Saturday Morning Massacre - Review

Saturday Morning Massacre has a simple premise. Scooby-Doo meets R-Rated horror film. It's an interesting concept that will probably resonate with any of us adults who grew up watching Scooby-Doo on Saturday Mornings. If you happened to be one of those early watchers you will recognize the plot. A group of four college age paranormal investigators go to a spooky old mansion with their dog and VW bus in tow with the goal of debunking a supposed haunting. Following some accidental drug consumption the line between reality and hallucination are blurred until events finally spiral into the promised massacre.

Our four main characters are Nancy, Gwen, Chad, Floyd and their dog Hamlet. These are of course fill-in's for Velma, Daphne, Fred, Shaggy and Scooby. The casting works relatively well here. The "Velma" and "Shaggy" characters have the right mix of believable character and cartoon based caricature. They manage to emulate the characters we expect them to be based on the influence without going over the top into cartoon land. The "Fred" and "Daphne" fill-in's are a bit more underwhelming. They don't come close enough to fitting the bill of what we expect and come off as more generic than anything. There is, however, a pretty gratuitous sex scene between these two characters for anyone that ever wanted to see Fred and Daphne get it on. Basically the casting of the lead's if 50-50. It's probably better that some characters feel more generic than caricature as it probably would have put the film too over the top. There's a good amount of comedy in here but it comes from the situation's and dialogue rather than the characters themselves.