Editorials
[Special Feature] Top 10 Most Memorable ‘Scooby-Doo’ Villains
Once upon a time, Saturday mornings consisted of getting up early and watching four-hour blocks of cartoons. With the entertainment ranging from superheroes to “Smurfs,” a favorite of many children was a cowardly “Great Dane” and his four teenage human friends solving supernatural mysteries. Premiering September 13, 1969, Scooby-Doo and the Mystery, Inc. gang are still having adventures to this day. However, it’s the iconic original shows – Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, The New Scooby-Doo Movies and The Scooby-Doo Show – that produced a slew of fear inducing monsters and g-g-g-ghosts that remain prominent in many of those children’s – now adults – minds.
Each episode of the program took the teens – Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley, and Norville “Shaggy” Rogers – along with Scooby – to a location – abandoned amusement parks, concert halls, ski slopes – and set up exactly what they were good at solving: a mystery. On occasion, Scooby’s cousin Scooby Dum or his nephew Scrappy Doo would join the group in their van, the Mystery Machine. In later years, the kids teamed up with celebrities like the Harlem Globetrotters and Sonny & Cher. No matter what, an ominous spook would ruin their day and the caper would ensue. The show included a laugh track to lighten the frightening atmosphere, and the overuse of stating the obvious – “We found a clue.” “Look! It’s a piece of paper.” “It has writing on it!” – gave it an educational edge for children.
To further ease children’s fears, Scooby-Doo villains were always unmasked at the end of episodes. Even with Old Man Smithers stating he would have gotten away with his plan if it wasn’t for those pesky kids, or even the musical montages of chase scenes, the monster incarnations still imparted terror upon kids. It didn’t matter if Shaggy and Scooby were dressed like women – the fact that they had to don disguises in order to stay alive was terrifying. Ok, I may be over exaggerating. But there were plenty of monsters that gave me nightmares. Here is a short list of some of the most memorable
Orange and yellow with jaunting eyebrows over piercing eyes – this guy is out to get the crew, pursuing them with the hissing sound of his electric body. Honestly, the 10,000 Volt Ghost looks like it was drawn by a child, but his famous appearance in the credits of The Scooby-Doo Show makes him one of the most memorable. He’s out to get revenge on the town and the power company after a winter storm that happened some time ago caused his untimely death. His fiery body melts through locked gates and snow as he wreaks havoc. In the end, we find the Mayor of Winterhaven is a jerk that partnered with Mr. Voltner to buy up the town and make millions when selling it for a freeway to be built. They would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for the meddling kids. I personally can hear the sound of 10,000 Volt Ghost’s body if I just think of it – and those eyes and mouth still bother me.
Lifesaving Moment: Everyone balancing on Scooby’s back as he stands on a rope suspending in the air.
The looming green dude has been robbing a bank in the dead of night, never opening a door or window – just walking through the walls. With the group attending a school dance in the barn of a local farm, the Creeper moans through his chase – a montage set to a classic Scooby tune. Of course, the Creeper ends up being the damn bank president, Mr. Carswell who is just a greedy dick. The Creeper is a personally favorite of mine. He’s just a gnarly zombie like character that brings a smile to my face.
Lifesaving Moment: Scooby with a red glove on his head blends in with the chickens in the coop to avoid an untimely death by the hands of the Creeper.
Gene Simmons makeup + Ace Frehley’s costume + wild flaming hair = Freaky. The Phantom seeks out an unfinished song from a missing writer, Tony Signs, which about to be recorded at Decade Records. His gravelly voice is menacing as he haunts the team with his crazed look. We learn that the song he seeks is special because the notes spell his real name. It’s Ace Decade! And he was selling records for his own profit on the black market until Tony Signs found out. Something about the makeup – and memories of seeing Gene Simmon’s spitting blood as a young child – made this one of the most terrifying monsters on the show for me. Even still I get uneasy thinking of him.
Lifesaving Moment: Shaggy and Scooby hide inside a piano, and then take off carrying it on top of them.
