Scooby-Doo and a Mummy, Too/Which Witch is Which?
Scooby-Doo and a Mummy, Too
The gang is visiting the Department of Archaeology at some unnamed university to view the Mummy of Anka. Daphne is terrified, but the professor in residence assures her there’s nothing to worry about. We’ll check back in in 22 minutes and see if he still feels that way. The mummy of Anka is over 3,000 years old. In response, Shaggy says he doesn’t look a day over 2,000. Scooby CACKLES madly at this.
The professor thanks Dr. Najib, a visiting archaeologist who provided the mummy. Dr. Najib’s voice sounds like rusty gravel scraping across a chalkboard. He tells the professor about the curse of Anka which turns everyone who disturbed the resting place to stone. He peaces out after that, pretty unconcerned with the dire warning he just gave.
Shaggy finds an ancient coin nearby and the professor suggests the kids get some sandwiches to eat while they “help” him. What kind of help he needs in the middle of the night is left unspecified. The moment they leave, the professor hears a crash and sees a mummy-sized hole in the wall when he investigates. Uh-oh.
Meanwhile at the malt shop, Scooby and Shaggy are getting liverwurst sandwiches a la mode. (☹) Shaggy tries to pay for them with the ancient Egyptian coin and is immediately busted for counterfeiting and sentenced to life in prison. Just kidding. The cook just thinks it’s weird and Shaggy promises to return it. Side note: The cook is voiced by Casey Kasem who also does the voice of Shaggy. It’s pretty common to have him pull double duty in a lot of these episodes, and it’s just funny that his choice for all these minor parts is “what if Shaggy had a baritone.”
As they leave, the chef despairs over Scooby and Shaggy’s dietary choices. Unsurprisingly, the professor has turned to stone by the time they’ve returned. The mummy of Anka has returned! Shaggy and Scooby arm themselves with a broom and a trash can lid so they can beat the shit out of the mummy if they run into it. Velma makes them put their weapons away, so Shaggy opens a nearby closet, where of course the mummy is hiding. He chases the gang to a room with a diorama where Shaggy and Velma use their old trick of pretending to be mannequins.
Scooby has decided to try something new and hides in a jar, which the mummy immediately shatters. Luckily, Velma sneezes, allowing Scooby to escape. Also, the mummy is really slow, so that helps a lot. The gang runs into a locked door and Velma tries her classic intimidation tactic by telling him to “Shoo!” This doesn’t work. The mummy angrily mumbles “Coin! Coin!” Velma deduces he means the coin MacGuffin Shaggy’s been carrying around. However, she doesn’t negotiate with terrorists and demands Scooby fight the mummy instead.
Scooby consents for a box of Scooby Snacks and begins to karate chop the mummy. Unfortunately, he breaks his hand on the rock-hard body of the mummy so he tries an old soft-shoe routine, dancing by the mummy and leaving Velma and Shaggy to their grisly fate. Shaggy is distraught but admits that Scooby’s dancing “wasn’t bad.” Luckily, Scooby returns at the last moment and nails the mummy’s bandages to the ground, giving them time to escape.
Meanwhile, Fred and Daphne are exploring the grounds. They come across Dr. Najib’s stone statue body and go off to find Velma and the others.
Velma has returned to the scene of the crime and grabbed the bandage the mummy left behind to test in the university laboratory. While she tests it, Scooby drinks every vial of fluid in the lab and turns into some hideous frog-dog hybrid. Luckily, he gets better. Right as Velma is about to find out how old the bandage is, the mummy returns. Velma decides to throw a bunch of chemicals on the ground to create a smoke screen for them to escape. Velma and Shaggy flee abandoning Scooby to his fate. All’s fair in love and war, I guess.
The gang searches for Scooby and finds a statue that looks just like him! Luckily, the real Scooby is nearby. When he appears, Shaggy informs him he’s been turned to stone. Scooby is understandably distraught by this news and the two weep, hugging Scooby’s corpse. Until…wait a minute! Scooby’s alive and right there!
