So Good That It's Scary

Over the years, there have been plenty of Saturday morning cartoons on TV that have involved several household names. Hanna-Barbera was no stranger to this method, as shown on Villiana's list of about every HB property. One of HB's examples was Gravedale High, which aired on NBC's Saturday morning block in 1990 with other cartoons such as Captain N and The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3.

Gravedale High stars Rick Moranis as Max Schneider, an eccentric human in his late 20's/early 30's who takes up a job teaching teenaged monsters. His students are the cool vampire Vinnie Stoker, the Gorgon diva Duzer, the werewolf nerd Reggie Moonshroud, the Bart Simpson-ish Frankentyke, the surfer fish monster Gill Waterman, the awkward nerd girl mummy Cleofatra, the cultured leech-loving J.P. Ghastly III, the Southern Belle zombie girl Blanche, and the invisible class clown Sid. The animation is a mixed bag: sometimes it looks gorgeous, such as the opening, but sometimes it can also have several inconsistencies, the latter being most prominent in the episode "Frankenjockey". The voice actors are great: aside from Rick Moranis, there's also Ricki Lake, Jackie Earle Haley, and others such as Barry Gordon (Donatello's first VA) and legendary voice actors Frank Welker and Maurice LaMarche. Since this was a cartoon from the late 80's and early 90's, it has life lessons, like "friends are there to help you", "don't skip school", etc., but the messages aren't layered too thick.

Sadly, Gravedale High never got any reruns in the United States, where it originated (and yet Camp Candy did), but it did get to air in the United Kingdom, and of all places, Italy. I may have been born a year after this cartoon first aired, but I feel that it does not deserve to be tossed aside and forgotten like some cheap rag doll; it is an underrated animated jewel that is lost in a dark vault we call the short-lived cartoons of the 1990's.

My rating: 8/10