10 Things You Didn't Know About Scooby Doo

8. Shriek Of The Mutilated - The First Scooby Doo Movie?

Speaking of horror films, consider the plot of Shriek Of The Mutilated (1974): An academic recruits four students – a handsome blond jock, a danger-prone damsel in distress, a beatnik and a short bookworm – to accompany him on a “research expedition” that involves searching for a Yeti in (where else?) upstate New York.

After ignoring a Dire Warning from a Creepy Stranger, the group drive to an Isolated Cabin in a van with flower decals on the side, encounter a Weird Housekeeper and are chased by a monster, whose appearance causes the bookworm to fall and lose her glasses. Naturally, they set a trap for the monster. Naturally, it fails.

The monster is eventually revealed as the academic in a shabby costume, who in this R-rated version also turns out to be a cannibal. You see, his plan was to lure the kids to the cabin, kill them and devour them, which – spoiler alert – he does in the downbeat ending.

The film doesn't take itself too seriously, hence the theme song ("He's mean and he's gruesome/ He'll make your threesome into a twosome"), but the film's director, Michael Findlay, isn't around to respond. He died in an accident in 1977.

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Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'