Goosebump a thon #33; The Horror at Camp JellyJam

Hello, Spongey here

Welcome back to Goosebump-athon!

 The first half of the series varied. There were good books, bad books, and awful ones. But they all had one thing in common: they were almost believable In a way. No matter how dumb a book got (*cough* giant hamster wut *cough*)., you can follow its own dumb logic. It had something for kid’s. some substance. Books like Night of the living dummy 2 of the haunted mask had silly moments, but were almost scary for kids, and kids could enjoy them fine. Stine didn’t try to go to hard to make them kid friendly.

Then comes this one. It ruined the series. It never got the good momentum again.

(Hate to post an update so early but yeah, I wouldn’t go that far. Frankly I was kind of an idiot. I do think there’s a downward spiral around the 30’s, even though Horrorland is where it started to get goofy. As for my stance on the book itself, hold on)

The Horror at Camp Jellyjam

 

Cover: This one is…unsettling. I think I like it though…

Reprint Cover: This one just goes for the spoiler but by 2009, people know what was going on this book. The design is a tad too cute though. It’s fine but as striking.

Front Tagline: “Tennis, ping pong…monsters, anyone?”

Back Tagline: “It’s not wether you win or lose…it’s how you stay alive!”. I admit, that’s funny.

Summary:

Wendy and her younger brother Elliot are en route to a family vacation with their parents. The Wyoming countryside does very little to excite the two kids, so Wendy suggests that maybe they could ride in the trailer hitched behind their car

Once inside the trailer, the two kids merrily pass the time as the trailer accelerates down the highway. Wendy thinks they’re going awfully fast and assume that their mother has taken the wheel.

It’s funny cuz it’s not.

The trailer races off the road and finally tumbles to a stop on the outskirts of a campground. The two kids are unscathed, and Elliot cheerfully declares that the experience was “better than Space Mountain!”

Who is this kid, seriously?

They hear a knock at the door of the trailer and assume it’s their parents. However, upon opening the door, they are greeted by a smiling blond man dressed all in white. His t-shirt is tucked into his shorts. He introduces himself as Buddy and directs their attention to the camp banner above their heads: King Jellyjam’s Sports Camp. He cheerfully tells the kids that they can wait for their parents in the camp.

Buddy informs the kids that he’s Head Counselor of the camp. Wendy asks what the little cartoon purple glob on the banner is supposed to be and Buddy tells her that’s the mascot, King Jellyjam.

Guess who the villain is.

Buddy shows them the campground. There are two long, two-story white dorms on either side. In between are various courts and sports diamonds and two swimming pools. Wendy and Elliot are excited, though Wendy just wants to have fun, while Elliot is a competitive asshole.

As Buddy leads the way through the camp, a little redhead (ding ding ding!) girl pops out from behind a tree trunk and tells Wendy to get out of the camp while she can. Before Wendy can respond, the girl disappears.

The camp’s slogan, “Only the Best,” is slapped everywhere around the grounds, appearing right below the blobby face of King Jellyjam. Wendy makes small talk with Buddy on the way to the girls’ dorm, casually asking him where he’s from. Buddy can’t remember.

As they walk, they pass a lot of kids playing a lot of sports, from baseball to outdoor bowling. Yeah, troy pointed out all the sports…it’s a sports camp dude, that’s the point. (Even back then I called him out for this lmao)

She heads to her dorm. The three girls are Ivy, Jan, and Deirdre. One of the girls massages her calf muscles  ( I WLL NOT MAKE A LES YAY JOKE ) while Deirdre gives Wendy one of her swimsuits so she can participate in the four-lap race. When Wendy tells the girls that she’s not interested in competing, they get very irate and repeat the camp slogan, “Only the Best.”

Wendy and about a dozen other girls stand on the cusp of the Olympic-size swimming pool. Deirdre tells Wendy that she should have tied her hair back so it won’t slow her down in the water. Once the race begins, Wendy is actually on her way to winning when she sees Deirdre working really hard to come in first.

Since Wendy doesn’t care, she lets her win. Deirdre is awarded a gold King Coin for coming in first. Apparently when a camper accumulates six King Coins, they get to walk in the Winners Walk. Deirdre is very excited, as she only needs one more King Coin to achieve this goal.

Yes, be happy you get to WALK!

Holly runs up to Wendy and lectures her for not following the camp slogan. Wendy pretends she didn’t throw the race but Holly knows better and tells her that the slogan is a threat, not a promise, and tells her not to do it again.

….That won’t be key in the twist at all

Elliot shows up and invites Wendy to watch him play ping pong in a ping pong tournament. Elliot really wants to win and gets very worked up.

The guys at ping pong mesa would love this guy

In the past when he gets overexcited, Wendy performs a special whistle to alert him to calm down.

I…have no words for that.

She is forced to use the whistle on Elliot during the tournament. He gives her two big thumbs up. Elliot wins the ping pong tournament and hopes to win another King Coin before the night is over.

Wendy is getting concerned that her parents might be worried about her and her brother. She decides to call their home answering machine and leave a message for them. Before she does though, Deirdre shows up with her sixth King Coin and will be in the Winners Walk that night.

Wendy gets very excited about Deirdre’s excitement,and says she’s never been so excited, except for the time they met and she went “huh!”, but really, who can top that? and decides she is going to try to win a King Coin of her own. She gets so excited that she forgets to make the phone call.

The idea of walking is better than your parents, right?

That night, Wendy, Ivy, and Jan watch the Winners Walk ceremony outside in the dimly lit evening. The counselors go all out for this ceremony, and Wendy is told it is a big deal. Two counselors come out holding torches and the kids who won their sixth coin follow them single file into the darkness as marching band music plays from the loudspeaker.

Yep, that was the big deal this whole time. Are you excited? Cuz I’m-

Okay, I’m not doing that again

The girls gather some snacks for Deirdre’s celebration party back in their dorm room. Ivy and Jan and Wendy pass around a bag of tortilla chips and share a can of Diet Coke while they wait for Deirdre to show up to her own party. When she never arrives, the girls decide to break the camp’s curfew and go out looking for her.

The three girls wander around in the dark for a while. Some bats show up to drink from the swimming pools. Suddenly, the girls hear a cry for help– it’s the little redhead girl who previously warned Wendy. She tells the girls that her name is Alicia and she followed the counselors to see where they go. What she saw was so horrible that she insists they all must leave the camp while they still can.

Safely back inside the dormitory, the girls discover all of Deirdre’s belongings have been removed. The next morning at breakfast, Wendy accosts Buddy, who tells her that Deirdre left, as did Alicia. She tries to tell Jan and Ivy, but they’re rushing off to play more sports.

Yeah, the book is now a lame rehash of welcome to camp nightmare.

Wendy reattempts her phone call to her parents, but is shocked to discover that the pay phones are not functional. Buddy watches her from afar and then approaches to tell her that she must find a sport in which to participate. Since she’s not a self-starter, he’s lined up an itinerary for her.

Wendy loses her tennis game to a girl who wins her sixth King Coin. After tennis she is hustled down to the softball diamond. She practices her swings with the bat and accidentally slams the bat right into Buddy’s chest. Despite the sickening “eggs breaking” sound it makes against his chest, Buddy does not feel any pain from getting hit and cheerfully recommends that Wendy try a lighter bat.

…Okay, that was scary.

That night, another Winners Circle ceremony. The next morning, another revelation that the winners have disappeared. Wendy tells her brother that they have to run away from the camp that night, but Elliot’s in no rush: he’s won his fifth King Coin and wants to acquire the sixth so he can march in line behind a torch.

Seriously, no kid is THIS excited about winning.

Wendy covertly follows the counselors after nightfall after she notices all of them heading towards the woods. In the woods, positioned in a clearing, she finds a small white domed building and goes inside.

Inside the building she finds a small theater. Wendy ducks into a broom closet and watches as Buddy hypnotizes the rest of the counselors and himself (the nightly hypnotizing explains why Buddy didn’t react to the pain of getting hit with the bat and why the other counselors are pushing the kids to do well in sports). He tells the counselors that they must always serve The Master.

Okay, so far so good. Let’s see what this leads to..

Wendy sneezes loudly twice. Panic-stricken, she discovers that she’s not hiding in a broom closet but a passageway and escapes. She hoofs her way downstairs, noticing a foul stench rising up the stairwell.

Okay, up to this point the book has been meh. Nothing incredibly dumb. Until now.

Once below the ground, Wendy sees dozens of kids working hard. All of the Winner Circle champions and Alicia are moving furiously with mops and hoses around an enormous purple gelatinous creature.

….I…the,…WHAT.

Wendy spots Deirdre and runs over to her. Deirdre explains that only the best workers get to be King Jellyjam’s slaves. The creature can’t stand his own stench so he makes the kids constantly rinse and mop him clean. Small things fall from the heights of his being onto the kids: snails. The creature’s face is covered in snot and it’s wearing a gold crown. When it belches, the ground shakes.

Couldn’t it be that buddy is a dude who loses a lot and wants everyone to be the best to make for his losses? That’d be a great!

But no…a blob that sweats snails.

Deirdre tries to get Wendy to flee, because King Jellyjam had already eaten three kids that day.

…they died? Wow, a death…and it’s by this guy. Yet Mortman couldn’t eat kids.

Wendy runs out of the igloo and sneaks into the woods, where she falls asleep.

Yeah, no need to hurry, take your time.

When she wakes up she hears the sound of the track meet. Elliot was going for his sixth King Coin! Wendy has to stop him so she tries the whistle, but he ignores her. So she simply tackles him to the ground just as he approaches the finish line

. He grasps that she’s desperate and agrees to follow her down to see the horrible creature. Once beneath the ground again, Wendy reveals that she has a plan. She tells all of the slaves to get down on the floor. Wendy watches as the creature flails and tries to pick up the children to eat them

Her “plan” is working, except that from her position on the stairwell, she isn’t laying flat on the ground. The creature picks her up and lowers her towards its gaping maw. However, the monster quickly begins to melt. Wendy’s plan was to stop washing the creature, making it choke on its own stench. The creature melts down to purple goo.

So we have a blob that sweats snails, and smells so bad it kills him. What a weakass villain.

The kids rush out of the igloo and face a group of the counselors, who are about to attack when the police show up. The stench was so bad that the cops came to investigate.

So the disappearing campers never got anyone’s attention?

Wendy and Elliot are reunited with their parents.

WAIT..

So they never heard the trailer unhitch. They never thought to just go in reverse, and they never found the camp a few feet away from they were. It took them a few days to realize they’re gone and didn’t even find them until the police smelled a jelly man.

Huh.

Two weeks after the events of the camp, Buddy knocks on their door. He gives Elliot his sixth King Coin, telling him he earned it. Wendy is nervous about Elliot accepting his sixth coin. Suddenly, a foul odor fills the room–but it’s revealed that it’s only her mother cooking brussel sprouts.

Oh so funny!

Twist Ending:

None. Meh.

TV Episode:  

None.

Graphic Novel: There are 3 GB Graphic novels, each with 3 comic versions of a book. This one is…done in a cartoon-y style. Weird. (Interesting note about it, in it the protagonists are black. Neat)

Notable Lines: I couldn’t find one. Yes the book with kids working as slaves for a sweating monster has no out of context lines. I looked like 20 times for one!

