Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders

Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders is the third of a series of direct-to-video animated films based upon the Scooby-Doo Saturday morning cartoons. It was released on October 3, 2000, and it was produced by Warner Bros. Animation (though it had a Hanna-Barbera Cartoons logo and copyright notice at the end). Unlike the previous films, in spite of the grimmer atmosphere, it also had a lighter tone since the real monsters are the good guys and the disguised humans are the primary antagonists. It is the third of the first four Scooby Doo direct-to-video films to be animated overseas by Japanese animation studio Mook Animation.

Plot
The Mystery Machine is driving through the Sonoran Desert. A sandstorm comes up and Shaggy makes an wrong turn onto government property. Seeing a UFO causes Shaggy to lose control of the vehicle and the gang find themselves on the outskirts of a small town. While Scooby and Shaggy stay with the van the rest of the gang enters a local diner to get directions. Shaggy and Scooby then see a mythical animal called a jackalope. The jackalope takes their last Scooby Snack and they chase it into a cave, where they encounter aliens. They run into the diner in panic, claiming to have seen aliens.

The waitress, Dottie, says that they never see aliens but do see strange lights and hear sounds at night. The chef, Sergio, says that a month earlier local cattle vanished without a trace and a lot of people moved away. A man named Lester claims to have been abducted and he believes the two. He also claims to have pictures, so the gang goes to his house to see them. However, they are nothing more than paintings by Lester. He then refers to SALF: the Search for Alien Life Forms (similar to S.E.T.I.), dishes, saying that ever since they were installed there have been numerous UFO sightings and disappearing livestock.

The gang stays overnight at Lester's home with Daphne and Velma sleep in a bunk bed and Fred sleeps on the couch. Scooby and Shaggy fall into a deep sleep on the roof, and are abducted. The aliens try to examine the two, but Scooby is able to free them. After being cornered by the aliens when they try to escape, they pass out. They are awakened in the middle of the desert by a hippie photographer named Crystal, and her golden retriever, Amber. Shaggy and Scooby immediately fall in love with them, and when they meet up with Fred and the girls at the local diner, the two of them are still so love struck after seeing Crystal and Amber that they're not even hungry, which shocks Fred, Daphne and Velma.

Velma, Fred and Daphne meet the crew of SALF, Steve, Laura and Max, while Shaggy and Scooby hang out with Crystal and Amber. Velma becomes suspicious when she sees dried mud on the boots of Steve, Laura and Max, since they are in the desert. Later, she takes the gang to a canyon where she believes a seasonal river runs. The canyon proves to be dry, but they find caves, mining equipment and on the cave walls, gold. The SALF crew capture and tie them up. The crew explains that they stumbled on the gold cave while searching for a new location for another SALF dish. Since it was on government land, they decided to keep the secret for themselves, and they planned to keep it that way. They are also exposed as the "aliens" who abducted Scooby and Shaggy, with the UFO being nothing more than a dressed-up helicopter, and the inside of the UFO being an old movie set. Shaggy, Scooby, Crystal and Amber also investigate the cave in the canyon and find the gang and try to rescue them.

Eventually, Crystal and Amber reveal themselves to be the actual aliens from a planet 20 light years away. They dressed like hippies because their only information about Earth came from 1960's television broadcasts, and they assumed that the people of Earth still talked and dressed like those from 1960s. The UFO that ran Mystery Inc. off the road was actually Crystal and Amber's. The gang, Crystal and Amber manage to stop the SALF crew from escaping and tie them up. The SALF crew and their accomplices are arrested, and Crystal and Amber return to their home planet after a heartfelt goodbye. Shaggy and Scooby are brokenhearted, but a box of Scooby Snacks helps them forget about their sorrows. In a post-credits scene, Scooby-Doo scares the viewer in an alien costume.

Cast

 * Scott Innes as Scooby-Doo, Shaggy Rogers
 * Frank Welker as Fred Jones
 * Mary Kay Bergman as Daphne Blake
 * B.J. Ward as Velma Dinkley
 * Jeff Bennett as Lester
 * Candi Milo as Crystal, Amber (uncredited)
 * Mark Hamill as Steve
 * Audrey Wasilewski as Laura
 * Kevin Michael Richardson as Max
 * Jennifer Hale as Dottie
 * Neil Ross as Sergio

Production

 * The opening music strongly alludes to the main theme of the TV show Star Trek.
 * When Shaggy and Crystal are viewed from a distance walking together and talking, you can hear him telling her the story about his first encounter with the Witch's Ghost, the previous animated release. This is not the first time continuity was shown, as Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost also continuity from events in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island.
 * Jennifer Love Hewitt performed Scooby Doo, Where Are You? for the film. The track was played when Shaggy and Scooby were being chased by the "fake aliens".
 * "Groovy", another main movie track, performed by Scott Innes voicing Shaggy (and in part, Scooby Doo) saw Shaggy in one of the most rare scenes where he kisses a girl on the lips (Crystal), but it was all just a dream sequence.
 * Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders was Mary Kay Bergman's last film as she had died on November 11, 1999 after completing the voice work for the film as the voice of Daphne. The film was dedicated to her memory. It was released almost a year after her death. Grey DeLisle would take over after Bergman's passing.
 * One of the bad guys (voiced by Luke Skywalker's actor Mark Hamill) almost says the famous "And I would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for you meddling kids!" but before he can say "meddling kids", he is ordered silent by a police officer.
 * Crystal and Amber's 1960 outfits were a tribute to the era when the original cartoon series was held.
 * This is the second time Mark Hamill voiced a character in the direct-to-video series of Scooby Doo. He also voiced Snakebite Scruggs in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island.
 * During the song that Shaggy sings, he says that when he and Crystal get a house they'd fill it with stuff from 1969, the year that Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! first premiered on television.
 * A post-credits scene begins in a black background after the copyright notice fades out and a red laser carves the background in a circular shape revealing a circle of a blue background and the circle falls back and one of the aliens scares the viewer but it turns out to be Scooby dressed in an alien cosume and he laughs at the viewer.

Follow-up film
Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase, which was released in 2001.