Point Horror-Beach House

Hello, Spongey here.

It’s finally time to return to the world of Point Horror. When it comes to Stine’s contributions to literature, Point has proven to be quite the mixed bag. The Baby-Sitter was a standard but at least solid story while Twisted was forgettable and the Halloween Night duo was…well, bad. It feels like his lesser tendencies get brought out by these.

I don’t know what the deal is, but it’s a gamble when I cover these. I used a randomizer and got this and oh boy it should be interesting. This is one of the more notable ones, with it being a solid favorite for a few people. Some see it is one of his better ones, although some see it as a bit messy. Guess we’ll guess which side I’m on.

This was published in August 1992, so Goosebumps had just started. He had a few Points by now so he was in the grove but not quite in full burnout mode, I hope. I should note that he also had Beach Party a couple years earlier but they aren’t connected.

It’s Summer so why not let him take us out to the beach for a little murder. I do know a bit about the ending of this one but otherwise I don’t know too many details. So let’s hope for some solid stuff in here.

This, is Beach House

This cover is standard and fine. The bikini on the fence does bring up…questions though. A simple image that gets the job done but does nothing special. It’s…fine.

The book is split in two different time periods, and we open in the summer of 1956. Amy and her friend Maria are sunbathing on the beach while listening to “Sh-boom” by “The Crewcuts”. I thought it was Stine making up things again but nope, they’re real. Amazing. Patti Page comes on next, because we gotta know it’s the 50’s.

When it comes to these two, Amy is skinny with a “boyish figure” who looks like a “very cute mouse”. I don’t like that. Amy has a boyfriend in Ronnie while Maria has no-one despite a fun personality and “dark dramatic looks”. They’re on vacation here in Dunehampton, where Maria has met this guy named Buddy, who is awkward in a cute way that gets him some mild mockery from Ronnie.

There’s also Stuart, a “real cool cat” who tries to look tough. They have some fun as they gawk at a red-head girl (ding ding ding) in a Bikini which they are new to the concept of. This is oddly period accurate from what I could find on Wikipedia, so that’s something. Even down to them mentioning France and how they’ll “never catch on here”.

They hear Buddy screaming and it turns out the other boys de-pansted him. Because the boys in this just have to be mostly awful. Maria says it’s not funny but the third person narrator is like “Well it is pretty funny”. Stine, stop inserting your own thoughts. He’s out in the water and flounders a lot without his trunks and eventually they just leave him there.

Later, Stuart approaches Maria who calls him out for leading the charge on all that. We’re told Buddy lives in a previously empty Beach House by R.L. Stine and Stuart wants Maria to stand up because he’s weird. That’s about all the reasoning you get. He’s sensitive which they see as “humorless” Classic “harassment=just jokes bro” behavior.

Even as she defends him, she laughs at a few mean joke Stuart makes, and agrees that “Buddy wasn’t exactly a million laughs”. Boy this better pick up soon. Thankfully she’s like “There’s more to life than practical jokes and acting silly all the time”. Deep but this is a Stine book so nah, not really.Stuart wants her to ditch Buddy and come with him tonight to the drive in to see Creature from the Black Lagoon in his Thunderbird.

That part makes her change her mind, as she thinks “He’ll get over it”. This is gonna be one of those “Everyone sucks” books, eh? She goes home and it turns out that Buddy heard all that and starts trembling in anger. I’m rooting for ya, don’t worry. The next day, Maria and Amy are talking about last night’s date.

Maria says she’s starting to like Stuart despite being a little immature. Amy says all boys are immature. True that. Stuart shows up and seems to have moved on. He has not moved on. He appears to accept her excuse/apology but you know the drill. He invites Maria to have a little swim and she accepts.

They end up getting rather far from the shore as Buddy vanishes into the fog then pops back up. This would have more suspense if we didn’t already know that he is planning revenge. He soon changes his tune and says he’s gonna take care of her.

“You hurt my feelings”

That came across as goofier than intended, I think.

He gets threatening without making any threats as he mostly stares at her. He says he knows that she was lying and all that, and he gets out a knife to draw blood to attract the sharks. He does that then she sinks down. We cut to Buddy getting to shore as he realizes he feels nothing after the “hype” has worn off. A good sobering moment after a solid exciting bit. I guess we’re in Carrie terrority with revenge that is more scary than satisfying, especially since the boys are the real assholes.

