, those were both important and time-consuming things to do. 

Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. carry over from "I Know What You Did Last Summer". 

THE PLOT: The murderous fisherman with a hook is back to stalk the two surviving teens who had left him for dead, as well as cause even more murder and mayhem at a posh island resort.

AFTER: Wow, they didn't waste any time at all coming out with a sequel to the first film, this sequel was released just one year later, in 1998.  That first flick must have done gangbusters business, and even though the plot only allowed for two of the main characters to return, it feels like the filmmakers really knew what elements to bring back and put the focus on - namely, Jennifer Love Hewitt's boobs.  Seriously, though, the first film got some kind of "Best Breasts" award, so they probably went ahead with a sequel and decided to double down on the cleavage factor, assuming that was what was putting asses in the theater seats.

So it's no wonder that in the sequel we get to see her in a bikini, just before getting stuck in a tanning machine - I don't really think the killer locked her in there, I think her character was just so dumb that she locked herself in, prove me wrong - and then later we get to see her in the rain wearing a very soaked white shirt.  The last film ended with a shower scene, which might have been one of her recurring nightmares, and there's at least one scene here with her in a towel that still somehow covers everything.  

Clearly if you're looking for subtlety, you've come to the wrong movie. I had no trouble figuring out that there was something hinky about the free trip to the Bahamas that Julie James' roommate won by answering a radio station trivia question. I've played my share of pub trivia, and world capitals is ALWAYS coming up as a subject, and so I knew her answer was wrong, but scored as correct anyway. The capital of Brazil may have changed over time, but it's FOR SURE not Rio de Janeiro.  It used to be Rio, then it moved to Brasilia. Right?  The only country more complicated is South Africa, which I think had three capitals at last count. (look it up.)

In the context of the film, though, it maybe makes sense that the giveaway hotel rooms in the Bahamas would be available at the start of the "bad weather season" - or does it?  Doesn't it make more sense that the hotel would close down during hurricane season - have I stumbled into another giant NITPICK POINT here?  Or is a tropical hotel more likely to just stay open all during late summer and just let all the guests take their chances?  I'd look this up, but I have a strong feeling that I've already thought about this much more than any screenwriter ever did.  A screenwriter would never let the facts stop him from writing such a "fact" into a movie, as long as that "fact" served his purposes and gave his characters the motivation they needed.  (This is the second movie this week that features a red herring of a character performing voodoo rituals, and I guarantee that in neither case did any screenwriter do any research into voodoo AT ALL.)

From there, it wasn't too hard for me to figure out the identity of the mystery killer here, they practically served it up on a plate, unlike in the first film that made you sort through three different boring stories to get there. (And I get to play this game all over again, but sort of for the first time, with the "Scream" movies next week.). But Kevin Williamson didn't write the screenplay for this sequel, he was too busy working on "Dawson's Creek" and the movies "The Faculty" and "Halloween H20", so the job fell to other writers. Maybe that's why the secrets were so much easier to figure out in this one. 

But what I don't quite understand is why, if the killer has such a beef against Julie, and also Ray, why they go about killing all of those characters' friends and acquaintances, without ever getting around to killing Julie and Ray themselves. It feels so inefficient somehow - I can almost get behind the theory of hating somebody, then killing them. But why drag a bunch of complete strangers into the mix? I guess you can't ask a psychopathic character to act logically, but then why assume that he's going to continue to strike illogically?  Is there some researchable basis for this, like are there serial killers out there who say, "Wow, I really want to kill Brad Johnson who lives down the street from me, but I'm thinking I should start small, work my way up to it, and just savor the journey of getting there?" 

I know the first film did better at the box office, and I'm guessing it's more highly regarded than its sequel, but I think I like the second film just a little better.  They're both non-nutritious films, sort of like the candy corn or circus peanuts of horror movies, but I'll eat just a little of those snacks if available. But you just can't live on a steady diet of non-nutritious foodstuffs, so in a similar fashion, I really can't wait to get back to regular dramas.  As Sesame Street ended up telling Cookie Monster, cookies are a "sometime" food, not an all-the-time food - so just imagine what October does to my brain every year, it fills it with a bunch of nonsense.  Thankfully there's just 10 more to go, plus one documentary. 

Well, at least I now know what film the Broken Lizard comedy team was parodying when they made "Club Dread". There is a third film in the franchise, and it's called "I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer", which is a bit of a weird title, because at some point "last summer" becomes "two summers ago" and then three, and so on, and you can't keep calling it that. No actors from this film carry over to that one, so I'm not including that one in the chain.  There's also a new TV series with the original film's title that's starting up on Amazon, but I'll take a pass on that, too. I've got more than enough horror movies that DO connect to get me through both this year and next year. 

Also starring Brandy Norwood, Mekhi Phifer (last seen in "Shaft" (2000)), Matthew Settle (last seen in "U-571"), Jennifer Esposito (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Muse Watson (also carrying over from "I Know What You Did Last Summer"), Bill Cobbs (last seen in "Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb"), Jeffrey Combs, Benjamin Brown, Ellerine Harding, John Hawkes (last seen in "The Peanut Butter Falcon"), Jack Black (last seen in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny"), Red West (last seen in "Cookie's Fortune"), Michael P. Byrne, Michael Bryan French, Dee Anne Helsel, Johnny Harrington, Mark Boone Junior (last seen in "Life of Crime"), Dan Priest, Sylvia Short.

RATING: 5 out of 10 bullets fired from a gun that probably only holds 6.

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Year 13, Day 286 - 10/13/21 - Movie #3,954

BEFORE: Two roads diverge here, and I'm going to follow one path, with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. both carrying over from "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed".  I'm going to not follow the path with Matthew Lillard carrying over to "Scream", I'm going to get there soon enough, though.

