Customer Reviews

Scooby Doo: Original Mysteries [VHS]

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Scooby Doo and the gang may have hit the big screen, but this is the real stuff: the original Saturday morning cartoon series that so many of us grew up with. And although we might say we got this for our kids, the truth is that even as grown-ups we're addicted to these cartoon Scooby snacks ourselves!

This particular DVD offers the first five episodes in the series, each one running just under half an hour. "What a Night for a Knight" finds the gang investigating a suit of armor that comes to life during the full moon. When their ship run aground on a spooky island, the gang visits a creepy castle in "Hassle in the Castle"--and encounters a ghost! "A Clue for Scooby Doo" concerns a ghostly scuba diver; "Mine Your Own Business" has the gang investigating 'the miner forty-niner' that haunts an old gold mine; and "Decoy for a Dognapper" finds Scooby himself dognapped and the gang searching an abandoned Indian village to find him. And you'll find all the stereotypes here: crazy clues, frantic chases, and the "ghosts" are NEVER real!

The animation is pretty flat, the music is 1969 wannabe funky, the plots are loose and pretty silly--no one would ever accuse the series of being great art. But it has tremendous nostalgic appeal. The episodes seen here have not been restored, but to my mind the scratches, blips, and dust spots just add to the sense of watching an old favorite. The DVD includes a number of extras that the kids will enjoy... if you ever decide to share it with them!

If you grew up on Scooby-Doo like I did as a child in the 70's, then you will love this DVD. I own alot of Scooby videos, but when I surfed over to Amazon.com one night, and typed in Scooby-Doo in the DVD-video section and saw this DVD, I ordered it on the spot. Its about time they put the best cartoon that has ever graced Saturday morning tv on DVD format. If you love Scooby and the gang, and want the original classics(FIRST FIVE EPISODES) then, get this DVD, you will love it....

I will give you a description

What A night for a knight-An Old legend come true and a vanished archaeologist is in this episode

Hassle In The Castle-When the gang's boating stops they realizes that they are stuck in haunted isle and meet a ghost.

A Clue For Scooby Doo-The ghost of Captain Cutler stole many yatchs so the gang decides to solve the mystery.

Mine Your Own Business-The miner that Hank, the caretaker said the miner was looking for gold. Is this for real?

Decoy For A Dognapper-When Scooby was feeling bad about the kidnapped dog, he tells it to the dog. They listened to the radio and said "Dognappers Have strike Again". So Freddy says they have a mystery to solve.

Scooby-Doo is one of the great TV cartoon stars, and the show, while cartainly fairly flimsy in the plot department (although pretty strong compared some of the other H-B cartoons), is still as entertaining as ever.

This disc has the first five episodes in order (unlike most of the other discs, which are just random collections of episodes), which is a welcome change to the compilation discs and tapes. However, as always, the special features basically stink if you're above the age of like 8, and there still hasn't been any sort of series (or season) box set, so if you want the episodes in order, this is it.

First off, Scooby Doo is my favorite Saturday morning series ever, and my 3-year-old loves it as much as I did when I was growing up. The stories, the music and the animation are all fun, so I was tickled when I found this DVD and got it to share with my son.

He loves the DVD and watches it over and over, but every time we watch it, all I can see are the dust spots and scratches that are everywhere. It looks like the prints were gathering dust since 1969 and they never even bothered to clean the film before they slapped it in the duplicator! In some places, it's so bad that you watch pieces of fuzz blow across the picture while the action goes on.

Come on, guys! Scooby Doo is a great property, so at least make sure the releases are quality work and not [something that] looks like you picked it up off the floor and sold it to us!

I watched Scooby Doo in the late 70's as a kid and loved it. I still do at almost 30 years of age. It's a great cartoon. The mystery, the atmosphere etc. These are all great episodes except the reason I put 4 stars instead of 5 is the most obnoxious thing about this DVD.
The laugh track they have just about kills the enjoyment of watching these. It is more obvious in some of the episodes, like 'Mine You Own Business", where it seems like every time any of the characters says a word, you get this cheesy overbearing laugh track. It almost ruins it totally for me. Scooby says hello, here comes the laughs. I don't know, if you can get by this as an adult, no problem. The kids probably won't mind, but some may.
Needless to say, the episodes are still what they are and you'll enjoy them for what they are. Good fun.

On a side note, I wish we could see seasons of Scooby Doo and not an episode here and there put on a DVD.

What can I say? The transfer of each of the five episodes is fantastic, as is the sound. The episodes here are the first five, so while being classics, they are not my personal pick for the best selection. I hope that Warner continue to issue all the ep's up to the '76-'77 series - I'd buy them all! My personal fav. here is 'A Clue for Scooby Doo', if only for the classic character Ebenezer Shark: "looks like your pooch found me old diving suit!"
Oh, and skip the 'extras'. Just an assortment made up from the newer (i.e. bad) episodes.

Get a big bowl of your favorite sugar coated cereal, and turn off all the lights in the room to watch this one. For Scooby fans, this is a real treat. The images are clean and the colors are bright, especially considering this is a 30 year old cartoon. Looks great on a TV, but on a laptop computer the clarity of the LCD screen reveals every spec of dust on the film. You can see every place they painted outside the black ink lines, and if you look closely, you can see the thin shadows between the celluloid overlays and the painted backgrounds. In the opening, you can see the grass in front of the castle bouncing up and down when the bats fly across the screen. Of course, none of this shows up on a television. Also look for a shot of Velma wearing lipstick when Hank, the caretaker, tells the kids about the "Miner 49er". Jinkies, that's creepy! The special features are lame, so buy it for the episodes, but buy it! I hope they release more of Scooby on DVD.

Movie Summary: Five meddling "kids" drive around in a van called "The Mystery Machine" solving spooky mysteries. Scooby Doo a talking Great Dane is a big scaredy-cat but can usually be bribed into doing something with a Scooby Snack as can hippie Shaggy. This volume contains the first five episodes of the famous Saturday morning cartoon.

My Opinion: This is a classic DVD. It's fun to see the original Scooby Doo episodes. They hold up well. Why does Velma always get stuck going with Shaggy and Scooby when they split up? Freddy and Daphne always end up going off alone! And one Scooby snack never seems to be enough for Scooby. He always has to bargain for at least two just like my 4 year old daughter!! This is good clean fun.

DVD Quality: Standard Full Screen 1.33:1 with Mono Sound. Extras include a music video and trivia quiz.

What You Should Do: See it and show it to the kids. They will love it. Buy it if you are a huge Scooby fan. You can't go wrong.

Scooby Doo is one of my favorite cartoons, yeah it's true that it's campy and you can always tell who the villain is before the ending, like usually the villain always turns out to be the person who warns them about some kind of legend involving a ghost, monster, etc, but that and the campy style are appealing and kids don't get so scared when they know the monster will turn out to be just a bad guy trying to steal something, etc. I think it's nice to have these shows on DVD because if you or your child is a Scooby fan then you can put the DVD in and you and your child can watch a couple of Scooby episodes without being a slave to the TV and the TV schedule by being a couch potato who wants to sit and watch all of the Scooby episodes that are on TV every day and you can choose what time you or you or child will watch a Scooby episode and there are no annoying intrusive commercials. The shows weren't restored but I have read in magazines and heard on TV that it's very expensive to restore old film, but it seems like some people think that all they need to do is take a dust cloth spray on some cleaner and wipe the film off and it actually takes a lot more than that and with so many classic films needing restoration I think they usually get top priority first. I give the shows 5 stars even though I think chapter selections like on the Simpsons first and second season DVD would have been nice but as the old saying goes "beggars can't be choosers"