One of the best Scooby mysteries.
On Halloween night the gang travels to Salem to visit an old friend, Arlene Wilcox. When they arrive in Salem they are told to stay away because a witch has possessed Arlene. When they get to Arlene's house, she tells them that one of the townsfolks claims to have seen a witch, who over 200 years ago was burned at the stake, raise from the grave and that the witch looked like Arlene.
This is a wonderful episode. It benefits from a strong spooky atmosphere. The idea of have a Scooby-Doo! mystery take place in Salem on Halloween night is brilliant. There is already a spookiness to this setting that is in place even before anything even happens. This is only enhanced by the wonderful artwork. Having the episode take place only at night and being in a town that looks quite old-fashioned leads to some very atmospheric background that makes this episode feel like an old monster movie in all the best ways. This is especially true of the scenes that take place in a graveyard. As creepy as it is this artwork is also beautiful to look at (I really would love a book made entirely of Scooby-Doo! background art). This would be a terrifying situation and the use of it here makes this episode have a great amount of suspense and a greater sense of danger than most Scooby mysteries of this time. Adding to the creepy atmosphere is the angry mob hunting after Arlene believing she is a witch. The witch is also a truly wonderful villain, with a creepy design and voice that simply makes her perfect for such an atmospheric episode. The slapstick with Scooby and Shaggy is also great here with the scenes with the two trick or treating and a nice twist on the old mirror gag being definite comedic highlights. The mystery is also really good here and this is one of the few Scooby mysteries of the 1970's where the reveal actually took me by surprise. Yet the clues where there and when they were pointed out they made perfect sense.
This is as good as classic Scooby-Doo! gets.
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