Spooky Buddies

Spooky Buddies follows the talking puppy friends as a curse settles over their hometown. An old sorcerer, Warwick, escapes imprisonment and sets his sights on a pure-hearted soul as the final offering he needs for unlimited power, aided by a hound that prowls the neighborhood while Halloween festivities are underway. The Buddies get help from a friendly ghost and other new companions as they try to stop the sorcerer before his scheme can reach beyond their town.

Robert Vince directed and wrote the screenplay with Anna McRoberts, and both produced. It is the ninth of the fifteen films he has directed, coming between The Search for Santa Paws and Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups. The voice cast includes Genevieve Hannelius as Rosebud, Debra Jo Rupp as Zelda and Skyler Gisondo as Billy, while Sierra McCormick, Sage Ryan and Tucker Albrizzi appear in live-action roles. Twenty-six performers are credited.

The film runs 88 minutes and was released in 2011 as a TV movie, a family comedy with mystery elements made for home viewing in Canada and the United States. Reception was modest and split along audience lines: on IMDb it holds 4.6/10 from about 2,800 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6/10 from roughly 170 votes. The much smaller TMDB sample is friendlier, but neither figure points to a widely admired entry in the series.