Groovy DVD of Goolies...Groovie Goolies...

In this blog entry I'll be writing a little about a certain cartoon series that was airing on a local channel in my area when I was a kid. I'm a child of the '80s, pretty much, as I've written about in other blog entries. By the time I was old enough to really comprehend and remember the programs on television, in my younger days, it had to have been 1982/1983 at the earliest when I was around 6 and 7 years old. One of the cartoons I recall seeing is Groovie Goolies, which is a horror-based cartoon series closely associated with the children of the '70s who saw the reruns on Saturday morning TV. My oldest sister is who found the Groovie Goolies and so that's how, in the early 1980's, I was exposed to the cartoon series. I wasn't attentive enough to fully understand the cartoon other than it's look and the catchphrase uttered by the Frankie character. That phrase was often repeated by my father many, many times after he'd have an accident while working on something outside or inside the house. The phrase, "I needed that", said in a slow Karloff inspired voice, was the thing that stuck with me about this cartoon as the decades went by.

On the DVD cover you see the three main characters: Drac, Frankie, and Wolfie. Each of the characters is a late '60s interpretation of Count Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, and Wolfman. The program was set inside a facility known as Horrible Hall. The series was patterned after Laugh-In, a hilarious program hosted by Dan Rowan and Dick Martin in the late '60s through the early '70s which featured a large ensemble cast with one-liners and recurring sketch characters. The comedy program was the #1 television program for a couple of seasons and at that point in time it was the most imitated comedy program...which is what typically happens in the aftermath of a hit series...the airwaves become dominated by copycat shows. The most famous program to draw inspiration from Laugh-In happened to be it's country counterpart, Hee Haw. Whereas Laugh-In was dominated by topical jokes and so-called 'hip' cultural references and an occasional guest from a current TV show or movie, Hee Haw went in the other direction with intentionally corny jokes and southern references. The biggest difference is Hee Haw employed an ensemble cast of musicians, comedians, and country singers and had at least 2 or 3 different guest artist's on the show each week. Laugh-In often went just for the laughs with the surreal style of humor that had come to dominate mainstream comedy at that point in time. The Groovie Goolies didn't follow any plot and there wasn't any story arc to speak of and so for those cartoon fans who champion story lines and character growth you'll more than likely be disappointed in a series like this. Each episode consisted of a couple of songs as well as various recurring sketches and one-liners delivered from an area in Horrible Hall drawn to be a spoof of Laugh-In's joke wall with all the characters popping out of the walls and up from the floor to deliver jokes laced with puns. The voice cast was rather small but when you factor in the voice talents that the show had you'll understand why there wasn't any need for a larger cast. Howard Morris could be considered the star voice of the show since he did nearly all the main characters (Frankie, Wolfie, Mummy, Hauntleroy). Jane Webb did all of the female voices (Hagatha, Sabrina, Bella La Ghostly). Larry Storch was the voice of Drac and several others and then you have Larry Mann (Boneapart), Dallas McKennon, and John Erwin supplying voices, too.

I purchased this DVD in late 2006 when it was brand new and have often re-watched the cartoons around Halloween season. The project features all 16 episodes from the Groovie Goolies series on 3 discs.

Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1970's, Volume One!

This DVD collection features 12 cartoons on 2 discs...6 cartoon programs on each DVD. One of the programs is an hour-long and so technically you get 2 cartoons within the 1 hour time-frame. The hour cartoon is The Batman-Tarzan Hour. There are three extra's on the DVD. First we have something called "Saturday Morning Wake-Up Call" which is narrated by Casey Kasem. Mainstream audiences know of him for radio countdown programs while cartoon watchers immediately recognize his voice as Shaggy on Scooby-Doo, Alexander on Josie and the Pussycats, and Robin on Superfriends. The second and third extra are more traditional with interviews and commentary. There is a look at the cartoon series, The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan, with interviews by Eddie Carroll and Jamie Farr. The two of them describe what it was like writing a cartoon with a lot of interference from the censors and parental control groups. The third extra is a look at the Funky Phantom series with remarks about the series from fans in the cartoon industry and a brief acknowledgment to Daws Butler, the voice of the title character.

The extra's are a bit more irreverent but they aren't blatantly disrespectful to the audience. There is a companion Volume Two of this series and there is a two volume collection of the previous decade, the 1960's. Each collection has similar cover art. Several episodes on the DVD collections can be found on other releases. This DVD set is more or less for the general public and really isn't meant for the avid collector...even though the avid collector will no doubt purchase the series just to have it. The DVD being a sampler means that you're not going to be seeing the same characters over and over as you would in a DVD collection of one cartoon series. I liked all of the cartoons in this set and I was treated to a few I'd never seen before. Roman Holidays is by far the one that stands out because until this DVD came along I'd never seen that cartoon before. I'd also never seen any Tarzan cartoons, either, until now. Here's a list of what's on this DVD:

THE JETSONS

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF BATMAN

TARZAN: LORD OF THE JUNGLE

HONG KONG PHOOEY

GOOBER AND THE GHOST CHASERS

SPEED BUGGY

WHEELIE AND THE CHOPPER BUNCH

YOGI’S GANG

THE AMAZING CHAN AND THE CHAN CLAN

THE ROMAN HOLIDAYS

JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS

THE NEW SCOOBY DOO MOVIES {with the Harlem Globe Trotters}

THE FUNKY PHANTOM

EXTRA FEATURES: Saturday Morning Wake-Up Call; Solving Crimes the Chan-Clan Way; and Heavens To Betsy Ross: The Spirit of the Funky Phantom.