You might think, while I'm knocking off as many horror franchises as I can this year, that it would have made more sense to watch the two "I Know What You Did..." movies first, then link to the first "Scooby-Doo" film via Freddie Prinze Jr., then link to "Scream" with Matthew Lillard - but then you're not looking at the big picture that way.  If I'd put the films in THAT order, then I wouldn't have been able to work in "Scoob!" the animated film, or link from "Salem's Lot" - and that meant I would have had to find a new lead-in to October.  But, with just a little bit of twisting around, and sort of splitting October into two main sections, linked together with just one documentary, I can get to all the films this month that I want to get to, and still leave a valid, workable chain of horror films for 2022.  I can't really see what to do in 2023 yet, it's just too far off - let me get through this year and then see where things stand. 

What I am doing is recording more horror films this month, even if I don't quite know where I'm going to program them, simply because this is the month where every channel is running them.  I do the same thing in February for romance films, and in December for Christmas films.  I've got to burn them to DVD when I can, because this year's crop of movies might not come around again - I feel a bit like a squirrel storing up acorns for winter, only with movies.  Sometimes squirrels might forget where they buried acorns, and that's good for trees - I stash some movies away when they air, and then sometimes I don't have a way to link to them, c'est la vie.  But, the more films I add, the greater the chances that I WILL be able to link to them in the future.  

THE PLOT: Four young friends bound by a tragic accident are reunited when they find themselves being stalked by a hook-wielding maniac in their small seaside town.  

AFTER: There's a new adaptation of this story, starting THIS WEEK, of course, and it's now going to be a series on Amazon Prime.  This is that streaming service mentality, of course, why just remake a movie when you can remake it into a SERIES, and stretch a story out for three or four seasons rather than just a couple of hours.  I guarantee you that series is only going to dole out one or two plot points for every hour you watch, and there's never going to be any kind of resolution, just cliffhangers to bring you back next week or next year. 

OK, so I'm going to get to the "Scream" series next week, and this movie's poster prominently says, "From the creator of Scream" - they're talking about Kevin Williamson, who also created or produced other horror franchise projects, like "The Vampire Diaries", "Halloween H20", and "Dawson's Creek".  I assume that last one is a horror series, right?  I never watched it, so I'm guessing it's about a creek haunted by the ghost of somebody named Dawson, am I in the ballpark? JK. 

Seriously, though, this writer/producer had three or four hit shows on at the same time in the late 1990's/early 2000's, and later on he focuses on shows about serial killers ("The Following") and "Stalker", which I guess was about stalkers, and then "Time After Time", a series based on one of my favorite time-travel movies, in which H.G. Wells time travels to the future to catch Jack the Ripper, who's done the same. Why didn't I watch that? Probably because I love the movie version with Malcolm McDowell, David Warner and Mary Steenburgen so much, I couldn't bear to see anybody mess with it.  

I feel like I probably shouldn't link from a comedy/cartoon-based "horror" series like "Scooby-Doo" to a more serious horror film about a slasher terrorizing a seaside town, I'll get thematic whiplash, right?  But it's all grist for the mill here in Shocktober. I think I actually prefer my horror films to have comedic bits in them, it makes the subject matter easier to take - I just also prefer ones without so much talking dog in them, though. But bottom line here, this slasher film is just as ridiculous as a "Scooby-Doo" movie, just in a different way, it's serious-ridiculous instead of comical-ridiculous, ya know what I mean?  

The set-up is great, don't get me wrong - four partying teens home from college for the summer, and they hit a pedestrian at night on a secluded coastal road. After much discussion over what to do in this situation, ranging from "We should call the police" to "We should just drive away" all the way to "We've got to get rid of this body!" Naturally, do you know how many points you get on your driving record for running somebody over? Umm, neither do I, I was hoping that you might know. Forensics being what they are these days, and car insurance costing what it costs, and reputations being what they are, maybe you can see how one friend (clearly he's, like the ALPHA) might be able to bully the other three into going along with his plan to keep his driving record clear and his insurance payments down, and that's how the group goes from "What do we DO?" to "What's the best way to dispose of a body?"

And so they find themselves down by the pier, with a sudden expert knowledge on tides, currents, and how long it might be before this body washes ashore somewhere.  Jeez, don't these kids know that they have to weight the body down, and also remove the fingertips?  It's almost like they don't teach this stuff in school any more.  But it's also worth noting that it's very important, before you dispose of a body, to make sure that the body in question is, in fact, dead. 

Otherwise, he's JUST going to recover from the accident and the subsequent drowning and circle back next year with a large hook to start taking people out, you get that, right?  Even worse, he (or somebody) starts sending notes to the teens when they come home from college - the notes read "I Know What You Did Last Summer".  (Leading me to ask the obvious question, namely is there a porn parody of this film, called "I Know Who You Did Last Summer"?  I'm guessing there probably is...).  But then the questions start - how is this guy still alive?  Why did he send notes to the teens, instead of turning them in to the cops?  And how is his penmanship so darn good, even with a hook for a hand?  

The rogue fisherman with the hook kills one of the kids who was there that night, but that kid's not even in the group!  He just sort of, you know, drove by.  So this killer has a lot to learn about social cliques, and how they function.  You just killed somebody on the fringes of the social circle, you idiot!  The main members of the group don't even care!  But then the killer goes after Barry, and things get serious.  Jesus, is he going to target Helen next?  All the cool kids this semester are getting targeted by psychos, my god, get with the program already!  

Meanwhile, there's some attempt to find the identity of the killer (aka the man that got hit by the car, we assume) before he kills everyone in town - he's ambitious, but he seems to lack focus.  If he hates the four kids who were in the car, why not just kill them outright, instead of targeting their frenemies and sisters and such?  Julie learns that a local man named David Egan died that summer, and so she naturally assumes that's the name of the man they hit with the car, only things don't seem to be lining up, David allegedly committed suicide, so it has to be somebody else.  This was an unnecessary fake-out, and the path from David to the real killer seemed so contrived, that basically I no longer even cared.  I think I fell asleep for a bit at this point in the movie, because we all came here for slashy-slashy, not talky-talky, right?  

