I have an interesting history with the horror genre as a whole.
I can remember being very little and being somewhat put off by the concept of horror movies, but never really being scared by them either. But, as I got a little older, I definitely became much more interested in horror and began seeking it out in whatever medium I could find. I played a lot of Silent Hill games as a kid, and really liked stuff like Courage the Cowardly Dog on Cartoon Network. That all being said, and while I think I turned out fairly okay as an adult, it's highly likely that I did see certain things before I was probably supposed to, and one of those things was horror movies. I watched the original IT adaptation on the Scifi channel eons before I even knew what IT or Stephen King was, and I wound up somehow convincing my parents, likely because I was extremely mature for my age, to let me rent horror movies that I probably shouldn't have been allowed to rent. Nothing insidiously gruesome, mind you, nothing with nudity or over the top violence. They were liberal people but they weren't nutjobs. Well, they were, but let's not get into that.
This is probably why when The Blair Witch Project came out, my folks allowed me to rent it. I can remember the night I watched this movie, as it changed my life. We went to a Longs Drugs Store, and the VHS box which was encased in plastic, and it made a horrible sound when you managed to finally slide that sucker out. I remember sitting there, in the dark, in the living room, alone, watching this movie, not knowing anything about it or what to expect. But it's kind of the perfect movie to introduce kids to horror with because, okay there's some pretty foul language but there's really no violence, no sex, there's nothing on screen to ever insinuate horror. Blair Witch Project succeeds because it's all in your head, which is what made it so much scarier than anything else.
On the other side of that spectrum was my love for the Scooby Doo franchise, whom, only a year prior in 98, had released their first full length feature in eons to critical acclaim, titled "Scooby Doo On Zombie Island". The success of that probably had a lot to do with why Scooby Doo Project was largely untouched when it came to creative control. The network essentially just told the people making it to do whatever the hell they pleased, and I guarantee it was the success of Zombie Island that was why they were given that freedom. I'd been a big fan of Scooby Doo for ages, despite how ancient the original was by the time I was born in 89, but when Zombie Island (and its subsequent film Witch's Ghost) came out, I became obsessed with them. So, for two of my absolute favorite things, both under the horror umbrella, to essentially merge and create one fantastic piece of media? It was like a goddamned dream come true.
So when these interstitial pieces started to air randomly on Cartoon Network, featuring the Scooby Gang melded with live action shots ala Roger Rabbit style, as a parody of The Blair Witch Project, I was not only surprised as all hell but also ecstatic as all hell. I remember they eventually said the thing would air in its entirety and I remember tuning it specifically for it, perhaps even recording it to rewatch it later. I used to record a lot of television for rewatch. I grew up in a less digital friendly age, before the advent of streaming and easy access to media, so recording something was the closest I got to rewatching stuff. Looking back on The Scooby Doo Project now, it's become a lot more talked about in recent years, but for the longest time I felt like I was the only person who not only remembered it but maybe had even seen it. I'm glad to see it still has a following of some sort, but a lot of the other articles or videos you'll find about it are more a "what the fuck was this" sort of mindset. Hey, let's look at something from our childhood and discuss how absolutely warped it was and talk about why it even exists.
But that's not why I like remembering it, or discussing it.
Sure, it's weird as hell and sure it's fun to question just how this thing came to be, not to mention the miracle that it made it to air at all, but my viewpoint on the whole thing is more along the lines of a treasured memory of a thing that allowed me to finally sort of grow up a little, taste wise. It felt like a thing tailor made for me, because I loved both aspects of what were involved, and I held it really close to my heart for a long time because of that. And while the special is now easily available to view on Youtube (and I'm nothing if not happy for its random burst in popularity, don't get me wrong), for the longest time it was just a fuzzy memory. A fever dream, almost. And those are the sorts of things I'm interested in covering on this blog, not just stuff that's fun to review and weird to discuss, but things that were really important to me growing up. That's what The Scooby Doo Project was to me, something really important and special to me. Something that felt like it had been made specifically for me.
It also made horror all that much more approachable for me, because it showed me that horror comedy can exist in a really perfect way, and that made me really begin to seek out even more horror than I had before. Between this and Zombie Island, it was a pretty solid few years for the Scooby franchise. And while they weren't the only ones by a longshot to be doing a Blair Witch parody at that time, seeing as it was a massive phenomenon, they were absolutely the best to do one, which didn't hurt. Hell, theoretically, without Blair Witch and Scooby Doo and The Scooby Doo Project, I may not be as big a fan of horror as I am today, so that's a pretty big impact to have on someones enjoyment on an entire genre of a medium. And I think it also proved that horror isn't solely for adults, because everyone enjoys being scared silly, and it really allowed people to be a bit more lenient on making kids entertainment just a tad genuine spookier than it had been in a while. That's a pretty good torch to carry, honestly.
This blog stands as a testament to the things I loved but feel are underappreciated, the things that really touched my life in one way or another, and that's why Scooby Doo Project is on here. Because weird as it was, recognized as it's become, for a long time it felt like it was just for me, and I'll never forget that feeling.
So here's to you, Scooby Doo Project, for being a really weird part of a really weird little girls childhood, and for making her feel less weird by extension. Thank you. Now go have a Scooby Snack.
Comments
Post a Comment