- Title: Scooby Doo, Where Are You! – Hassle in the Castle
- wiki: link
Today’s Throwback Tuesday takes us back to Scooby Doo, Where Are You! for another mystery involving some meddling kids and their talking dog. On a foggy night the Scooby Gang’s boat runs aground on Haunted Isle and a pirate castle rumored to still contain the treasure of the pirate Vasquez. Ignoring warnings, the gang investigates the castle coming face-to-face with a Phantom (Hal Smith) who passes through walls and makes various items around the castle levitate. While things initially appear to have supernatural causes, various clues allow Scooby-Doo (Don Messick) and his friends to discover the true identity of the Phantom is a magician with a criminal past hoping to scare away others while he searches for the fabled treasure.
The semi-transparent ghost makes for a fun monster of the week and the episode does a fair job of explaining how the effect was used by the magician during the epilogue (although not why he isn’t using it when he’s captured). “Hassle in the Castle” diverges from the show’s formula in one important way by not introducing the man behind the monster mask prior to his unmasking. We do see Scooby accidentally spring the trap on himself only to still capture the monster for unmasking, Scooby finding some temporary courage in Scooby Snacks, and Daphne (Stefanianna Christopherson) walking into a trap and getting separated from the group (all staples of the show). As for the treasure, that’s one mystery left unsolved.