Later, Maria has gone missing as the cops are looking for her and the friends are talking about it. Buddy is gone too and here they see they were too mean to him. There’s some mild emotion here, not the heaviest but hey for these I’ll take what I can get. The cops go to Buddy’s house to look into his situation and there’s no sign of anyone.

Turns out he was lying, dun dun dun. And then we cut to the present of 1992. Alright that ended up working well as a setup that uses the past. We meet our real protagonist Ashley and her boyfriend Ross as they are hanging out at the beach. Ashley gets a detailed description and is compared to a model, which is a jump from the average girls that are usually the protagonist. Meanwhile, Ross looks like Matt Dillion.

They meet up with their friends Lucy and Kip. We’re told Kip isn’t too nice to Lucy and looks like “Vanilla Ice on a bad day”. Ouch. Lucy is a red-head, another ding ding ding. They notice the local empty beach house, which had oddly never been rented or anything like that. Then some guy grabs and drags her to the water, who turns out to be this guy Denny Drake who sucks.

He grew up next to them and isn’t really a friend, he’s just around and another bad boy to add to the pile. We meet a nicer boy in the form of Brad, who Ross knows through tennis or something. He has a Grateful Dead shirt on, because yes Stine is still a fan. He turns out to be rich but not stuck up, still don’t trust him though.

He clearly likes Ashley, which Ross picks up on. He was noted to be jealous and frankly Ashley just thought about how she’s attracted to him so he’s not totally in the wrong to be mad. They chat it up further until Ross leaves out of anger. They actually do talk it out soon after at least.

Well, it doesn’t work as Ross stays mad and Ashley starts being afraid of him. How is the rich guy the nicest boy in here? He calms down but is still a bit heated. She should just ditch him but she kisses him to fully calm him down instead. They decide to check out that creepy old beach house, where they bump into Kip and Lucy who had been exploring it.

Kip reveals there have been stories about the house, about murders that go back to the 50’s. They just move on from that as Ross thinks how odd Kipp is. Pot, meet kettle. Ashley walks home and someone jumps out to grab her and it’s Denny. This is the 2nd time he’s done this fakeout. He acts like a jerk then calms down enough to ask her to go on a walk. She has some solid comebacks here and she declines.

That ends that, and the next day she goes to the beach with her Walkman while thinking about how her outfit looks like one Madonna would wear. I love these sometimes. She sees Brad with a pretty redhead, geez Stine we get it. Ashley is jelly. But no time for that, as Brad breaks some news: Lucy and Kip have gone missing.

In the case of Kip, nothing of value was lost. Then for Part 3 we’re back in 1956 as I guess there’s more to tell. Amy has been having dreams about sharks eating her, rather violently I might add, ever since Maria and Buddy vanished. It’s rather effective and we get some emotion in the next scene as she talks to Ronnie about this.

Stuarts shows up and says he’s leaving for reasons that don’t matter, I hope lol. Amy reads the newspapers and reads a story about a disaster involving the SS Andrea Doria, a ship about the size of the Titanic that is sinking. This is indeed a real event from 1956 so more kudos for the research. They walk by the beach house and notice someone in there.

It turns out to be Buddy, oh no. He makes a whole story to explain it so it’s all good and he’s totally not evil. He mentions Maria going swimming on her own after he bowed out and Ronnie doesn’t fully buy it. They don’t think he’d have a reason to lie as they aren’t too aware. They head out and find Stuart’s dead body, his skull smashed open.

Nothing of value was lost.

Later, Buddy is watching the cops look into this as he thinks about murder is way easier than it looks on TV. Okay that’s funny. He thinks things like “Try making fun of me now” and “They all have to pay”. Again, I love these sometimes. Buddy goes over to the others and plays it cool. Amy tries not to suspect him and thinks about happier times…like Buddy struggling in the water earlier, and starts to laugh. #BuddyDidNothingWrong.

Later, Amy tries to get her mind off of all this but that’s pretty hard, as Maria keeps popping into her mind. It starts running and then Buddy shows up to tackle her but totally playfully. She’s starting to get some bad vibes from him. Buddy starts to open up and claims to be sad about Maria, which makes Amy soften up and think about how mean they were to him.

