I got a real kick out an episode of Beetlejuice I watched this morning. I’d forgotten how self-aware the show became as it went on. It makes for an amazing watch now that I’m old enough to actually get all the jokes.
Things kick off with the Neitherworld’s Good Neighbor Day Picnic. It turns out that local law dictates an annual day of niceness, much to the chagrin of The Ghost with the Most. Everyone’s gathered for some quality poetry courtesy of The Monster Across the Street’s nephew, The Little Monster From Around the Corner. Of course, Beetlejuice can’t resist causing some mischief because he’s not a good neighbor, and the whole thing devolves into a massive food fight.
These shenanigans prompt the arrival of a fairy named Goody Two Shoes. She explains that she works for the Bureau of Sweetness and Prettiness – The BS&P. Not even the Neitherworld’s foulest phantom expected that one to make it to air.
Goody Two Shoes repeatedly shows up and uses her magic to temporarily transform the population into cuddly, cuteified citizens. Lydia gets a headful of curly blond locks, and Beetlejuice becomes a bizarre off-brand Mr. Rogers with an insatiable craving for sing-alongs. No matter what anyone tries, the winged witch’s powers are irresistible. She eventually breaks out a super-charged magic wand and turns the entire town into a brightly lit, blue-skyed monstrosity.
Just when everything seems hopeless, Lydia realizes that Goody Two Shoes has an incessant need to criticize and correct. She devises a fiendish plan for everyone to pretend to embrace niceness and prettiness. With nothing to correct, the failed fairy flies into a furious rage that gets her carted off and fired from the BS&P. The Neitherworld goes back to its dark, dreary, and decidedly grotesque condition, and all is well. Then, Beetlejuice lets loose with a string of bleeped-out profanity to wrap the episode and remind everyone that the censors are always watching.
I don’t know any juicy backstage gossip from the Beetlejuice Animation Studios, but I can’t help but wonder how much network meddling a show centered around elementary schooler’s friendship with a bug-eating, armpit-farting ghost and their adventures in Afterlife…er, Neitherworld…must have endured. By this point, the correctors and criticizers must have been completely exhausted. I mean, how did a name like “BS&P” manage to make it past the censors?
It’s funny. When I got into horror, Michael Myers was only bringing home the bronze during the Horror Icon Olympic Games. Freddymania was still running wild, and Jason was doing guest spots on the Arsenio Hall show while poor Michael and the Halloween franchise had to play catch-up after the disastrous release of its third entry.
Michael’s status, or lack thereof, can largely be attributed to timing. Some audiences found him a bit basic compared to immortal dream demons or pissed off goalies. Filmmakers attempted to combat this notion in the “Thorn Trilogy” (Halloween 4-6). Thorn Trilogy is a ridiculous term, by the way.
Whether you’ve contracted that weird obsession with grouping movies into trilogies that’s been going around or not, one thing that The Return, The Revenge, and The Curse of Michael Myers all have in common is their attempt to elevate The Shape in some way….whether it’s by giving him the level of super-strength it takes to jam your thumb into an EMT’s forehead, revealing a mysterious psychic connection with his niece, or introducing a centuries old cult and curse that were *actually* the *real* reasons for The Shape’s evil *the whole time*!!
I usually hate those out-of-nowhere plot twists that pop up late in the game and retroactively force their way into the old story. I’m looking at you Cobra-La. I’m looking at you real hard. And frowning.
But I’m not frowning at The Curse of Michael Myers because, not only is Halloween 6 amazing, it’s a fascinating look at a struggling franchise’s attempt to stay relevant with an ever-evolving audience. And, holy shit, did I just type that sentence? A struggling franchise’s attempt to stay relevant? How can I possibly be saying such a thing about Halloween? The trendsetter. The OG. The King of all slasher movies.
‘Cause it’s true.
Halloween 6 was pretty much cursed from the start – forced to somehow pick up the pieces of Halloween 5‘s open-ended conclusion while also casting all that silly stuff aside and telling a new, more modern, story for new, more modern, audiences who needed new things that were more modern. Of course, “picking up the pieces” is a bit of an understatement considering that Halloween 5‘s wacky writer and director specialized in throwing stuff at the wall without any sort of long-term game plan in mind. Halloween Ended (see what I did there?) for a few years while folks tried to come up with some sort of way of addressing all the dangling threads Revenge left.