Then there's the issue of that boat's name - so very, very contrived here, leading Julie to think that Ray might be the killer, I mean, come ON, that's just stupid.  How can Ray be the slasher, when he was IN the car the night that guy got hit?  It just makes no sense that way - Julie is an idiot or she's seeing connections in places where there aren't any.  Right?  Ray doesn't have the stones to be a killer, anyway, it's just another fake-out / time waster.  Like I said, by the time they got to the truth about the slasher, I honestly no longer cared. The job of the screenwriter is to MAKE me care about this, so that's a fail. 

But that's the thing about great set-ups, sometimes - the rest of the story here maybe just can't possibly match the set-up?  The movie plot plays out much differently than the one in the book this was based on, but I'll allow for a few changes, to keep the book readers interested in the movie version.  But I also have the feeling that there were much better ways to do everything here, there were better ways to learn the identity of the man hit by the car, there were better ways for him to let the four teens know that he knew who they were, there were better ways for that man to exact his revenge. So it's like this whole thing is just wonky across the board, you have to figure there's no universe in which the events following a car crash would play out like this.

Maybe there's just a problem with the notion that four people can just "forget what happened" that fateful night.  You can't just try to forget something, it's like trying to NOT think about a white elephant, that then becomes, over time, about the only thing that you CAN think about.  Sure, let's just forget about that accident and maybe murder that we all participated in.  Yeah, that proposition is just doomed to fail.  

Also starring Jennifer Love Hewitt (last seen in "Can't Hardly Wait"), Ryan Phillippe (last seen in "The Lincoln Lawyer"), Bridgette Wilson-Sampras (last seen in "Higher Learning"), Anne Heche (last seen in "The Last Word"), Muse Watson (last seen in "Assassins"), Johnny Galecki (last seen in "Happy Endings"), Stuart Greer (last seen in "The Gift" (2000)), J. Don Ferguson (last seen in "Something to Talk About"), Deborah Hobart (ditto), Mary McMillan, Rasool J'Han, Dan Albright, with a cameo from Patti D'Arbanville (last seen in "Fathers' Day").

RATING: 4 out of 10 beauty pageant contestants

Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed

Year 13, Day 285 - 10/12/21 - Movie #3,953

BEFORE: Probably the best thing about watching these old Scooby-Doo films is clearing them off the list, knowing that I'll never have to watch them again, unless I want to, but then, why would I want that?  At least this way they serve some kind of function, they get me to the next thing, which is slasher movies - not that slasher movies are any less junky for my brain, but those films at minimum follow a set of basic rules, they exist in a lawful universe where things happen for a reason, as opposed to being loud, flashy, colorful films where people battle ghosts and tend to fall down a lot, or get covered in goo or protoplasm or something just to get a laugh out of small children. And there are all sorts of topical references from the early 2000's included just to make kids somehow think these films are "cool", which they're not. God help me. 

Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr. and several others carry over from "Scooby-Doo".

THE PLOT: The Mystery Inc. gang must save Coolsville from an attack of their past monsters brought to life by an evil masked figure trying to take down the gang.

AFTER: Oh, this was just dreadful and pitiful, let us never again speak of this movie, not until it's time for the year-end round-up analysis.  Clearly this film is "cool" because it's set in the town of Coolsville. Good lord, who came up with that?  Such pandering should be beneath everyone - and then to drive the point home, the haunted (?) museum is called the Coolsonian, in case you missed the fact that these are very "cool" people who live in a "cool" town and do very "cool" things. Jeezus, what year is this, it's like those terrible beach movies with Frankie and Annette and the filmmakers were a bunch of old geezers who threw in references to bikers and doing the frug and this crazy new music called rock and roll in feeble attempts to connect with the youth culture.  Remember "Beach Blanket Bingo"?  Yeah, I'm sure teens on the beach brought their bingo cards.  Remember the "Batusi"? Yeah, sure, Batman's got his own dance, whatever, you old farts. 

In this one (like it matters...) some old enemy of Mystery Inc. has invented a machine that takes the costumes of their old foes, like the Black Knight Ghost and the 10,000 Volt Ghost and the Pterodactyl Ghost, and somehow turns them into REAL monsters.  Right, because we have that technology to take a set of clothing and make it into a living creature, WTF?  So now the group that spent years debunking and unmasking ghosts and zombies and tar monsters has to contend with the fact that those things are REAL now.  Yeah, because some villain figured out how to science, that really sucks.  

I think the problem is that people don't demand more from films aimed at kids - there was an opportunity here to get some real science on the table, nowadays it's all about STEM education, whatever that is, but I know some parents dig it.  We've already got a girl in bulky sweaters and sensible shoes who loves science, why not take things a step further and incorporate some real science here?  You could probably win a Peabody Award or something. Nope, they just fall back on, "Wait, if we reverse the polarity and run a negative current through the device, that will solve everything." Nobody realizes that if you fall back on this too many times, you create a generation of kids who get to their high-school science class and want to reverse the polarity and run a negative current through their frogs on dissection day. Those little monsters....

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  The film starts with the opening of that costume exhibit at the Cool-sonian, and all the Scooby Gang's fans have come out to celebrate.  Fred's fans are a bunch of love-struck girls, but Daphne's fans are just two fat guys with tattoos of her.  Well, I guess people are just as faithful as their options, right?  Shaggy's fans are a bunch of total stoners, and Scooby's fans are...dogs. Velma's fans are the plus-sized girls in glasses and sensible shoes who just "LOVE" her, so she's getting some leg tonight for sure.  There you go, Velmster, get some. 

