This post contains minor spoilers for Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School.
Scooby-Doo and Shaggy being hired as gym teachers makes complete sense, right? It might be a weird way to get us to Miss Grimwood’s Finishing School for Girls, but it gets us there. The school is where the real spooky fun begins because Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School has a wide range of horror characters that will be familiar to you if you’re a big horror movie fan.
It isn’t often that you get a movie that features a mummy, a vampire, a wolf, a ghost, and the daughter of Frankenstein’s monster. While they’re all descendants of these well-known horror figures, it takes a more light-hearted look at the lives of these girls. The entire premise is that the girls are going to go up against the boys at the military school next door in a volleyball match. Remember, this is a kid’s movie, but I wanted to revisit it because of how fun it is. It isn’t a dire horror movie that will leave you feeling depleted when you watch it.
Sibella (Dracula’s daughter), Elsa (the daughter of Frankenstein’s monster), Winnie (Wolfman’s daughter), Phantasma (Phantom’s daughter), and Tanis (the Mummy’s daughter) are all tribute characters to the Universal Monsters. Each of the students has their own little quirks, like Sibella turning into a bat and Tanis’s bandages coming undone during dance class. It’s the little things like that which make the movie a truly fun one to watch.
I’ll admit that I was a little bummed it was just Scooby, Scrappy, and Shaggy were the only ones in it out of the main characters. However, it being different from a regular Scooby-Doo mystery makes it interesting to watch. Yes, there’s still a mystery that comes into play, but it’s not immediate. We get time with all the new characters before Revolta is introduced. She has an evil plan to take the girls and have them work around her lair. Her plan involves picking them off one by one, and it’s an effective way to move the plot along. I’ll admit that’s a weird thing to say about an animated kid’s movie, but it’s crucial in order to keep their attention (and mine).
Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School doesn’t need to be a masterpiece to be enjoyable. Scrappy is exactly as peppy as you’d expect him to be. He’s always ready for anything, and he’s the only one of the three who doesn’t see any problems at the school. Scooby-Doo and Shaggy are every bit as afraid as you’d expect. The dynamics are spot on between all the characters – even between the girls and Scooby-Doo and Shaggy. They wanted to show off the school and what they could do, but Shaggy and Scooby-Doo were just too chicken to handle most of it.
I grew up loving Scooby-Doo and I know I had seen this before – maybe more than once. However, it had been so long that all I really remember were the girls at the school. So, it was a nice treat when Revolta appeared because then I knew things were about to get even better. Despite being fuzzy on the details, watching it was a big nostalgia trip, and it’s nice to have those every once in a while. If you want to have a fun time and need a good laugh, I can’t recommend this enough.
Ghoul School might not be my favorite of the Scooby-Doo movies, but it’s a perfect one for the Halloween season. It has odes to Universal Monsters, a weird villain, and a ghoulish school. What more could you want?
