The Corner Penthouse

Warner Brothers recently released the Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost (1999) / Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders (2000) Double Feature Blu-ray. Read on to find out more about it...

[ SYNOPSIS ]

Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost (1999) - Scooby (Scott Innes), Shaggy (Scott Innes), Fred (Frank Welker), Daphne (Mary Kay Bergman), and Velma (B.J. Ward), get tied up with bumbling mummies and monster turkeys when famous fright-writer, Ben Ravencroft (Tim Curry), invites the gang to his hometown for the Autumn Harvest Festival. There, they learn that Ben's ancestor, Sarah (Tress MacNeille), haunts the place, and they set out to uncover the ghostly Ravencroft secret that will prove her either a good-hearted healer or a spell-casting witch.

Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders (2000) - Scooby, Shaggy, and the rest of the Mystery, Inc. gang are stranded in a desert town where they soon discover a plethora of flying saucer buffs, secretive scientists, and less-than-friendly extraterrestrials! After aliens beam them aboard a UFO, clues to the mystery of the alien invaders lead the gang from a top-secret government research base to a huge network of caves hidden under the town.

[ SPECIFICATIONS ]

Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio with a runtime of 1:06:38 across 18 chapters. Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio with a runtime of 1:12:40 across 18 chapters. Both movies have not been rated. For both movies, audio languages include English, and subtitle languages include English SDH. I do not believe that there are any alterations to either movie and, I'm happy to report, that the "A Time Warner Company" text is still present under the Hanna-Barbera Scooby logo at the end of both films.

[ SPECIAL FEATURES ]

All of the content listed below, which can be found the Blu-ray disc, is presented in 720x480 SD.

• Witch's Ghost: Making Of (4:48) - A brief look at the various aspects of putting this animated film together, including footage of the recording sessions, featuring interviews with the voice cast. What's interesting to note is that the featurette here is LONGER THAN ON THE DVD! The featurette on the original DVD ran for 2:59, with the Blu-ray's version being nearly two minutes longer. The edits on the DVD start at 0:44 and run throughout. I never even knew that the DVD version was edited, but I'm glad that the team at Warner Archive found the longer version. (For screenshots and video of this featurette, see this Spook Central article.)
• Witch's Ghost: Music Video (1:10) - A promotional piece for the soundtrack album that edits down the songs "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?" (performed by Billy Ray Cyrus) and "Hex Girl" (performed by The Hex Girls) featuring clips from the movie with people dancing superimposed over some of them.
• Witch's Ghost: Promo Trailer (1:02) - Promotes the movie on videocasette and DVD.
• Alien Invaders: Making Of (5:56) - A brief look at the various aspects of putting this animated film together, including footage of the recording sessions, featuring interviews with the voice cast. (For screenshots and video of this featurette, see this Spook Central article.)
• Alien Invaders: Promo Trailer (1:00) - Promotes the movie on videocasette and DVD.

All of the important content from the old DVDs of both films has been ported over. Most of what's missing is just text-based fluff, such as the same Mystery Inc. character bios for both films (same text as also on the Zombie Island DVD), a trivia quiz for Witch's Ghost that didn't reward a prize if you got all questions correct, and "Scooby's Steps to Solving a Mystery" (five text screens; on the Alien Invaders DVD). The Alien Invaders DVD also includes a three-minute "Making of Scooby-Doo Mystery Adventures PC Game" featurette, which is no longer relevant, but it is a nice time capsule of computer technology from a quarter century ago :-) Of course, both DVDs also have some advertisements for other Scooby and Warner Brothers videos that came out in the late 1990s/early 2000s. In short, you can "upgrade" your DVDs to Blu-ray with confidence in knowing that nothing of importance is missing on the Blu-ray.

[ ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ]

No digital copy code voucher is included inside the standard one-disc blue Blu-ray case, nor is there a slipcover.

[ NOTES ]

The Scooby-Doo Witch's Ghost / Alien Invaders Double Feature is available on Blu-ray and is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Add in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (reviewed here) and you'll have the Mary Kay Bergman as Daphne trilogy, as she died after completing work on Alien Invaders.

These three movies - Zombie Island (1998), Witch's Ghost (1999), Alien Invaders (2000) - were the start of a direct-to-video series of Scooby-Doo movies that has continued to this day. I won't list all of them, and not just because I think the quality of each movie gets worse and worse over the years, but I will tell you that the next three in the series are all available on Blu-ray: Cyber Chase (2001), Legend of the Vampire (2003), and Monster of Mexico (2003) - the latter two reunite the original 1969 voice cast of Frank Welker, Casey Kasem, Nicole Jaffe, and Heather North.

Finally, if you enjoy the music, buy the Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost soundtrack album. Sadly, since it is long out-of-print, you'll be stuck paying exorbitant aftermarket prices.

This item has been provided by Warner Brothers for review on this site.