Useless Fact: the original title was “Smelly Summer”

Final Thoughts:

Okay…this one isn’t THAT bad. I like the mystery aspect, and I admire the message about winning. It’s fine to win, but don’t worry too much…or you’ll get eaten by a purple monster. But it’s just stupid. The characters are whatever, the story is predictable, and king jellyjam is the lamest, dumbest thing ever. This book cannot be taken seriously, at all. It’s not even so bad it’s good…it’s just bad. But …I’ll go easy on it

Grade:  C-

But hey, at least the series will give us a good book next time, right?

…

Yea, I know. Join me next time for…a really bad one

UPDATED FINAL THOUGHTS:

I was too harsh and yet I agree with my general thoughts. After a weak start, this book gets fairly okay with the mystery and some solid scares, especially the scene where Buddy gets hit.

Although even that gets a bit too rehash-y of Camp Nightmare for my tastes, so the 3rd act being flawed hurts it quite a bit. The concept of this horrible monster eating kids is neat but everything about him just makes no sense, even for this series. Granted, past bias can be blamed as nowadays reviewers actually like it…or at least two big critical ones do. How was I supposed to know people would change their mind on it?

It takes out a lot of the fear power he could have had. I do like that we’ve got a moral which isn’t done terribly, but the 3rd act does kinda throw some of it anyway.

I think this deserves more credit than I gave it but it’s not that good. A sadly fairly middling entry with dumb lows and some decent highs packed in.

UPDATED RATING: Average

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE:

I thought this deserved a seperte update instead of a rewrite of my updated thoughts. I would like to formerly apologize to this book. My general thoughts in a way haven’t changed. I still think the bulk isn’t anything great, and goes into mild rehashing, the lack of logic with Jellyjam still freezes me off. It’s the hypnotism thing I don’t get mainly, I can let slide the existence of this weird creature given what we have in this series. I think it’s a bit silly to downgrade it to average just for the last part. I still think it’s a bit too logically out there but I can appreciate the description of how disgusting Jellyjam is.

And it’s certainly not awful in the same way the third act of something like Abominable Snowman for example, and the rest at least stays fine. I really like the cult vibe and it goes well with the message about how winning isn’t everything. The reveal takes it down a fair bit, but I think my rating should reflect what it does right, as well as how it has notable flaws. Thus, I bestow an upgrade.

Rating: Decent

Not the best, but it can win a participation trophy.

See ya!

Goosebump a thon #32 The Barking Ghost

Hello, Spongey here

Welcome back to Goosebump-athon!

 The Barking Ghost

 

Cover: I like it. It’s really cool, and it takes the idea of an evil dog and makes it works really well .I approve.

Front Tagline:  “Bad dog. REALLY bad dog”

Back Tagline:  “It’s a dog gone nightmare!”

Summary:

CarlyBeth + Gary Lutz=Cooper Holmes.

He’s a huge scardey cat, and his brother mikey pranks him a lot. Also, he just moved into a new house in Maine. Oh shit, I accidentally picked up a Stephen king book.

“The only scary books I ever read too place in maine”

…Did Stine just make the joke for me?

Cooper is so afraid of his new surroundings that he stays up all night thinking he sees strange, unexplainable things through his window, like a snake (garden hose) and a horrible monster (bunny rabbit).

He hears some scuffling below his bed and when he goes to investigate, someone tries to choke him. It’s only his older 16 year old brother, Mickey who was wearing a Half-dog, Half-Dragon mask to frighten and choke poor Copper. This then leads to the two boys fighting in Copper’s Bedroom, only to be interrupted by their father, who tell them that fighting is inappropriate behavior for the first night in a new house.

Get used to mickey getting away with asshole-ery.

Once Mickey leaves, Cooper hears two dark shadowy ghost dogs barking outside his window. Cooper thinks it could be Mickey again. Still, Cooper believes it could be real dogs, and this scares him. The next morning, Cooper investigates his back yard and the surrounding woods for any evidence of the two ghost dogs, but finds none. He decides to be brave and go into the woods.

He gets lost. Wah wah.

He meets a strange red-haired girl named Fergie-

I wish-

who knows Cooper’s name and warns him that he and his family must move away, that their house is haunted. Cooper rushes away to go tell his parents that they have to move..

He believes  her. Without a thought. What?

On the way back to his house, two Labradors appear out of nowhere and chase Cooper all the way home. He tries to convince his family of the dog’s existence, but they think he’s lying.

Cooper spends the rest of the day pouting in his room, unpacking his snow glob collection.  Which he calls snow DOMES for some odd reason.

That night, Cooper hears barking from the living room. When he goes down to investigate, he sees a bag of potato chips torn open and scattered all over the floor. Mickey shows up and makes fun of Cooper. Cooper picks up and throws the gutted potato chip bag at Mickey.

What a badass.

The next morning, Cooper runs into Fergie and she apologizes and admits that the chips in the living room were part of Mickey’s scheme to scare Cooper. Mickey had asked Fergie to tell Cooper that their house was haunted. But once she saw how scared Cooper was getting, she felt bad.

What an asshole., am I right?

Also, she’s a redhead in a GB book…and she’s nice at the end? WHAT A TWEEST!

He asks her if she believes him about the dogs and she says yes and they become friends and then Mickey shows up in the woods, his clothing torn open and blood all over. He laughs when they freak out and mocks Cooper by saying “You always fall for fake blood.”

I hope you get crushed by RL Stines mole

Fergie and Cooper decide that they’re going to come up with the perfect plan to get Mickey back. Fergie’s family is leaving for Vermont so she stays with the Holmes for a few days. At midnight, the two prepare to deliver revenge on Mickey with their genius plan. Cooper and Fergie plan to tie a fake rat to a string and dangle it in Mickey’s bed. Mickey fools them by hiding in the closet.

So yeah, this book is no longer about ghost dogs, it is about an asshole brother, Oh wait, here they come.

Cooper and Fergie see the two dogs running around the house and Cooper insists that the two go out and investigate. This leads to the two ghost dogs holding them captive outside their house, and then dragging them to a shack out in the woods.

Fergie thinks they should go ahead and see whatever it is that the dogs want to show them. The two dogs shove the two kids into the shack, where they fell down was a well. Then the dogs start speaking to them.

See, the ghost dogs were originally humans who were turned into dogs and so they’ve been waiting for two humans to trick into going into the Changing Room so they can take over their human form.

Yep, freaky Friday meets cujo!

Fergie and Cooper turn into dogs and meet larry boyd.  The dogs turn into Cooper and Fergie. How can you switch bodies with a ghost, which has no body to speak of?

As dogs, Cooper and Fergie communicate telepathically and try to find a way to tell Cooper’s parents that they’re not really dogs. Cooper tries telling them directly, but it comes out as, “Woof woof woof woof woof.” The two dogs then try running around and barking some more, which only frustrates the Holmes.

The ghost dogs then re-break into the Holmes’ house and Cooper tries to write a letter to his parents but discovers that dogs can’t write.

I have no words.

The parents show up and ask the dogs “Didn’t we just tell you to get out?” In a final act of desperation, Cooper hears the fake-Cooper telling his parents that he hates liver, when in fact actual Cooper loves liver. Realizing that this is his chance to convince them that he’s the real Cooper, Cooper-Dog runs into the house and eats the liver from the plate.

Because that makes perfect sense, right?

Finally, Cooper and Fergie decide the only way to get the two humans back into the Changing Room is to drag them there. So they do, and the parents follow behind the two kids getting dragged away by giant dogs, calmly noting that it should be interesting to see what the dogs want to show Fergie and Cooper.

They drag them in the shack, and switch. The bodies of Fregie and cooper walk off…

Twist Ending:

Cooper and Fergie wake up to see the bodies walk up. They look down. Seems there were two squirrels in the Changing Room, so their dog bodies switched places with the squirrel bodies. End!

Great cruel twist. I dig it

TV Episode:  

This one is more faithful than I thought. It sticks to the plot for the most part, so let’s talk about the two big changes.

One, the shack is a tree. The episode opens in the 1700’s with the two dudes becoming dogs. They are pirates. Why? No idea

At the end, the two kids actually become normal. But mickey…switches the squirrel. End.

Great ending. Fuck that guy. Decent episode

Notable Lines: “What am I  thinking of right now?”  “chicken”

Useless Fact: Stiine has cited the cover as being the best.

Final Thoughts:

This one was fun. It had it’s dumb moments, as usual. That bogged it down, but I liked some of the ideas and the twist was cool.  A typical Goosebump in many ways,  but a fun one. Not much to say, but it was decent.

Grade:  B-

UPDATED FINAL THOUGHTS:

Ooof, big update here. Since then, Stine has cited this as his all time least favorite and yeah, I get it. This is basically two random ideas smashed together. The whole body switching thing comes out of nowhere and is very poorly explained.

Even before then, not much interesting really happens. The fake outs are especially bad here, and Cooper can be a bit too wimpy to like. I do like a couple of the ghost dog moments though, and when Mickey gets scared by the dogs.

Otherwise, a fairly weak entry that feels like just a bunch of weak ideas smashed together. Not quite terrible but a lesser one.

UPDATED RATING: Meh

See ya!

Goosebump a thon #31; Night of the living Dummy 2

Hello, Spongey here

Welcome back to Goosebump-athon!

 Damn, another sequel? Son of a-..what? this one is GOOD!? BRING IT ON!

Night of the Living dummy 2

 Cover: Okay, Slappy himself is creepy enough but…what’s with all the pink? The cover slime, the room…the hell? It’s well drawn, but I question the pink.

Reprint Cover: I like that it depicts a specific scene and is less generic but eh, I’ve grown to like the pink contrast. Otherwise, it’s fine.

Front Tagline:  Remember how in the first book, the tagline was “He walks, he stalks”?. This one is “He’s still walking, he’s still stalking’”. I love you, whoever wrote that

Back Tagline:  “You can’t teach an old dummy new tricks!”

Summary:

Every Thursday night at the Kramer house,. It’s Family sharing night. Older sister Sara shares amazing paintings, young Jed shares pranks, but our lead Amy has jack shit. In the books opening scene, Amy performs with her dummy, named dennis. Unfortunately, Dennis has become almost unusable with age, and his head keeps falling off. Jed uses it to pretend to be Dennis on one occasion, and on top of that, Jed messes Sara’s painting as a prank, to show us how prank-y he is.

This comes into play later, I promise.

Soon after, Amy’s dad buys her a new one at a pawnshop. Here’s Slappy! They find a moldy sandwich crammed inside his head. This is a BLAM, unless you consider that lindy and kris did it to stop him.

Amy then finds  the card inside slappy’s pocket and read the magic words. How did that card got on him anyway? So yeah, he comes to life and now it’s time for mischief!

At first, they accuse Jed due to his pranks, making this a rare time the main character isn’t the first suspect

Slappy starts to cause a lot of accidents, including slapping Amy’s father on the cheek, ruining a birthday party, and trashing her sister Sara’s room. Amy’s sister, as well as her younger brother Jed, repeatedly accuse Amy of doing all these things, and Amy’s parents believe them.

Oh, you wanna hear the party scene? Well, Amy’s friend Margo’s dad has a restaurant, and they have a party there and Amy is meant to perform. Before the show, a little girl wants to see slappy, and amy has him shake her hand. He squeezes hard and he won’t let go.

The girl pulls, but nothing happens. She starts crying. DAMN. Amy runs home in shame.

She gets punished for all of these, but on top of that, but her family becomes unhinged due to Amy’s actions. They think she’s crazy, and Jed and Sara are always on edge. Their family seems to be coming apart at the seams

One night, she hears Slappy breaking out of the closet inside of her room that she keeps him in, and sees the dummy actually walk out of her room to Sara’s room and ruin her watercolor painting even further.

