Thursday, March 29, 2018

Toon Legends: Scooby-Doo in A Night of Fright is no Delight (1970)

"A Night of Fright is no Delight" was the pentultimate episode of season 1 of Scooby-Doo Where Are You?, first shown in January 1970. The Mystery Inc. team heads for a mansion on a remote island, where an eccentric millionaire's will is being read. Scooby (Don Messick) stands to inherit a share of the fortune if he & the gang can stay the night.

Edit, 5/6/21: The video has been deleted. In its place is the title card:


This episode was loosely adapted for tonight's episode of Supernatural on CW. Casey Kasem (Shaggy) can be heard in this one also as Col. Beauregard Sanders and, predictably, a police detective. The current cast (Frank Welker, Grey Griffin, Matt Lilliard, Kate Micucci), plus Dee Bradley Baker, are the guests on Supernatural. We'll review "Scoobynatural" tomorrow.

Rating: A-.

2 comments:

magicdog said...

The original incarnation will always be my favorite (followed closely by Mystery Inc. as it wouldn't exist without it). There are so many laughs and sight gags in this episode - the flying washing machine, Shaggy & Scooby trying to escape the ghosts via bicycle, the drainpipe crashing down....all memorable and still funny!

I think however the ending was a bit nonsensical. Being attorneys Creeps and Crawls must have known the money in the briefcase was Confederate money not current US currency. I can't imagine neither of them opening it when it came time to set up the will reading. I also wondered why the other relatives merely left the estate. It was the middle of the night and the house is obviously in the middle of a lake. Too risky to leave under those conditions. What should have happened was have all the other relatives be ghosts which would have allowed for the constant presence of the ghosts (in one scene, a ghost is chasing Fred & the girls, yet the next scene, two ghosts are on a bicycle scaring Shaggy & Scooby!). Then the reason would be for the money to remain "in the family" only to discover it wasn't proper currency.

I was a bit disappointed that the scene with the wine bottles and the organ weren't utilized for the Scooby Natural episode of Supernatural, but it did a great job with the material given.

hobbyfan said...

Because the plots tended to be repetitive, simply change the villain, rinse & repeat, it was mostly nonsense, just for the sake of comedy.