The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo
The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo is an American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, and the seventh incarnation of the studio's Scooby-Doo franchise. It premiered on and ran for one season on ABC as a half-hour program. Thirteen episodes of the show were made in 1985. It replaced Scary Scooby Funnies, a repackaging of earlier shows; another repackaged series, Scooby's Mystery Funhouse, followed. This was the first show in which the Scooby-Doo characters actually encountered supernatural creatures, rather than criminals and grifters wearing disguises.
The series also aired in reruns on USA Network in the 1990s, on Cartoon Network, and from time to time on Cartoon Network's sister channel Boomerang until 2014. With 13 episodes, it is the shortest-running series in the Scooby-Doo franchise. A follow-up film, Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost, released in 2019, featured the previously unseen 13th ghost. The entire series is also available on the Boomerang streaming service.
Plot
In the initial episode, the gang are thrown off course on a trip to Honolulu in Daphne's plane, landing instead in Himalayas. While inside a temple, Scooby and Shaggy are tricked by two bumbling ghosts named Weerd and Bogel into opening the Chest of Demons, a magical artifact which houses the 13 most terrifying and powerful ghosts and demons ever to walk the face of the Earth. As the ghosts can only be returned to the chest by those who originally set them free, Scooby and Shaggy, accompanied by Daphne, Scrappy-Doo, and a young con artist named Flim Flam, embark on a worldwide quest to recapture them before they wreak irreversible havoc upon the world.Assisting them is Flim Flam's friend, a warlock named Vincent Van Ghoul, who contacts the gang using his crystal ball and often employs magic and witchcraft to assist them. The 13 escaped ghosts, meanwhile, each attempt to do away with the gang lest they are returned to the chest, often employing Weerd and Bogel as lackeys.
Production
The series was created and produced by Mitch Schauer. Tom Ruegger was associate producer and story editor, the irreverent, fourth wall-breaking humor found in each episode resurfaced in his later works, among them A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Animaniacs. Of The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, Ruegger recalls not being fond of the Flim-Flam character or the other added characters in the cast. As with most of the other early-1980s Scooby-Doo entries, original characters Fred Jones and Velma Dinkley do not appear, and the enemies were real ghosts and not simply humans in costume. 13 Ghosts ended its run after 13 episodes and was replaced by reruns of Laff-a-Lympics in March 1986, before the end of the season.After a hiatus, Ruegger and ABC decided that they would overhaul the series entirely, developing A Pup Named Scooby-Doo in 1988. At the time of the cancellation, twelve of the thirteen ghosts were recaptured in the chest of demons with the show-stopping production before the last ghost could be found. Originally it was debatable if Captain Ferguson, the antagonist of the episode "Ship of Ghouls", counted as one of the thirteen ghosts. However it was later confirmed by Curse of the 13th Ghost writer Tim Sheridan that Captain Ferguson was one of the thirteen. To date, it is the last Scooby-Doo running series to have featured Scrappy-Doo, who was eliminated after the three Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 movies in 1987.
Flim-Flam makes a cameo as a wax museum figure in Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated. Daphne asks Fred if he remembers him, but Fred reminds her that he was at trap camp. It is mentioned in passing that Flim-Flam's con-artistry has ended up landing him a long prison sentence. After Daphne and Fred talk about Flim-Flam, they run across a wax statue of Scrappy-Doo, to which Fred says to Daphne, "Remember, we promised never to speak of him again."
A direct-to-video film released in 2019, Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost, looks to resolve the open ending of the original and feature the entire gang helping Vincent Van Ghoul in capturing the last ghost.
Voice cast
- Don Messick – Scooby-Doo, Scrappy-Doo
- Casey Kasem – Norville "Shaggy" Rogers
- Heather North – Daphne Blake
- Susan Blu – Flim-Flam
- Arte Johnson – Weerd
- Howard Morris – Bogel
- Vincent Price – Vincent Van Ghoul
Episodes
Home media
On June 29, 2010, Warner Home Video released The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo: The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1.| DVD name | No. of episodes | Release date | Bonus episode |
| The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo: The Complete Series | 13 | Don't Feed the Animals |