Of course, she stills fail at proving the dummy’s living thing, and she continues to be punished. Eventually, Slappy just comes out and goes “you gonna my slave, bitch”

They fight, and she gets her ass handed to her. Amy runs to sara, and tells her slappy is alive. And..she knows.

Sara soon confesses that she saw Slappy wrecking her room. She didn’t say anything cuz she didn’t want to believe that Slappy was alive. Plus…she’s been jealous of Amy. Amy has been jelly of sara, but Sara feels that Amy is laid back, and can entertain people just by being her

“I have to paint to impress people”

They hug and I D’AWWW to death.

After some vain attempts to stop Slappy, it all comes to a head one night. Amy follows slappy on his way to do evil…when Dennis comes, punches slappy, and breaks him in two!

Turns out it was jed. Amy says they had Jed disguise himself as Dennis to fool Slappy so they can grab him. Also, the parents hid in the closet to see if amy was doing this, and they saw Slappy.

So Slappy is dead until the next book.

Twist Ending:

Jed pops up

“Sorry I’m late”

DUN DUN DUN!

It was the real Dennis…making that bit even more badass. Wait…if Dennis was alive, and Slappy was easy to stop in the end….why didn’t he do this in the first place?

TV Episode:  

Yeah, they did one of the sequel, but not the original. I don’t know.

The story is changed to be a tiny  bit different, but has the same spirit.

Oh, and the party scene is replaced with one with Margo’s sister, visiting amy’s house. The hand squeezing happens, and Margo gets pissed. This bit of friendship trouble is never addressed again. Wut.

Anyway, the end happens mostly the same. But…we cut to Dennis saying “it’s good to be back in the family again”. This would be amazing if he didn’t…sound like Goofy with a head cold.

It’s still a fun episode, just not as good as the book

Notable Lines: “You’ll have to come to my room to see it, it’s still wet”

Useless Fact: None

Final Thoughts:

A rare great sequel. Great family dynamic, good main character, heartwarming moments, Slappy is a famous villain for good reason,. He attacks the main character on a psychological level, by tearing the family, and thus we have a rather interesting book beyond the premise. It’s better than the first one.

Grade:  A

UPDATED FINAL THOUGHTS:

Downgraded rating aside, I’m still with my past self. This pretty much nailed the Slappy formula and no book has ever even be able to touch this. It’s rare we get to explore a family dynamic in the same way this one does and it does it quite well.

Especially in regards to Sara, that moment later on is quite nice. The psychological  element that Slappy goes for her really works and helps give him an edge beyond just being rude.

There’s some dumb moments early on, and I feel like Jed should have been given a bit more of an arc along with Sara. Otherwise, this is a strong sequel, a rarity for this series.

UPDATED RATING: Very Good

See ya!

 

Goosebump a thon #30: It Came from Beneath the sink!

Hello, Spongey here

Welcome back to Goosebump-athon!

 Holy shit, we’re on 30 already? Well it’s celebrate by looking at a book with an evil sponge!

…Really.

It Came From Beneath the Sink!

 

Cover: Really cool. I love the creepy eyes..

Front Tagline:  “It’s warm, it’s breathing…and it doesn’t do the dishes!” And worse: it don’t live in a pineapple under the sea.

ALTERNATE SPONGEBOB JOKE: He’s ready…to kill

Back Tagline:  “Their luck’s about to go down the drain..”

Summary:

Kat-

SHUT UP ICE

And her brother Daniel have been allowed to skip a day of school to help their parents move into their new huge yellow house.

While their parents busy themselves with unloading boxes, Daniel is put to work feeding the family dog, Killer, and Kat is told to wipe down the cabinets. While Kat is cleaning the inside of the cabinet below the sink, she hears a noise from the far, dark corner of the cabinet. She ignores the noise and continues cleaning. Suddenly a hairy claw pokes out from the darkness and grabs her arm. Kat screams and then realizes it’s not a horrible monster, but just her brother in his rat costume.

Why does he even have that?

For some reason the dog comes trotting into the kitchen and Daniel convinces her that he too is a giant rat, and she falls for it. It makes as much sense in context

.While tickling her brother, Killer the dog starts barking ferociously at the empty cabinet beneath the sink. The item to inspire Killer’s wrath is revealed to be a sponge. When Kat goes to retrieve the contentious sponge, she discovers that the sponge appears to be breathing.

Her brother at first is skeptical, but he still readily tries to claim the breathing sponge as his own, diving under the sink and hitting his head hard. He blames Kat, saying she pushed him, and the two try to justify their actions to their mother, who berates them for arguing over a “stupid sponge.”

Smart mom.

Kat, armed with breathing sponge, goes to show the item to her father, who is on top of a ladder in their living room. Her father has nails in his mouth-

Oh this will turn out well-

and he cheerfully agrees to examine Kat’s sponge, which by this point has sprouted two beady eyes. As he reaches down to grab the sponge, the ladder tips over and her father lands on the ground, grabbing his ankle. He angrily asks her why she tipped over the ladder. Kat insists she didn’t touch the ladder as the sponge in her hand pulsates wildly. Kat decides this is all too weird and disposes of the sponge in one of those big metal trash cans outside the garage.

A few days after moving in, Kat is in the process of making a list of who to invite to her birthday party. She hears a racket upstairs and upon investigating sees Daniel showing his friend Carlo the sponge she had thrown away. Kat pleads with Daniel to re-throw away the creature. Carlo wants to spook his babysitter with the creature, and upon placing the “sponge” in a gerbil carrier, his hand appears to be bitten off.

Turns out it’s a prank.Lame.

After Carlo and Daniel have a good laugh about his prank, Carlo does manage to get hurt, stepping on a nail sticking out of a floorboard in Daniel’s bedroom. Carlo lays on the floor in agony as his sock soaks up the blood and the sponge in the gerbil cage pulsates wildly.

..that’s freaking dark. I approve.

Kat’s Mom goes over the details for her birthday party. Kat is worried about topping last year’s “Make your own pizza” party, which she claims was talked about for weeks after the fact. Kat decides she’s too old for themes. Her Mom has promised to take her and her friends to WonderPark. (NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Stine predicts animated films confirmed) Kat has only invited her friends and considers inviting her brother until he raises a big stink about her sponge, which she has now claimed full ownership of, and in fact is about to take to school to show her science teacher.

Because evil sponge=science.

She stores the sponge in a used potato salad container and heads off to school.

On the way to school a tree branch falls and almost kills Kat. Luckily Daniel pushes her out of the way just in time, spilling her bag out onto the ground. The sponge falls out the container and starts pulsating wildly.

At school, Kat shows the sponge to her teacher. It just sits there like an ordinary kitchen sponge and the teacher tosses it back to Kat like it was garbage. Then the teacher slams her fingers in her desk drawer, breaking both her hands.

Yikes. This book loves harsh stuff like this

Kat walks back to class from the nurse’s office, where she helped her teacher, Kat knows she’s got to find some kind of peace of mind, and she might have been searching everywhere were it not for Daniel running up to her in the hall.

It seems he’s found the sponge creature in a very convenient book called Encyclopedia of the Weird. It’s called a Grool and is a mythic creature that causes and feeds off bad luck.

Oh, good concept. Props to Stine for that one.

According to the book, the only way a Grool can be passed on is if its owner dies. If the Grool’s current owner tries to give it away, they will die within one day

Die. You know-for kids!

. Daniel also shows Kat a picture of a potato-like creature with teeth called a Lanx, which is the Grool’s more dangerous cousin. (Because Sponge’s and potato’s are related?)  A Lanx will attach to a person and drain them of all their energy.

Once home, Kat’s mom informs her and her brother that Killer has run away. Not to worry though, as Kat’s mom has called the police and they are out searching for the dog. Daniel and Carlo go out to look for the dog themselves. Kat gets frustrated and blames the throbbing sponge.

Furious, she throws the sponge across the room. As she looks down at her hand, she sees blood everywhere. She had slammed her hand down on an open pair of scissors which were resting on a desk. Clutching her bleeding palm,-

For a book about an evil sponge, this is really gore-y

she walks over to the Grool, which has changed color from a dusty brown to a tomato-red color, and now appears to be laughing.

A red evil laughing sponge. I love this book..

The morning of Kat’s birthday, she gets dressed for her fun day at the WonderPark except it’s raining outside. Kat naturally blames the Grool and pouts over her breakfast waffles when her mother tells her that she cancelled her birthday celebrations.

So this thing can control the weather? It plays god?

Kat sulks upstairs and makes plans for taking care of the Grool that are so intricate that she gets out a notebook and puts pen to paper. The plan? To bury the Grool in the backyard when the rain lets out.

Troy already made a  joke for this, so I’ll move on.

Kat somehow manages to master this plan and after burying the Grool deep in the backyard, she can’t find Daniel anywhere. Eventually she spots him cowering in the garage, afraid that something was going to happen to her for burying the Grool in the ground.

Well, nothing happens to Kat but the backyard doesn’t fare as well, as the next day, all of the grass and flowers her father worked so hard to cultivate in the backyard have shriveled up and died, the entire lawn brown and dead. Kat concludes that the Grool is mocking and punishing her for burying it, and so she digs it up while she thinks of another plan.

The following day, Kat’s favorite aunt comes to visit. Kat thinks she’ll know a lot about sponges. Kat takes her aunt by the hand immediately upon her arrival and goes to show her the Grool, which has again reverted back to looking like a regular sponge. Her aunt throws the old dried up thing on the floor and leaves Kat’s room, laughing. After she’s gone, the Grool immediately reverts back to its moist pulsating self.

Oh, and that  entire scene is pointless and never mentioned again.

Kat gets frustrated and smashes the Grool into a million pieces with her textbook. But all of the pieces of the Grool pool together and reform as one entity.

Granted a reprieve from school when a teacher’s conference is scheduled, Kat relaxes at home, gradually completing an essay on why her family is important to her.

She sneaks down to the kitchen for some milk and cookies and upon returning to her room she sees the Grool has disappeared!

Frantically she tears up her room looking for the sponge. She finds Daniel and he tells her that Carlo just left and he must have stolen the creature. Fearful for her life, Kat and Daniel put on their jackets and race out into the street, heading for the park where Carlo has likely gone to show off the sponge.

Yes, show off a sponge.

“hey guys check out my sponge”

“awesome!”

“OH MY GOD A SPONGE’

“HAVE MY BABIES!”

They don’t get far before they spot Carlo splayed out in the street, where he has hurt his knee from falling from his bike. He tells the two that he broke his leg racing bikes with some older boys, and maybe they stole the Grool once it fell onto the ground. Kat and Daniel ride their bikes over to the park, where sure enough, a circle of high school boys are leaning over the dried up sponge. Kat tells the boys that it’s her favorite sponge and asks to have it returned.

The boys make fun of her and their ringleader, a tall blonde, tells her that it’s their sponge now. Kat, knowing how bad luck finds those in possession of the Grool, slowly walks away and waits for something bad to happen. It doesn’t take long, as some kids playing baseball lob a baseball right into the tall blonde’s head. The boy drops to the ground and Kat grabs for the sponge while his friends rush to his aid.

After more attempt to crush the grool, Kat enters the kitchen, shoves the Grool into the drain and turns on the garbage disposal. The disposal makes a lurching sound and the Grool is propelled out of the drain, safely, and lands on the counter, laughing maniacally. Daniel again pleads with her to quit trying to kill it, that the Encyclopedia of the Weird specifically says that the Grool can’t be killed by any means of force. That’s when Kat gets an idea.

