The New Scooby-Doo Movies

The New Scooby-Doo Movies is the second TV series in the Scooby-Doo franchise. It premiered on September 9, 1972 and ran for two seasons on CBS as the only hour-long Scooby-Doo series. Twenty-four episodes were ultimately produced (sixteen in 1972–73 and eight more in 1973–74). Aside from doubling the length of each episode, The New Scooby-Doo Movies differed from its predecessor Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! in the addition of a rotating special guest star slot; each episode featured real-life celebrities or well known animated characters joining the Mystery Inc. gang in solving the mystery of the week. The New Scooby-Doo Movies was the last incarnation of Scooby-Doo to feature Nicole Jaffe as the regular voice of Velma Dinkley, due to her marriage and retirement from acting.

Overview
Some of these guest stars who appeared in The New Scooby-Doo Movies, were living celebrities who provided their own voices (Don Knotts, Jerry Reed, Cass Elliot, Jonathan Winters, Sandy Duncan, Tim Conway, Dick Van Dyke, and Sonny & Cher, among others); some had died or retired celebrities whose voicing was done by imitators (The Three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy); and the rest were crossovers with present or future Hanna-Barbera characters. The characters from Harlem Globetrotters, Josie and the Pussycats, Jeannie, and Speed Buggy all appeared on the show during or after their own shows' original runs; The Addams Family and Batman and Robin both appeared on the show a year before they were incorporated into Hanna-Barbera shows of their own, The Addams Family and Super Friends. Many of the supporting voice roles were done by several celebrities who were famous elsewhere (Ted Knight [The Mary Tyler Moore Show], Larry Storch [F-Troop], and Jamie Farr [M*A*S*H]) or were unknown by the time of production (Jodie Foster and Vincent Van Patten). After The New Scooby-Doo Movies ended its original network run in August 1974, repeats of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! aired on CBS for the next two years. No new Scooby-Doo cartoons would be produced until the show defected to ABC in September 1976 on the highly publicized The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour. When the various Scooby-Doo series entered syndication in 1980, each New Movies episode was halved and run as two half-hour parts. The USA Network Cartoon Express began running the New Movies in their original format beginning in September 1990; they were rerun on Sunday mornings until August 1992. In 1994, The New Scooby-Doo Movies began appearing on three Turner Broadcasting networks: TNT, Cartoon Network and Boomerang. Like many animated series created by Hanna-Barbera in the 1970s, the show contained a laugh track created by the studio. The first season of the series was animated at Hanna-Barbera's main studio in Los Angeles, while the second season was animated at their newly formed studio in Australia.

Season 1 (1972)

 * 1. Ghastly Ghost Town - September 9, 1972
 * 2. The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair - September 16, 1972
 * 3. Wednesday is Missing - September 23, 1972
 * 4. The Frickert Fracas - September 30, 1972
 * 5. Guess Who's Knott Coming to Dinner - October 7, 1972
 * 6. A Good Medium is Rare - October 14, 1972
 * 7. Sandy Duncan's Jekyll and Hyde - October 21, 1972
 * 8. The Secret of Shark Island - October 28, 1972
 * 9. The Spooky Fog of Juneberry - November 4, 1972
 * 10. The Ghost of Bigfoot - November 11, 1972
 * 11. The Ghost of the Red Baron - November 18, 1972
 * 12. The Ghostly Creep from the Deep - November 25, 1972
 * 13. The Haunted Horseman of Hagglethorn Hall - December 2, 1972
 * 14. The Phantom of the Country Music Hall - December 9, 1972
 * 15. The Caped Crusader Caper - December 16, 1972
 * 16. The Lochness Mess - December 30, 1972

Season 2 (1973)

 * 1. The Mystery of Haunted Island - September 8, 1973
 * 2. The Haunted Showboat - September 15, 1973
 * 3. Mystery in Persia - September 22, 1973
 * 4. The Spirit Spooked Sports Show - September 29, 1973
 * 5. The Exterminator - October 6, 1973
 * 6. The Weird Winds of Winona - October 13, 1973
 * 7. The Haunted Candy Factory - October 20, 1973
 * 8. The Haunted Carnival - October 27, 1973

Cast

 * Don Messick as Scooby-Doo
 * Casey Kasem as Shaggy Rogers
 * Nicole Jaffe as Velma Dinkley
 * Heather North Kennedy as Daphne Blake
 * Frank Welker as Fred Jones

Special guests

 * Don Adams - Himself
 * John Astin - Gomez Addams
 * Ted Cassidy – Lurch
 * Sonny & Cher - Themselves
 * Tim Conway - Himself
 * Jackie Coogan – Uncle Fester
 * Phyllis Diller - Herself
 * Sandy Duncan - Herself
 * Dick Van Dyke – Himself
 * Cass Elliot – Herself
 * Don Knotts - Himself
 * Carolyn Jones – Morticia Addams
 * Davy Jones - Himself
 * Jerry Reed - Himself
 * Jonathan Winters - Himself

Home Media releases
Upon attempting to release a complete series set of the entire "24-episode" show on DVD in 2005, Warner Home Video was unable to negotiate agreements with several of the episodes' guest stars to have those episodes included in the DVD set. As a result, the DVD was released under the title The Best of the New Scooby-Doo Movies, and features only 15 episodes culled from both seasons. The opening titles on this release were edited to remove the images of The Addams Family, Batman & Robin, The Harlem Globetrotters, The Three Stooges, and Laurel & Hardy. It is still unknown if Warner Home Video will ever get legal permission to release a DVD for the remaining episodes.