Thursday, October 20, 2022

The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo!: Reflections in a Ghoulish Eye (1985)

 



A really fun Scooby adventure.

In this episode the gang travels to Morrocco after receiving a telegram supposedly from Vincent Van Ghoul telling them to go to a paranormal convention there. Unfortunately that telegram was not actually sent by Vincent but rather one of the 13 ghosts, a mirror demon called the Reflector Specter. He hopes to suck them into a mirror dimension where he can control everything. 

The Reflector Spector is a wonderful Scooby villain. His design and his voice are wonderfully creepy and his power to suck our heroes into another dimension makes him a major threat to our heroes. The first scene where he appears is fantastic, as we seem him sucking in a completely innocent victim, who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This scene already sets him up as quite creepy and a real threat to our heroes. 

The episode also benefits from the Moroccan setting. This gives the episode a unique atmosphere and feel that sets it apart from other episodes in the series. The background art is also as wonderful as ever and the detail and effort put into it really shows. The mirror dimension is also wonderfully designed.

Unfortantly the humor here is not as good as in the previous episodes. There are no real laugh out loud moments here, though there are a few jokes that do raise a smile. Too much of this humor revolves around the one time character Sandy. Sandy is a takeoff of Martin Short's Ed Grimley character, a character I always found more annoying than funny. This takeoff of him to me is just as annoying and unfunny and I feel this episode would have been quite a bit better if it didn't have him.

While Sandy brings this episode down a little, this is still a delightful Scooby adventure.  

 

1 comment:

  1. That Ed Grimley parody (by way of Alfred E. Neuman in the looks department) was waaay too on the nose -- he even said "I must say". Funny since a few years later H-B would do an actual Ed Grimley cartoon which was very enjoyable.

    ReplyDelete