The gang is puzzled by the presence of the statue. Daphne says she doesn’t get it and Velma says “I don’t get a lot of things.” Me too, Velma. Me too.
The gang decamps to the library to investigate why the mummy wants the coin so badly. They find that the design on an old statue is the same design as the coin. This explains nothing to me but I’m not as smart as Velma. The mummy attacks, chasing the gang out of the library. They retreat to the wood shop where Danger-Prone Daphne turns on the power saw which goes haywire, cutting up everything in sight, eventually sending the gang plummeting into the pool on the floor below. The mummy throws the power saw in after them which chases the gang through the pool?? The gang barely escapes the sentient murder saw and sits on a bench to rest. Unfortunately, the mummy also had the same idea and the whole chase begins again.
Shaggy and Scooby hide in a construction area and find a bag of quick-drying cement and realize that this is how the mummy made the statues. That, and he’s a wonderful sculptor. Scooby and Shaggy hide in a shack and the mummy begins to brick up the door Cask of Amontillado style! The professor is also tied up in a sack in the shack. Shaggy asks if he’s okay. The professor says yes, so Shaggy just leaves him there. They break out the back door with the help of a power mower that quickly goes out of control. Feels like the gang should be more concerned that every electronic appliance on this campus is trying to murder them. The power mower slams into the mummy, trapping Scooby and him on a wild ride. They crash into a sawhorse which sends the mummy cascading into the basketball net.
Fred unmasks the mummy to reveal Dr. Najib! Dr. Najib was after the coin which opens a statue concealing a diamond. When Shaggy took it, Dr. Najib freaked out and came up with the mummy routine to get it back from Shaggy. I feel like he could have just asked for it back, especially since no one knew what it did. Scooby finds the real mummy lying in a closet somewhere and the gang has a good laugh about being complicit in aiding and abetting graverobbers looting an entire culture for their amusement.
Scooby Snack Stock Market: Scooby takes an entire box of Scooby Snacks as his reward for karate-chopping a mummy, which seems like a fair trade to me.
Where in the world is the gang?: Near a university that has enough resources to display a mummy so maybe an Ivy League school? Seems pretty likely they’re somewhere in the Northeast.
Overall Rating: 3/5 Scooby Snacks. A weirdly plot-heavy episode that’s not terribly exciting but there a bunch of good gags.
Which Witch is Which?
I cannot stress enough that this episode only contains one witch. Talk about misleading advertising. Anyway, we open in a swamp with a zombie peddling a boat. This isn’t a George Romero flesh-eating zombie for the record.
Nearby, the gang drives through the spooky swamp complaining their fishing trip came to no good. Gee, you couldn’t find good fish in the creepy swamp? Weird. Scooby is bravely still forging ahead by fishing in a bucket in the back of the van. They see the zombie standing in the road and Shaggy decides he’d be good person to ask for directions. Up close, Shaggy realizes his mistake and the gang jets off until they arrive at the town of Swamp’s End. Boy, I don’t feel good about this.
In the general store, the shop owner, Zeke, tells them the story of how the zombie came to be at the hands of a crazed witch. Zeke was exploring the swamp with his partner Zeb when they saw the witch practicing her voodoo, summoning the zombie from the flames of her campfire. Everyone in town booked it pretty quickly after that with the exception of Zeke and the mysterious Zeb.
Scooby is so spooked by this story that he eats a bunch of jumping beans and his body starts flinging itself every which way, destroying most of the shop. Fred offers to clean up Scooby’s mess while Shaggy and Scooby investigate Zeb’s cabin. Once they arrive, Scooby and Shaggy just break in and start poking around. Zeb is nowhere to be found and cobwebs coat his cabin. A mysterious figure lurches outside the cabin and Shaggy offers to flip a coin to see who goes to investigate. “Heads I win, tails you lose.” Scooby takes him up on the bet because he’s a MORON and is weepingly forced to investigate. It turns out it’s just an angry chipmunk.