All-New Superfriends Hour, Volume Two review

Volume Two of this DVD set is just as great as Volume One, released over a year ago. In this new collection we see the remaining episodes missing from Volume One. A random sampling of what you will get when you buy this collection are 8 episodes. The episodes originally ran an hour when broadcast on TV but minus the commercials each episode is roughly 45 to 50 minutes in length. Each episode is broken into four separate segments as well, which is why it's advertised as 32 episodes. The first segment features a team-up between two Superfriends. The second segment features the Wonder Twins on adventures revolving teenage issues/peer pressure. The third segment is the main attraction, a story involving all of the Superfriends and the Wonder Twins. The final segment teams up one of the Superfriends with a guest super-hero. Batman and Robin, since they work as a team, are considered "one" hero in the team-up's.

Batman and Robin along with Superman appear together in the episode "Man-Beast of Xra" where an evil scientist, a woman named Dr Xra, unleashes man-beasts on the city with the help of her nervous accomplice. The professor is voiced by the show's narrator, William Woodson. Xra is voiced by Jean Vanderpyl, who became popular as the voice of Wilma Flintstone.

Aquaman's primary villain, Black Manta, appears in an episode entitled "Water Beast". In the episode, though, he's only referred to as Manta but the character design is clearly based on Black Manta. Aquaman gets a lot of screen time in the PSA segments where safety and health tips are dispensed. He also appears in the magic segment's as well. The rest of the Superfriends rotate with Aquaman in those PSA segments. In one safety segment, Aquaman warns a kid about attempting to roller skate with rusty skates and suggests he have a grown-up oil them. In the episode "Frozen Peril", Aquaman and Superman go on the mission of defrosting the world after an undersea villain, Sculpin, freezes the surface. John Stephenson voices a few characters in this episode including the villain.

The Wonder Twins appear in their own segments and one of them in this collection is frank by 1970's standards...Saturday morning TV standards specifically. I speak of the segment called "Prejudice" where the Wonder Twins tackle the subject when two bikers refuse to help a stranded motorist due to the color of his skin. "Pressure Point" deals with a kid named Jerry who feels insecure and sets about to show how talented he is at motorcycling by attempting to jump a canyon.

"Mummy of Nazca" is a story of an evil scientist who uses a mummy to do his dirty work. The doctor's name is Cooroff, loosely based upon Karloff, as in Boris Karloff, the actor who appeared in the Mummy horror movie 77 years ago in 1932. Henry Corden voices Professor Cooroff. In a rare moment in this series, Superman appears as Clark Kent for a period of time in this episode as he takes the Wonder Twins to the museum. Judging by the script, they didn't know Clark Kent and Superman were the same person.

"Forbidden Power" is a story about an evil scientist who sets off to find the ultimate power...Batman, Robin, and Wonder Woman stop him.

"Day of the Rats" features Batman, Robin, and Black Vulcan in Gotham City attempting to clean up the rat's that have littered the city. The rats turned evil because of a mechanism in the sewers. It's one of the few episodes where a main villain wasn't featured...just a bunch of evil rats flooding the city and terrorizing businesses. It was like the film 'The Birds' but with lots and lots of rats. By episode's end, Black Vulcan destroyed the mechanism controlling the rats and they changed back to their normal behavior.

In an episode called "Tiny World of Terror" we have a greedy scientist/inventor who doesn't get co-operation from his colleagues with one of his schemes and he gets his revenge by shrinking them...he soon shrinks the Superfriends as well and they have to over-come their height disadvantage in order to stop the scientist, named Professor Strickland. His partners who he shrunk were Professor Wong and assistant Mary. In a funny scene, the tiny Superfriends encounter all sorts of animals climaxing with Superman hopping on a giant spider and riding it like a bull. In "Tibetan Raiders", Flash guest stars and joins Superman in the Himalaya's to rescue passengers from an airplane that crashed. Flash isn't voiced by Jack Angel, so it was unusual seeing the character with a different voice.

As you can see, a lot of these stories center around an evil scientist or a professor who becomes vigilante-like and sets about to "rid the world of war" or "end all suffering". William Woodson, the show's narrator, often provided the voices for the assistant's and sometimes he was the voice of the main villain. The villains were described as being mis-guided, rather than intentionally harmful.

The methods in which the villainous doctor's carry out their hopes and dreams in the episodes, of course, cross the line into illegal activity and by episode's end they're told how wonderful their wishes and dreams are but breaking the law to achieve their wishes and dreams was still a big no-no. There were rarely any villains, with a few exceptions, that were deliberately evil.