So, long story short, we got two movies in one. The Theatrical Cut, hodgepodged together after a bunch of ill-informed children whined about Dr. Loomis, tries real hard to squeeze a somewhat traditional Halloween out of one that presented some of the wackiest developments of the series. All those kids who whined about Dr. Loomis went on to lead very unsatisfying lives, by the way.
But the aforementioned Wacky Halloween, the version we were *supposed* to get before those meddling kids meddled, was the stuff of legend amongst horror fans. Dubbed “The Producer’s Cut,” this version was only available in homemade editions of varying quality before it was finally released in a truly awesome blu ray set that sells for way too much money these days.
While the gist of the movie is the same across both versions, The Producer’s Cut refuses to dance around the more controversial aspects of the story. A cult afflicts Michael with “the Curse of Thorn,” gives him a tattoo, and sends him out into the world to kill off his family….until they decide to break him out of jail, kidnap his niece, and have Michael impregnate her with a child intended to be his last victim because it’s time to pass the curse on to kid named Danny who happens to live the old Myers house and is encouraged to kill folks by a voice that is revealed to belong to the guy who runs the asylum Michael is committed to – leading one to wonder how the doctor manages his work duties with all his traveling time. What a sentence that was. I’m honestly proud of it. I’m also selling the sheer insanity of this story way short. It’s like trying to describe Halloween 5‘s Cookie Woman scene. It has to be experienced to be appreciated.
Despite all that, there’s something about this movie that keeps me coming back. With its curses and cults, it’s one of the Halloweeniest Halloween movies out there. You can tell that the scriptwriter, Daniel Farrands, absolutely loved the franchise because it’s littered with references and callbacks that only the most seasoned fans would notice.
The Producer’s Cut is the more coherent of the two versions – largely because we’re getting the intended story. It lays its cards on the table, consequences be damned. You’ve just got to accept that Michael lives with a crew of Hot Topic shoppers and commits ritualistic incest with his last remaining relative because his pals need him to pass his curse onto the next person by killing the his last remaining relative. Wait a minute…………..
Sure, it’s satisfying to see Michael carve up the cultists in the theatrical version, and maybe it’s a little jarring to see Paul Rudd stop The Shape in his tracks by slicing his palm over a bunch of rocks, but Halloween 6: The Producer’s Cut of Michael Myers is essential October viewing. For me, at least. Amanda hates it.
For some reason, folks really love taking villains and looking at them through the good old “tragic figure” lens. It’s nothing new. We’ve done it forever. Even Satan, himself, is written to be relatable and even maybe just a smidge sympathetic in Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” and, if you’ll excuse me for a second, I’ve got to run to eBay and reward myself for making a reference to Classical Literature instead of a movie or cartoon or comic book or video game. There’s still a smidge of scholar buried somewhere beneath the pop culture nostalgia that consumes 98% of my being. We love feeling sorry for bad guys, and that’s not always a bad thing. The best baddies always think that they’re justified and right, so why shouldn’t they be relatable – misguided or not?
But some villains don’t necessarily subscribe to that whole “the bad guy has to think he’s the good guy” thing, and one of them just so happens to be a guy who is quickly becoming the mascot for the misunderstood weirdo rejected by the mean ol’ world and driven to his breaking point – The Joker. It drives me to the store to get nuts with Michael Keaton. I love Mr. J, but come on. This isn’t a guy you’re supposed to feel sorry for.
The Clown Prince of Crime doesn’t think he’s misunderstood. He doesn’t think his actions are justified. That’s the whole point. The Joker revels in his depravity. He’s not under any illusions about what he’s doing. He’s out to kill people until he gets Batman’s attention. If Matt Hooper showed up in Gotham, he’d tell you that The Joker is a miracle of evil-lution. He kills and laughs and thinks about Batman. And that’s all.