Pulsating Glowing Skull + Space Suit = Zoinks. This creepy chap stalks the bunch through an old airfield, leaving glowing footsteps and cackling the whole time with an ominous wooshing noise. This visual was echoed recently on an episode of Doctor Who titled “Silence in the Library”. In the end, of course, it’s just old Henry Bascombe – who’s mad the airfield was going to reopen and possibly take some of his land. Pretty elaborate method of saving property. That insane laugh of the Spooky Space Kook is the most haunting of all Scooby villains in my opinion. It’s incredibly unnerving.
Lifesaving Moment: Scooby and Shaggy dress as pilots and act like mannequins inside a plane to avoid detection.
Ah yes, the Miner Forty-Niner. Though this guy now looks like some fella you could buy pot off of at the local farmers market, back in the day, he was pretty gnarly in a malevolent way. The Miner arrived in 1849 and can’t rest until he finds all of the gold in Gold City. As memorable as he is, the Miner Forty-Niner barely appears in the episode. Ranch caretaker Hank ends up being our villain, wanting to gobble up the oil hidden in the mine. His casual presence is probably why he is scary. Just an old timer, working in the mine, ready to split you with his pick ax.
Lifesaving Moment: Shaggy and Scooby ride down the mine tracks in a cart ala Temple of Doom.
Another monster from the credits, the Man from Mars is actually a bit rare in the realm of Scooby villains in that he, himself, cannot be unmasked – for he is a robot! He’s just a little creation named Charlie that has gone amiss. Stalking through Funland, the kids avoid his death grip only to find that he’s much different than their average mystery. Mr. Jenkins, the caretaker had programmed him to run the amusement park before Charlie decided to go haywire.
Lifesaving Moment: Scooby dresses as a caveman to avoid the robot’s grasp.
Who doesn’t love melty green gooey men? These two haunt the Sugar Plum Candy Company factory every night going crazy and grinding up some goodness. But really, nevermind them. They end up being Sterling Smith and Mr. Crink – who just want the candy factory to make $2,000,000 worth of gold (the real kind) candy bars. This entire episode is really dedicated to making fat jokes about Cass Elliot. Yes, Mama Cass is the owner of the candy factory, and her overweight self is the focus of all humor.
Lifesaving Moment: What luck! After being entangled in enough taffy to cover the kids and Mama Cass, they’re hoisted into the air by an awry forklift and doused in water. Uhh…they started to lose it in later years…
A Mummy goes missing from his tomb, lurking about in hopes of scaring all those he encounters into giving him a very special coin. The coin unlocks a compartment that contains a diamond scarab. Mr. Mummy turns all of those whom he finds to be in his way – into stone! Of course, there are plenty of highjinks along the way for the teens – including dressing as Egyptians to avoid detection and a moment where Scooby is found reduced to rock. In the end, it’s Dr. Najib who had figured out the secret of the coin!
Lifesaving Moment: Scooby actually slamdunks the Mummy into a basketball hoop to capture him and save the day. No, really.
I remember envisioning this lady as the witch in countless fairy tales I read growing up. The ghostly hag goes around turning people into frogs and scaring off villagers. Her techniques also include late night stalking and getting in bed with dogs. Ultimately, Aggie Wilkins is the culprit, creating the witch as a way to scare rivals the Hattfields from the property!
Lifesaving Moment: Velma, Shaggy and Scooby use a joint effort to hop away in a cast iron pot that the witch has tied them up to cook in.
Something about primates can be terrifying for children – and the Ape Man – cartoon or not – was no exception. This dude who is rummaging through a movie set even goes as far as to put on a Scooby mask and play mime games with our canine hero. There is no shame on his part as he opens his mouth of gnarly sharp teeth and bellows at the pals. This guy, no doubt, is a dude in a mask – this time it being Carl, the stunt man. Oh, that a-hole was just trying to sabotage the movie because he wanted to play the lead.
Lifesaving Moment: Shaggy and Scooby are enticed (as always) to save the day by some munchies, including a pot pie with pizza crust, anchovies, and pepperoni.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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