Scooby-Doo! and the Witch’s Ghost (1999) – Review

Following up the successful direct-to-video release of Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, Warner Bros. Animation once again decided to blend actual ghosts and magical powers with the mystery-solving world of Scooby-Doo, but with Scooby-Doo! and the Witch’s Ghost fans were also introduced to the Hex Girls, the popular eco-goth rock band who later become semi-regular guest stars in the further adventures of Mystery Incorporated. Can the power of rock save our heroes from the forces of evil?

Like the previous movie, this one also begins with a cold open, where the viewer steps into the last act of a Scooby-Doo mystery, but instead of Mystery Incorporated getting full credit for exposing a couple of disgruntled archaeologists behind Aztec mummies terrorizing a museum, they are assisted by horror novelist Ben Ravencroft (Tim Curry). It also turns out that Velma (B.J. Ward) is a super-fan of said author, which then leads to Ben inviting the gang to visit his old hometown of Oakhaven, Massachusetts. When the gang arrives in Oakhaven, which Ben had assured them was “A sleepy New England town,” they find the place overflowing with tourists. It seems that since his last visit home, Oakhaven has been transformed into a tourist attraction, complete with 17th-century replicas and attractions based on the alleged ghost of Sarah Ravencroft, an ancestor of Ben’s who was persecuted as a witch and then executed by the Puritan townspeople back in 1657. But the tourists aren’t flooding the town to see people in period costumes churning butter, or even to check out the local rock group the Hex Girls; everyone is eager to see the actual witch’s ghost, who has been appearing ever since they broke ground on the Puritan village exhibit.

Who could be behind this fire-ball-throwing spirit?

Shaggy and Scooby-Doo (Scott Innes) are, of course, more than eager to pack up and leave town, while Fred (Frank Welker) and Daphne (Mary Kay Bergman) toy briefly with the idea that maybe they are “into each other” — Velma having pointed out that Fred seems to always team himself up with Daphne — and Ben Ravencroft looks to be more obsessed with finding Sarah’s medical journal to prove her innocence than in what ghostly happenings are “plaguing” the town. Once again, we have a plethora of suspects; could it be Mayor Corey (Neil Ross), whose town has now economically boomed since the ghost appeared? How about those eco-goth rock singers? Velma discovers flash-powder residue from the witch’s fireballs that resembles what the Hex Girls use for their stage show, and broken branches at the flight level of the witch all point towards a more mundane explanation than there being a real witch. And then there is Ben Ravencroft himself, could his obsession with finding his ancestor’s journal have a more sinister motive?

Could this band be made of actual witches? If so why the vampire fangs?

Well, it turns out that things are a little more complicated than your average Scooby-Doo mystery, we do discover that the Mayor, along with all the other leading citizens of Oakhaven, are behind the Witch’s ghost hoax as a last-ditch effort to save their dying town, but then in a surprising twist, it is revealed that Ben Ravencroft had lured Scooby and the gang to his hometown — the disgruntled archaeologist having been paid off by Ben so that he and Mystery Incorporated could meet — and that he wasn’t at all interested in proving Sarah Ravencroft was innocent, because she, in fact, wasn’t. He needed Velma’s detective skills to locate Sarah’s journal, which was actually a spellbook that had been used by the good Wiccans to imprison Sarah within its pages. Ben’s dastardly plan was to release Sarah and with her at his side, the two could rule the world. Unfortunately, Sarah has no interest in partnering up with anyone and is more about destroying the world rather than ruling it.

“I’ll get you my pretty and your little dog too!”

It’s odd that the show would go out of its way to explain to viewers that in the 17th century women who practiced Wicca, encroaching in on the field of medicine ruled by male doctors, were wrongfully persecuted as witches, but then in the third act to reveal “Well, look at that, she was an evil witch after all,” which is a little off-putting. The show tried to salvage the moral high ground by pointing out that it was good Wiccans who imprisoned her in the book, but this then implies that Wiccans were actually using spellcraft and that they had lugged around evil tomes that looked like the Necronomicon. Also weird is that Thorn (Jennifer Hale), the lead singer of the Hex Girls, is the only one able to use the spellbook to re-imprison Sarah Ravencroft because she has inherited Wiccan power, which is rather odd because Wicca is a religion and is not something passed down through bloodlines. Why not just team up Mystery Incorporated with Sabrina the Teenage Witch?

“Klaatu, Barada, Nikto!”

Despite the dodgy ethical and historical elements of Scooby-Doo! and the Witch’s Ghost, this movie is still a lot of fun; Tim Curry looked to be having a ball voicing the character of Ben Ravencroft, and he even considers “Dreadful darkness, hear my cry. Bring back one who cannot die,” to be his favourite line throughout his career, as he believed this to be an inside joke referring to Scooby-Doo, who entered the scene after the line was said. The evil witch theme continued the darker elements that had started with Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, but as cool as animated trees and pumpkins looked in this movie, they still don’t hold a candle to the zombie army in that film. Also, like in the last film, there is no arrest of the villain, and no moment of “I would have gotten away with this if not for you meddling kids,” and though Ben doesn’t die, as the cat creatures did in Zombie Island, he does find himself being pulled into the book to spend eternity with Sarah Ravencroft.

“It’s astounding… Time is… fleeting. Madness… takes its toll.”

Once again the humour is rather hit or miss — I assume younger viewers will be a little less jaded than me when it comes to watching endless scenes of Shaggy and Scooby eating — and the voice casting of Scooby and the gang for this outing left me rather cold, with Frank Welker being the only original voice actor to reprise his role from the original series, but those are just minor quibbles and would not stop me from recommending Scooby-Doo! and the Witch’s Ghost to any fans of the world’s best mystery-solving team.

You can find all my reviews of the various Scooby-Doo shows and movies collected here: The Wonderful World of Scooby-Doo.