He picks up the Grool and instead of inflicting pain on it, pets it. She then begins to coo sweet nothings into the Grool’s ear, and softly rocks the creature with love. The Grool begins to lose its coloring and shrivels up. Kat tells the Grool that she loves it and gives it a big kiss.

KAT/GROOL OTP

The Grool shrinks to a small shrieking ball and then explodes into a million little particles. Kat explains for her brother that since the book said the creature couldn’t be killed by means of force, she figured that it could be killed by means of love

DRAT, FOILED BY THE POWER OF LOVE

Except there’s suddenly a scratching sound on the back door! It’s Killer, the dog. Rushing outside to greet the dog, Kat sees the dead grass and flowers reverting back to their previous state, filling with color as they come back to life.

Twist Ending:

Killer has brought something in his teeth with him. Kat takes it and…IT’S THE LANX! It bites into Kat, the end!

Yep, implied death. Nice. Obvious brick joke, but a fine ending nonetheless

TV Episode:  

Like normal, the story is simplified so some of the filler stuff is cut. Also, in the climax they LEAVE it at school for the teacher study. They learn whoever gives the grool away will die, and they sneak in. In a crowning moment, the janitor saves them from the Grool…and gets himself knocked out.

Then she does the power of love thing. However, in this version he doesn’t die. Instead, kat just makes it listen to music all the time to keep it calm. Kind of a bittersweet ending, but eh.

Oh, and at one point, Daniel is watching tv. You can he is watching Welcome to camp nightmare. Nice choice!

It’s a fun episode, at least

Notable Lines: “I was about to be crushed into Kat litter!”

Useless Fact: A friend of mine on Twitter once jokingly asked Stine for a sequel, and I joined her and going ‘I WANT THE LANX” he joked to both of us it wouldn’t happen. So yeah, I’ve had a run in with stine. Fun!

Final Thoughts:

This one is  so dumb I can’t even be upset with it. It has cool ideas with the  bad luck thing, and I like the gore, but the whole sponge  thing and some of the 2^nd half brings it down. It’s dumb most of the time, but fine. The title tells you how seriously Stine took this, and I don’t mind that.. it’s fun, just with some actually decent concepts thrown in.

Grade:  B

UPDATED FINAL THOUGHTS:

I like this one. The concept is fresher than usual, and it gets surprisingly violent. You do have to put up with some dumb moments, and not everything was exactly thought out. Still, it flows well and the Grool is a weirdly cool monster.

And yeah, that’s about it. A bit dumb but enjoyable one with some decent violent moments.

UPDATED RATING: Good

See ya!

Goosebump a thon #29: Monster Blood 3

Hello, Spongey here

Welcome back to Goosebump-athon!

Sigh…its sequel time. And that means it’s time to meet that whiny Evan for a third time. Yay

PREVIOUSLY ON GOOSEBUMPS:

Evan had moved to Atlanta, but he told everyone the scary story of monster blood since he thought everyone would love it. The did not, and his life sucks now. Andy returned, with the can of blood, and it started growing again. She fed it to the school hamster, and it grew giant. Evan ate some blood, and fought him. But it turns out the blood expired and it was all lame.

At the end, Andy got some new blood from her parents in Germany. Cuddles was last seen eating some of it..

Monster Blood 3

 

Cover: It’s a good one. Nice and cool. Also, see those shoes? The cover artist quite liked those kind, and put them on his covers a lot.

Front Tagline:  “Evan is growing up way too fast!”

Back Tagline:  “It’s the slime that never dies” you’re telling me..

Summary:

Well…I don’t own it, the blogger beware entry is a quiz, and I don’t have a page by page memory.

Add that to the fact that it’s boring, dumb, predictable, and offers nothing I can snark on. I’ll comment on the things I CAN though.

Evan has this cousin named Kermit. He’s an kid scientist and he makes science stuff in his basement. Jimmy Neutron, he ain’t.

Oh, and Kermit sucks. The main focus of this book is the Evan/Kermit thing and not Evan/Andy. Oh, she’s in it. But she only says a couple funny lines, and honestly adds nothing and becomes bland.

Evan and Andy has a legit good dynamic going on, as Andy was his opposite (Evan is a bad character, Andy is a good one) and they bounce off well. But here, Kermit just kind of tortures Evan and makes science jokes while Evan whines.

And it makes up most of the book too

Oh, and cuddles is never mentioned. The new blood is, but him eating it? Never mentioned. Conan also shows up, and bullies Evan

Hey, he saved your ass, you prick!

See what I mean? This one doesn’t mention anything from  books 1-3 outside of “blood did bad stuff”.

So anyway, Andy thinks they should put the Monster Blood in one of kermit’s experiments as joke.

You ,may  be thinking about how the blood was a normal toy, enchanted by Sarabeth, so the new blood should not work.

But it does.Ugh.

Anyway, he puts it a science-y thing . it explodes. Lands in evan’s mouth, and he eats it.

In MB 1, trigger took a couple days to grow big. Same for cuddles? Evan only takes a few minutes. Makes no sense. Then we get stuff with Evan running around as a giant, as no one sees that he looks exactly like Evan, even though he is well known. Bah.

To make a long, stupid story short,  Evan makes Kermit create a shrink formula. He runs in the house, and makes some. He comes out with it, Evan drinks it. As Troy Steele  noticed, it just does random shit to page the page length.

This book is padded like hell. The first HALF is spent on Conan being a dick, Kermit being smart, and Evan being whiny. The stuff with giant evan is just him running around and it’s rushed.

So back to the “plot’, eventually Evan drinks the right formula, and shrinks to normal size.

Lame.

Twist Ending:

Evan shrinks too much and becomes the size of an ant. End. Boring twist, next!

TV Episode:  None

Notable Lines: You’d be hard pressed to find anything notable about this crap.

Useless Fact: This book is useless, does that count.

Final Thoughts:

Meh. This book is lazy, boring, and not even worth making fun of. MB 1 had some decent well done moments, and was overall fun. 2 was so bad it’s good, fun to make fun of. This is just dull. It sucks anything creative or fun out of it. Sure, some of the giant bits are fun, but that’s about it. I can’t call it HORRIBLE since it lacks the dumb ness 2 had, but I will call it really bad due to how dull, and poorly written it is. I struggled to remember anything about this. It’s so dull I put off doing this one so I can do my Haunting Hour review I just did.  So thus…I give it this.

Grade:  D-

UPDATED FINAL THOUGHTS:

I feel about the same. This book is a lot of nothing. A couple okay moments with giant Evan can’t really save it. I give it a higher rating than Monster Blood 2 but I tend to get more enjoyment out of that one even though it is worse generally.

It takes too long to get started and even then not much really happens. Andy is officially bad, wanting to use this blood for revenge and not being that funny. Evan is still bad and Kermit is worse.

It’s pretty bleh.

UPDATED RATING: Meh

See ya!

The Haunting Hour

Hello, Spongey here

So i thought I’d take a break from the Goosebumps books, to look at another RL Stine book.

He’s written tons of other kid’s books, and this is one of them. This is a follow up to a short story Collection called “The nightmare hour”. It was decent, and had some good stories, but also some dumb ones. It was hit or miss.

They’ve been adapted into episode of his new show, called The Haunting hour. Yet, none from today’s book has been turned into an episode, despite the show’s name.

Logic!

This, is The Haunting Hour

The Halloween Dance

 Mark’s parents are throwing a Halloween party. This seems epic, but Mark is disappointed, as he wants to go trick or treating. Plus, his sister Madison is inviting all her 8 year old friends and mark does not want to hang out with little kids.

He wants to invite all his friends, but they don’t want to hang out with little kids either. His parents always make him do crap with her, and he is sick of it. His parents assure they’ll do something cool, and watch a scary movie too.

Mark is right, the party sucks. Only a few of his friends show up, compared to 30 of Madison’s. They all want to listen to “wimpy boy band music”

“Mom’s games didn’t help. Pin the vine on the pumpkin? Whoa, hot stuff”

Okay, that’s funny.

“Guess what scary movie he picked”

Saw?

“The wizard of oz’

…That was funny too.

He and his friend Jake sneak away and head out to go do something else. They almost get run over by a truck on their way. Nice move, genius.

They bump into a kid named Ray. He tells them he knows a much cooler party. I can only see this going well.

They head out and the party turns out to be in a graveyard. And almost right away, they see the guests are all zombies. Their costumes happen to be zombies, so they arrive undetected

Ray convinces them to hang out here, since the zombies are doing no harm.

The party really begins. First, one ghoul pulls out a mirror and passes it around.

“Will anyone reflect?”

Mark realizes they must suspect the kids, and are trying to get them to reflect In the mirror, to prove they are alive. They can’t run now.

The kid holds the mirror to their face, and they look in

“No reflection”

Ray tells them the car actually killed them.

…That’s..dark.

Before they can join Bruce Willis, It chimes midnight. Ray informs them it’s time for, you guessed it, the Halloween dance. All the undead form a moving backwards circle, and for one moment, time is frozen. The dead and the living are one.

They do this every year on Halloween.

While they go backwards, the two kids get the idea to move it COUNTER clockwise, to rewind time go they’re alive again, and they can avoid the truck.

This works, and time moves backwards..

But it works too well. He can’t let go. It moves faster and faster, until he final lets go. He sees his mom staring him in the face.

“It’s your first Halloween!”

The end.

Yes, he is now a baby. A little dumb, but a great cruel twist.

Thoughts:  Creepy, fun, and I love the dark death twist.

The Bad Babysitter

Matt’s parents always make him and his sister Courtney hang out with two neighbor kids, Larry and Maryjo

They’re gross, have tons of allergies, mess up the kid’s stuff, and never apologize. The 4 never get along too well, but the parents make them hang out, since they are friends with the kid’s parents.

One night, the two siblings need to have a babysitter, since Country is only 8. Their normal one is Mrs Craven. Sadly, she is sick.

So, Mom gets a new one. Her name is Lulu, and she arrives.

And…well…

“She is a total babe!”

That is all.

They hit it off, and they tell her about the horrible twins. Lulu suggest they get back at them.

“Let’s bake some mud cookies”

You read that right. She wants to make cookies of mud, in the shape of the kids,. They also get some of their DNA (larry’s droll from a chip he took from Matt, and maryjo’s hair from…I don’t remember).

She is about to explain how they get revenge, but the parents show up. Man, that was fast!

Matt is playing with his Larry cookie, when the hand breaks off. The next day, larry’s hand is broken. At first, he passes it off as a coincidence.

Then the hair from the maryjo cookie falls off. They call Maryjo, and find out her hair has fallen out.

They know the cookies are bad. Suddenly, Lulu shows up for more baby sitting. They tell her it’s not right to do this. Wow, another nice main character.

Lulu reveals she made cookies out of the siblings, and if they don’t obey her, she will crush them.

“Do you want to see what happens when I drop these…in boiling water?’

Damn.

They make cookies of the parents, but they take her hair, and make a lulu cookie instead. They fight over it, and it’s head breaks off.

So Lulu’s head bounces off. She lives, but she is magic, so there’s a reason here.

Her body approaches the kids… And their dog, Muttley eats the lulu cookie, killing her.

Two deaths in a row!

So they’re happy to have this scary adventure over. They look around for the Matt/Country cookies. Then..

“MUTTLEY,DON’T EAT THOSE!”

…So they die.

Damn, this book is dark.

Thoughts: Another good one. A tiny bit dumb, but still pretty good. Love the ending too.

