That's Snow Ghost

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Not to be confused with the Goober and the Ghost Chasers episode That Snow Ghost.
That's Snow Ghost
File:.png
Network CBS
Premiere date January 17, 1970
Starring Don Messick
Casey Kasem
Frank Welker
Stefanianna Christopherson
Nicole Jaffe
Hal Smith
Vic Perrin
Music composed by Ted Nichols
Director(s) William Hanna
Voice director(s) Joseph Barbera
Animation director(s) Charles A. Nichols
Episode navigation
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Title card
WAY 117 title card.png

"That's Snow Ghost" is the seventeenth and final episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! season one. It aired on January 17, 1970 on CBS. It was produced and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, the founders of Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Scooby and his friends take a skiing vacation at Wolf's End Lodge, which low and behold, happens to be haunted by a ghostly snow creature.

Detailed summary

White Timber Wolf howls, as the Snow Ghost makes its way through the snow.

The gang arrives at Wolf's End Lodge, a spooky ski resort, for some winter recreation. When they check in, the strange lodge owner, Mr. Greenway, warns them to keep their doors and window locked, or the Snow Ghost will get them and turn them into ghosts. And no sooner does he leave than the Snow Ghost itself shows up outside the window.

They follow its enormous tracks on snowmobiles and spot it on a cliff opposite. To their astonishment, it soars into the air and over their heads, gliding into the woods beyond. They track it to a cave filled with Tibetan knickknacks where an eccentric man named Fu Lan Chi who resides in the cave tells them about the snow ghost. He explains he encountered a Yeti back in Asia and as he was trying to escape across a chasm, the Yeti fell to its death. Now he fears the Yeti's ghost has followed him as the Snow Ghost.

Velma spots sawdust on the Snow Ghost's footprints and that leads them to a nearby sawmill. Upon entering, they split up as usual, and Shaggy, Scooby and Velma get separated. Velma is taken by the Snow Ghost and Shaggy falls through a trapdoor. Scooby saves Velma from a circular-saw fate and fends off the snow ghost and Velma and Scooby go propelling down a chute towards the lake at the bottom. The Snow Ghost ties some dynamite to a log and sends it down, but Velma and Scooby escape.

The gang is surprised when Shaggy appears, ghastly white. But when he falls into the water, he appears normal. Shaggy explains he fainted and woke up covered in white powder. It's revealed this is how the Snow Ghost has been doing the "turn you into a ghost" effect. The Snow Ghost makes an entrance and chases the gang. When he leaves, Daphne finds some jewelry in hollowed-out logs.

Chased by the Snow Ghost, Shaggy and Scooby flee on snowmobiles but end up frozen like icicles in the freezing waters. The rest of the gang breaks them out, and their accident gives Fred an idea. They lure the ghost by and Scooby knocks a tub of water onto him, freezing the Snow Ghost. But it backfires as always, and the Snow Ghost pops up beside Scooby, grabbing him. The Snow Ghost is about to throw Scooby off the ledge, but Scooby grabs onto the Snow Ghost's hand at the last second. Unfortunately, all Scooby can do is hang on for dear life. The Snow Ghost first tries to shake his arm free of Scooby. He then tries to pull Scooby's hand off of his hand. Then, he tries putting his foot on Scooby and pushing him off. Shaggy, knowing his friend is in trouble, flings a snowball at the Snow Ghost, resulting in the Snow Ghost and Scooby being trapped in a now-huge snowball, which rolls down after the rest of the gang as they try to flee from it before it eventually collides with them.

The gang unmasks the Snow Ghost as Mr. Greenway. He was also in cahoots with Mr. Leech, who would bring Greenway the stolen jewels in a suitcase and Mr. Greenway would hide the jewels inside hollowed logs (like what Daphne found), and float them down the lake to the sawmill. Mr. Greenway devised that plan after Fu Lan Chi told him his story and he dressed up as the Snow Ghost in order to scare people away. Mr. Greenway used plastic transparent skis to fly across the sky. Scooby volunteers to give a demonstration as to how the plastic skis work. Everyone is cheering for his skiing until Scooby crashes through a tree and gets stuck. A squirrel that was living in the tree starts to get angry with him, but then settles down and starts having a laugh.

Memorable quotes

Shaggy: Oh, boy! This ski trip is turning into a real scare trip!


Shaggy: Sawdust? Maybe he works in a meat market.


Mr. Greenway: Oh! Have I got a headache!

Characters

Legend
Character debut Speaking debut Ep. debut No lines Mentioned

In order of appearance:

Character Actor
White Timber Wolf Unavailable
Snow Ghost/Mr. Greenway Frank Welker (Snow Ghost)
Hal Smith (Mr. Greenway)
Fred Jones Frank Welker
Daphne Blake Stefanianna Christopherson
Velma Dinkley Nicole Jaffe
Fred Jones Frank Welker
Shaggy Rogers Casey Kasem
Scooby-Doo Don Messick
Mr. Leech Vic Perrin
Fu Lan Chi Unavailable
Yeti Vic Perrin
Sheriff Unavailable
Squirrel N/A


Organizations

Locations

Objects

Vehicles

Production

Development

Joe Ruby and Ken Spears either wrote or story edited, as they were unable to remember what they specifically did past the fifth episode.[1]

Filming

This was the last episode in which Daphne's voice is provided by Stefanianna Christopherson, who moved to New York to start a family after the first season's recording had finished.

