Saturday, September 5, 2015

Saturday Morning's Forgotten Heroes: Goober & the Ghost Chasers vs. the Ahab Apparition (1973)

Featured on Saturday Morning Cartoons: The 70's, Volume 1 is the series premiere of Goober & the Ghost Chasers.

Ted (Jerry Dexter), Tina (Jo Ann Harris), and Gillie (Ronnie Schell, ex-Gomer Pyle, USMC, Good Morning, World) work for Ghost Chasers Magazine, but as you can see in this episode, their technique in getting stories needs a little work. For some reason, ABC must've insisted on having four of the kids from The Partridge Family (Susan Dey, Danny Bonaduce, Suzanne Crough, Brian Forster) appear on the show as well, which, coupled with shoddy writing, doomed the show.

In the opener, Goober (Paul Winchell) and friends are called by Laurie Partridge (Dey) to a remote beach, where the ghost of Captain Ahab (John Stephenson) haunts the island. Turns out there's also a fake Ahab (Stephenson again). Of all the Scooby-Doo clones Hanna-Barbera produced off an assembly line in the 70's, this was one of the weakest. Don't believe me? Scope for yourselves.

Edit, 7/9/22: The video was deleted by Dailymotion. We've located a sampler from Warner Archive's YouTube channel:



Sony owns the rights to Goober due to the Partridge crossovers, but understandably, they're in no hurry to relaunch.

Rating: C-.

2 comments:

Silverstar said...

As if randomly placing the Partridge Kids in a Scooby-Doo clone show wasn't odd enough, as a kid I used to wonder why Keith Partridge wasn't among them. Apparently David Cassidy wanted nothing to do with the Partridge Family franchise after the series ended.

hobbyfan said...

Well, he did try a more adult role (Man Undercover), and that bombed. Consider also that the Partridges were next shoehorned into what was supposed to be a Jetsons revival, which also bombed, and......