Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island

Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island is a 1998 direct-to-video animated comedy horror film based on Hanna-Barbera's Scooby-Doo Saturday-morning cartoons. In the film, Shaggy, Scooby, Fred, Velma, and Daphne reunite after a year-long hiatus from Mystery, Inc. to investigate a bayou island said to be haunted by the ghost of the pirate Morgan Moonscar. The film was directed by Jim Stenstrum, from a screenplay by Glenn Leopold.
Popularity for Scooby-Doo had grown in the 1990s due to reruns aired on Cartoon Network. The channel's parent company, Time Warner, suggested developing a direct-to-video (DTV) film on the property. The team at Hanna-Barbera consisted of many veteran artists and writers. Much of the original voice actors of the series were recast for the film, although Frank Welker returned to voice Fred Jones. It was also the first of four Scooby-Doo direct-to-video films to be animated overseas by Japanese animation studio Mook Animation. Rock bands Third Eye Blind and Skycycle contribute to the soundtrack.
Zombie Island contains a darker tone than most Scooby-Doo productions, and is notable for containing real supernatural creatures rather than people in costumes. The film was released on September 22, 1998, and received positive reviews from critics, who complimented its animation and story. The film was aided by a $50 million promotional campaign, and sponsorship deals with multiple companies. Sales of the film on VHS were high, and it became the first in a long-running series of DTV Scooby-Doo films. This movie was released on June 26, 1998.
Two decades after the film's release, Warner Bros Animation developed a standalone sequel, Return to Zombie Island, released in 2019.
== Plot ==
Mystery, Inc. goes their separate ways after becoming bored of mystery-solving due to their monstrous culprits always being people in costumes. Daphne Blake, along with Fred Jones, starts running a successful television series, determined to hunt down a real ghost rather than a fake one. Sometime later, Fred contacts Velma Dinkley, Shaggy Rogers and his dog Scooby-Doo to reunite for Daphne's birthday. They embark on a road trip scouting haunted locations across the U.S. for Daphne's show, only to encounter more fake monsters. Arriving in New Orleans, Louisiana, they are invited by Lena Dupree to visit her workplace at Moonscar Island, an island allegedly haunted by the ghost of its pirate namesake Morgan Moonscar. Though they are skeptical, the gang agrees. On the island, they meet ferryman Jacques, Lena's employer Simone Lenoir, who lives in a large mansion on a pepper plantation, and Simone's gardener Beau. Shaggy and Scooby encounter Moonscar's ghost, who becomes a zombie while the gang receives several ghostly warnings to leave. Despite this, they stay overnight, still skeptical.
That night, Shaggy and Scooby are chased by a horde of zombies. Velma suspects Beau while Fred and Daphne capture a zombie, believing it is a human culprit until Fred pulls its head off, revealing that the zombies are real. As the horde chases them, the gang gets separated and Daphne accidentally causes Fred to drop his video camera in quicksand, losing film evidence for their show. In a cave, Shaggy and Scooby discover wax voodoo dolls resembling Fred, Velma, and Daphne and play with them, unknowingly controlling their friends until the pair disturb a nest of bats.
The rest of the gang and Beau discover a secret passageway in the house, where Lena claims the zombies dragged Simone away. The passageway leads to a secret chamber for voodoo rituals, where Velma confronts Lena about her lie, having seen Simone's footprints instead of drag marks. After trapping the gang with the voodoo dolls, Simone and Lena reveal themselves and Jacques as evil werecats. Simone explains that 200 years ago, she and Lena were part of a group of settlers on the island who worshiped a cat god. When Moonscar and his crew invaded the island, they chased the settlers into the bayou, where they were eaten alive by alligators, but Simone and Lena escaped. They prayed to their cat god to curse Moonscar and were transformed into immortal werecats. They killed the pirates, but later realized that invoking the cat god's power had also cursed them. Every harvest moon since, they lured and exploited victims to drain their lives and preserve their immortality, hiring Jacques along the way to facilitate their plot in exchange for making him immortal, with the zombies and ghosts being their previous victims who awaken every harvest moon to try to scare people away to prevent them from suffering the same fate.
While being chased by Jacques, Shaggy and Scooby disrupt the werecats' draining ceremony, allowing the gang to free themselves. The werecats surround them, but realize too late that the harvest moon has passed, causing them to crumble to dust and putting the zombies' souls to rest. Beau reveals himself as an undercover police officer who was sent to investigate disappearances on the island. Daphne asks Beau to guest star on her show, and they all leave the island in the morning.
Category:1998 films
Category:1998 animated films
Category:1998 direct-to-video films
Category:Warner Bros. Animation animated films
Category:Scooby-Doo films
Category:Scooby-Doo direct-to-video animated films
Category:Hanna-Barbera films
Category:Hanna-Barbera animated films
Category:Films starring Scott Innes
Category:Films starring Billy West
Category:Films starring Frank Welker
Category:Films starring Jim Cummings
Category:Films directed by Jim Stenstrum
Category:Films starring Mark Hamill
Category:Films starring Tara Strong
Category:Films starring Ed Gilbert
Category:Films starring Mary Kay Bergman
Category:Films starring B.J. Ward
Category:Films starring Jennifer Leigh Warren
Category:Films starring Cam Clarke
Category:Films starring Adrienne Barbeau