He asks if she wants to go on a walk with him and before she can decide, we cut back to the present. Boo, the 50’s stuff is way better. Ashley and Ross are walking on the beach.

“Nearby, two tall black men in baggy Hammer pants were practicing a complicated dance step, their bare feet sinking into the sand, their boom box blaring”

…I’m not touching that one.

They’re worried about Lucy and keep thinking about her. Oh and Kip too. Hey they agree with me as they smack talk him for a bit. They accuse him of having no sense of him on top of his other crimes. I find that interesting as they said that about Buddy. There, he actually just disliked the mean harassment while here he actually indeed doesn’t know funny and just sucks. Interesting parallel.

Eventually Ashley and Ross start arguing in regards to Brad, who invited them over for some tennis at the estate, basically. Things cool down a bit after that as it begins to rain and they hide in the beach house. They look through a closet and find Lucy’s scarf. And…then we cut to Brad’s house. Guess that wasn’t important enough to dwell on.

There is lots of fawning over his rich guy stuff, all while the servant Mary looks at them weirdly at times. They all play tennis, where Ross gets more jealous at how not terrible Brad seemingly is. Brad swoops in on his girl and does that thing he shows her a trick as an excuse to be closer to her. I haven’t seen Challengers yet but I assume it’s exactly like that.

Ross storms off and it’s no tragedy to Ashley. Right away she turns to Brad and goes “How about that swim?”. A lot of this teen drama is whatever, but stuff like this is kinda charming. Later, Ashley is out on the town when Ross shows wanting to apologize but being weird and aggressive about it. Then Denny appears, oh he exists and hits Ross in the stomach. Finally, a heroic act.

This makes Ashley scared and the police even happen to show up, as Denny flees. She sees he is dangerous, even though he just did his first good action lol. At home, Ross calls and she formally breaks up with him and rejects his apology. You go, girl. She hangs up, then gets a creepy phone call from a random voice telling her to stay away from Brad. They say they are dead and she will be dead too.

Please be Buddy’s ghost. Nah this is Point, a non supernatural zone. Shame. The next day, Ashley and Brad are walking home from  a Chevy Chase movie only she thought was funny. 1992 so I guess she’s a big Memoirs of an Invisible Man Stan. She’s been feeling like someone’s following her, almost like someone…wants to sell her something.

Brad kisses her and is a tad forceful about it. He says she is his first girlfriend and he wants to make this special. He takes her to the beach house cuz nothing says special like a murder location. Brad mentions a secret, oh no will he be a bad boy too? Well, we’ll have to wait to see what that entails as it’s back to the 50’s. Dang, just as the 1992 stuff was picking up.

Amy and Buddy go on that walk and talk about how sad they are. They also talk about things like that new rock and roll singer Elvis. He’s really “gone’ which I guess is a good thing? I don’t get slang. It starts to rain and they hide in the beach house. As Amy explores, Buddy starts acting odd and a bit threatening.

He says Ronnie is gone and now it’s her turn. Yep, he finally reveals himself, saying they shouldn’t have made fun of him. She tries to play it off as being jokes, so yeah go ahead and kill her. He’s past the point of reason by now. He reveals it doesn’t matter as he doesn’t live here anyway. As in, not in the beach house.

“No one lives here. Everyone dies here”

Oh God it’s the first draft of “Now we’re dead in your house” I love it. Amy has trouble escaping so she tries a super smart trick: “Look over there!”. Okay, she says “Ronnie, you’re alive” but she may as well have said that. It works, I love these sometimes. She escapes but he knocks her out with a shovel. Upon waking up, she is tied up under the house with a tide about to come in.

Buddy appears to gloat about leaving her behind, just like they did to him. His last words to her as he leaves are: “See you later, alligator. You’re a real gone chick. But now I’ve got to go home now”. Have I mentioned I love these sometimes?

Then it’s back to 1992, so I guess she died at the hands of a tide rather than murder. That’s a bit lame but it does kind of work. Anyway, what’s Brad’s secret? He explains that the men in his family are explorers, like how his Great-Grandfather took pictures of some Amazon tribes and such. Grandpa was a different type as he explored different fabrics and basically they got rich off of that. As for his father, he left them. To explore other women I guess.

