#“This is it. This is my villain origin story.” - real line uttered by Johnny as he lost yet another fucking round of UNO

[johnnyshrine]

★ 065 // “UNO, based on a true story” (Story below the cut!)

(Sometimes me and my partner will slip into improv RP over text and it leads to fun shenanigans. Like last night:)

(We then get in call to actually play cards. Johnny and Gyro play many riveting rounds of UNO and decide to turn it into a drinking game: whoever loses, drinks. This is the aftermath of that night:)

(Yes, this is real: I did lose at UNO 11 times in a row, and I have to tell the whole world this.... sigh....)

[ayellowbirds]

Keshet Rewatches All of Scooby-Doo, Pt. 25: “Don’t Fool With a Phantom”

("Scooby-Doo, Where Are You", Season 2 Episode 8. Original Airdate: 10/31/1970)

AKA, "The Gang Are Oblivious To The Permanent Skin-Altering Side Effects of Regularly Ingesting Silver Compounds"

It seems especially appropriate that the final episode of the original series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, aired on the morning before All Hallow’s Eve. How many kids got ready for trick-or-treating with this one fresh in their memories?

Upbeat music and a shot of the exterior of a high-rise building lit by a flashing sign with the station identifier KLMN, probably not associated with the real-life station of the same call letters. The scene transitions inside to a studio where the gang participate in Johnny Sands’ Dance Game Show.

Fred and Daphne repeat the same generic, jerking dance they’ve done at every single occasion where there was music, and are applauded off the stage with a “groovy!” from the host... who introduces “Shaggy and Scooby-Doo, with their ‘Toffee Twist’!”

The boys put on a performance using an immense length of uncut soft toffee as a dance prop, and as the rest of the gang watch, the station manager Roger Stevens lauds the original performance. The only problem, Velma notes, is that Shaggy and Scooby might eat their way out of the contest.

Suddenly, the lights cut and the stage is plunged into utter darkness. Shaggy cries out the series title in spite of the fact that Scooby was inches away from him, and the lights come back up just as he gets his response. Or more accurately, something else lights up the stage.

A glowing, misshapen figure towers over the boys, moaning hauntingly, and the lights go out again as people scream and attempt to flee amidst crashing noises. The problem with this scene?

When the lights come back up, none of the studio audience has moved, and while the sign for the show is busted up, it’s clearly a completely different sign. The colors are reversed from the original, and if you look closely at the very top, you can see where the background artist(s) simply painted it over the original sign.

Velma thinks this is just one of Johnny Sands’s famous “publicity stunts”, but when the gang respond to cries for help, they find Johnny tied up in a ransacked room. He explains that the station had been receiving threatening notes signed by “the Wax Phantom”, a figure he relates back to “Grisby”, an eccentric maker of wax figures who had briefly had  a spot on the show until he was canceled and swore revenge by bringing one of his statues to life.

The safe has been emptied out, and Mr. Steven is absent—with a trail of wax footprints leading out a 10th story window as the only solid clue. Fred wants to call the cops, but Sands insists that the publicity would ruin the financially struggling KLMN. It’s the last we see of him for the rest of the episode, which really feels like a missed opportunity to add more clues and red herrings.

While Fred and Daphne investigate the wax museum, Shaggy, Scooby, and Velma are sent to check on Grisby (first name? Last name? We never find out). He greets them at the door, hushing them.

It’s never said out loud that Grisby is gray-skinned, though maybe argyria is a common enough condition in the Scoobyverse that it isn’t seen as appropriate to question it. He welcomes the trio into his home, where we immediately see a table with a skull and taxidermied raven, as well as some kind of bird of prey over the front door, as well as a crystal ball on a pedestal with the likeness of a snake coiling up it. A skeleton in an electric chair makes its appearance in the next shot, and while Shaggy investigates a cauldron cooking in the fireplace, Scooby opens a small box.

I already made one Danny Phantom joke, so i’m afraid that i’ll just have to let you enjoy this BOX GHOST on its own. What a little cutie. It makes a chittering noise and flaps its arms, so i think it might be the ghost of a bat or bird, rather than a human. More tiny ghosts—little skulls—bubble up from the stew before Shaggy can take a taste, and Grisby gleefully declares that his black magic is working, and he will soon have his revenge. A live corvid crows and swoops through the room, and Shaggy, Velma, and Scooby flee—though Scooby pauses to wave goodbye, and the skeleton in the chair giggles and waves back.

It’s a charmingly spooky little place, but having seen shots of the interior of @bogleech and Guillermo del Toro’s homes, i feel like there’s just not enough going on. A guy like Grisby wouldn’t be happy unless the walls were lined with eerie memorabilia and figures.

The scene cuts to the wax museum, where the Wax Phantom watches as the Mystery Machine drives up. Finding the front door unlocked, Fred and Velma enter, and are too distracted to notice as the Phantom bolts the door behind them, and sneaks around to moan and chase at them.

Outside, Velma struggles with the door, and bribes the boys with handfuls of Scooby Snacks to find a window they can climb through. A series of frights ensues as Scooby and Shaggy are repeatedly caught by surprise by the displays, including animatronic gimmicks like a giant bat that drops down in front of a figure of a vampire.

At one point, however, Velma is surprised by a floating, translucent gloved hand that has no rational explanation. It’s an “actual ghost” bit like so many others, never revealed as part of the villain’s setup and given no mundane cause. Spooked again, the gang run into each other—well, Shaggy runs into an Egyptian-style sarcophagus (”just dropped in to see my mummy”).

