Western Animation / The New Scooby-Doo Movies

Scooby Scooby Doo, lookin' for you.
Scooby Scooby Doo, where are you?
All the stars are here, waiting for you.
Couldn't have a show without you.

—Theme song excerpt

The second series to feature Scooby-Doo, The New Scooby-Doo Movies ran on CBS from 1972 to 1974. Scooby and friends interacted with celebrities and other Hanna-Barbera characters of the time. This series featured nearly all of the Scooby-Doo tropes and was unique in that all episodes were an hour long. In Syndication, the episodes were usually split into two half hour episodes across two days.

Guests included:

• The Addams Family
• Batman and Robin
• The Harlem Globetrotters
• Jeannie and Babu
• Josie and the Pussycats
• Laurel and Hardy
• Speed Buggy
• The Three Stooges
• Don Adams
• Tim Conway
• Phyllis Diller
• Sandy Duncan
• Mama Cass Elliot
• Davy Jones
• Don Knotts
• Jerry Reed
• Sonny & Cher
• Dick Van Dyke
• Jonathan Winters

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Tropes in The New Scooby-Doo Movies:

• Bait-and-Switch Credits: Minor example, but Dribbles appears in the opening credits, but he didn't appear in any of the episodes with The Harlem Globetrotters.
• "Best Of" Anthology: Warner Bros. didn't have the rights to republish all episodes on DVD, because they featured guest stars. So they released a "Best-of" DVD set instead, limiting the selection further … until April 2019, when Warner released eight of the missing episodes (they still couldn't get the Addams Family).
• Book Dumb: Shaggy comes across as relatively uneducated in this series. In "The Frickert Fracas", he and Scooby go to a corn field; he doesn't realize it's corn until Scooby decides to collect an ear and peel it back to eat the cob. Shaggy gets confused and asks why the corn is wrapped in "this green stuff". A disbelieving Scooby tries to explain that it's corn in its natural state, but Shaggy doesn't believe him.
• Bootstrapped Theme: The theme song would be resurrected without lyrics in 1979 for Scooby Goes Hollywood and Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo and become the theme song for the whole franchise for most of the next decade.
• Bowdlerise: Part of first season's title sequence has Scooby facing off against a Wild West gunman who repeatedly fires his gun into the air, deafening Scooby. For the second season, this was changed to the gunman firing his gun off-screen, and Scooby running away.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: While it is the usual here, it is actually averted and played hilariously straight in both Don Knotts episodes.
  • In the first, Don's character is supposed to be the cavalry to help Captain Moody; but by the time he got there, Moody had vanished (although his arrival apparently kept the culprits from murdering the captain).
  • And in the second, Don plays a police officer for the whole episode, so the cavalry never really leaves.
• Character Catchphrase: Velma's "Jinkies!" is finally introduced, though Shaggy is actually the first to utter it in "The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair", the second episode. Velma wouldn't say it until "The Frickert Fracas", the fourth episode.
• Cold Touch Surprise: In "The Mystery of Haunted Island", Shaggy and Scooby weaponize this, dumping ice down the shirts and shorts of the Harlem Globetrotters to shock them awake after the owner and coach of the Scorpions successfully kept the Globetrotters from getting a good night's sleep before the game.
• Continuity Nod: in the Opening Credits, the name of the previous series (Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!) is title dropped. When Shaggy asks, "Where are you?" Scooby replies, "Over here!"
• Crossover: A bunch of Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters have put in appearances, most notably Jeannie, Josie and the Pussycats, Speed Buggy have appeared.
• Expy Coexistence: "The Haunted Showboat", and "The Weird Winds of Winona" are crossovers with other Hanna-Barbera "meddling kids" shows. Velma lampshades this in the latter by saying "One Shaggy in this outfit is enough!" when Tinker starts acting cowardly.
• Failed Attempt at Scaring: Grandma Frickert is not scared of the scarecrow that seems to be haunting her farm, just annoyed that it ran off with her farm hand's Sunday best.
• Fictional Fan, Real Celebrity: Many of the weekly guest stars were Ink Suit Actors whom Mystery Inc. would express admiration for. These included The Three Stooges, Dick Van Dyke, and Sonny & Cher.
• Fooled by the Sound: Jonathan Winters, known for his impressions and sound effects, guest-starred in "The Frickert Fracas". At one point, he tries to trick the Monster of the Week by convincing him a police helicopter is chasing him. It fails because, there's obviously no helicopter in the sky. At a previous point, he uses Ventriloquism to trick a particularly stubborn farm hand.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: This show had some of the franchise's first tentative steps at it, since at least some of the guest-spots were trial balloons for new shows. For instance, the second Batman episode ("The Caped Crusader Caper") is pretty much a straightforward superhero adventure, with The Joker and The Penguin donning monster suits almost purely for appearances' sake.
• Inept Mage: Babu is so inept that even Shaggy realizes that there’s a reason why Babu had been an apprentice genie for 1500 years!
• Ink-Suit Actor: Just about all celebrities who appeared on this show voiced their animated counterparts.
• Karloff Kopy:
  • "The Haunted Horseman of Hagglethorn Hall" features a butler named Creech whose voice and appearance invoke Boris Karloff.
