In the film, Shaggy, Scooby, Fred, Velma and Daphne reunite after a year-long hiatus from Mystery, Inc. to investigate a bayou island said to be haunted by the ghost of the pirate Morgan Moonscar.

Zombie Island contains a darker tone than most Scooby-Doo productions, and is notable for containing real supernatural creatures rather than people in costumes.

Daphne Blake, along with Fred Jones, starts running a successful television series, determined to hunt down a real ghost rather than a fake one.

As the horde chases them, the gang gets separated and Daphne accidentally causes Fred to drop his video camera in quicksand, losing film evidence for their show.

In a cave, Shaggy and Scooby discover wax voodoo dolls resembling Fred, Velma, and Daphne and play with them, unknowingly controlling their friends until the pair disturb a nest of bats.

The passageway leads to a secret chamber for voodoo rituals, where Velma confronts Lena about her lie, having seen Simone's footprints instead of drag marks.

Simone explains that 200 years ago, she and Lena were part of a group of settlers on the island who worshiped a cat god.

When Moonscar and his crew invaded the island, they chased the settlers into the bayou, where they were eaten alive by alligators, but Simone and Lena escaped.

Every harvest moon since, they lured and exploited victims to drain their lives and preserve their immortality, hiring Jacques along the way to facilitate their plot in exchange for making him immortal, with the zombies and ghosts being their previous victims who awaken every harvest moon to try to scare people away to prevent them from suffering the same fate.

The werecats surround them, but realize too late that the harvest moon has passed, causing them to disintegrate to dust and put the zombies' souls to rest.

The Scooby-Doo franchise, which by the time of the film's release was nearing its 30-year mark, had entered into a period of diminishing returns in the early 1990s.

[2] Zombie Island just was not the first attempt at a feature-length Scooby adventure; several television films were produced in the late 1980s starring the character, such as Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School.

Warner executives suggested Scooby, given that the property held a high Q Score, and proposed it could be a direct-to-video feature film.

As the film was considered a one-off experiment by studio brass, the crew worked with little oversight and complete creative freedom.

Heather North was set to reprise her role as Daphne, but after a day of recording, Mary Kay Bergman replaced her, while B. J.

They briefly changed Shaggy's shirt color to red and gave him sneakers, though they quickly relented, as they viewed his original outfit as more timeless.

In addition, the group enlisted the assistance of Iwao Takamoto, the original designer of Scooby-Doo, still on salary at Hanna-Barbera, for advising on scenes.

All lyrics are written by Glenn Leopold; all music is composed by Tom Snow, except track 1 written by David Mook and Ben RaleighOriginally, the film was planned to be released theatrically, but when Warner Bros noticed the strong market on home media, particularly their successful direct-to-video animated Batman films, it was later decided to release it on VHS on September 22, 1998, through Warner Home Video.

[15] The film was aided by a reportedly $50 million promotional push, as advertisers believed the character's iconic nature would generate strong sales, and deserved "equal visibility to a theatrical release.

"[16] Tie-ins included the Campbell Soup Company,[17] SpaghettiOs,[18] 1-800-COLLECT, Wendy's, Lego, and Cartoon Network,[16] who debuted the film on television on October 31, 1998, after a month themed after the series.

[22] Donald Liebenson of the Chicago Tribune described the film as "ambitious" and calls it "a nostalgic hoot [that] resurrects all the touchstones of the original cartoons.

"[23] Entertainment Weekly's Joe Neumaier praised the film as "Fast, fun, and filled with knowing winks, the mystery honors the show’s beloved structure, but writ large.

"[12] Lynne Heffley at the Los Angeles Times called the film "more entertaining than you'd expect, despite the familiar Saturday morning-type animation.

Michael Mallory at the Los Angeles Times credited it and its subsequent features for "[spinning] the characters into more modern treatments of action and horror, and toyed with [a] self-spoofing quality.