Michael_Elliott
Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School (1988) *** (out of 4) Good feature has Scooby, Scrappy and Shaggy going to a "school" that is attended by famous monster's children. At this female school they play an annual volleyball game against a military academy and Shaggy has been hired to make them winners. The first sixty-minutes of this feature are absolutely delightful with all sorts of laughs but sadly it really runs out of gas and barely makes it to the end. At 90-minutes it just runs way too long and the second portion of the film has a fairly weak story involving someone at the school trying to take it over with a new kind of evil. I thought the final thirty-minutes really dragged in spots and nearly ruined the entire film but the first part is just so good that horror fans should really enjoy it. I thought some of the best moments involved the monster children and the nice homages to previous movies. We get Count Dracula's daughter, a mummy, a werewolf and Frankenstein's daughter who is made up to look like the Bride and of course she's named Elsa (Lancaster from the 1935 film). We also get some pretty good jokes once the parents show up and of course they're enough to scare Shaggy and Scooby. Fans of the TV show should really enjoy this and monster fans will also have a good time with the creatures on hand.
scotthellings
You know what this movie needs? MORE bad puns!! Yes, more!Seriously, the depth of every character is simply that they say one word that somehow relates to who or what they are. Now, I don't expect much in the way of characters for a kids cartoon, but come on. Seriously, I think a group of eight year old children could have produced a better script.We have one character who is a young vampire and, as such, can turn into a bat. So, all her lines revolve around her making a pun with bat. Such as "that is a BAT idea!" And yes, even "I shall do my bat." Which, to me, doesn't even work. Bat and best don't even begin to rhyme.And there is the young mummy who only ever talks of her "mummy" (GET IT? LIKE HER MOM! OH THE COMEDY! HAHAHAHAHAHA! Ugh). However, later on when we get to meet all the children (the students in said "Ghoul School") we do not meet her "mummy," but rather her father. What?And in the meantime, we see Shaggy and Scooby occasionally chipping in a line here or there and the obligatory eating and getting scared/running away sequences. There is one such sequence where they decide to run away from the fathers of the children and, all of a sudden, the all-too annoying Scrappy Doo makes an appearance. You don't see him for like fifteen minutes, without explanation, and suddenly he literally just jumps into the running away scene for no particular reason.And don't even get me started on the volleyball scene and the lack of rules (okay, okay, little kids, whom this cartoon was intended, won't understand anyway, but it was SO bad that the producers HAD to know they were destroying any semblance of the game's rules). And yes, we also have a character that is a combination of a bat and a spider. And his name? Spiderbat, of course.Yes, this will probably appeal to some children, but even I didn't enjoy it when it was out. Even at the tender age of nine I could tell this was garbage and having just watched it again on television, I can plainly see why. Avoid this at all costs. It will make you "batty!"
IzzyGarrish
It was a joy to see Scooby, Shaggy, and Scrappy true to character. Shaggy's clothes--and the Mystery Machine--appear as they premiered in "The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo" (1985-1986), providing continuity. Glenn Leopold weaves a multi-character story with traditional Hanna-Barbera charm. I think it would have made more sense to include Daphne, but it still lives up to Scooby-Doo cannon established from 1969 to the late 1980s. A must-see for true fans!