Meanwhile, Shaggy has found Zeb, only in shrunken voodoo doll form. They report back to the gang and Fred insists there’s only one place to look for answers. Shaggy suggests the phone book but Fred leads them into the swamp instead. They find the witch and zombie paddling through the swamp but quickly lose them. Luckily, a lot of helpful signs saying stuff like “Beware of the witch” point them in the right direction.
They break into the witch’s house without knocking AGAIN and find voodoo dolls of the entire gang. Velma declares the voodoo stuff is just a bunch of phoney baloney and Scooby decides to test this by brutally mutilating Shaggy’s voodoo doll. Before he can do serious damage, the witch appears and tells them they were stupid to ignore her signs. Daphne boldly declares that you shouldn’t believe everything you read. Which sure, I guess, but maybe not in this circumstance. This pisses the witch off a lot, so she disintegrates Daphne. Oh well.
Velma quickly realizes Daphne is alive and that she was standing on a trapdoor. They investigate and find a trail of footprints leading to an abandoned river boat. The gang splits up with Scooby and Shaggy walking off in one direction and Fred and Velma in another. We follow Scooby and Shaggy, which is a shame because I wonder what Fred and Velma have to say to each other. Probably nothing good. Scooby and Shaggy find the zombie and hide out in the ship’s gambling room, disguising themselves as poker players.
This disguise is pretty effective except for the fact that no one else is in the room and the boat’s been abandoned for years. The zombie helpfully gives Shaggy a full house before trying to murder him. Luckily, our heroes escape. Meanwhile, Velma thinks she’s found a secret entrance and rips a lantern off the wall, setting off a Rube Goldberg-esque sequence of events that opens the actual secret entrance which hides Daphne’s horribly disfigured corpse. Only kidding! She’s alive and has helpfully found a bunch of power tools one might use to look for something sunken in the swamp. Interesting. The witch appears and chases them. Fred leads everyone down a coal chute. Upon landing, Velma complains they landed in a coal pile. No offense, but I’m not sure what she was expecting to find.
Shaggy uses a mop and blanket to dress him and Scooby up as a witch and bypass the zombie. The zombie sees right through them and grabs poor Scooby, cackling maniacally. Shaggy decides the best action is to toss Scooby a Scooby Snack for his final meal. This seems to give Scooby Popeye-like superpowers and he karate chops the zombie. As they try to make their escape, the witch appears again. Shaggy grabs her broom and tries to make an escape, but the broom doesn’t work because she’s not a real witch. They plunge off the boat into a small airboat below.
Since Shaggy is still in the witch’s disguise, the gang finds him and beats the shit out of him before he can explain. Once they realize their mistake, they don’t apologize and attempt to escape in the airboat. The airboat crashes into a sunken armored truck full of cash! Velma deduces that the “witch” and “zombie” are after the cash. They decide to use it to set up a trap.
Scooby and Shaggy conceal themselves in the money bags and the witch cackles upon finding them, launching into a rendition of “Money, Money, Money” by ABBA.
After she’s done, Scooby and Shaggy escape, leading them right into Fred’s trap. His bright idea is to pull a giant tree branch back and whack the monsters when they run by. Miraculously, it works.
The witch and zombie are unmasked and revealed to be Zeke and Zeb, the only other characters in this episode. The gang drives off, satisfied with their work. Scooby tries fishing in his bucket of water again and actually catches a fish! We love circular storytelling.
Scooby Snack Stock Market: Scooby is given one Scooby Snack as a condolence prize for getting almost murdered by a zombie, which again, is very reflective of the American economy as this literally happens to thousands of workers every day.
Where in the world is the gang?: I don’t know, in Louisiana? I think this is the episode that broke me location-wise. I’m comfortable saying they travel a lot and am officially retiring this feature.
Overall Rating: 5/5 Scooby Snacks. Great mystery, great gags and a very spooky setting.