"A Scary Night With a Snow Beast Fright" was actually one of the few 'The Scooby Doo Show' episodes seen quite a bit later on in age than most of the show's episodes. For some strange reason, when finally getting round to watching it just before turning a teenager (somehow the premise didn't grab me as much as those of most episodes), it also was one of my least re-visited and between first viewing and my recent re-watches memories of it were relatively vague with a few vivid moments.
On recent re-watches though, "A Scary Night With a Snow Beast Fright" is one of those episodes that has grown quite a bit on me. It is not one of the best 'The Scooby Doo Show' episodes or one of the best of Season 3, but it is absolutely not one of the worst either. It is another mostly successful excursion to one of the numerous exotic locations (here the North Pole) that the show had in Season 3 and one not seen before in the franchise's history. One though that would have benefitted from a stronger final solution.
There is a lot to like here in "A Scary Night With a Snow Beast Fright". On the most part the animation is fine, with one glaring exception, people may not agree but that is one aspect that came on leaps and bounds in Season 3. The North Pole location is beautifully detailed and the chilliness is felt. The music also improved, while loyal stylistically to its roots there's also more of a groove and there is more variety. My love for the theme song will never die. The writing is fun and endearingly silly, while also being intriguing.
Have found too on my young adult watches that the story was much better than remembered. It starts off brilliantly, with one of the show's most ominous openings that had a real sense of jeopardy that not many other openings of the show's episodes did. Generally the Snow Beast was well done. There was genuine menace and he was cool. Shaggy and Scooby are amusing and amiable as usual and the interaction between the gang is cohesive and raises smiles. The voice acting is generally solid (Alan Oppenheimer has too little to do to register much though), especially Casey Kasem and Don Messick and this is one of the few episodes where the villain isn't voiced by John Stephenson.
Not a perfect episode though by all means. Although the build up to the final solution was great and tense, the final solution felt on the bland side with a very familiar motive and a perpetrator that actually didn't have much of a presence in the episode and actually to me was fairly obvious, the number of suspects to choose from is not large.
Was a bit distracted too by the constantly changing proportion/size of the Snow Beast. And to be more nit-picky, some of the writing is a bit sloppy in research (like with the totem poles).
Generally though, this was not a bad episode at all that grew on me. 7/10.
On recent re-watches though, "A Scary Night With a Snow Beast Fright" is one of those episodes that has grown quite a bit on me. It is not one of the best 'The Scooby Doo Show' episodes or one of the best of Season 3, but it is absolutely not one of the worst either. It is another mostly successful excursion to one of the numerous exotic locations (here the North Pole) that the show had in Season 3 and one not seen before in the franchise's history. One though that would have benefitted from a stronger final solution.
There is a lot to like here in "A Scary Night With a Snow Beast Fright". On the most part the animation is fine, with one glaring exception, people may not agree but that is one aspect that came on leaps and bounds in Season 3. The North Pole location is beautifully detailed and the chilliness is felt. The music also improved, while loyal stylistically to its roots there's also more of a groove and there is more variety. My love for the theme song will never die. The writing is fun and endearingly silly, while also being intriguing.
Have found too on my young adult watches that the story was much better than remembered. It starts off brilliantly, with one of the show's most ominous openings that had a real sense of jeopardy that not many other openings of the show's episodes did. Generally the Snow Beast was well done. There was genuine menace and he was cool. Shaggy and Scooby are amusing and amiable as usual and the interaction between the gang is cohesive and raises smiles. The voice acting is generally solid (Alan Oppenheimer has too little to do to register much though), especially Casey Kasem and Don Messick and this is one of the few episodes where the villain isn't voiced by John Stephenson.
Not a perfect episode though by all means. Although the build up to the final solution was great and tense, the final solution felt on the bland side with a very familiar motive and a perpetrator that actually didn't have much of a presence in the episode and actually to me was fairly obvious, the number of suspects to choose from is not large.
Was a bit distracted too by the constantly changing proportion/size of the Snow Beast. And to be more nit-picky, some of the writing is a bit sloppy in research (like with the totem poles).
Generally though, this was not a bad episode at all that grew on me. 7/10.