He has a brother Johnny who is a bit of an explorer himself. He tended to go off and do his own thing, making him hard to wrangle sometimes. He’s a joker too, of course. One day a new house was being built and he wanted to explore it. By the time Johnny realized he was missing and checked in on him, he was dead. The 2nd floor wasn’t finished and he fell. You’d think there would be someone there to make sure this doesn’t happen.

He’s been messed up since he died. He started exploring the old beach house and has found something incredible. Interesting story, provided he isn’t evil it’s a fair sob story. They go inside to look at this secret and they drag it out until he shoves her in the closet where the secret is. Oh no, more murder.

They go deeper into it until she is grabbed by Mary the Housekeeper from earlier who is here now. She forces him back into the closet after he tries to get out, saying he’s staying in there. Then comes the bomb:

“Don’t come out, Buddy”

What.

She claims Brad is his nickname and he wonders how Mary knows this. She’s like “Don’t you recognize me?” Then some padding later, she reveals herself to be…Maria, who he killed in 1956! I repeat: WHAT. She goes on to say Buddy learned the secret of the beach house: The house is a way station…built on a time warp. Once more with clarity: What.

Brad discovered that the house can time warp from 1956 and the present, how oddly exact. You can go through the closet to do this, although getting back to the future is a bit harder than going to the past. Buddy was actually from the present and found his way to 1956, meaning their old pal was from the damn future. Ashley assumes that Kip and Lucy found the closet and got lost in 1956. So did we meet them in 1956 without knowing it?

So before finding his way to the present, Buddy just decided to befriend these people and you know the rest. After killing him, he seems to have escaped into the future where thankfully no one can know he’s a likely missing 50’s kid. I’m not even gonna question the time travel logic. I love this twist for how dumb, brilliant and lazy it is all at once.

So how is Maria alive? Did she simply get away from the sharks and never hit up the police? She’s in her 50’s now, so she did age so why didn’t she at least try that given the idea for this plan couldn’t exist until way later? Buddy goes on about wanting to explore like Johnny, and also Maria made those scary calls. She explains that her “heart” died but her body survived. What is left of it, as Buddy’s attack gave her scars.

She was indeed saved back there, by two super strong fishermen. I guess this didn’t happen until after the stuff we saw back in those sections? She was taken to her aunt and then the hospital for a while. She was so scarred that she didn’t want anyone to see her so she considered herself dead. Boy that disbelief is in suspension right now.

She never contacted her old friends so she made them think she was dead. She moved to a new town and kept to herself, too ugly for friends. She went back to the beach house for old time’s sake and happened to see Buddy coming out of the closet (good for him, happy pride month?). She mentions following Buddy to the future which I question. It had to have been just a couple years at that point, and it’s left up in the air when he went back to his time on a permanent basis and I guess he waited to do that since he mostly spent time in 1956.

Maria followed him this past spring but she aged 30 years, instead of turning 50 naturally like I assumed happened. I’ve gone cross eyed. She skips over the becoming his maid part to tell him to go home. I mean he is from this time but I think the statute of limitations passes faster if it’s through time travel.

Maria doused the place with gasoline and plans to blow it up. She’ll kill them all, even the innocent Ashley. She puts the torch she has on the gas and boom. Ashley gets lucky and is just thrown outside by the explosion. She’s fine and is able to run right into…Ross’ arms as he indeed followed her here. You just ended up in the hands of a more evil guy!

She passes out but is okay otherwise. The house burns down and later we’re told all the authorities found was a woman’s charred body. Buddy is gone, possibly having gone back to 1956. Sometime later, Ashley and Ross are hanging out, as she is ready to “drive into the future”. Corny jokes, where we’re going we don’t need corny jokes.

She just has one request from Ross: Turn off the oldies station! The end. Haw haw you almost died I guess. And yeah, that’s it. After all that last minute insanity, it just…stops. So…I guess his jealousy was founded? And they’re together even though he didn’t change beyond saving her which he only did cuz he was there to stalk? Wouldn’t be one of these if the girl didn’t get the shitty boy I guess. But okay, a lot to unpack so let’s do that.

