Welcome to the first installment of....

Cartoon Funtime

HKC's

Jamboree!!!!

The New Scooby Movies:  "The Caped Crusader Caper" (1972) (Hanna Barberra Productions) A couple of weeks back, in a fit of nostalgia, I purchased the recent Warner Home Video DVD release of "Scooby Doo Meets Batman".  Why?  Well, I'm not a huge Scooby Doo fan, not like alot of my generation who took to the show in the mid-1990s because of the unintentional drug humor the show reperesented....these are the same people I went to school with who took up the whole "retro 1960s" hippy thing...a  nostalgia trend of the period I just didn't get...well, simply because I was spending way too much time trying to recapture the punk scene of the late 1970s.  But, I am a comic book geek of long standing...and well...I'll watch anything once.  I'd spent years trying to obtain both of the "New Scooby Movies" that featured the Dynamic Duo, and finally resolved that quest with the purchase of this disc.  Somehow, all those bell-bottom wearing retro-hippies don't seem so silly and pitiful now....

The first show contained on this DVD is the 1972 epic, "The Caped Crusader Caper"...and after watching it, I wish I had been stoned, then I woulda had an excuse for spending the dough on this animated cheese-fest. The Plot:  The Mystery Inc., gang are still on their vision quest out on the open road to bring spooky badguys to justice that woulda made Jack Kerouac green with jealously.  Stopping for the night to camp out in a creepy forest...Don't they always?  Haven't these people ever heard of a motel?  'Course, if'n yer stoned all the time, it probably seems like a pretty groovy idea to sleep out in the haunted amusement park and/or woods..the trips you could take in the funhouse would be pretty far-out!  Not  that I'd know...mind you.

The Caped Crusaders turn on, tune in, and drop out.....

Anyways, out in the sticks they uncover a plot to kidnap a certain Professor Flakey, who has invented a flying suit that the arch-fiends the Joker, the Smoker and the Midnight Toker have cooked up.  Actually, it's just the Joker and the Penguin, but couldn't resist going for the cheap pot joke and Steve Miler Band reference, thank you very much.  The kids run into Batman and Robin out there, who are investigating mysterious happenings out in the forestland.  They agree to split up, search for the missing Flakey, and meet up later to compare notes.  This is when it's revealed that the infamous ultility belt contains the awesome instrument of d0-gooding...Bat Cookie, which Shag and Scoob mooch off the Dark Knight Detective.  Y'know..it makes sense.  If I had a job that required a utility belt, I'd only keep the essentials in it, as well.....a pack of smokes, pocket change, aspirin, etc.,...along with my bat-lasers and flying rodent shaped wirepoons.

Organized crime goes off the wacky meter....

The Joker (who sounds like Edward G. Robinson trying to speak with his mouth full) and the Penguin, with the captive Flakey, find out that the do-gooders are on their tail, and decide to take the offensive.  To strike terror into the kids, the Joker makes use of the most fearsome weapon in his evil arsenal.  Laughing gas?  Nope.  He dresses up like a tree, yells "booga booga", and prances around like an idiot. I sh*t you not. How the hell these guys ever survived Arkham Asylum is beyond me.  And to beat all, the Penguin dresses up like a troll and menaces Shaggy and Scoob from under a bridge.  Comedy genius!

Um...yeah.

After some Laurel and Hardy-like hi-jinx, involving a revolving bridge and an adventure into the criminals lair and the rescue of Flakey, our heroes deduce that the bad guys are making their way back to Gotham to retrieve the flying suit for their nefarious deeds.  How'd they get away?  They stole the f*ckin' Bat-Copter.  Y'know, if I was Bruce Wayne, I wouldn't just leave the keys in that thing all the time.  But, he's a rich millionaire playboy, and I'm not.  There's no justice in the world.  They hotfoot it back to Gotham, get to the Prof.'s lab where he unveiils the Flying Suit, which looks like an old diving suit with a third leg hole in the crotch.  Scooby gets thrown into the suit, flys around like an idiot, until the Joker and Penguin are almost crushed by a giant Batman balloon.  Hilarity abounds. The End. I've smoked "mary-jane", and never in my times in that scene did I ever say, "Hey!  I know!  Let's load up in the van and solve mysteries!"  Hell, most potheads I know are usually too stoned to get their ass off the couch and stop watching Sccoby Doo, much less get involved in some crazy monster antics themselves. But, the cartoon is alot of fun.  I laughed my ass off, just because of the pure stupidity of it all.  Recommended for comic book fanboy completists and reefer fiends everywhere.  God knows we' be the only ones to appreciate it.