Music

The theme song, "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?" was performed by Larry Marks, with lyrics and music written by David Mook, while Ben Raleigh wrote the music, respectively. The rest of the music was composed by Ted Nichols, who was credited as the musical director.

Release

Dates are in order of release:

Behind the scenes

  • Mr. Greenway and Mr. Leech are parodies based on the performances by Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre as Kasper Gutman and Joel Cairo, respectively, from the 1941 film The Maltese Falcon.

Errors

This page or certain elements were originally from Scoobypedia, whose content is licensed under the compatible CC-BY-SA license. View this template
  • After Scooby makes a funny face in the broken mirror, Scooby, Shaggy, and Velma are all standing closer to the wall than they were previously (the trapdoor has also moved with Shaggy).
  • When Mr. Greenway warns the gang about the Snow Ghost, he suddenly has white sclera.
  • When the gang first sees the Snow Ghost through the window of the guest room, they panic and leap onto Velma's back. She runs around the room, carrying the others, but only picks upDaphne at the threshold of the door, the door leading out into the snow. Why isn't Daph in the room with the others? Where was she when the whole business started? Even more oddly, to "escape" the Snow Ghost, having already locked the window, they run outside, where the Snow Ghost is.
  • After the invasion of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in Tibet in 1950-51, Tibet has officially been a part of the People's Republic of China, therefore Shaggy wasn't wrong when he said that Fu Lan Chi's cave was furnished in early Chinatown, and Velma's "This stuff isn't from China, it's from Tibet!" comment is subsequently misleading; she just refers to a specific part of China, clarifying Shaggy's generalization. It is similar to someone saying "This stuff isn't from America, it's from Nevada!"
  • It's unknown if Fu Lan Chi already knew about the sightings of the Snow Ghost, or had only just heard about it from the gang. The fact that he's incredibly calm about it may be a result of the former. (It could also possibly reflect his age.) Also, they find his story dubious; even if this is the case, it isn't clear if they bothered to have the decency to tell him it was just Mr. Greenway in disguise. They would just be assuming it was fake if they didn't tell him the outcome.
  • There are several mistakes with tracks in the snow. Freddy says the Snow Ghost's tracks end at the chasm, but they actually end well before it. The snowmobiles don't leave any tracks at all, although the Snow Ghost does. Also, why does the gang never find Greenway's ski tracks anywhere when they're continually finding his footprints?
  • The reflection in the broken mirror is incorrect.
  • There must be a conveyor belt moving the log toward the buzzsaw since there is no chain pulling it. Yet, when Scooby gnaws the log in two, only the front half continues to move.
  • The dynamite explodes before the fuse is burned up. In fact, the fuse barely shortens at all.
  • The Snow Ghost is right behind Shaggy's snowmobile, when suddenly, the snowmobile hits an icy cliff face, does a loop-the-loop in the air, and lands immediately behind the skiing ghost. The question is, if he was so close behind the snowmobile in the first place, how did he avoid the loop, which would've put him behind them once again?
  • When Shaggy and Scooby drive onto the ice, they turn and see the Snow Ghost, who was chasing them, stopped on the edge of a cliff, even though they didn't encounter any cliff to get there. And why does the Snow Ghost stop chasing them, anyway? Cliffs don't deter him, as had already been seen. Perhaps he knew the ice was dangerously thin.
  • After Shaggy and Scooby crash into the sign, it takes a moment for it to break off.
  • The lid is missing from the tub of water.
  • Scooby sits on the edge of a cliff above the kids, waiting to throw water down on the Snow Ghost. When the ghost appears, he growls, Scooby yells, and they have a noisy tussle that goes on for quite a while before the others notice what's happening.
  • Daphne and Velma simultaneously say, "You?" but only Velma is heard.
  • All through the episode, the Snow Ghost mask covers Greenway's entire head, but when it finally falls off, it's just a frontal face mask.
  • Velma explains that Mr. Greenway uses transparent skis to give the appearance that the Snow Ghost was flying. However, when the gang first sees the Snow Ghost flying, he jumps off a cliff and hovers through the air, belly-down. Transparent skis would not explain how Mr. Greenway did this. Furthermore, the Ghost seems to hover higher off the ground than the height of the skis shown, and there is even a shadow underneath the ghost as he floats.
    • Also equally unexplained, is where the Snow Ghost carries his skis when walking.

Legacy

The episode and characters have been referenced several other times in the Scooby-Doo media franchise:

In popular culture

Main article: List of pop culture references to Scooby-Doo
  • In the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "One Hundred," realizing that their series has reached a hundred episodes, Master Shake demands the network put his team's show in syndication. But this leads to Hundred, a monster shaped like the number 100, on the warpath. In their escape, Master Shake takes the Aqua Teen Hunger Force to a place to hide that's a parody of the Scooby-Doo series called Aqua Unit Patrol Squad with the pilot called "The Bayou Boo-Ya!," with 100 taking on the guise of the Bayou Boo-Ya, who resembles the Snow Ghost.
  • In the Supernatural episode "The Rising Son", Jack enjoys watching this episode until Dean turns it off.

Marketing and promotion

Due to the popularity (and more likely nostalgia) of the episode, it has since been published in comic or children's book form:

Critical reception

In other languages

Language Name Meaning
Greek Το Φάντασμα του Χιονιού The Ghost of the Snow
Hungarian A hószellem The snow ghost
Swedish Snöspöket Snow ghost
Polish Śnieżny duch The snow ghost

Home availability

References

  1. ^ Joe Ruby and Ken Spears. Scooby Addicts. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
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