The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo

The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo is an American animated supernatural/mystery-comedy television series created by Mitch Schauer. It was produced by Hanna-Barbera (H-B) for ABC's Saturday morning children's programming. It ran in 1985, airing 13 episodes that spanned one season. It was the seventh Scooby-Doo series after Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!

After accidentally releasing the thirteen most terrifying ghouls on the face of the earth, Scooby-Doo and his friends are forced to pursue them, guided by a warlock named Vincent Van Ghoul, and return them to their prison inside the Chest of Demons.

The entire series has been released on DVD.

Development
The original pitch by Mitch Schauer was for Scooby to fight the classic movie monsters owned by Universal Studios, under the working title of Scooby-Doo and the Devil's Eye, but Hanna-Barbera didn't want to pay Universal for the rights.

Schauer adamantly changed Shaggy's green t-shirt to red.

Flim-Flam was a network request, who believed a kid needed to be a real kid's entry point. Flim-Flam was inspired by Short Round from the 1984 film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Vincent Van Ghoul was created for Vincent Price only after his availability and approval was guaranteed. If Vincent Price turned down the role, Van Ghoul's name would've been changed to something different for another actor to play, preferably another celebrity.

Casting
Once Vincent Price was locked in, he performed the role for thirteen episodes, which were spread over four recordings.

Aftermath
The series was canceled due to budgetary restraints (and apparently not because of bad ratings), leaving one or two of the ghosts free (depending on your own view). Why they couldn't have caught each of those thirteen ghosts in each of those thirteen episodes, is beyond my comprehension.

More than 30 years later, however, Warner Bros. Animation hired Tim Sheridan to write an ending to the series in the form of the direct-to-video film, Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost, which was released on February 5, 2019. As this was number 29 in a series of DVD movies that were more on the traditional side of things, i.e. ghosts are just bad guys in masks, this movie had to abide by that rule by retconning The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo into possibly being a hoax. If believed to be real and not just the result of a hallucination brought on by spending an extended amount of time in the Himalayas, the thirteenth ghost was Vincent Van Ghoul's ancestor who had become corrupted by his own growing power and attempted to repent for his sins by following Vincent around like a guardian angel.

Music
The music was composed and conducted by Hoyt Curtin, with supervision from Paul DeKorte.

Cast

 * Don Messick as Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo
 * Casey Kasem as Shaggy Rogers
 * Heather North as Daphne Blake
 * Susan Blu as Flim-Flam
 * Vincent Price as Vincent Van Ghoul
 * Howard Morris as Bogel
 * Arte Johnson as Weerd

In popular culture

 * In the Torchwood book Slow Decay, it was brought up in a discussion about how the Scooby-Doo franchise had shifted towards using real monsters during the 1980s. Owen, being a fan had seen it, while Toshi had not.