Velma's conflicted, though, when she meets the geeky (but also maybe creepy?) museum director, who's a big fan of hers, but she's very nervous about dating a man - gee, I can't imagine why - and doesn't want to go on a date with him, claiming that "mystery is her mistress". Right, it's not the screaming girls out in the crowd throwing themselves at her, it's "mystery". Whatever, girl, if that's your cover story then let's run with that. 

There's no shortage of suspects for the main villain here, in fact there's a whole bar full of them at the Faux Ghost, unmasked villains who get together and drink and talk about how much they hate Mystery Inc. There's Old Man Wickles, and Old Man Smithson and Old Man Magnus and I'm really noticing a pattern here about old frustrated caretakers who dress up as phantoms to scare people off of property after they don't connect romantically with the female property owners...maybe it's just me. 

But hey, ghosts are real now, so that's something, and Mystery Inc. needs a plan to sneak into the old mining town (which is somehow part of a modern city) and reverse the polarity and then unmask somebody.  Once again, there are very important flashbacks that tell us everything we need to know - one flashback to a frisbee game the Scooby Gang once played, and the other tells the backstory of one of their early villains.  Gee, I wonder if this information will be important later on.  Now I think I've cracked the code on James Gunn screenplays, because even in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" everything you needed to know was in the flashback. I'm thinking about "The Suicide Squad" now, but the only flashback I recall was the brief one with Ratcatcher and her father, and it had nothing to do with the identity of the big bad villain - although the flashback with the astronauts was a key piece of the puzzle.  I see you, Mr. Gunn, and I love your work, but you've got a "tell". 

There's a bit where Scooby-Doo drinks a potion from a scientist's refrigerator, and turns into a monster, and this leads to both him and Shaggy drinking more random substances, in search of an antidote, and they turn into other wacky things.  First off, why would SHAGGY drink the "antidote" for the thing that SCOOBY drank, and NITPICK POINT, this is a terrible message to send out to the kids.  If you drink something bad, boys and girls, just keep drinking more random things until you find something that makes you better, changes your gender or maybe kills you.

Shaggy and Scooby set out in this film to be more productive members of the team, and so they work on getting their shit together, so to speak. Well, it's about time. They end up being very helpful against the Cotton Candy Glob, putting their strengths to work - yeah, they eat a monster. Which is a bit gross, but it is an innovative way to solve a monster problem. And I can't think of a better metaphor for this film than cotton candy - it's light, airy, colorful and provides no nutritional value whatsoever. Plus it's bad for you if that's all you eat. Which is why I made this part of a balanced diet of movie consumption, and we're back on more serious matters tomorrow (are we really, though?)

Also starring Matthew Lillard, Linda Cardellini (both also carrying over from "Scooby-Doo"), Seth Green (last seen in "Shazam!"), Peter Boyle (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Tim Blake Nelson (last seen in "The Jesus Rolls"), Alicia Silverstone (last seen in "The Art of Getting By"), Karin Konoval (last seen in "War for the Planet of the Apes"), Calum Worthy (last seen in "The Big Year"), Stephen E. Miller, Zahf Paroo (last seen in "Seventh Son"), Christopher R. Sumpton, Kevin Durand (last seen in "Smokin' Aces"), C. Ernst Harth (last seen in "Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball"), Ryan Vrba, Emily Tennant, Cascy Beddow, Laurne Kennedy

with the voices of Neil Fanning, J.P. Manoux (both also carrying over from "Scooby-Doo"), Dee Bradley Baker (last heard in "The Suicide Squad"), Bob Papenbrook, Michael Sorich, Terrence Stone, Wally Wingert (last heard in "Chappaquiddick") and cameos from Pat O'Brien, Ruben Studdard, Kester Moorhouse and Big Brovaz.

RATING: 3 out of 10 pickled eggs at the bar

Scooby-Doo

Year 13, Day 284 - 10/11/21 - Movie #3,952

BEFORE: OK, I know I set up this chain months ago, but now I find that I have to bend my own rules a bit in order to continue. Frank Welker carries over from "Scoob!" and Frank Welker's been a part of the Scooby-Dooniverse since the very beginning, he's the long-time voice of Fred "I'm Too Sexy for my Ascot" Jones, like, since the original series run began in 1969. Over 50 years later, he's still associated with the franchise, only he performed the voice of Scooby-Doo the DOG in "Scoob!" last year. So naturally it was easy for me to assume that he did the voice of Scooby in the 2002 live-action version. Umm, nope. He's credited, along with Jess Harnell, as doing the voice of "Creatures". Now, normally this would be against my rules - for the sake of expediency, I don't count voice actors as part of a cast unless they're credited with specific, ideally named, characters - otherwise I'd be here all night listing "additional voices" actors and people who do ADRs, aka the "loop group". Hey, you've got to have a cut-off somewhere, right?

But, if I make the cut-off in my usual place, then the chain is broken. So we can't have that, can we? I'm knocking off a bunch of long-avoided horror franchises this year, and my first preference is to keep all the films from the same franchise together, and in the "right" order, instead of jumping around between the franchises all willy-nilly. My goal is to watch films and present them to you in what I deem to the be right way, and I'm not making a connection where there is none, Frank Welker's voice is DEFINITELY in this film, so I'm going to say that the chain remains a chain, and is unbroken.

There is a precendent here, also with animated films - last year it suited my purposes, and my OCD to watch "Tarzan 2: The Legend Begins", Disney's prequel with Tarzan as a baby, before watching "Tarzan & Jane", which is set after Disney's first "Tarzan" film.  Young Tarzan, then old Tarzan, makes sense, right?  But the only voice actor who carried over between the two was... well, look at that, it was Frank Welker. Wikipedia says he provided the voices of two gorillas in "Tarzan & Jane", Nuru and Sheeta, but the IMDB didn't list him at all for that film.  For "Tarzan 2", Welker was only listed as providing "animal vocal effects", namely tiger growls, but because I really wanted to watch those two films back-to-back, with nothing in-between, that had to suit my purposes.  If you've got a problem with that, go on and prove that Frank Welker WASN'T the voice of two gorillas in "Tarzan & Jane". Ah, not so easy, is it?  

