Tonight I plan to watch The Blair Witch Project for the first time when it airs on House of Sven on MeTV. The show’s social media has been teasing what looks to be an elaborate parody of the movie for the host segments. That reminded me of what’s probably the best parody of the movie, The Scooby-Doo Project.

The Wikipedia entry goes into a decent amount of detail, but the special was designed as a series of interstitials for a Scooby-Doo marathon on Cartoon Network that, when strung together, would still tell a complete story. Even after producers for three separate marathons pooled their resources budget was limited, so they had to get creative – animation of the characters from behind and lip motions for dialogue was reused, live action scenes were filmed at the homes of family members, many of the actors were Cartoon Network employees, and the producers flew to Canada to get footage of an already existing promotional Mystery Machine.

The special won an Annie Award and received glowing reviews, widely considered to be one of the best of the many, many, many Blair Witch parodies that were made in 1999. It’s also surprisingly emotionally affecting – hearing the Scooby characters with genuine fear in their voices hits hard, and the ending…well, you’ll see. Despite that, the special has never been commercially released, and when Cartoon Network did upload it to their YouTube channel a few years ago it was an abbreviated cut. There are several attempts on YouTube to piece together the special as a whole. I picked this one because it includes a segment from January 2000’s Big Game: Road Runner vs. Coyote marathon with Fred talking to Space Ghost’s Moltar. It’s funny, but it also reframes the ending of the extended cut.

Have fun posting!