  • In "A Good Medium is Rare", Phyllis Diller's butler Lucas resembles Karloff in his later years and speaks in the same vocal tones.
• Lovable Coward: Jonathan Winters and Alexander Cabot, who fit right in with Shaggy and Scooby during their respective appearances (bonus points for both Alexander and Shaggy having the same voice actor). Henry and Babu of Jeannie, and Tinker of Speed Buggy are also this as well (with both Henry and Tinker being Expies of Shaggy).
• Nonindicative Name: These episodes really don't seem long enough to count as "movies", though in all fairness, the modern notion that movies must be around "90 minutes" is a little unfair given the amount of movies that have existed that are under and over that length. This show being early 1970s, there were plenty of drive-in movies in the 1950s and 1960s with around an hour's run time. After all, any form of video media longer than 45 minutes is classified as a "movie".
• Obviously Evil: Quite a few of the villains, either due to creepy appearances and actions, the fact that they are the only characters in the entire episode besides the gang and the special guest star, or both (such as in "The Loch Ness Mess").
• Palette Swap: Several of the villains are recycled designs from Where Are You" with different colors. Redbeard's crew was recycled twice''.
• Police Are Useless: Often played straight given the show's format, although there's a couple exceptions. For instance, the endings of "The Secret of Shark Island", "The Ghost of Bigfoot", "The Ghostly Creep from the Deep" and "The Haunted Showboat" have an Undercover Cop Reveal and show that the authorities were aware of the villains' schemes and ably investigating them independently of the gang.
• Powder Gag: In "Ghastly Ghost Town": Shaggy falls to a storage cellar, hitting containers of a white powder and getting himself covered in it. The villains think he's a real ghost and run away in fear as he calmly tells them, "What's wrong? Have you never seen a flour child?"
• Recycled Animation: Like its predecessor, the show would frequently reuse animation, including many of the same stock poses, walk and run cycles from said show. Notable examples include:
  • Henry of Jeannie and Tinker of Speed Buggy have the same exact walk and run cycle as Shaggy (Tinker especially looks more like a shaved red-haired version of the character and even wears green to boot), seeing as they are Expies of Shaggy, they both share Shaggy's Lovable Coward tendencies, the only thing they don't share is Shaggy's Big Eater tendencies.
  • Corry (also of Jeannie) and Mark (also of Speed Buggy) share the same walk, run cycle as Fred, due to sharing the same character build as him, only major difference is that Mark isn't the leader of the Speed Buggy crew (with that honor instead going to the Daphne Expy Debbie) and is actually The Smart Guy of the Buggy Gang (making Mark a male Expy of Velma), and Corry is the only (alongside the titular Jeannie) member of his group whose run cycle is never seen at all at any point in the episode (Corry's also implied to be the leader of the group due to being Jeannie's Master and Love Interest). Singer Davy Jones also has a similar (but slightly altered) run cycle to Fred during his musical act, as does Don Adams whose run cycle was alerted to be similar.
  • Sandy Duncan shares Daphne's walk and run cycle, which actually becomes a huge plot point in her guest appearance, since she even wears a wig at one point that makes her look exactly like Daphne herself that causes both girls to become Damsels in Distress throughout the episode with Duncan herself the primary target of the Villain of the Week (it also helps that Daphne agreed to be Sandy's stunt double after Sandy's own stunt double walks out to confuse said villian). The titular Jeannie (of the Jeannie cast) is also implied to have Daphne's build (implying the same walk and run cycle), but like Corry, her run and walk cycle is never seen due to Jeannie being both a Damsels in Distress and Action Girl throughout the episode. Debbie from Speed Buggy also shares the same walk and run cycle as Daphne (but is also the leader of her gang, unlike Mark who is the Fred Expy). Cher also shares the same walk and run cycle as Daphne (where as her husband Sonny gains a unique run cycle).
  • Jonathan Winters' female aide Maude (who's also voiced by Winters himself) shares Velma's walk and run cycle, while also having a unique run cycle of her own with her picking up her dress while running (due to her dress being very long). Phyllis Diller also shares Velma's run cycle though unique for the fact she carries her iconic smoke dab in every scene, even while running.
  • Last but not least, Speed Buggy is pretty much a vehicle expy of Scooby Doo himself, sharing Scooby's Lovable Coward and Big Eater characteristics (except swapping out love of food for oil), and has the same friendship dynamic with Tinker as Scooby does with Shaggy and is the mascot of the Buggy Gang in the same vein Scooby is for Mystery Inc., he's also a minor expy to the Mystery Machine as he's also the Buggy Gang's main mode of transport.
• Uncanny Family Resemblance: While visiting Shaggy's uncle, Shaggy shows Scooby portraits of his family, and every single member looks exactly like him — right down to the goatee (even the girls)!
• Unconventional Food Order: At one point in "Ghastly Ghost Town", Shaggy says he wants a chocolate pizza. This was in an era before the advent of dessert pizzas, so this might not sound strange to a modern audience, but the implication at the time was a standard pizza with chocolate added.
• Weird Crossover: Most of the guest stars are quite out of place being in a Scooby-Doo episode, and some of whom aren't actual Hanna-Barbera characters.

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