THE PLOT: After an acrimonious break-up, the Mystery Inc. gang are individually brought to an island resort to investigate strange goings-on.

AFTER: Last year's film "Scoob!" got really into some lessons about friendship, and the bond between Shaggy and Scooby got tested after Scooby started hanging out with Blue Falcon and Dynomutt. Here the WHOLE GANG goes on a break after taking down the Luna Ghost, who was haunting the factory that makes Pamela Anderson action figures. Though their plan went a bit awry, and there were a few accidents, nobody got hurt and they were able to prove it was the creepy janitor all along, the one who was leering after the Baywatch babe and then tried to ruin her financially after she wouldn't go out with him.  

We're kind of coming in here midway into the story of Mystery Inc. - these crazy kids have been together for a few years, and they've solved many cases together, sure, but they're getting on each other's nerves. Fred always takes the credit for solving the case, forgets to mention the other members of the team to reporters, and when the team splits up to check out the spooky houses, he always pairs up with Daphne (gee, I wonder why). Velma's upset, because she's smart and confident and there's no reason why she can't also make out in those spooky dark halls with Daphne. No, FRED, geez, did I say Daphne, that's ridiculous, why would Velma want to make out with Daphne? Clearly, she's got the hots for Fred. But maybe also Daphne...?

Daphne's upset because she always plays the hostage role, getting kidnapped by the bad guy pretending to be a ghost or pirate, and that means she always gets tied up, or hypnotized and then God knows what happens to her when she's separated from the rest of the group, right?  I think she also protests too much, maybe she kind of digs getting tied up and tossed around?  Just a thought. And Shaggy and Scooby are also tired of chasing ghosts around through spooky houses, remember how they're always acting scared? Why do these two hang out with paranormal investigators if they're so easily scared, and they'd rather just be eating themselves sick somewhere? You know what, maybe it is time for this group to take a break, so they can all figure out just what they want out of life.

(If what you want out of life is to really see these characters gettin' it on, there IS a porn parody of "Scooby-Doo" that's readily available on the internet. You really have to search hard for it, because it's called "Scooby-Doo: A XXX Parody" - which is probably exactly what you'd type into a search engine if you happened to be wondering if such a thing exists.  It does. And they do it, all of them, in a spooky house. Fred & Daphne. Shaggy & Velma. Daphne & Velma. And all four of them together.  And there's NO dog in the movie, because that would be gross. Yes, there's no Scooby-Doo character in "Scooby-Doo: A XXX Parody" and somehow that's both very strange and also a giant relief at the same time. Just be aware that after you watch that, you will be unable to un-watch that. Hey, there's a porn parody out there of every show, from "A-Team" to "X-Files". Yep, even "Seinfeld". Yep, even "The Brady Bunch". Yep, "Taxi", "I Love Lucy" and "Golden Girls".)

But let's put all that aside for a bit. Our heroes try to fill their time off with various pursuits, Shaggy and Scooby take the van to the beach and just live out of it, grilling up food and making weird sandwich combinations. I can get behind that - at least the van won't smell like weed and sex for a while. (Or will it?). There are plenty of "in-jokes" here about Shaggy being a stoner, like he falls for a girl named "Mary Jane" and he says that's, like, his "favorite name". Sure it is. 

There's a crazy billionaire who runs a tropical, horror-themed resort (is that a thing?) for twenty-somethings, he seeks out all five members of Mystery Inc. and lures them back into the paranormal investigation racket by offering them all money, free airfare, and for Shaggy and Scooby, access to the "all-you-can-eat" buffet. I can get behind that - like, dude, you had me at "buffet" too. Scooby is smuggled aboard a plane disguised as somebody's ugly, dog-faced grandmother, and then once they hit the resort, the team members split up in a competition over who can solve the mystery of why many young people come to the island all happy and energetic and leave all sullen and emotionless. I don't know, maybe their vacation just sucked and was a waste of money, and now they're depressed and poor?

Daphne checks out a voodoo priest who doesn't know he needs to use a LIVE chicken, Velma checks out a ritual with a pretend cult leader and some Mexican wrestlers, and Fred goes to the Sugar Ray concert. Yeah, that's helpful. Meanwhile, Shaggy goes for a ride with Mary Jane (if you know what I mean) and Scooby learns she may not be what she pretends to be. But before long each member's quest takes them to the big spooky mansion up on the hill, so before you know it, the gang's back together investigating all the secret passages, moving walls and floors, and animatronic beasties trying to kill them. Since this all takes place in a giant spooky theme park, it's hard to know where the amusement park ride stops and the real spooky stuff starts.

HOWEVER, underneath the fake cult and the plastic monsters, there seems to be a REAL cult and ACTUAL monsters, of a sort, anyway. You know, for a group of kids who made their bones de-bunking hauntings and paranormal stuff, they sure seem to encounter a lot of real spooky stuff that just can't be explained by holographic projections and luminous paint, things floating on wires and hallucinogens in the air or foreign substances in the drinks. There are genuine "creatures" here that are tormenting the park, only nobody really notices because of all the clearly fake ones, until their best friend gets eaten by a creature. This is a bit like "Jurassic Park", maybe, because perhaps those first few people who visited J.P. naturally assumed it was all special effects and fake dinosaurs, but that assumption only lasts until a raptor bites your arm off.  