Revenge of the snowman

Rick, Loren, and Fred have continued the pattern of having a dude they hang out with that they hate. His name is Billy, and much like this book,, he is obsessed with death.

He talks about the many ways, you can die and the chance of death anyone has.

One cold winter day, Billy is telling them about how you can really get scared to death. Of course, they think he’s full of shit.

To prove his theory, they cover him in snow, turning him into a snowman. Of course, he can run away, but he’s very weak it seems. They cover him head to toe in snow.

They expect him to break out, crying. But he doesn’t move.

They think he just gave in, and leave to go sledding. They head back, and find snow billy. But…he’s not moving still.

They pull away the snow, and find no billy! Suddenly, he pops up behind them, with snow on him.

“YOU FROZE ME!”

YOU WERE FROZEN TODAY!

…Sorry.

Rick thinks he froze him to death. Before he can apologize.., he hears a pop in his head. He can’t move. At all.

He remembers billy’s words about being scared to death. Billy reveals the whole thing was a prank. He wasn’t dead.

“Come on rick, snap out of it!”

The end.

Wow, I never thought I needed a body count but..

Body Count: 4

 Thoughts:  This one was good too. Creepy, dark, and a great death ending. It also serves as a nice warning to not freaking freeze people you hate.

How To Bargain with a dragon

 Okay, this one is a SEQUEL  to a  short story in The Nightmare Hour. It was called “The Most Evil Sorcerer”. It was a medieval  fantasy story, and it was a nice change. It had a dude named Ned, who was an assistant, to a mean wizard, who tortured him. At the end, Margolin is stopped due to Ned working for another wizard and they hint that Ned will get rid of him too…but they just have-wave that away here.

Ned is heading to Sir Darkwind, the greatest Dragon master in the kingdom. He wishes to find a job working for him, since that other guy is a bit..deadish. he arrives at Darkwind’s house

Dark’s servant greets Ned at the door. Dark never leaves his house, as he has too many enemies. He begs to be brought in to meet darkwind.

He asks for a job. Ned says he is poor, and so is his family and his dad is out of commission, so they depend on Ned for food.

‘Am I supposed to cry for your poor fortune?”

Wow, what an ass.

Darkwind tells him he is the ONLY dragon master left. They are endangered and he has the last few In the entire world. He has captured them, he whips them, and clipped of their wings so they won’t fly away.

What a bundle of joy this guy is

He informs Ned that there is only one free Dragon he doesn’t own. And he says he needs to catch them all, dragon-mon.

“I made a bargain with my dragons.  If they stay, I wouldn’t kill them’

Well ,there’s your title. How to bargain with a dragon? Threaten to kill them!

Ned must convince the last dragon, Ulrick to join Darkwind. He must bargain with him.  If he can get the dragon, he has a job.

Ned treks to Stone Hill. After a run in with rats, he quickly bumps into the dragon.

“What do you want?”

Yes, all dragons speak when there is something to say…Stine’s words, not mine.

He tells Ned dragons are no threat to humans. They only eat Grosel bushes. Darkwind BURNED them all to capture the dragons.

Like  I said, Stine makes amazing assholes.

He eats Ned. End! Kidding.

They cut to Darkwind’s house. The huge dragon lands in front of it. The servant asks the dragon where ned is. He opens his mouth, to reveal ned’s head!

Darkwind comes out to see it. Ned jumps up. He’s alive!

Ned made a bargain with the dragon. He says he was taught many spells under the evil dude. He then turns Darkwind into a grusel bush.

He has kept his bargain.

The dragon eats Darkwind bush…thus, killing him/

Body Count: 5

 Thoughts: This one was good too. A nice fantasy story, great villain, and nice ending.

The Mummy’s Dream

Conner’s sister Joanna picks the best Birthday party location: the museum. Connor is actually interested. Okay, this is the most unrealistic kid ever.

They are looking at a mummy on display. His friend josh suggests he wrap Conner in cloth they find in a nearby closet (why is that there?) and get In the mummy case. When the sister show up, he’ll jump up and scare her.

He does so. He gets in , but he falls asleep. He wakes up and sits up to scare the sister.

He looks around, he’s no longer in the museum. He is in a creepy old  room. An old guy pops up and talks to Conner.

He addresses him as prince Akor. He Is now in ancient Egypt. The man is the high priest. He tells “akor” there is a plot against his life. An evil guy plans to KILL him, and not mummify the body.

He tells Akor that he will be mummified now to avoid this. Can’t you…stop the murder? Seems easier.

He tells the priest he is Connor and he is from the future.

“you have had these dreams before, Akor”

“But I’m from the United states!”

“You have dreamed you live in a future time. If this is true…how do you speak our language?”

“…Good point”

OWNED.

Connor has no idea what is going on. Is his life really a dream, or Is something more sinister going on?

The priest leaves to prepare for his mummification.  Connor tries to escape, but fails. He realize that maybe his current situation Is one long dream. So, he goes to sleep so he can wake up back home.

He falls asleep. He wakes up …back in the mummy case!

Kids look down on him.

Sick, he’s all decayed”

Connor tries to get up. He can’t. he’s all decayed, and the kids leave.

“..I’M THE MUMMY!”

End.

Brr, cruel ending. The whole thing was a dream within a dream (MUMMYCEPTION)  and he’s really an old mummy. I dig it.

Wait…does being undead count? Fuck it.

Body count: 6

Thoughts: A mummy version of inception, but still great. Fun concept, and it’s fairly creepy.

Are we there yet?

 Tammi and Artie are on a road trip with their parents. They are not happy. They inform the parents that friends of theirs went on one….last year

“They haven’t come back yet”

FORESHADOWING ALERT

They drive for hours, without stopping. Suddenly, Tammi spots  a dog in the road, and makes them stop. They siblings love animals, and don’t want them injured Wow, more nice leads.

That night, they stop a motel, called Wayside motel. I never knew they had a motel. Guess that school didn’t work out.

They fall right asleep. They wake up, to find mom and dad missing. They look out the window. The car is missing!

They head to the lobby to find out what is going on. They attempt to talk to the man at the desk. They go around the other side…and it’s a skeleton.

They freak and run the fuck out. They run until they get tired. They are now In a graveyard. Two graveyards in one book? Sure.

They spot a shack on the other side. They hear dogs howling from inside. They hate to know that may be in danger, so they open it. They head in and see them chained up!

Before they can do anything, a voice cries out “SORRY, YOU FAILED”

A Man steps out…joined by mom and dad.

“Give them another chance!”

They reveal that kid all have to take car trips. It is a test for bravery.

“There’s so little food. So little everything to go around. Only the bravest…can come home”

Yep, this is some kind of dystopia.

Oh, and once he says that…he starts crying that his kids can’t come home.

DAMN.

Turns out they failed cuz they opened the dog shed. So caring for animals, was their  weakness.’

They let the dogs go and sic them on the man’

“You pass, just get them off!”

K, that is a crowning moment of awesome,

They pass and drive home.

“This was our best family car trip ever”

Thoughts: Excellent. It’s good, deep, and interesting. I’d love to see adapted for the haunting hour, it’d be great!

Take Me with you

 Amber’s family is going on a cruise soon. Her dad gets her an antique chest to carry her stuff in. Amber doesn’t like it since it’s old, small, and dusty.

She also collects dolls. She doesn’t play, she just collects. Skipper, meet your new girlfriend!

However, her sister is annoying. Her name is..

VANILLA ICE: Kat.

…Yeah, that.

She copies everything Amber does. Anyway, they look in the old trunk and see a few loose clothes. As if someone started to pack, but stopped.

She doesn’t want to go the cruise, as she wants to join her friends at camp.

Yes, a camp with no electricity is better than a fucking cruise ship.. duh!

“Why can’t we go on a normal vacation?”

“Eat your spaghetti”

She heads upstairs, to see her room trashed. She thinks kat did it.of course she denies it, and the parents don’t believe  Amber.

That night, she hears a voice chant, yep you guessed, it “are we there yet?”.

She doesn’t see anything. She tells her parents, but they completely believe her and get rid of the ghost. Kidding.

The next morning, she goes to the bathroom, and sees the title written in lipstick on the mirror. She tells her parents, but they think Amber did it to make them think the ghost was real.

That night, she hears the chant again. She gets up and sees a ghost girl. Turns out she was in the trunk, haunting it.

Long ago, she was packing for Scotland. But she got sick , died, and never got to go. She wants Amber to take her on the ship to fulfill her wish.

“You will take me…because I’ll be you!

Yay, possession.

She tries to take Amber over, but she fights back.  She grabs one of the dolls.

“They prove I’m still me!”

This works and the ghost comes out of amber, pissed as hell. Amber pushes the ghost in the trunk and traps her in it.  This defeats her.

The next day, they leave for the cruise. They get on the ship, and amber sees that her room on the ship has TV and stuff. She also finds out about the amazing things you can do on a cruise.

Okay, now I can take back my camp comment.

Kat reveals that dad gave her the trunk, since amber didn’t want it. Dad opens the trunk. End!

Thoughts: This one was decent. Creepy, but not great. I still thought it was a real winner.

My Imaginary Friend

David’s brother Shawn has an imaginary friend named Travis. Mom says “you’re too old for this”, then proceeds to fluff Shawn pillow/ He’s also too young for his mommy to do that, you hypocrite.

David worries about Shawn and his friend thing. Suddenly, Travis starts to talk. Showing him to be real…I guess.

Travis suggests sneaking out. David warns Shawn not to listen, as he only gets them into trouble. He doesn’t listen.

They head out and Travis convinces Shawn to help prank the neighbor by vandalizing his garage door with paint.

Suddenly, Dad catches them in the act. Dad is  pissed at david, as he seems see him as the ringleader.David says it was Shawn’s/Travis’s idea to go out, and David says it was Travis.

Dad don’t buy it.

Next day after school, Shawn says Travis wants to take another way home. Over the old railroad trestle.

David tries to get him to stop this shit, but nor Shawn or Travis will listen. halfway across, it gives way and they almost die.

But they grab on to the railroad and live. The dad shows up (how does he keep knowing where he is?) and scolds him for going in dangerous places. Don’t worry, he shows  concern for his safety too.

He tells him the story: Shawn and Travis did it, but nope, he won’t have it.

David tells Shawn Travis is nothing but trouble, and…he buys it! He agrees, but there is nothing to do about it. The next day, they talk a walk outside.

Travis spots an old frozen over pond and wants to go across it. Travis forces Shawn on it.

“I’m taking over. You’re going to be the imaginary friend!”

Shit just got real.

David runs to save Shawn from Travis. But they both fall through the ice.

The live and are save by a neighbor. Travis lost this round.  David tells Dad the story, and how he needed to rescue Shawn. Oh, and they’re at the hospital as Dad is talking to a doctor.

“Who are travis..and shawn?””

“His imaginary friends.”

DUN DUN DUN!

Yep, Shawn wasn’t real either.  You see, David’s parents divorced  and imagines Mom is still there, and talks to these guys to deal with it.

Damn, if it isn’t death, it’s complex stuff this book loves.

If you notice, there are hints about Shawn not being real.  Example: Dad and mom are never in the same scene. Plus, there’s the whole…not blaming Shawn thing.

The story ends with  Shawn and Travis arguing Yep, they’re semi real. End!

Thoughts;  A winner. Good concept, fun story, and a complex situation at the end. I like it.

Losers

Colin, his friend pete, and his cousin Franny (her parents must have hated her) are at the county fair.

The two kids are asses who mock other people for being fat, ugly, etc.

