by Nelson
Reader Beware; You’re in for a Scare!
DoubtFire ventures into the terrifying world of zombies, werewolves, egg monsters, and annoying siblings that is GOOSEBUMPS.
Night of the Living Dummy is the second Goosebumps story to get a sequel, and this follow-up lets the character who will eventually become the series mascot finally take center stage. Right up until the last two sentences, Slappy was only a harmless puppet in the original, but, this time, he’s ready to bring the pain and make readers forget that Mr. Wood ever existed. Part One was pretty good, but Night of the Living Dummy II is deservedly more iconic. The first story sees Kris use Mr. Wood to frame her twin sister Lindy for a series of mean spirited pranks. The dummy doesn’t actually come to life until a little past the halfway point. Part 2 delivers on the title and gives readers the evil toy story they wanted all along.
Amy Kramer is a twelve-year-old ventriloquist and our narrator for this ghastly tale. Her younger brother Jed’s sole purpose in the story is to be as obnoxious as possible, and her older sister Sara is an award-winning artist who makes straight A’s and leaves Amy feeling perpetually mediocre and jealous. She’s got her ventriloquism to fall back on, but her dummy Dennis is old, and his head keeps falling off. Uh-oh. It sounds like she may be in the market for a newer model….
The Kramer Family has a weekly “Family Sharing Night” – a cringy home-edition of show and tell. Jed burps and reads “a very personal note” from a guy in Amy’s class; Sara shows off her latest paintings, and Amy tries out her routines with Dennis. When his head falls off in the middle of her act, Mr. Kramer finally decides to cut his middle child a break after letting her little brother read her love letters in front of everyone and gets her a “new” dummy from a pawn shop that just happens to be Slappy from the first story. We don’t find out how he made his way to the pawn shop, but that’s not important. What is important is that he’s got a rotten, moldy sandwich in his head that Amy gets a handful of the first time she tries to use him. Mr. Kramer pulls it out and hightails it to the kitchen sink, but he doesn’t insist that his daughter do the same because he’s the sort of dad who replaces your old ventriloquist dummy with someone else’s old ventriloquist dummy.
In addition to old food, Slappy’s also got a card with some mysterious words in his coat pocket, and you know what that means. If a character sees a mysterious words, they’re going to read them out loud. It’s not just a Goosebumps thing. It’s an iron-clad rule that applies to all forms of fiction.
The moment Slappy arrives, the Kramer home falls into disarray, and everyone blames Amy. Slappy insults Mrs. Kramer’s weight and calls Mr. Kramer “baldy” at Family Sharing Night, and he repeatedly sabotages Sara’s art projects and art supplies. He even paints Amy’s name all over Sara’s room. Since her only defense is “it was Slappy!”, Mom and Dad decide to book an appointment with a psychiatrist – leaving Amy with only two days to prove to everyone that she’s not crazy! It seems like a pretty hopeless situation for our poor narrator, but then we get the story’s big twist – Sara knows Amy has been telling the truth! She just didn’t want to admit to herself that a dummy was alive. In other words, Sara is the worst sister in the entire world with an excuse thinner than the plot of Go Eat Worms!
Instead of murdering her older sister in her sleep, Amy joins forces with her, and the sisters resolve to bring Slappy’s rein of terror to an end. In a confrontation straight out of the first book, the wooden warrior smacks the two girls around ferociously until they manage to pin him down and tie his limbs together. Then they take him outside and toss him in the sewer. The next morning, a stinkier, dirtier Slappy is waiting for them in the kitchen. That night, the timber terror unwittingly walks into a trap when his misdeeds are interrupted by a figure who looks an awful lot like Dennis the Headless Dummy. The two dummies fight it out until Dennis manages to split Slappy’s head in two – revealing a big fat white worm because of course there’s a worm: it’s an R.L. Stine story. Mr. and Mrs. Kramer come out of the closet where they’ve been hiding and watching the battle go down and apologize to the daughter they accused of being crazy. Things seem to be turning out happily ever after until our big ending twist: Jed was supposed to be dressed up as Dennis, but he accidentally slept through the whole thing. But if Jed wasn’t Dennis…..then who was?!
All in all, Night of the Living Dummy II is a lot like its predecessor but with Slappy as the villain instead of Mr. Wood. There are still two sisters who don’t get along; there’s still a staggering local demand for twelve-year-old ventriloquist acts, and the story still ends with a “the other dummy is alive too!” twist. But somehow, Night of the Living Dummy II is in every way superior to its predecessor. Both stories feature living dummies, but only one manages to include a rotten sandwich. R.L. Stine knows what it takes to up the ante.
But my eyes were locked on the two pieces of Slappy’s head. I stared in horror as an enormous white worm crawled out of one of the pieces. The fat worm slithered and curled to the wall—and vanished into a crack in the molding.
Doubtfire 