Alan Moore was the first writer to toy with the idea of Joker being someone audiences could feel sorry for in 1988’s The Killing Joke. The book suggests that, prior to taking a dip in the chemical concoction that transformed him into a human playing card, The Joker was a struggling comedian desperate to support his pregnant wife. He unwittingly becomes the fall guy for a robbery and winds up taking his pivotal swim in an attempt to escape Batman. When he realizes that he’s become a permaclown, his mind snaps, and The Dark Knight’s greatest adversary is born. But, hey, don’t be too mad at him. He was just a sad guy trying to get by. Well, maybe. One of the big reveals of The Killing Joke is The Joker’s unreliable memory. He’s not quite sure who he was or how he came to be, and he couldn’t care less.
It’s ironic that the idea of The Joker as an unfortunate victim of cruel circumstance originated in a book that ultimately tells us that the whys and hows and wheres and whens don’t matter one bit. He’s irredeemably evil. He paralyzes, strips, and photographs Barbara Gordon in a maniacal attempt to drive her father insane and prove that poor old Commissioner Gordon is just like everyone else – just like Good Ol’ Mr. J, himself. Joker thinks that the Commissioner is “one bad day” away from depraved insanity, but he’s proven wrong by the end of the story and even rejects the idea of rehabilitation before heading back to the asylum…..or being strangled to death off-panel while sharing a laugh with Batman if you prefer that interpretation. Either way, The Killing Joke‘s message is simple: Joker is wrong and crazy and evil and you shouldn’t feel sorry for him just ’cause he had a bad day. It was a pretty bad day that time I woke up and discovered that my dog decided to use my home office as a toilet, but I didn’t go out shopping for purple clothes and start killing people. I pouted and drank alcohol. Like a decent person.
People’s wacky fixation and romanticization of The Joker seemed to kick into high gear in the aftermath of Heath Ledger’s performance and subsequent death before The Dark Knight even made it to theaters. Ledger gave the world a more grounded version of the character that fit quite nicely into Chris Nolan’s realism-based Batverse and hardly came across as sympathetic or redeemable. But, for whatever reason, a chunk of the audience managed to find merit in the character’s meaningless philosophizing – just like poor old Harvey Dent in the movie. At least Harvey had an excuse; he burned half his face off. The man lost an eyelid. That pales in comparison to being laughed at by people or having your crush tell you to stop being weird because they’re not interested. At least you can still blink.
Joaquin Phoenix’s turn as the character only doubled down with the “oh this poor guy – if only people weren’t so mean to him!” narrative by envisioning Mr. J as a downtrodden, lonely man who laughs uncontrollably at inappropriate times seemingly thanks to a kooky medical condition that I looked up just now and verified the existence of – which makes me second guess my use of the word “kooky.” I’m sticking with it, though. You know who else would? The Joker. Because he doesn’t care about your feelings.
It’s funny how things play out. The Joker got his very own (and very short-lived) comic book way back in 1975. Because the stories consisted of the character running amok in his constant mission to assert himself as the #1 criminal in Gotham, there was a strict company decree that every issue must end with the Jester of Genocide captured and returned to his cell (except for the one where he seemingly falls to his death only to show up unscathed in in the next issue). Forty-four years later, we get Joker: The Movie, and the guy once referred to as “The Thin White Duke of Death” is reimagined as a victim of the ruthlessly uncaring world that refused to give him a chance. Boo hoo.
Times change and characters evolve. If I were twenty years older, I’d be lamenting the fact that Batman hasn’t had a good, honest dance sequence since the 60s. If I were twenty years younger, then I’d probably think that The Dark Knight was the greatest comic book flick of all time and that Michael Keaton’s Batman wasn’t comic accurate enough. Just typing that made my skin crawl. I’ll take age and good taste over youthful ignorance. So there.
With the recent Darkside of the Ring episode on the life of the Junkyard Dog fresh in my mind, and the 25th anniversary of World Championship Wrestling’s Bash at the Beach 1998 PPV also fresh in my mind, amidst a swirl of rose-tinted nostalgia for things I witnessed live and things I witnessed on tape years after the fact, all of it made for a sort of mental hurricane heading straight for The New Orleans Superdome on June 1st, 1985.