They are looking at the crazy contest stuff made at the fair.

“It looks a little like your mom!’

“No..it looks A LOT like my mom!”

MUSCLEMAN: you know else rips me off? MY MOM!

Franny is pissed at how big of an asshole these guys are. They continue to mock people at the fair.

They attend a pig judging thing…to make fun of the people owning the pigs. They then look at some homemade cabbages at another contest.

They then vandalize them by writing a word on them. The word is, yep, you guessed it, “my imaginary friend”

Franny has had enough. She walks away.

Then a man pops up. He tells them they’re perfect. He tells them to follow him to a nearby tent.

Yep, follow a creepy old guy into a tent. Great idea!

He gives them cotton candy. Okay, creepy guy…tent…candy

I could make so many jokes, but I won’t.

They eat the candy. He tells them they are in time for the judging. He takes them onto a stage. Their audience is everyone they mocked so far.

Suddenly, they get fat into they are the size of huge round balls.

The judges then judge them and proceed to mock them for how ugly they are.

“Losers!”

They chant this, and boo and his too.

The man is disappointed. He takes a giant stamper, and stamps LOSERS on both of the boys.

They faint, and wake up back to normal, outside.

Franny returns. They tell her and she tells them there is no tent. They look to where it was and yep, it’s gone.

Colin goes home, thinking it was all just a dream.

He takes off his shirt to take a  shower. He stares.

The word LOSER IS stamped on him

End!

 Thoughts: Another decent one, I love asshole comeuppance stories. This was a good morality tale about judging people by their looks. Thumbs up!

Well, one left! Will it end with a whimper, or a bang?

Can you draw me?

Dylan is a gifted artist. He has a cute girl over, and he’s drawing her like one of his French girls.

You see, Dylan took lesson two weeks ago by a dude named Mckenzie. Ever since, he can draw anything with no problem.

Oh, and he..has a pet money named Flash.

Dad works at an animal hospital, hence the monkey.

“I try to impress a girl, and a chimp knocks her to the floor”

Suddenly, the  brush starts painting on it’s own! He looks at the final painting of her. It is gross and has her with scars, and a rat in her mouth. Ew

She gets pissed and runs off.

That night, he tries painting again to see if he was going crazy. But once again, it goes insane and draws a gross image of Dylan. Now he thinks it’s haunted for sure;.

The next at art class, they are tasked to draw an American scene. He starts with a pencil but paints with his brushes. Yes, use the brushes you KNOW are haunted. Great idea!

He starts painting, but it goes insane and he can’t stop, and the teacher sees he really cannot stop at all. He even ends up painting the door, that’s how insane he gets.

Of course, the teacher think it’s his own fault, and he is kept home the next day for safety reasons.

The teachers visits him to see what is going on. He tells her about the lessons he got.

“McKenzie. I read he died three weeks ago!”

WHAT A TWEEST! He’s been dead, and is haunting the paint brushes.

That night, he sees them floating, and painting. He grabs them and throws them away.

But of course, they pop up in his room the next day. He then tries to put them In his dad’s table saw. It doesn’t break.

It paints a message. “YOUR HANDS ARE ALL MINE NOW!”

…Mr toggle, Is that you?

“Suddenly, I had an idea”

The next day, he and Julie are watching a show on TV. Flash is on TV with dad, painting….with the brushes. He is now famous for being a painting. Dylan gave flash the brushes, so the ghost is happy,  and Dylan has no ghost to deal with.

Then flash starts a bunch of webcomics he never updates. The end.

Thoughts: The weakest one in the book. It’s not bad, though. It’s spooky, and has a good concept. It’s just bogged down by the typical Stine-ism. Meh ending, but a okay story overall.

Final Thoughts:

 This is Stine’s best short story collection, by far. It’s  funny, scary, and very well written. Pretty much all the stories  work very well. It’s written in a way that reads better than it sounds.

There’s a lot of death and great concepts. I’m shocked there weren’t dumb ideas like a jelly monster or some shit. RL Stine shows  off his strengths here, and even some weaknesses. Sadly, none of these has episodes in the TV show. I’d love to see one of Losers or Revenge of the snowman. They’d be great!

 Grade: A-

See ya.

Goosebump a thon #28: The Cuckoo Clock of Doom

Hello, Spongey here

Welcome back to Goosebump-athon!

 The Cuckoo Clock of Doom

 

Cover:  It’s a dumb idea but actually looks pretty decent.

Front Tagline:  “Keep your eye on the birdie”

Back Tagline:  “Don’t beat the clock” Ew

Summary:

The main character is Michael Webster, a 12-year-old boy.

Also, the sky is blue

He has a crush on Mona Deaton, his classmate. He begins by talking about his sister, Tara, who is always lying and getting him into trouble. She’s a bitch, plain in simple. She tortures him night and day, and puts on an innocent act for her parents.

Micheal treats us to a flashback, on his 12 birthday, which was February 5^th, the only time a specific date is mention in a GB book, I almost mention this to bring up a point later on;

On his 12th birthday, Tara ruins everything; she scratches his present, a new bicycle,

By getting on it without permission and falling, and the parents scold Micheal despite that fact that her injury is her own damn fault.

She tells his crush that Mike likes her (as well as opening all of Michael’s presents ahead of him, including a CD she says that has great love songs on it), and purposely trips him while he is carrying his birthday cake, resulting in the cake splattering over Michael’s face.

And a few days before, she took a bully’s hat, and put in micheal’s bag, thus making the bully beat him up. Yesh, this chick is a real bitch..

Back in the present, his father purchases an antique cuckoo clock from a local store, Anthony’s Antiques, that is supposed to have one flaw. He’d been admiring the clock for fifteen years. But sadly, he never had enough money.

It’s been said that if a person can figure out the clock’s secret, it can be used to go back in time. Tara fools around with the clock, and her father gets very angry. This gives Michael an idea on how to get back at Tara. That night, when the clock strikes midnight, Michael sneaks downstairs and touches the cuckoo’s head and twists it around backwards. He hopes this will get Tara in trouble for sure.

The next day, he sees dad putting up crepe paper, his mom telling him not to go in the garage, and a …Happy birthday banner. Yep, that act took him back in time. He thinks it was due to his wish to redo his birthday,. So it’s a little like groundhog day..

This book takes place in early February. Heh, that’s kind of funny.

He goes through the same stuff, but he tries to not get tripped, but he fails. He heads back to bed, and wakes up a two days earlier. He remembers the day was when his frog costume for the play “The Frog Prince” gets its zipper stuck. Yes, he was In play with mona, but she accidentally walked in on him when it fell off, and saw him in his underwear.

She laughed instead of screamed. But this time, Micheal uses his smarts to stop it from happening again. He tries to talk them out of doing the costume, but they won’t have it.

He just locks the door while in his room. e forgets that the lock is broken because it was fixed on his birthday and the girls see him in his underwear just like originally

And why were they in his room? Tara told them that they were practicing for the play in there

RL Stine writes amazing assholes.

The next, day is the one with the bully. So it’s now Feb 1^st…so they avoid every early day…except Groundhog day

Coincidence?!

He forgets this was the bully day, so he ends up taking the beating.

He starts to worry, and tries to tell his family. Of course, they don’t believe him, but they do play a joke by walking and talking backwards.

What great parents. Tara even calls him a moron, and they just laugh.

He realizes the days are getting worse. When he wakes up the next morning, he doesn’t notice anything different. But when he walks in the door of his classroom, he realizes the truth: he’s back in third grade.

Long story short, he doesn’t have a good day

The next day after that, Michael is in second grade. After Tara pokes him in the eye, he wonders what the pre-Tara years were like since his doesn’t remember much from before age five

That afternoon, he heads over to Anthony’s Antiques, only to find it closed. He attempts to break a window with a brick, but his dad catches him and takes him home, criticizing him for going on the bus alone.

Yet the brick is fine, I guess.

The next day, he wakes up and notices he’s back in his old bedroom (now Tara’s room), and he’s five years old, and thus, in kindergarten. He is bored and inattentive, faced with problems such as tying his shoes (and since he still has the brain and mind power of a 12-year-old, he does it very easily).

The next day he wakes up a year younger, his four year old self is taken to nursery school. He bumps into young Mona, and since has 12 year old smarts, he still likes her, and only cuz of her he hangs out with her. Sadly, at age 4 she was a bitch and she chases him.

She makes him climb  a tree (makes sense In context). But halfway up the tree..

“Wasn’’t this the year I broke my arm?”

He falls and breaks him arm. WAIT…he was only up to the tree due to his 12 year old mind, which was cuz of the time loop. Yet, this happened before..So he was SUPPOSED to go through time this whole time? All time travel stores are complicated, seriously.

The next morning, Mike wakes up as a baby. After having a bottle-feeding, a diaper change, and a minute in the baby pen, Mike starts to feel like he will never get to the clock and that this day as a baby might be his last

Mom takes him to see his dad at work, but before that…she goes into Anthony’s Antiques.

That certainly is convenient!

They talk and Dad complains that mike, a one year old, can only say a few words, while a neighbor kid speaks full sentence. He calls him slow since he put a pea up his nose once

Wow, no wonder Tara is  such a bitch. She takes after her dad!

While his parents look for a new kitchen table, he crawls quickly towards the cuckoo clock.

Yeah, leave your baby son unattended. That’s smart.

Just as it rings for a 12th time, he grabs the head and twists it forward again, then sets the year dial to 1995, accidentally knocking an unknown year off in the process.

There is a bright flash, and Michael is taken back to the morning of his 12-year-old birthday. Yay.

Twist Ending:

Michael is almost happy to see Tara again, but he can’t seem to find her. During his birthday without Tara, his bike isn’t scratched, his birthday cake is actually eaten and Mona’s best friend tells Michael that Mona has a crush on him, which works in his favor.

A few days later, the clock is delivered and Michael finds the clock’s defect; its year dial is now without 1988 which means…

DIE HARD NEVER CAME OUT!

..Oh, and Tara was never born either.

“I’ll get her back…,maybe”

Damn, that’s a great ending. The horrible bitch gets deleted from history, and it’s heavily implied the world is better without her. People have their own view on who was in the wrong here, and debate on if Micheal is doing good or bad

Like CR Said, it’s thought provoking. I don’t think it was meant to be, but it’s still an excellent ending.

TV Episode:  

There are major changes. First, instead of dragging the plot, he just repeats his b-day, goes to age 6, then a baby

That’s…it for the changes. The plot gets an update, and that’s all. There are a few odd things.

When 6-Mike heads to Anthony’s, a dude in black behind him andomly says “got the time?”, and the episode slows down for this. Then mike continues walking and it’s never mentioned again

What the hell? That was so random! Hell, he’s listed in the credits as Creepy guy.

Oh, and check out what mike does when he finds out he’s 6

Home alone much?

Anyway, a pretty good episode, and it’s better than the book.

Notable Lines: “But Anthony’s cost an arm and a leg” “so give them an arm and a leg!”

Useless Fact: Stine has cited this as another Favorite of his.

Final Thoughts:

Awful parents aside, this one is pretty good. Tara was  a fun bitch, Micheal was a cool character, and I liked the time travel plot. It moved fast, and it was fun. It did have it’s dumb moments that bring it down, but it’s overall a good book. Plus, the ending is still amazing! Not much to say, it’s just good

Grade:  B

 UPDATED FINAL THOUGHTS:

Yeah, I like this one. It feels padded and Micheal is a bit too dumb, but there are some funny moments within, like Micheal seeing how silly things were as a kid. Tara’s terrible-ness works thanks to that amazing twist.

