The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo

The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo
Title card from The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo
Genre	Horror Adventure Comedy
Format	Animated series
Created by	Joe Ruby (characters) Ken Spears (characters) Tom Ruegger
Directed by	Ray Patterson (supervising) Oscar Dufau Arthur Davis Alan Zaslove
Voices of	Don Messick Casey Kasem Heather North Vincent Price Susan Blu Howard Morris Arte Johnson
Theme music composer	Hoyt Curtin
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	13 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	William Hanna Joseph Barbera
Running time	20 Minutes
Production company(s)	Hanna-Barbera Productions
Distributor	Taft Broadcasting (1985–86) Great American Broadcasting (1988–91) Turner Program Services (1992–98) Warner Bros. Television Distribution (1999–present)
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Original run	July 9, 1985 (1985-07-09) – December 7, 1985 (1985-12-07)
Chronology
Preceded by	The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries (1984)
Followed by	A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (1988–1991)
Related shows	Scooby-Doo

The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo is the seventh incarnation of the Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon Scooby-Doo, and the final first-run version of the original 1969–86 broadcast run of the series. It premiered on September 7, 1985 (1985-09-07) 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. The series used to air in reruns on Cartoon Network, but now the series only airs from time to time on Cartoon Network's sister channel Boomerang.

Plot

In the initial episode, the gang are thrown off course on a trip to Honolulu in Daphne's plane, landing instead in the Himalayas. While inside a temple, Scooby and Shaggy are tricked by two bumbling ghosts named Bogel and Weerd into opening the Chest of Demons, a magical artifact which houses the thirteen 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 juvenile Mexican 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 (based upon and voiced by Vincent Price), who contacts the gang using his crystal ball and often employs magic and witchcraft to assist them. The thirteen escaped ghosts, meanwhile, each attempt to do away with the gang lest they be returned to the chest, often employing Bogel and Weerd as lackeys.

Production

The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo differed greatly from most previous incarnations of the series, in that it pitted the Scooby-Doo characters against actual supernatural forces. The concept of capturing real ghosts was one that was already familiar in mid-1980s culture after the debut of the film Ghostbusters in 1984; indeed, two other ghost-busting series, The Real Ghostbusters (an adaptation of the film) and a Filmation production known as GhostBusters, were also soon to debut. Story editor and associate producer Tom Ruegger led the overhaul of the property, and the irreverent, fourth wall breaking humor found in each episode would resurface 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 ("Definitely the product of network focus groups") 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.

13 Ghosts was canceled and replaced by reruns of Laff-a-Lympics in March 1986, before the end of the season. It became the final Scooby series to feature Scrappy-Doo, as it was decided by Ruegger and ABC that they would overhaul the series entirely, developing A Pup Named Scooby-Doo in 1988. At the time of the cancellation, eleven of the thirteen ghost were recaptured, although it is unknown if some of the ghosts captured in the two episodes, "Ship of Ghouls" and "A Spooky Little Ghoul Like You", where more than one of the thirteen ghost were captured, are part of the originals.

Episodes

Main article: List of The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo episodes

Cast

• Susan Blu – Flim Flam
• Arte Johnson – Weerd
• Casey Kasem – Norville "Shaggy" Rogers
• Don Messick – Scooby-Doo, Scrappy-Doo
• Howard Morris – Bogel, Platypus Duck
• Heather North Kenney – Daphne Blake
• Vincent Price – Vincent Van Ghoul

Additional voices

• Bob Arbogast – Announcer voices from pilot episode.
• Hamilton Camp – Ghoulio, Rankor
• Gay Autterson – Wanda Brewski
• Victoria Carroll – The Kangaroo Waitress
• Peter Cullen – Maldor the Malevolent, Sandy
• Marshall Efron – Lousy Lizard
• Richard Erdman – Travel Agent
• Howard Morris – The Concierge
• Linda Gary – Queen Morbidia, Nicara
• Joan Gerber – Ernestine Brewski
• Phil Hartman – The Vaccu-Spook Auctioneer
• Bob Holt – Zagras the Wizard

• Marilyn Lightstone – Astrid
• Kenneth Mars – The Mayor, Officer Toomey
• Edie McClurg – Selma, Telula
• Sidney Miller – Officer Regis
• Alan Oppenheimer – Professor Fantazmo
• Robert Ridgely – Captain Ferguson, Time Slime
• Michael Rye – Demondo, Zimbulu, Reflector Specter
• John Stephenson – Boris Kreepoff, Freddie Cadaver
• Russi Taylor – Hilda Brewski
• Les Tremayne – Zomba
• B.J. Ward – Marcella
• Frank Welker – Egad, dragon roars

DVD release

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
The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo: The Complete Series	13	June 29, 2010

Reception

The series was heavily profiled in the Christian fundamentalist documentary Deception of a Generation as an example of occult influences on children's entertainment.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Scooby-Doo Series
• Scooby-Doo (character)
• List of works produced by Hanna-Barbera
• List of Hanna-Barbera characters

External links

• Official Scooby-Doo Website
• The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo at the Internet Movie Database
• The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo at TV.com
• The Big Cartoon Database – The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo
• The Cartoon Scrapbook – Profile on The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo