All tagged Scooby-Doo
The PBS series 3-2-1 Contact debuted on PBS in 1980, introducing young viewers to the multitude of fun facts surrounding the growing world of science. Within the series (which was a bit like Mr. Wizard meets Nova), was a series of shorts called The Bloodhound Gang. A bit like Scooby-Doo, this live-action mystery program featured three kids who solved mysteries, usually turning to science to get the bottom of each case.
What has become of Saturday mornings is a travesty. In the 70s and 80s, watching Saturday morning cartoons was a ritual. You’d climb out of bed at the crack of dawn, grab a blanket, go to the kitchen and pour yourself a bowl of Fruity Pebbles or Cocoa Krispies, make your way to the living room, and ready yourself for a marathon of sitting in your pajamas and watching the world of Hanna-Barbera unfold before your eyes.
Saturday mornings used to be the most-eagerly anticipated time of a child’s week. Getting up early, pouring yourself a big old bowl of Fruity Pebbles or Trix, making a blanket fort, and watching your Saturday morning cartoons. It was sacred time for the kid to rejuvenate from their school week and get lost in the world of animated fun. Of the myriad options you could tune in to over three major networks, the most common names to come up in your cartoons’ credits were those of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, titans of the animated Saturday morning world. This article is a celebration of the best of these Kings of Cartoons and the multitude of shows they churned out over the span of five decades.
We’ve seen it occasionally happen over the years: movies that hope to cash-in on iconic television shows by using them as a basis for a feature film. Typically, these outings are awful. They seldom do anything to improve upon the performances and premises on which they are based. The recent ChiPs is an example. A bumbling film of poor taste that does damage to the show’s reputation by recreating it as a comedy with insipid, juvenile humor and frankly, poor taste. Other TV to film enterprises include the Scooby-Doo films, Bewitched, The Flintstones, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Brady Bunch, Charlie’s Angels, Dragnet, Dukes of Hazzard, Fat Albert, The Fugitive, Lost in Space, The Smurfs, South Park, Thunderbirds, Veronica Mars, 21 Jump Street, The Avengers, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Inspector Gadget, The Honeymooners, Miami Vice, Mission: Impossible, Star Trek (myriad inceptions), and The Mod Squad. This is just a partial list, but as you glance through it, only a handful stick out as having been faithful, entertaining adaptations of their original sources. Why is it that so many films that found their genesis in popular TV shows have failed to ignite on the big screen? How does this bode for the upcoming and eagerly-anticipated (by some) Baywatch film?