Can’t say the same for the parents though. Frankly, I blame them for how Tara turned out. Micheal basically lives in an abusive home, so thank god for that ending for fixing that. So yeah, a fine one.

UPDATED RATING: Good

See ya!

Goosebump a thon #27: A Night in Terror Tower

Hello, Spongey here

Welcome back to Goosebump-athon!

A Night in Terror Tower

Cover:  This one’s awesome. I love the executioner dude, and it’s just a great cover.

Reprint Cover: Not as good but I still kinda like it. The design is different so at least it stands out, although the full art gives you a better look at it. Not as cool, but not a bad update.

Front Tagline:  “It’s going to be a LONG night!”

Back Tagline:  “All locked up and no place to go!”

Summary:

Sue and her younger brother Eddie are American tourists in London. They’ve spent an average day in London, eating burgers, riding in double-decker buses, and visiting old buildings. As the story opens, Sue and Eddie are touring the infamous ominous Terror Tower. Sue didn’t want to go but Eddie begged her

Inside the castle, the guide leads the tourists around the various rooms, showing them empty jail cells and torture chambers. The guide, named Mr Starke (insert iron man joke here) spends a good amount of time introducing the various tools of torture, such as the rack and thumbscrews

I’d like to mention this segment was disturbing in a good way.

Sue wants to take a picture, but she can’t find her disposable camera. Her brother produces it from his bag and it’s revealed that Eddie is a gifted pickpocket. I mention this as it is a checkov’s skill.

During the tour, Sue spies a man in black following their every move through the castle. The tour guide leads the group into a small barred cell and tells them the tragic story of Prince Edward and Princess Susannah  (insert Narnia joke here) of York, two preteens who were sentenced to death by the King, known as the lord high executioner.

Best name ever?

Once Sue and Eddie stop bickering about the camera, they realize that the tour has left them behind. They walk out into the steep narrow stairwell and can’t hear or see anything. The man in black attempts to capture the children. The siblings still aren’t quite sure what’s going on, but the man is wearing a cape.

One chase scene later, they escape out into the parking lot. They discover that their tour bus left without them, but luckily the trusty night guard tells them in a thick Scottish burr where to call for a cab.

The cab delivers them to their hotel, where they’re sure their parents, who came to London on business, are bound to be back. When the kids try to use the money their parents gave them, they discover it’s worthless.

The cab driver agrees to wait while they run up to their room for the money. Inside their hotel room however, they discover the suite to be empty, with no record of any family having registered. Also, when questioned by the concierge, the kids can’t remember their last name.

Over dinner in the restaurant, they think about this. They don’t remember anything about their lives at all. Their minds are a blank.

This scene is scary without the usual crappy stuff we get. These kids have lost their memory and have no idea who they really are. Infact, Stine says this is one the scariest scenes he’s written.  I agree.

The cabbie pops back in, and they flee him. Damn amnesiacs, always stiffing him up.

Running through the kitchen corridors, the man in black blocks their path. He accosts Eddie and forces him to give up the three white stones he apparently lifted from the man in black earlier. Eddie does so and the man in black waves his hands over the stones.

They faint, and wake up a bit later.  Suddenly, everything is old fashioned, and the hotel is replaced with an abbey. At first, they think it’s some kind of party..until they get into the main abbey, and see the truth:

They’ve gone back  in time.

The man In black shows his face, and they run off. Eddie suddenly disappears, and now she’s on her own.

Sue pays a peasant for a hiding space with the funny money and is shocked to discover that it’s actually real gold coins. When the man in black strolls around to the peasant’s hut, the peasant wastes no time turning Sue in

What an asshole.

The peasant apologizes to the basket for turning the girl in, but she just couldn’t go against the man in black

“You can’t run from the  Lord High Executioner!”

DUN DUN DUN!

Sue is escorted back to the castle, where Sue is reunited with Eddie. Turns out the evil dude took him when she wasn’t looking. In the cell, they bump into a creepy old guy.

The white-bearded… sorcerer introduces himself as Morgred, the king’s personal magician. Then, he drops off a huge bomb at the two kids:

They are actually Susannah and Edward. Morgred sent them to the future with new memories in order to survive in a new, distant time, albeit their memories were not complete. Their parents are dead and their uncle, the King, has imprisoned them to await their death.

…dead parents…uncle wanting to KILL them?!

You know-for kids!

The kids try to make a break for it out the open cell door, but Morgred bewitches the children and they freeze in place. He apologizes with tears in his eyes, but if he lets the children escape, the King will kill him

Now, you may wonder why the king considers them a threat if they plan to leave….Okay let’s move on.

. He tells them he must stay to help London with his magic. As Morgred keeps wailing, Eddie reveals to Sue that he’s swiped the stones yet again.

Remembering the ancient Latin words Morgred used to cast the spell the two cast themselves back into the present.

…that…was REALLY ant climatic. Bah….

Back on the tour, (shouldn’t it still be night time?)  they finally hear the rest of their story: on the night of the execution, the children mysteriously disappeared. A bearded man joins the children and thanks them for bringing him with them. Morgred asks for the children to call him Mr. Morgan

So much for ‘I have to help my people”

Twist Ending: None. The twist back there was good enough anyway        

TV Episode:  

This one is really faithful. There aren’t many differences until the end. Oh, and sue is played by the chick who played Sabrina in the haunted mask..yeah.

Anyway, let’s skip to the end. Once when they are found to be British, they get their full memories back like in the book, but they turn into their British forms with accents. The book never mentioned the accents.

Oh, and they are taken to be executed, and they actually just give in to it, with honor. Damn.

But at the last minute, Morgred saves their asses, but Edward really does it by kicking the bad guy’s ass, and taking the stones to transport them to the future.

Oh, and this ep has a twist!

They get on the bus to leave, when he notices one of the stones is missing. Cut  to the lord high executioner holding it. Now THAT’S what I call a twist.

Then we get an awesome medieval version of the theme in the credits.

It’s a good episode that improves on the book. I dig it

Notable Lines: “:They don’t torture people anymore. Now they just sell postcards”

Same thing.

Useless Fact: This book is inspirited by a true story. . In 1483, Richard III placed his two nephews, Edward (see, same name) V and Richard, Duke of York, in the Tower of London then a palace) and were never seen again. So RL Stine thinks they were transported to the future.

Sure, why not.

Also ,this had a sequel in the Give yourself goosebumps series. Haven’t read it.

Final Thoughts:

This one was quite good. The characters were interesting, the story was well done, and it had a very creepy tone to it. Plus, it has a great twist. My only issue was the anti climax. The episode had a good one, but here we get nothing. It just felt meh to me. It really does bring a good book down. But it’s still a well done entry in the series despite that.

Grade:  B+

 UPDATED FINAL THOUGHTS:

I agree with past me this time. The weak climax hurts it so much, although I may have been spoiled by the TV episode. Plus, Morgred not helping him makes no real sense. Oh and the twist is telegraphed since they say the full name of the Prince and Princesses, as well as when Sue says the tower feels familiar.

Otherwise, this has some solid scares on a few different levels and is one of the stronger ones for that reason. Once again, the episodes tweaks things so that it becomes much stronger. The book is still pretty solid, just not as great as it could have been.

UPDATED RATING: Good

See ya!

Goosebump a thon #26: My Hairest Adventure

Hello, Spongey here

Welcome back to Goosebump-athon!

This is one of the most infamous entries, thanks to Blogger Beware’s running gag. But is it still a good book? Let’s find out!

My Hairiest Adventure

 

Cover:  This one is okay. It’s well done, but the hair kind of looks more funny than scary…

Front Tagline:  “It’s growing. And growing…and growing”

Back Tagline:  “Hairy Larry!”

Summary:

Larry Boyd is running from a pack of stray dogs. The strays are all over his town. Larry slides across ice and snow as he races towards his friend Lily’s house.

. The dogs flee eventually. . Larry was going to Lily’s house so that they and their friends Manny, Kristina, and Jared can rehearse for the upcoming Middle School Battle of the Bands. Their main competition is a band called Howie and the Shouters, the superior group led by the typical goosebumps jerk

Larry has big ears and wavy blonde hair; Lily is blonde and her eyes are two different colors, Manny is tall; Kristina is fat. Oh, and guess which one is another useless boring character!

The kids decide to take ten and go play in the snow. While digging through Lily’s neighbor’s dumpster, Larry comes across a discarded medicine cabinet. He retrieves a bottle of tanning lotion by the name of “INSTA-TAN”All five members of the band think that it would be really awesome to get a fake tan during the winter.

Yes, put on a subtan lotion from the dumpster. Such a good idea!

They excitedly race into the bathroom and take turns squirting the liquid on their bodies. Larry initially refuses, as he notes that the lotion expired several years ago.

Yay, a smart Goosebumps character!

Larry expresses concern, but nobody else does, and Larry is pressured to apply the lotion when the group asks what harm an expired tanning lotion could really do.

…good point, but what could you GAIN from it?

The group participates in a snowball fight, in which Larry faints and collapses. Dr. Murkin, Larry’s pediatrician, gives Larry his regular bi-monthly shot and reminds the boy that he’s not supposed to overexert himself, as he doesn’t have sweat glands. Kind of like a-

Woops, almost gave it away

That night Larry is simply exhausted. But before he can drift off to sleep, he’s shocked to discover a thick patch of thick, bristly, oily hair growing on his palms.

Okay, I swear to god I won’t make any dirty jokes in this.

He races to the bathroom and frantically shaves his palm.

The next morning, Larry is paranoid about his hair growth. He tries asking Lily if she experienced the same thing, as Larry assumes that the growth is the result of the INSTA TAN. But it goes about as well as most conversation to women about body hair go.

In class, Larry goes up to give his Bruce Coville (haw) report but Howie trips him. Oh, and Howie is said to always give a report on a sports book, which are all the same. That was funny, I’ll admit.

While picking himself up off the ground, Larry notices the hair has grown back around his hands, this time covering both palms. Oh god, I won’t make a joke, I won’t make a joke…

A paranoid Larry, worried about what is happening to his body, soon discovers hair growth on the knees and legs. Oh, and I have to mention Larry has a pet cat named Jasper. I mention this because jasper likes larry a lot, and it adds to the twist later on.

Larry refuses to wear shorts to gym class, and temporarily avoids a crisis. Larry soon discovers that Manny can be found nowhere. He goes to talk to Manny’s parents, but his house is completely empty. A dog with the same shaggy hair as Manny shows up and runs away.

Larry, shaken that Manny or his folks didn’t say goodbye, knows that now the Geeks
(their band name, yea I would have gone with Ghost Tornado) only have two guitar players instead of three.

Things go from bad to worse when Lily also disappears. He meets a dog that has the same multicolored eyes as Lily. When Larry tries to talk to her parents, they quickly drive away, but not before insisting they never knew any Lily.

Wow, this book is getting semi suspenseful! …Weird.

Larry tries to get the Insta tan back to fix this problem, but long story short, it doesn’t go well.

Hopeless, the remaining kids ultimately decide that, regardless of the dwindling size of their band, the show must go on. Triumphantly, they declare that they’ll do it for Lily.

So we go from good suspense to school stuff. Baaaah.

Finally, the night of the Battle of the Bands arrives. Since Howie and the Shouters went on first and were even called back for an encore, the bar was set pretty high for the Geeks.

Larry is horrified to see that his entire face is covered in the hair and screams helplessly, knowing that everyone has seen his body hair. However, everyone thinks that it is all part of special effects.