Having said that, one of the villains that was intentionally cruel was Lion-X. He was the leader of the race of lion's that appear in the episode "Lionmen". In this episode, Lion-X uses a special ray device and while taking control of the space station, he beams the ray at Earth. They want to pull the Earth apart and look to be a success pretty much throughout the episode...with Lion-X knowing Superman's weakness: kryptonite. Wonder Woman uses a special voice changer and pretends to be Lion-X...ordering the followers to switch off the ray...the plan almost works until Gleek innocently walks across a monitor and his tail clicks on the camera switch...exposing Wonder Woman's trick.

Rima, Green Lantern, and Apache Chief also make guest appearances. Atom, the small guy with the atomic energy, guest stars in the episode "Cable Car Rescue" with Wonder Woman. The two of them have to rescue a cable car dangling in the sky. The only DVD extra is about the Wonder Twins. Five stars...the DVD is of an acquired taste. Those raised on the super-hero cartoons of today with all of that over-the-top realism will perhaps not find these cartoons entertaining because the stories are fantastical and fiction, using just a shred of reality for the plot-line and going from there...since cartoons were geared at children who weren't expected to grow up too fast back then.

The principal voice-cast include the following:

Danny Dark as Superman
Olan Soule as Batman
Casey Kasem as Robin
Shannon Farnon as Wonder Woman
Norman Alden as Aquaman
Michael Bell as Zan and Gleek
Liberty Williams as Jayna
William Woodson as the Narrator

In the Wonder Twins segments, Michael Bell and Liberty Williams voice multiple characters in addition to Zan, Jayna, and Gleek as you'll be able to tell right away. Olan Soule often played villainous henchmen in addition to voicing Batman...Casey Kasem not only voiced Robin but in later episodes he voiced the computer. Casey can be heard as various villainous characters and incidental characters in this collection. William Woodson was often heard as villains, too.

All-New Superfriends Hour, Volume Two...and Beyond...

This DVD collection was released a few months ago, back in January 2009. I have just now gotten around to buying it...and the reason for the hold-up in purchasing the collection is because I was certain that it would become available at the local Wal*Mart store as quite a few DVD collections have...including the previous Superfriends collections...but after several weeks of checking and still no Season One, Volume Two I gave in and ordered it on-line and it arrived the other day. I watched DVD #1 and will watch the second DVD at a later date and once I do that I'll have a review written...and that brings me to my personal pointers of reviewing...

I tend to write my reviews in an enthusiastic manner...and I avoid using a lot of language that would suggest mockery toward what I review. I have genuine interest in everything I have a blog about.

First of all I feel that if you review something you have to understand it and second of all you must have some sort of respect for the audience of the material in which you're reviewing/critiquing because if you don't you won't be taken seriously. I know some people may not agree with that statement but that's how I feel. The first thing I look for when I read someone else's review is audience respect...the first hint of mockery renders a review useless to me. So, for me, I write my commentary for those who are fans of whatever I happen to spotlight...and being a fan of Superfriends I write from a fan's point of view. The fans of this series, and I am speaking of the 1970's/1980's versions, know how the animation is and they know the way the characters were depicted and the less-than-complex stories, so it is useless to point those things out over and over and so I don't. I also do not ridicule and make fun of anything I happen to like and so you'll only have serious commentary and opinion within my reviews.

I see a lot of commentary about this series all over the internet...some good, but mostly not so good. The old-school animation and storytelling techniques are looked down on today for the most part by a society that is compelled to compare everything with a modern-day mentality. This sort of thing severely cripples a lot of animated cartoons...not just the Superfriends but programs similar to it...cartoons made prior to the "oh so hip" 1990's.

There is a phrase called "Saturday morning TV" that critics like to talk negatively about. The imagery of kids in their pajamas eating their cereal for breakfast watching cartoons...oh, I should say sugary coated cereal with that yum-yum goodness which is how most people generalize cereal commercials from that era. There is a touch of sarcasm in that last sentence or two.

Anyway, those sort of images of children watching cartoons on Saturday morning...and chomping down on the various delicious flavors of Lucky Charms or Frosted Flakes cause most modern-day mom's and dad's to throw a fit and harp on sugary cereal, etc. etc. Anyone remember when Cap'n Crunch and other animated cereal mascot's became popular? A lot of the fun in watching Saturday morning cartoons was seeing the recurring commercials with the mascots. There was the previously mentioned Cap'n Crunch...plus Lucky from "Lucky Charms", and then there was the CooCoo Bird on the "Cocoa Puffs" commercials and of course there was the Trix Rabbit...and Tony the Tiger...and on and on. There are still cereal commercials on the air but nothing like that era.

But anyway, I will have a review up when I finish watching and taking notes of the Season One, Volume Two DVD collection. Judging by DVD #1, the second DVD will be just as good. I often type my reviews here and then copy and paste them on Amazon's web-site, or, I by-pass the blog and write my review at Amazon.

I have all of the DVD collections that have been released on the Superfriends but you could have guessed that without me saying so...I have another blog entry about this series for those wanting further information on the series itself.