Down in Louisiana in 1985, professional wrestling was still being presented in a territorial fashion, and the local promotion was Mid-South Wrestling, run by promoter Bill Watts. Mid-South Wrestling ran shows in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma, and it had a weekly television show to advertise the live shows in cities across the territory. Mid-South Wrestling didn’t rely on chiseled physiques and flashy characters, instead featuring big, tough grapplers engaging in feuds over personal and professional issues.
One of the most popular wrestlers in Mid-South was The Junkyard Dog, a charismatic, gravelly voiced, dog chain wearing street fighting type. The Junkyard Dog resonated with the territory’s sizable black wrestling fanbase, who bought tickets in droves to see one of their own at the top of the card, which was a rarity in professional wrestling in 1985. The Junkyard Dog (and promoter Bill Watts) made wrestling history when he won the territory’s top championship, making him the first black champion for any major promotion in wrestling.
But by 1985, Vince McMahon, the promoter of the World Wrestling Federation, had begun his push to destroy territory wrestling, offering huge contracts to the top stars in territorial promotions across the country. One by one McMahon bolstered his roster with these regional stars and the territorial promotions simply couldn’t find replacements, and ticket sales began to suffer, and eventually, these once revered regional promotions closed up shop.
Junkyard Dog would be one of many Mid-South Wrestling stars to take McMahon’s money, which left Mid-South promoter Bill Watts in a predicament. He had lost the star that could appeal to much of his audience. He needed a new black superstar.
Watts found The Snowman, a Memphis based journeyman wrestler who wore flashy hats and had a decent physique. Watts introduced Snowman to Mid-South TV and began to push him the top of the card in a feud with Jake Roberts, leading to a grudge match at the Superdome in June of 1985. The trouble was, The Snowman had the look, but he lacked the ring talent and most importantly he lacked the microphone skills of The Junkyard Dog. Something had to be done, so Watts enlisted Muhammad Ali to be in The Snowman’s corner alongside Ernie Ladd for the match with Roberts with hopes that it would be enough to elevate the Snowman to the main event.
It was still a novel concept to feature a sports celebrity in any capacity in a wrestling match, and when done right, the result can indeed be enough to elevate every wrestler involved to new heights. At the end of the match, when it seemed like the nefarious Jake Roberts was going to defeat the Snowman, Muhammad Ali intervened, dealing Roberts a stiff right hand allowing the Snowman to retain the Mid-South Television Championship. The crowd of 11,000 erupted and for a second, it looked as if Watts had indeed found his new Junkyard Dog, with a little help from Muhammad Ali. But it wasn’t enough, and the Snowman would disappear from Mid-South altogether, leaving Bill Watts searching for a way to replace The Junkyard Dog. Jake Roberts would soon depart Mid-Wrestling for the WWF, where he would carry a live snake to the ring and become a household name.
The match itself became a sort of legend, because at the time, territorial promotions didn’t sell tapes of their big shows (if they were filmed at all) so the only way to see any footage at all was to find someone who owned a VCR in 1985 (which was rare) that had recorded it. As such, the infamous confrontation between Jake “The Snake” Roberts, who had become a top star in the WWF, and Muhammad Ali was nothing more than a rumor of pre-internet wrestling fandom, with those that had claimed to see the footage making claims that were all but irrefutable about the match itself since so few had seen it.
For a young wrestling fan like me, it became one of those matches that I just had to see. And so I set out on a quest to finally view this huge moment in Mid-South wrestling history.
Give Yourself Goosebumps offered readers an experience they didn’t know they wanted but couldn’t possibly pass up: the opportunity to live a Goosebumps story! This spinoff choose-your-adventure series gave YOU, yes you, the chance to encounter purple peanut butter, beastly babysitters, and knights in screaming armor who can’t wait for you to make a bad choice!
Amanda and I will read each book separately and report back with all the grisly, gruesome, and grimy details of our adventures.