Velma spots a clue on the floor near Scooby: a “Speedy Airlines” ticket, “to South America”. Where in South America? It’s a clue, but a frustratingly vague one. The gang go looking for more clues, and Shaggy and Scooby voluntarily split when they catch sight of a display of a dining table with wax figures of dinner guests.

In particular, there’s this figure of the Space Ghost villain, Black Widow! It’s a cute little cameo. Meanwhile, the rest of the gang drop through a trap door into a pit with stone walls and no apparent exit. The scene cuts back to Shaggy and Scooby, as the Black Widow hands a bowl of fruit to Scooby, who passes it to Shaggy. Neither seem to process that the wax figure is moving, though Scooby offers his thanks just before Shaggy spits out a mouthful of wax fruit in disgust.

The Wax Phantom appears, and tells the boys that they, too, “will soon become members of my wax family.” Shaggy and Scooby distract him with the fruit and sneak away as quickly as they can, accidentally winding up in the “TOPSY-TURVEY ROOM”, a room set up to look like an ordinary household dining room turned upside-down. The boys panic and cling to the chandelier, confused by the reversal of gravity and convinced it’s part of the “haunting”. The Wax Phantom moans in the distance, and the duo crawl up the wall and onto the “floor” to rest in the chairs and enjoy a snack.

A lot of these jokes would be badly out of place in another episode, but here, they flow naturally from the setting. The Wax Museum is obviously full of weird gimmicks and spooky sights, as is Grisby’s house, so it just makes sense that the gang would keep running into them.

Well, the trap door pitfall needs some explaining. Who approved these building plans? Inside, Velma accidentally triggers the door to a secret compartment containing a bag full of cash, and then another that opens a door in the wall. They discover a grate at the end of the passage, through which they can see Scooby and Shaggy in the clutches of the Wax Phantom.

The Wax Phantom plans to turn them into wax dummies ("we’re already dummies!”), and Shaggy has been the victim of these villains enough that he actually criticizes the Phantom’s use of a conveyor-belt ride into the boiling vat of wax. “Like, that went out with the silent movies, Phantom old pal!”

As Daphne tries to get their attention, she once again leans out too far over a barrier and falls through the window, catching herself on a rope tied to a lever that reverses the conveyor belt. For once, there’s no comment about her being “danger prone”, since her fall actually helps matters. The boys are sent right back at the Phantom, and the resulting collision knocks their ropes off. The Phantom gives chase, and Fred, Daphne, and Velma follow, as the completely random musical choice of the chase song “Pretty Mary Sunlight” starts to play.

Character designer Iwao Takamoto mentions in his memoir that the cast and crew called these bits “romps”. As this is the last one for a long while, i kind of wish this one had been more memorable or appropriate to the scene. I think they didn’t start up again properly until... A Pup Named Scooby-Doo? That’s what the wikis say, at least.

The boys escape, and Fred forms a plan to trap the Wax Phantom in his own waxworks. Scooby and Shaggy try to flee their role as bait, but wind up wandering into the path of the Phantom anyway, and are forced into the trap. Unfortunately, Fred fouls up, and pours hot molten wax all over Shaggy, Scooby, and the Wax Phantom. It instantly hardens, so hopefully it wasn’t too hot, but that still must’ve been agonizingly painful for poor Scooby and Shaggy.

With the sheriff summoned, Fred does the honors of shattering the hardened wax shells around the three figures in turn, liberating Shaggy and Scooby with a small hammer.

However, as he starts to tap apart the Wax Phantom, the towering figure is reduced to the height of a normal human, who turns out to be:

Stevens wishes the gang had minded their own business, and so we end Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! with only two “meddling kids” for the entire run of the original series! Shaggy was sure that Grisby was responsible, but Stevens was just using the eccentric old man’s threats of magic to cover his embezzlement of funds (the reason the station was suffering, or simply something that he decided on as the financial troubles set in? It’s unclear) and disappearance from the country.

The fact that Fred is able to chip away Stevens’s costume along with the wax poured on it suggests that the whole suit was made of wax, which makes... no sense whatsoever. How was it mobile? Were there joints we couldn’t see? If not, why was it flexible but became brittle after more wax was poured on? In the end, it’s one of a great many monster costumes that make less and less as a costume the more you think about them.

Back in the Mystery Machine, Scooby and Shaggy look with joy on wax duplicates of themselves tucked into the back. As with many such interior shots, none of the contents of the van that were used in other episodes are visible; the walls are completely bare, without even the usual trappings of the inside of a van. It’s far from the only time the Mystery Machine’s contents will disappear and reappear, but as i said, it seems to be bigger on the inside, anyway.

Why did the boys want wax replicas of themselves, anyway?

“There’s only one problem,” Fred says in the final gag of the series, “how to tell one pair of dummies from the other.”

“Very funny, very funny,” Shaggy grouses.

“Reah,” Scooby adds, “very funny!”

And that’s it for the show. Tune in this time tomorrow for a bit of post-season analysis, and the start of The New Scooby-Doo Movies!

(like what i’m doing here? It’s not what pays the bills, so i’d really appreciate it if you could send me a bit at my paypal.me or via my ko-fi. Click here to see more entries in this series of posts, or here to go in chronological order)