Larry flees the stage. Larry runs home and tells his parents what happened. Well, here we go guys. The most infamous twist In the entire series…

Twist Ending:                                                                            

His parents drop a bomb.

“You’re a Dog”

I’ll let that sink in.

Okay, let’s move on.

Dr. Murkin developed a way of turning stray dogs into children and then giving them to his employees. The twice-monthly injections were booster shots of the serum to keep the subject a human being. After a dozen years, the formula loses its effect.

Yeah, I guess the government is fine with all this. Also, I guess Mr. murkin is fine with torturing innocent dogs like that.

The INSTA-TAN had absolutely nothing to do with the hair growth.

Everyone in the town works for Dr. Murkin but he decides that, after the serum’s failure, he does not want to turn dogs into children anymore

The book ends with Larry, now a dog, watching his parents bringing home a newborn baby girl ….named Jasper

DUN DUN DUN!

Anyway, this twist…I like it. It’s so dumb, so insane…that I really like it. At least it’s explained! It may raise questions, but I think it works in its own insane way.

TV Episode:  

Kristna is deleted.

So whoever guessed her back there was right!

Oh, and so is Howie…and any scene with school bullshit. No battle of the bands either. The entire episode is preparing for an audition with some…guy I guess.

The basic story Is the same. The entire ep has narration from larry, so you get in his shoes during the entire mystery. I think it works.

A lot of the crap from the book is gone, and It works. It’s a fun, decent episode. The ending is exactly the same, but I do need to make fun of one thing

You know how in the Goosebumps intro, there’s that dog on the porch?

Once Larry becomes a dog, the first shot…looks exactly look the one in the intro. Eh, I’m sure it’s just a co-

“This looks familiar!”

…4^th wall break…in goosebumps.  Nice.

Notable Lines: “It was weird talking a girl about body hair”

Useless Fact: This is the one where the kids turn out to be dogs or something

Final Thoughts:

Once you get rid of the twist, this book is alright. I like the mystery, and larry is a okay character. My main problem is all the school bullshit. Howie sucks, and there’s no reason for any of this. It just bogs the book down  I would have given it a C, if it weren’t for that insane twist. This is the only GB book I think is readable just for the twist ending. It’s still an okay book regardless though. This one gets a pass from me..in a good way

Grade:  B-

 UPDATED FINAL THOUGHTS:

Eh. Story wise, it feels like a running out of ideas entry. The concept is weak and barely anything really happens. Then the book throws in some lame fake outs to try to make this scarier than it really.

But then we get an insanely dumb twist. One that is actually foreshadowed quite well, but not in a totally forced way. In some ways it is more well thought out than usual, but for the sake of one of the dumber stories.

So it all balances out to a…whatever. Also, weird puberty metaphor.

UPDATED RATING: Average

See ya!

Gooosebump a thon #25: Attack of the Mutant

Hello, Spongey here

Welcome back to Goosebump-athon!

Attack of the Mutant

Cover:  This one is fine. It’s well drawn enough.Also, he kind of looks like batman for some reason.

Front Tagline:  “He’s no superhero…he’s a super villain” meh.

Back Tagline:  “Read at your own risk…”

Summary:

Skipper (His real name is Bradley, yet he considers Skipper better) Matthews is an overweight comic-book collector who loves collecting many comics yet only reads one, the Masked Mutant.

The Masked Mutant is an evil supervillain who can change his molecular form into any solid material. He’s goal is to, you guessed it, take over the world.

Yep.

He is constantly opposed by a league of superheroes lead by the Galloping Gazelle, the world’s fastest man. They are called The League of good guys.

Great name, right?

Skipper has a friend named Wilson who is into collecting rubber stamps and attempts at various times throughout the novel to share his passion with Skipper to no avail. ..yeah, I don’t know either.

Also, his parents don’t approve of him reading comics, as his dad is a big strong dude. …so why do they keep buying him comics?

One day while riding the bus to the dentist he meets a pretty redhead girl named Libby. She asks where he is going.

“I couldn’t tell her I was going to the dentist, it sounded too dorky. ‘’I’m going to the comic book shop’’ I said”

…That’s somehow LESS dorky?

Libby tells him she’s into a comic called “High School Harry and Beanhead” and skipper shows disgust.

“”Cant everyone see that they two girls are drawn exactly the same, except one has blonde hair and one has black?”

Archie reference? I dig it.

He gets so caught up talking to her that he gets off on the wrong stop and spots a building that looks exactly like the Masked Mutant’s headquarters!

He almost goes inside the building but he is late for his dentist appointment and decides to come back. The next day he comes back to see the building but it has disappeared

Later that night he goes home and reads the newest issue of the Masked Mutant that has arrived in the mail for him and sees that in the comic book the Masked Mutant has put an invisibility cloak on the building.

Now he’s wondering if the mutant is real, or if he’s finally going crazy.

Going back the next day, Skipper runs into Libby for a third time and the two decide to see if they can access the invisible building and sure enough they enter successfully.

When they arrive a yellow light ray scans over Skipper’s body but has no apparent effect on him. I mention this because it is a plot point later on.

The two venture into one of the building’s elevators and are whisked down to the basement of the building. The two get separated and while alone Skipper finds a large printing press and layouts for the last issue of the Masked Mutant. Skipper concludes that the building is likely the headquarters for the comic book publisher.

While leafing through the layouts Skipper notices a series of panels for the next issue, and the new character drawn within looks exactly like Skipper! At this point Libby reappears and makes Skipper leave with her. He tells her about the drawings, but she thinks he is full of shit

…Show her the pics. You had them in your hand, dude! Whatever.

That night Skipper gets home and there’s another new issue of the comic waiting for him. Inside the issue Skipper spies drawings of himself walking around the headquarters with the words “A NEW FOE” written about him!

Skipper also finds out that the Galloping Gazelle has been held hostage in the Mutant’s headquarters and that only “the Boy” can save him!

Skipper now knows that this is all legit…and he must save a superhero.

So Skipper returns again to the headquarters and makes his way up the elevator to rescue the Galloping Gazelle.  He finds the bound superhero tied to a chair in an unlocked room, unties him, and the two leave the room to confront the Masked Mutant

The Galloping Gazelle is convinced that Skipper is a superhero and keeps drilling him for his secret power as they make their way to the Mutant’s private offices.

The Galloping Gazelle informs Skipper that his plan is to run around and around the Mutant at such a fast speed that he becomes a cyclone and sucks the Mutant into submission. Suddenly the Mutant morphs out of hiding (he was disguised as office furniture) and the Gazelle makes good on his plan. However the Mutant outsmarts him and sticks his foot out, tripping the Gazelle.

Wow, he got defeated by tripping. What a lame hero.

The Mutant then transforms into the form of a Leopard and tries to eat the Gazelle. The Galloping Gazelle escapes the Mutant’s leopard clutches and abandons Skipper with the Mutant as he makes his escape.

“You’re on your own, kid”

Okay, that’s funny.

The Mutant returns to his normal form and he too starts to drill Skipper about his secret mutant-power. The Mutant lifts Skipper all the way up to the ceiling of his private office and is about to drop him to his death when Libby appears in the doorway

Libby removes a yellow toy gun from her satchel and tells Skipper that if this is really a comic book then anything can happen, so she tells the Mutant that the toy gun is a Molecule-Melter. The Mutant doubts her and he advances as she pulls the trigger. The gun fires at the Mutant and the Mutant melts down into nothing! Skipper is overjoyed, it worked! Libby tells him of course it worked, after all, it is a Molecule-Melter.

Skipper then watches as Libby transforms into the Masked Mutant. It turns out that the previous Masked Mutant was actually the Magnificent Molecule Man, who worked for the Masked Mutant.

So he killed his own henchman..that’s badass.

Anyway., yep libby, the cute girl skipper likes is really a man.

The most predictable twist ever?

He saw skipper, and thought he’d make a great foe for his comics, and thus he turned into a girl in order to spy on him.  He also tells him . The mysterious yellow ray when he first entered the building was a scanner and it scanned him into a comic book character, tiny dots of ink.

Told ya.

With no hope of escape the Masked Mutant prepares to destroy Skipper until Skipper stops him by announcing that he’s not actually Skipper! No, he’s THE COLOSSAL ELASTIC BOY in disguise!

Skipper reveals that nothing can harm him but sulfuric acid. Skipper throws a bucket of water onto the Mutant which makes him melt into a wave of acid. Skipper barely misses the wave and the acid eats into the carpet.

Skipper made up the whole thing about being the Elastic Boy. Since the Masked Mutant could only transform himself into solids, Skipper had tricked him into transforming into a liquid and thus the Masked Mutant was unable to return to his original form.

Skipper stopped an evil supervillain. Awesome!

Skipper returns home and, having had enough adventure for one day, decides not to read the new comic that has arrived for him in the mail. Instead, he has some CAAAAKE.

Twist Ending:

As Skipper is cutting the cake, he cuts his hand and discovers he bleeds ink. Sadly, he is not approached for the league of good guys initiative.

Cool bleeding scene…but it’s not a twist since the mutant said he was now a comic character.

TV Episode:  

First, Wilson collects rocks instead of stamps. Also, it’s actually pretty faithful story wise. A lot of the dialogue is the same, which leads to awkward acting from Libby, but Skipper’s is decent. Hell, he looks EXACTLY like skipper from the book. That never happens!

Also, The Masked Mutant’s actor previously voiced The Haunted Mask when it spoke. Awesome.

Oh, and because I must mention this…the gazelle is played by adam west.

Yes, they somehow got Adam west for the show. And he is amazing. When I read the book, I read his lines in adam’s voice. He’s that good!

He makes the episode a lot of fun to watch. So does the mutant, as he is the greatest ham ever. Every line of dialogue is right from the book and he brings it to life amazingly.

Also…the dad is a nerd. He has big ol’ glasses, and looks like the poor man’s rick moranis. Yes, the guy who doesn’t man his reading comics looks like a guy who should be doing so. Wut.

Oh, and I like how the ep has a bit more psychological stuff to it. After that yellow ray hits him, he starts seeing the world in a comic book style. So in a way, it talks about how far obsession can go. But maybe I’m looking too far into it.

It’s a very good episode.

Notable Lines: “My Fears dropped away like the feathers off The Battling bird boy”’

“You are a liar!” “YES! It’s one of my BETTER qualities!”

And here’s a bonus from the episode!

“You know what I like about rocks? They’re normal. No invisible rocks, no rocks that look like me…”

Useless Fact: Stine says this book has the best twist ending of all Goosebumps books. But…it’s not a twist, for reasons I said above.

Oh, and the audio book is narrated by the guy who voiced Invader Zim. No, really.

Final Thoughts:

This one was really good. The comedy works well, the concept is great, and the villain is a lot of fun. The story itself is good, and it’s a nice sort of comic style story. It’s not exactly horror, but it’s still a lot of fun. It’s an entertaining read, and a very good entry in the series.

Grade:  A

 UPDATED FINAL THOUGHTS:

I’m mixed. The concept is pretty novel, with the story flowing well. The Mutant is a cool villain and there are some good ideas. It just doesn’t work quite as well as it could as a whole.

I’m not sure what the “moral” really is. It tries to tackle both sides of the whole escapism but in execution it just seems muddled. The TV episode is a bit better at this although not perfect.

Skipper is also fairly unlikable and doesn’t learn much. It’s a weird one but it mostly works out for me and certainly stands out. The episode improves things quite a bit though. Notice that I say that a lot?

UPDATED RATING: Decent

See ya!