It's not so crazy a thought, really. Well, add a few margaritas and it's not so crazy a thought.
Looking through some Sherlock Holmes stories the other day, I was struck at how simple some of the plots are, and they are only simple, of course, because they were there first, and authors have been stealing from them for a long time. They are superbly gothic and creepy, a definite product of their time and for all time.
But when you invent a classic, you invite homage.
Take The Hound of the Baskervilles, for instance. A manor house on the creepy, misty moors. An old family with deadly secrets. A legend of a mysterious hound from hell despatching the Baskerville family.
But if you've ever seen, say, any episode of the early seventies cartoon "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?", you would be well familiar with the stories of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. In Scoobian fashion, it turns out that the nosy neighbors of the Baskervilles are really in line to inherit the Baskerville estates and all they have to do is get rid of the present heirs by sending a ghostly dog--really just a big hound with phosphorus on it--to take care of them. And it would have worked if it wasn't for those pesky kids, er, Sherlock Holmes butting his nose in.
In Scooby-Doo episodes, the Scooby gang are called in or fall into a situation where the owner of a theme park or some such must shut down because of a haunting. But it really turns out that someone wanted the property for the oil beneath or some buried treasure hidden in an attic or something similar. It's a cartoon so there's no murder, but it usually involves some bad guy dressing up as a ghost or mummy or other gothic horror figure and scaring everyone except the very smart Velma, the heroic Freddy, and the dense Daphne. Shaggy, the rumpled Maynard G. Krebs of the seventies (and now I'm really dating myself), who seemed to have imbibed one too many Scooby snacks of his own, and his great dane-talking-dog Scooby-Doo, seem to get into the most trouble, and in Abbot and Costello fashion, hilariously run away in fear believing in these spooks everytime despite having encountered these same con games over and over again.
I invite you to take the Scooby-Doo/Sherlock Holmes Challenge. How many Sherlock Holmes stories could be devolved into Scooby-Doo episodes. Go on. I'll wait.
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