Final Thoughts:

Oh this was a weird one. I honestly don’t know what to make of it. It’s somewhat good in some ways and offers some solid writing and ideas but it becomes a mess by the end and is boring in other areas. I couldn’t tell if this would be fully good or not as I was reading it. I think doing this will sort it out.

The 1956 part is mostly good. It starts off kind of bad with them being bad to Buddy but turns around. He’s a fun cheesy bad guy, with these over dramatic moments. The humor is used in these more subtle or corny ways that I liked. Revealing the bad guy was unique in that “We Know where the bomb is” way. It starts to flow well and becomes fairly entertaining.

It has a solid cautionary tale aspect to it. The create a murderer because they turned on Buddy and went too far with the jokes. They do feel some remorse, even if they try to pass it of as a joke. Making the victim is a bad trope in these but this makes it work better as an example of what happens if you tease someone too much.

It’s not that deep and all the time stuff kind of makes it go out the window but it is something. The 1992 stuff really drags it down, sadly. It’s mostly not that uneventful, being mostly about teen drama stuff I don’t care for. It does get better as the love triangle stuff is enjoyable. But the twist makes it so a lot of it is just pointless.

There’s not much horror in this section and why build up Denny so much if he didn’t do anything in the end? It feels like this book was gonna be mostly about 1956 with the 1992 just being there to get this to 200 pages. As a 200 page book, it mostly flows well but does have a few parts where a scene is dragged out. Not too many bad fake outs either. Writing is solid when it comes to some descriptions but in other places leans too much to the repetition word choices. Standard writing for him.

Ross sucks. I thought he’d be ditched fully or even at least redeemed but nope. Saves her once and it’s all good. Every boy in this sucks, it’s sad when the nicest one is a literal weirdo murderer. I’m just so sick of that stuff in these. Having one jokester guy is fine but so many times they’re all like this and the girl will still get with the bad boyfriend anyway. It’s not even the worst case but it still sucks.

The time travel stuff is mixed but I generally love it for how goofy it is. I can safely say I didn’t see it coming. It makes enough sense on a narrative level I guess, even if it makes no sense logical. There’s no explanation for why this time thing is here and I already poked a bunch of holes in the exposition we get. Buddy being from the future doesn’t add a whole lot to his character per say, the explorer thing is mild compared to the mockery he got.

It’s a crazy turn of events, given that these don’t use magic much. I feel like it was planned out to some extent, but he clearly had more ideas for the 1956 portion. Ashley, Maria, and Amy are just typical and mostly passable. Some off moments but they aren’t too bad by the end. And Maria shows off a bit of the cycle of revenge somewhat.

It’s such an odd book in terms of how it plays out. It’s very basic in some ways, with the standard tropes and the 1992 portion generally feeling kinda plotless. But other parts feel more fleshed out and somewhat ambitious, doing some new things. The twist makes it start to crumble on itself overall. On an entertainment level, once it gets going the 1956 stuff is pretty fun and the main stuff improves once Brad becomes more important.

The ending is fun if nothing else but Ross hooking up with her and the abrupt nature of the end does hurt the fun. I keep going back and forth. I enjoyed it well enough and it had some solid highs, especially compared to his other Points we’ve covered. But overall, I’d give it 2nd place as The Baby-Sitter is more well thought out and consistent.

I feel like with some tweaks, this could have been more fully solid as far as the story goes. As it is, it’s kind of a mess but a fun one with some solid ideas. My rating would be different deepening if we were mostly judging by pure entertainment value or purely a critical level, with that YA curve of course. For its flaws, it mostly doesn’t feel like autopilot at least so I give it plenty of credit even if I can’t say it’s anything that great.

If you have a higher tolerance for certain tropes, it’s worth at least one read and you can have fun with it if you an forgive some of the clunky elements. Point continues to be a bigger mixed bag than his other works and this sums it up. Although just wait til I cover a certain one I read recently ish lol. Anyway, long story short, it’s weird.

Rating: Decent

It was a hard call but if you mix my thoughts with its actual value, it gets to a high Decent. Better than average for these but pretty flawed. But hey, it wasn’t boring for the most part at least.