October 26, 2007

GROOVIE GOOLIES BACKGROUND PAINTINGS

The Groovie Goolies is a semi-obscure Saturday morning cartoon which originally aired in 1971 and re-aired on ABC in 1975. It was a spin-off of Sabrina the Teenage Witch which was a spin-off of the mega successful Archie Show. While it never earned a large following (possibly because the jokes are all terrible puns and juvenile sight gags, and its production values are quite low), it was my introduction to the Universal Monsters (or knock-offs thereof), and this Halloween Countdown is most likely a result of my exposure to the show.

As with Scooby-Doo I thought it would be fun to take a bunch of screen captures of the Groovie Goolie background paintings. They're not as lavish or moody as the Scooby ones, but many of them are pretty wonderful and the vibe is more fun and definitely influenced by sixties psychedelia. I've always appreciated the anthropomorphic nature of the Horrible Hall and the visual details that set it apart from standard creepy castle environments.

So let's get Groovie...












































The Groovie Goolies DVD set is available on Amazon.com

5 comments:

vantazy said...

Woah. Lots of tall objects dead center... Strange compositions and colors. I wonder if the colors were heightened because of the quality of TVs back in those days?

Ed South said...

Wow! That was really cool! It makes you appreciate the creativity going on at Filmation back then! Great Show!

Dane said...

Dig all that Dayglo! Thanks for doing this, it's another fun reminder of my childhood.

Kirk D. said...

vantazy- thy used a lot of foreground stuff for the old monster disappearing behind skinny stuff gag.
My theory is that the color pallet was just a product of the era it was done in.

glad you enjoyed the pics Ed and Dane. (cool blog Ed!)

landronartifacts said...

Any Disney Haunted Mansion fan who doesn't see the Rolly Crumpesque visuals in those gorgeous backgrounds needs to get their eyes checked. I love this so much!