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The Influence of “Scooby Doo” On the Slasher Film

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Art by: Travis Falligant

It’s a simple formula: take four or five teenagers, add a menacing villain, throw in several confrontations and top it all off with a chase climax where the bad guy is unmasked and/or defeated. That sums up pretty much every slasher movie from the last forty years. But long before the identities of the killers in Friday the 13thScream, Urban Legend, My Bloody Valentine, Sorority Row et al were revealed, one TV show was doing the same thing on a weekly basis.

On September 13, 1969, CBS broadcast the first episode of “Scooby Doo! Where Are You?,” in the process helping to create (along with the Italian Giallo films of the time) the blueprint for the modern slasher. The show’s main characters are horror movie archetypes through and through: there’s Fred Jones, the blandly handsome hero/leader; Daphne Blake, the tall, slender damsel in distress; and Velma Dinkley, the brainy nerd. And then there was of course Norville “Shaggy” Rogers and Scooby Doo, who provided the requisite comic relief. Sound familiar?

In this universe, scientists, mayors, college deans, police officers and every other person in a position of authority, right down to the parents, cannot be trusted. The local sheriff is unhelpful, corrupt or thoroughly evil, and probably has a dark secret. And the deputy is dumb enough to deny the bogeyman’s existence without first looking over his shoulder – though that’s no guarantee that he’s not the villain. Sound familiar?

Then there’s the dialogue, which consists of every single character stating the obvious. Whenever they enter a spooky house, they say, “This place is spooky!” When they find themselves trapped, they say, “We’re trapped!” When the No-Face Zombie turns out to be a robot, they say, “The No-Face Zombie was a robot!” Sound familiar?

And that brings us to the villains. For most of the running time of an episode, a “Scooby Doo” villain will appear where and when he damn well pleases, and to hell with logic. In his presence, power supplies will fail and cars refuse to start. And at the end, the villain will be unmasked, typically revealing him to be someone you wouldn’t have expected. Sound… familiar?

Not only did the modern slash film seemingly draw a whole lot of inspiration from “Scooby Doo,” but the entire sub-genre has some really interesting connections to the kid-friendly franchise.

The makers of Urban Legend (1998) in particular must’ve watched “Scooby Doo” for inspiration, because not only are Alicia Witt and Jared Leto dead ringers for Daphne and Fred but they spend the running time being surprised by a weird janitor, chased by a hooded figure and investigating suspects that have ‘red herring’ written all over them. There’s a dog named Hootie, all the adults are either incompetent or creepy, and when one character goes missing, the dean suggests he might be shacked up in a motel with a farmyard animal (see what I mean about unhelpful?). These motifs run through the entire franchise; in Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2006), Kate Mara plays another Daphne clone whose friends include a nerd, a dog-loving jock, and a stoner who owns a van with flowers on the side.

Speaking of franchises, you will not find a series that has more in common with “Scooby Doo” than Scream. We all know that Sarah Michelle Gellar (Scream 2) and Matthew Lillard (one of Scream’s masked villains) played Daphne and Shaggy in the live action movies, but did you know that David Warner, Lewis Arquette (both Scream 2) and Hayden Panettiere (Scream 4) all lent their respective vocal talents to “What’s New Scooby Doo?,” “A Pup Named Scooby Doo” and Scooby Doo! And The Goblin King?

More telling is the casting of Patrick Warburton, who played Sheriff Bronson Stone in “Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated.” The name of his Scream 3 character is Steven Stone, which is surely a coincidence… until you realize that he’s appearing in a movie where a masked villain chases characters through a mansion with revolving walls and one-way mirrors. For all the film’s attempts at nudge-wink self-awareness, it still presents its audience with characters that split up in order to search a spooky house and a villain who, when unmasked, turns out to be some guy found dead earlier in the movie. He would’ve gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids.

Instead of rebooting Scream as a TV series, MTV should’ve remade The Prowler (1981), which was scripted by Neal (son of Joseph) Barbera and Glenn Leopold, who between them worked on “The New Scooby Doo Mysteries,” “Scooby’s All-Star Laff-A-Lympics” and “The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo.” Needless to say, there’s a whiff of the day job as characters split up, search the local cemetery after dark and are chased down corridors by a masked assailant – although I don’t recall too many Scooby villains having their heads vaporized by a shotgun-wielding heroine. Also, if you can’t deduce that the sheriff is the killer before the end of the fourth reel, you should turn the Mystery Machine around and go home.  

Even when a slasher movie doesn’t conclude with a climactic unmasking, Scooby still casts a shadow over the proceedings. It’s difficult to take Freddy Vs Jason (2003) seriously when one of the main characters is a stoner whose ride is referred to as a “Scooby van” and the local Sheriff (an incompetent goofball, obviously) is played by Garry Chalk, who was also the Vice Principal in Scooby Doo: The Mystery Begins (2009). Related side note, Chalk was also in The Fly II, where he played a character named Scorby – at one point someone actually shouts, “Scorby, where are you?” 

Is this all just one big coincidence? You’d have a hard time convincing me of that!