If you've heard anything at all about this movie over the years, then you probably already know the ending, and who the villain behind the scenes is. It's a horrible cop-out, but they made it worse by telegraphing the reveal with an unwarranted flashback scene halfway through the movie. Why else would that even BE there, it doesn't prove any point otherwise. Very shoddy foreshadowing, for sure. And who wrote this screenplay?  Why, James Gunn, the guy who brought you "Guardians of the Galaxy" and also revived "The Suicide Squad". He was slumming on this one, but hey, it was early in his career, I guess when you're just starting out as a screenwriter you have to take what you can get.  

There's a whole demonic possession-meets-body-swapping bit here, as the souls of the Mystery Inc. characters try to get back into their bodies, though, they get a bit scrambled, and Fred's soul ends up in Daphne's body, Velma ends up in Shaggy's body, Shaggy's over THERE, it's a whole thing. I don't usually go for the whole "Freaky Friday" thing, I've avoided those films almost completely, except for the riffs on "Big" like "13 Going on 30". But now HBO is running "Freaky", which puts a whole horror spin on the body-swapping concept, I might give that one a go in the future. Here, in "Scooby-Doo", they don't really keep it classy - like when Fred's soul is inside a woman's body, he doesn't say, "Hey, this is great, maybe I can get some insight on women from their perspective..."  Nope, it's straight to, "Hey I can touch boobies!" and "I can see Daphne naked!"  Wow, man, that's so 2002 and it's no longer cool. Velma, meanwhile, DID want to get into Daphne's clothes, but not like this.  It's OK to say this because she's clearly LGBTQ.

I managed to successfully avoid this film for almost 20 years - it came out in 2002 and I thought it looked stupid.  Which it is, it's very stupid, it's really just a live-action cartoon, which isn't as much of a contradiction as it sounds. But now, this year, watching it gives me linking opportunities - Sarah Michelle Gellar's in at least one other notable horror franchise, and Matthew Lillard was also in the first "Scream" film. And I'm going to get to the "Scream" films this month, but a little later, like, next week, man. It turns out there wasn't one clear path through all the horror films I wanted to get to this time around, so I had to get a bit creative with the linking, but in the end, I think I'm satisfied with the result, and I hope you will be too.

Also starring Freddie Prinze Jr. (last heard in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"), Sarah Michelle Gellar (last heard in "Happily N'Ever After"), Matthew Lillard (last seen in "The Perfect Score"), Linda Cardellini (last seen in "Hunter Killer"), Rowan Atkinson (last seen in "Johnny English Strikes Again"), Isla Fisher (last seen in "Life of Crime"), Miguel A. Nuñez Jr., Sam Greco, Charlie Cousins, Steven Grives, Holly Brisley, Kristian Schmid, Nicholas Hope, Michala Banas, with the voices of Neil Fanning, Scott Innes, J.P. Manoux (last seen in "The Island"), Jess Harnell (last heard in "The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature") and cameos from Pamela Anderson (last seen in "Baywatch"), Mark McGrath (last seen in "Fathers' Day") and the band Sugar Ray. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 burps and farts (keepin' it classy!)

Scoob!

Year 13, Day 283 - 10/10/21 - Movie #3,951

BEFORE: OK, I'm back from New York Comic-Con - it's not like I really went anywhere, not out of town, just across town. And I only worked the set-up, Friday afternoon/evening, and all day Saturday - but these days, that's enough to wear me out, so it makes sense that I've cut back.  In my younger days, I would have worked all four days, or traveled to San Diego a day in advance of set-up, and stayed an extra day to avoid the red-eye flight, which was essentially a week out of my life, and involved round-the-clock work (and some fun, when you factored in a couple parties and a few beer floats).  Yeah, when I was a younger man, I'd party out in San Diego and come back to New York, and it would take me a few days to recover.  

This was something of a "rebuilding year" for the convention, ticket sales were capped, the crowds were sparser than usual, at least on Friday, and everybody in attendance had to go through an extra vaccination check before they could pick up their badges.  Masks had to be worn - not just superhero or costume masks, the surgical ones too, and people still needed to follow the social distancing guidelines - no handshakes, no high-fives, and well, nothing more intimate than that either. (Not at the convention, anyway, what you do back at your hotel room with your cosplay gear on is still up to you...)

The NY Comic-Con used to be held in February, which never made any sense to me, but then, I'm not in charge of scheduling at the Javits Center.  Those first few years they had to find a place for it between the Auto Show, the Home Show, and other annual events, and it used to take up only like a third of the building, but it's grown so much that now it takes over the whole convention center, and they kept adding new wings and finding new spaces to handle the overflow. This year, there just weren't as many people, not as many booths, but that led to spaces on the main floor that just had tables and chairs for people to sit down and eat, also there were more food stands than usual, booths that sold BEER even, and one big booth that just sold fudge. Really? Fudge at a comic-con? Any other year that wouldn't make any sense, who wants to get chocolate all over their hands and then touch comic books and other collectibles? Madness.

Despite the semi-lack of crowds, our booth did more sales than ever, we had a really good year.  It doesn't make sense unless you figure that the people who DID show up were more serious about collecting animation art, and since last year's event didn't happen, they were twice as eager to buy some.  Umm, OK, we're happy to give them what they want and take their money - we had to pay for the booth in June, after all, at a time when nobody was really sure if the event would take place, or in what form.  Anyway, it's the last day today but I'm relaxing at home, my work is done so I can get back to movies and scheduling shifts at my other job.  

There's always a fair amount of Scooby-Doo cosplay going on, these characters have been around since the late 1960's and are now part of the collective consciousness.  I didn't see any GREAT Mystery Inc. costuming this year, but you can always just look out at the crowd and pick out a Velma or a Shaggy, the costuming is easy enough if you just have an orange sweater and a purple skirt handy, or a baggy green shirt and brown pants for your "shaggy" hipster friend.  

