THE GROOVIE GOOLIES
(BCI Eclipse, 1970)

By Barry Meyer

By the 1970s the pop culture monster craze had become as charged up as Frankenstein’s creature on a stormy night.  The classic movie monsters flooded the market, appearing everywhere: in movies, comic books, magazines, on cereal boxes, and the boob tube.  Saturday mornings were clearly the favorite stamping ground for these ghoulish characters, creeping up on all the favorite kid’s shows, from Scooby Doo to The Wacky Races.  But one of the biggest monster success stories was the fleeting fame of the terrible trio – Frankie, Wolfie and Drac – who called themselves the Groovie Goolies.

Groovie Goolies features a graveyard full of legendary monsters that, week after week, get themselves in all sorts of wacky predicaments as they joke, dance and sing their way through each episode. Think of the show as a weird cross between Laugh-In and a Harvey comic book.  At their residence at Horrible Hall, Frankie, Wolfie and Drac are joined by Mummy, Hagatha, Bella LaGhostley, Boneapart and a wealth of other animated tributes to monster movie icons.

As seemed the tradition with most Saturday Morning cartoons, each ghastly episode ended with an original Groovie Goolies rock-n-ghoul song presented in the form of a wildly animated music video. As an offshoot of the Filmation cartoon  Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (itself an offshoot of The Archie cartoons), the Goolies became a crossover sensation, not just scoring a hit TV show, but landing their monster hit single “Chick-a-Boom!” on the Top 10 music charts.

The killer 3 disc DVD set (put out by BCI) features the complete collection of 16 episodes, digitally re-monstered, with some bloody good bone-us material sure to drive “Goolians” batty. 

Extras include: “Goolians”, a brand new, 45 minute “docu-comedy” featuring interviews with Alice Cooper, Forrest J. Ackerman, Ron Chaney, Lous Scheimer,  “Goolie” head writer Jack Mendelsohn, and more; music videos include the Sacramento punk band The Groovie Ghoulies and a “Goolie-Get-Together Sing-a-Long”; audio commentary tracks, featuring Scheimer, Mendelsohn, Filmation historian Darrell McNeil, and Hollywood monster expert Bob Burns; an image gallery featuring original model sheets, animation cels, storyboards, backgrounds and PSAs, plus trivia and episode guides. DVD-ROM extras include scripts and the original Series Bible for “The Kookie Spookies.”