Editorials

‘The Company of Wolves’ at 40: One of the Most Underrated Werewolf Movies Ever Made

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There’s a compelling idea in anthropology that many ancient werewolf legends are derived from our species’ need to rationalize the more animalistic side of humanity – which is why lycanthropy has historically been used to explain everything from medieval serial killers to cannibalism. While I personally think there’s a lot more to unpack when it comes to tales of wolfmen and women, this is still a great example of why so many of our most enduring fairy tales involve big bad wolves.

And in the world of film, I think there’s only one feature that really nails the folkloric origins of werewolf stories, namely Neil Jordan’s 1984 fairy-tale horror classic, The Company of Wolves. Even four decades later, there’s no other genre flick that comes close to capturing the dreamlike ambience behind this strange anthology, and that’s why I’d like to take this opportunity to look back on one of the most underrated werewolf flicks ever made.

The Company of Wolves was originally a short story contained in the 1979 anthology The Bloody Chamber, a collection of deconstructed fairy-tales intended for mature readers penned by English author Angela Carter. With the book quickly becoming a hit as readers became fascinated with its subversion of classic folk stories and (then) controversial feminist undertones, it was soon transformed into a duology of BBC radio-dramas which adapted both The Company of Wolves and Carter’s reimagining of Puss-in-Boots.

These radio-dramas soon attracted the attention of then up-and-coming Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan, who decided to meet with Carter to discuss expanding on her stories and bringing them to life on the big screen. The duo soon realized that a single short story wasn’t enough material for a feature-length film, so they decided to adapt all of Carter’s werewolf tales into a single anthology.

With a completed script and a $2.3 million budget, Jordan decided to tackle the project like a hybrid between a theatrical period drama and a schlocky monster movie. Effects-heavy creature features were a hot commodity back in the ’80s, with films like The Howling and An American Werewolf in London proving that there was an audience for horrific lycanthrope transformations, so the director soon recruited a team that could turn this odd collection of feminist folk stories into something commercially viable.

Not exactly a great pick for family movie night.

Shooting would eventually take place almost entirely within the England-based Shepperton Studios, with notable production designer Anton Furst (who would later be known for his work on Tim Burton’s Batman films) helping to bring Jordan’s vision of a darkly romantic fairy-tale world to life. Appropriately enough, production would also involve a real pack of trained wolves (as well as a collection of dyed dogs), though extensive puppetry and animatronics were also used to flesh out the more gruesome parts of the flick.

After a grueling nine-week shoot where budgetary constraints led to corners being cut on props and costumes, The Company of Wolves was finally released in September of 1984 – just in time for spooky season. In the finished film, we follow the strange dreams of a sulky teenage girl named Rosaleen (first-time actress Sarah Patterson) as the film unravels an Arabian-Nights-inspired tapestry of both familiar and not-so-familiar stories about big bad wolves.

From sexually charged cautionary tales to parables about female empowerment, this surreal collection of deranged bedtime stories is much more than the creature feature that the marketing initially suggested. Like a more horror-oriented version of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, The Company of Wolves exudes that same kind of hormonal teenage energy that transports us back to a time when the world was both scary and exciting in equal measure.

That’s not to say that this is an entirely pleasant experience, however, and I’m not just talking about the film’s horror elements. A big portion of the flick’s overtly sexual moments involve the then 13-year-old Patterson coming to grips with her blossoming womanhood and the dangers of predatory men (usually marked with a humorous unibrow), something that naturally makes for some intentionally uncomfortable viewing – especially in the year of our lord 2024.

Obviously, I don’t think it’s my place to dissect (or even judge) the effectiveness of the film’s commentaries on being a young woman, but even as a man I can still appreciate the thought and care that went into crafting this Jungian cocktail of serious themes in a genre-movie package that almost certainly went on to inspire future werewolf movies like Ginger Snaps.

Not the worst wedding I’ve been to.

That being said, what really keeps me coming back to the film is the absurd amount of memorable imagery. From a wedding party being taken over by canines to lonely treks through snowy groves, this is exactly the gloomy world I imagined as a child when reading Grimms’ Fairy Tales – and the dreamy atmosphere is only enhanced by the movie’s overall theatricality.

This also extends to the effects, as it’s easy to forgive decapitated dummy heads and ripped rubber skin when everything is happening in a magical hyper-reality, with a great example of this is being the scene where Grandma’s head unexpectedly explodes like a porcelain doll when it’s knocked off by a wolfman. That’s not to say that the effects are bad, as several of these transformations are downright grisly and likely influenced future lycanthrope effects like those in Underworld and even Trick ‘r Treat (even if the wolf-dogs here often look more cute than scary).

Of course, these aren’t the only things that The Company of Wolves has going for it, as the main trio of Patterson, Micha Bergese and the late, great Angela Lansbury exceptionally bring these exaggerated caricatures to life and the orchestral score is an absolute delight. I also really get a kick out of that bizarre ending implying that the dangers of adult life have literally come crashing into Rosaleen’s bedroom.

The Company of Wolves may not be a perfect film, suffering from some wonky pacing and the classic anthology problem where some stories are clearly much more enjoyable than others, but I’d argue that the flick’s iconic visuals and powerful thematic throughline more than make up for any minor flaws. And while we’ve seen bigger and better werewolf films since then, when it comes to adult-oriented fairy-tales, this is one psycho-sexual journey that is still worth revisiting 40 years down the line.

The Company of Wolves

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