The voice of Jason Isaacs carries over from "The Cure for Wellness".  

THE PLOT: Scooby and the gang face their most challenging mystery ever: a plot to unleash the ghost dog Cerberus upon the world.  As they race to stop this dogpocalypse, the gang discovers that Scooby has an epic destiny greater than anyone imagined.  

AFTER: This 2020 film took the characters back to the beginning, for an origin story that nobody really needed - though, really, there have been about 87 animated movies with the Mystery Inc. characters over the years, and maybe just nobody thought to do an origin before?  It's the story that nobody really needed, but I guess it's nice to have - or maybe they have done one, and this counts as a reboot for the younger viewers, I don't know.  Seriously, if I sat down to watch all the Scooby-Doo movies that would be my entire month of October, and you know they probably do all link together, but I don't have that kind of time, or the interest.  So, I'm just limiting myself this year to the 2020 CGI film, and the two live-action movies that came out in the early 2000's.  This will make sense in a few days, I promise - I get the feeling that I maybe say that a lot. 

Scooby-Doo was once a stray puppy, and lonely loner Shaggy (aka Norville Rogers, don't ask me how I know that...) was a lonely kid who kept to himself and listened to songs about being lonely, until this stray Great Dane puppy came into his life. As with all rescue animals, there's debate over who rescued who - great message for the kids here, adopt, don't shop, only this could have been even stronger if Shaggy could have gone to an animal shelter and found Scooby there.  In this version, Scooby the dog is named after the Scooby snacks, but this seems a bit like putting the cart before the horse, right?  We've all heard the legend about how the dog is named after Frank Sinatra singing "Doo-be-doo-be-do" in "Strangers in the Night", but now this seems to be something of an urban legend.  Wikipedia points out that "skooby-doo" was already in use in Cockney rhyming slang for "clue", which makes some sense, but also the fictional band The Archies had a single in 1968 titled "Feelin' So Good (S.K.O.O.B.Y.-D.O.O.) and considering the CBS connection to "The Archie Show", this seems maybe just as legit as the Frank Sinatra reference.  Kids today don't have any clue who Sinatra was, so maybe the new name motivation is acceptable.  

Then they've just got to get the gang all together - so a couple bullies steal Shaggy's Halloween candy and throw it inside a notoriously "haunted" neighborhood house, and Fred, Daphne and Velma appear on the scene to help get the candy back. Because, you know, it's not really a holiday where you can just go get MORE candy from other houses, or just go to the store and BUY the exact candy that you want, instead of a bunch of random candy that you DON'T want given out for free.  (Seriously, kids, it's a dumb process, wouldn't you rather buy a small amount of your FAVORITE candy and be very happy, rather than have to sift through a giant pile of lame-ass licorice, lollipops and candy corn just to maybe find a Snickers bar or some Sour Patch Kids?  I think it's time to retire the whole trick-or-treating concept.). 

The four kids and the dog bond as a group, investigate the haunted house, recover the candy, and discover that the home-owners been running a "my house is haunted" scam, though I'm not really sure how that benefits him.  On the old TV show, there was always somebody haunting the farm or house or other property, and it was USUALLY the person who would benefit from getting the property or the land, even as a kid I realized there was a pattern, it became like "CSI" or "Law & Order" for kids, just follow the money and after a few shows, you could pretty accurately predict who was dressing up like a ghost pirate or evil clown to try to chase the rightful owner off the property.  And they would have gotten away with it, if not for these meddling kids...

But who haunts their OWN property?  What is there to gain?  This makes no sense, did the writers here not watch the old Scooby-Doo show and forget to follow the pattern?  Maybe he just wanted to keep to himself, and he didn't want anybody else to ever visit him, so he made his house seem haunted?  Yeah, there's an extra bit of motivation thrown in at the last second, but this all felt VERY forced as a story-point, there had to be a better way to get the five main characters together as a unit.  Still, this was probably the best part of the movie, because after this, it just descended into greater nonsense.  

The story fast-forwards into the present, where these kids are now young adults, traveling around in their van from one mystery to the next, as we're used to seeing them.  Since this is a kids' movie, there's not much said about the potential romantic pairing of Fred and Daphne, or Shaggy and Velma, or even Daphne and Velma (come on, you know it's possible...).  The only two love stories here seem to be between Shaggy and Scooby, and also Fred and his van.  It's the classic comic-book conundrum, like most superheroes are single and asexual, because kids are reading - plus most comic-book writers are single nerds who don't know how to write married characters, so Spider-Man can have girlfriends but not ever marry Mary Jane (or if he does, which he did, the next writer's only going to undo it...) and Superman dated Lois for like 50 years before tying the knot, then that marriage got undone by the next writer, then another re-boot and he's married again, but come on, how long can it last?  

Sorry, where were we?  Oh, right, Scooby-Doo.  The plot of this movie seems to pieced together based on what other characters from the Scooby-Doo-niverse the writers wanted to use, which means The Blue Falcon and Dynomutt, Dirk Dastardly and Muttley, and also Captain Caveman.  Somehow the story had to incorporate all of those characters, who last all got together in the Laff-a-Lympics cartoon back in the 1970's (look it up) which was ridiculous, but I think still managed to make more sense than "Scoob!" does.  Here goes:

Dirk Dastardly is trying to gather three giant skulls, which belong to the giant mythical three-headed dog, Cerberus (I don't know how a mythical/fictional creature left three REAL skulls behind, but whatever) and the Blue Falcon and Dynomutt are trying to stop him.  (This Blue Falcon is the slacker son of the original Blue Falcon, which is interesting but problematic, how can he be both a slacker AND a superhero at the same time?  A real slacker wouldn't even bother...). Blue Falcon and Dynomutt are aided by Dee Dee Sykes, a female and ethnically diverse pilot character who seems to be here mainly because she's ethnically diverse. (Prove me wrong.) Scooby is important because he's the last living decendant of Alexander the Great's dog, Peritas - which seems to me like it should be pronounced "Perr-eh-tass", as if it rhymes with "Veritas", but everybody here says it WRONG, like "Purr-EE-tas".  I'm also not sure how a dog from 2,500 years ago can have thousands of descendants, but only ONE is still alive, like literally his DNA should be in nearly every dog by now.  But whatever.

