The Corner Penthouse

After reviewing Warner Archive's recent Blu-ray releases of the late 1990s Scooby-Doo films Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island and the Witch's Ghost / Alien Invaders Double Feature, I revisited all of my Scooby DVDs from that time period. One of them, Scooby-Doo and the Legend of the Vampire (2003), contains some faux bloopers that require some work to find...

The back of the cast lists one of the special features as the "Monster Factory Challenge - Scare Scooby-Doo and Shaggy with Your Monster Creations and Reveal the Hidden Bloopers". If you go to Special Features, then Monster Factory, you'll be greeted with a cave exterior still image while a narrator tells you to venture inside. If you've eaten some Scooby Snacks and gained the courage to head inside, you'll be greeted with the monster laboratory.


Three of the nine bloopers can be found on this screen, which contains four selectable spots; the yellow areas seen in the image below.


1. Birdcage (top left) - 0:29 (DVD Title 11)
2. Floor Grate (bottom) - 0:08 (DVD Title 12)
3. Electric Orb (top right) - 0:11 (DVD Title 13)

When you select the monster slab in the middle, you will be taken to the monster face selection screen. It is here where you have to work to obtain the remaining six bloopers.


There are nine parts here to select. You pick one forehead/eyes, one nose/mouth, and one chin - mix and match. When you get a "correct" combination, you will be shown a screen like the one below. You can play the blooper from the on-screen option.


It took me some effort to find the six correct combinations (Title 16 kept eluding me), but I managed to find them all. I numbered the grid of selectable parts from left to right, top to bottom as such:
1 | 2 | 3
4 | 5 | 6
7 | 8 | 9

4. Parts 1, 5, 9 - 0:18, DVD Title 18
5. Parts 1, 6, 8 - 0:14, DVD Title 14
6. Parts 1, 6, 7 - 0:12, DVD Title 16
7. Parts 1, 5, 7 - 0:10, DVD Title 17
8. Parts 2, 6, 7 - 0:15, DVD Title 15
9. Parts 2, 4, 9 - 0:17, DVD Title 19

What prompted me to go through all this effort to find, and preserve, the faux bloopers, is that they were NOT ported over to the Blu-ray release (alt url). The audio commentary (from Scooby, Shaggy, and Fred) and the "Get the Beat" music video collection are on the Blu-ray, but the bloopers are not. That's a shame, because the Blu-ray is preferable to the DVD; it is not only in high definition, but presents the movie in the complete widescreen aspect ratio. (Legend of the Vampire, as well as Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman, both from 2003, were animated in widescreen, but had the sides cropped off to fit the then-prevalent 4:3 televisions.)

What makes Legend of the Vampire even more special is that it, as well as the follow-up, The Monster of Mexico (DVD), reunite the 1969 voice cast of Frank Welker, Casey Kasem, Heather North, and Nicole Jaffe. So, it's definitely worth having in your Scooby-Doo video collection.

Finally, I touched upon preserving the faux bloopers from this DVD, and that's what I did. I ripped them from the DVD and losslessly combined them into a 2:10 video, which you can play by clicking on the image below, or download as a lossless DVD rip (66 MB). It's better than nine really short videos, and I organized them by "shooting order" (going off of the fake info on the fake clapboards). Yes, there are two "Day 13/Scene 10/Take 3" and two "Day 16/Scene 13/Take 7" bloopers!