The Mystery Inc. team is split up, Shaggy and Scooby work with the Blue Falcon, Dynomutt and their ethnically diverse pilot friend, while Fred, Daphne and Velma take the Mystery Machine to track Dirk Dastardly to his hide-out - the method that Velma uses to find this location is very questionable, it just comes down to "Hey, I used science!" without any further details, but there's a lot of that going around here.  Like "Hey, I need to take over the radio control, I just need to find the right frequency!" or "I need to stop this beam, I'll just reverse the polarity!" because why let any kids know how real science works?  It's all a bit like letting teen Wesley Crusher fire the right beam from the Enterprise to win the battle by pressing a random button on the console.  

Anyway, the team gets back together on a hidden dinosaur island located under Antarctica or something, where they have to fight Captain Caveman, who's protecting the third skull.  Another box checked, they used all the licensed characters that we wanted to... But Dastardly deceives them all, pulls one of those "false face" disguise thingies and gets all the skulls together.  This somehow opens a gate to the Greek underworld (not the Christian one), turns the ancient Greek ruins back into new-looking ones, and gives Dastardly access to Alexander the Great's treasure, also his dog, Muttley, who's been stuck in the Underworld for months with nothing to eat. Yeah, it's a lot to take in.  

But still, it feels like the writers couldn't commit to any solid ideas here - Dastardly wants the gold, no, wait, he just wants his dog back. And the gold.  Shaggy and Scooby want to work with their idols, the Blue Falcon and Dynomutt. Only Shaggy then doesn't want this, because he feels inadequate and like he's losing his only friend. Then he's back on board and they work things out.  Jesus, stop with all the back-tracking already, pick a storyline and stick with it!  The team needs to separate, the team needs to get back together.  One member of the team needs to make a sacrifice, which says something about friendship - only there's a secret way around the prophecy, so everything's OK!  Well, I guess that sacrifice didn't really mean anything, then, did it?  This is what you get when you try to write a franchise movie via committee, I suppose.

Some of the voice casting here makes perfect sense - Zac Efron as Fred, Mark Wahlberg as the Blue Falcon, and Will Forte as Shaggy is totally great.  No-brainers, but nearly any actress could have voiced Daphne, there was nothing distinctive about who they hired there, so they clearly just went for the biggest name they could get (Anna Kendrick, Karen Gillan and Bryce Dallas Howard were considered.). Cameos are another story, I'll allow Tracy Morgan as Captain Caveman, and Kevin Heffernan voices a cop that looks just like his character from "Super Troopers", that tracks.  But Ken Jeong as Dynomutt?  I'm scratching my head there, but honestly I don't remember what the original character sounded like.  So, whatever. 

The franchise doesn't really know what to do with Velma, not at all.  She's been portrayed and voiced over the years by many different actresses, including Mindy Cohn, Kate Micucci, Linda Cardellini and Gina Rodriguez in this one - maybe there's a similarity to those voices (like a grown-up Marcie from "Peanuts", if you follow me) but there's no through-line to the character.  She's Hispanic, she's Asian, she's plus-sized, what can we do to her to be P.C. or portray her as ethnically diverse?  But "Velma Dinkley" doesn't sound like an Asian or Hispanic name, somebody's just trying to cover for the fact that in the 1970's the show's main characters were all Caucasian, but allowed guest stars of color, like the Harlem Globetrotters.  And all of the running gags with Velma, about her being brainy and nearsighted, they're just not funny any more, they all just make the brainy girls in the audience feel "less than".  At least she uses science quite a lot in "Scoob!", but too bad it's all junk science that could have been improved with just a little bit of research by the writers.  I'm going to put a pin in this topic for now, but in the next two days I'll probably have more to say on this - but at least if they'd made her a lesbian here it would have been another step in the right P.C. direction. 

Also starring the voices of Frank Welker (last heard in "Aladdin" (2019)), Will Forte (last seen in "Life of Crime"), Mark Wahlberg (last seen in "Spenser Confidential"), Gina Rodriguez (last heard in "Ferdinand"), Zac Efron (last seen in "Liberal Arts"), Amanda Seyfried (last seen in "The Last Word"), Kiersey Clemons (last seen in "Hearts Beat Loud"), Ken Jeong (last seen in "All About Steve"), Tracy Morgan (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2010)), Iain Armitage (last seen in "I'm Not Here"), Ariana Greenblatt (last seen in "The One and Only Ivan"), Pierce Gagnon (last seen in "Wish I Was Here"), Mckenna Grace (last seen in "How to Be a Latin Lover"), Simon Cowell (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Christina Hendricks (last seen in "Bad Santa 2"), Henry Winkler (last seen in "Holes"), Harry Perry, John DiMaggio (last heard in "Teen Titans GO! to the Movies"), Kevin Heffernan (last seen in "Super Troopers 2"), Ira Glass, Henry Kaufman, Maya Erskine (last seen in "Wine Country"), Billy West (last seen in "Comic Book: The Movie"), Don Messick (last seen in "Diamonds Are Forever"), Fred Tatasciore (last heard in "Shazam!"), Justina Machado (last seen in "I Think I Love My Wife"), John McDaniel, Pam Coats, Adam Sztykiel (last seen in "Rampage"), Alex Kauffman, Vanara Taing, Sarah Lancia, Tony Cervone.  

RATING: 3 out of 10 forced modern pop-culture references