Give Yourself Goosebumps #10 – Diary of a Mad Mummy
Premise:
Get ready to embark on an adventure in San Francisco’s super cool Pyramid Building during your family vacation. You go on lots of family vacations. It sort of seems like these books aren’t putting as much effort into the setup. Just “you’re on vacation, here’s something wacky!” The building is hosting a mummy exhibit that you can’t wait to check out. When you do, you stumble on a seemingly unnoticed diary…written by none other than the mummy, himself! Why would a mummy keep a diary? And why is it in English? And why are you the only one who noticed it? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that this scribbling mummy has plans to escape TONIGHT. It’s up to you to decide whether to sneak away from your parents to read more of the diary for crucial plot details or take it with you to the hotel room. The choice is yours. How are you going to unravel this mystery?
Nelson’s Story:
I was sorely tempted to pick the “run into the elevator to sneak off to read” option just because the idea of a mummy’s diary being so scandalous that you can’t look at it in front of adults is hilarious. I just didn’t have the energy for a bunch of running around in the Pyramid Building. If I was going to take in the wit and wisdom of a withered pharaoh, then I needed to be comfortable. And room service. Ironically, I didn’t get to read the book because the room service my little sister ordered never arrived, and apparently I am unable to read if my sister’s room service order isn’t fulfilled. Instead of checking with the front desk to see what the problem was, everyone just went to bed. We’ve got a unique family dynamic.
Even though I didn’t get to read the diary or find out anything about the unhappy pharaoh, I decided to sneak back into the Pyramid Building to catch a glimpse of a real, live mummy. I crept past the guard thanks to my mastery of stealth only to discover that I’d arrived too late. The display was empty! What a waste of time that turned out to be. Or….so I thought………
I caught sight of a torn piece of bandage and realized that the mummy must have left it behind because I’m really smart and observant like that. Sadly, I should have been more concerned about hygiene because things went horribly wrong when I decided to throw caution to the wind and pick up a used bandage. It sprung to life, wrapping itself tightly around me – as if I were becoming a mummy, myself. But a kid turning into something against their will? No way. Never in these books.
As I stood there, trapped in the clutches of the bad bandage, the mummy reappeared and touched my face, triggering a magical transformation. Suddenly, like an Ancient Egyptian T1000, it morphed into a perfect replica of me. As if that wasn’t enough, I started shriveling up under the bandages, completing my metamorphosis into a desiccated, undead creature. I was powerless to stop my Mummy Decoy from running off into the night, potentially claiming my awesome preteen life and maybe even my sister’s elusive room service order. The injustice of it all still enrages me to this day. So much so that I dared break the cardinal “don’t seek help from your family after transformation” rule by choosing to flee back to the hotel room, hoping to rectify this ghastly gaffe.
Of course, this was a terrible idea. It’s always a terrible idea. Adults are never any help in these situations. I barely made it two steps out of the building before I was swiftly abducted by a group of overzealous doctors eager to “see inside” a real mummy. Thankfully, their fascination leaned more towards x-rays than autopsies, sparing me from having my stylish leathery skin sliced and diced.
The doctors miraculously discovered a tiny microchip in my skull and realized that Ancient Egyptians were super smart – which made me super popular! I was featured in magazines and newscasts and all sorts of neat stuff. But, when I tried to put pen to paper and tell everyone that I was just a kid who missed his family, I realized that I could only write in hieroglyphics! The…end? Or I guess I should say….that’s a wrap!
Amanda’s Story:
I headed for the elevator, thinking the mummy wouldn’t appreciate me taking his diary. The basement was weird, and there was no janitor! Book Me adamantly believes that janitors belong in basements.
I had to choose between a tunnel and some steps. I like tunnels, but this one smelled funny and started to narrow, so I went back to the stairs.
The steps somehow led me to an exit outside the Great Pyramid in modern-day Egypt, but I was still fixated on the diary. Now it was written in hieroglyphics, so I panicked. When I tried to reenter the pyramid, a security guard stopped me. I showed him the diary, but a random American appeared and declared that it belonged to “Buthramaman.” Both of them wanted it, so I made the logical decision and ran away.
In the scorching desert heat, I took a break and glanced at a page in the diary. It had a symbol resembling a group of birds around a campfire or an ancient Egyptian smiley face. It was up to me to decide. Clearly, it was birds enjoying a good camping trip. This led me to a Sphinx statue who ordered me to GO BACK and not trespass on the graves of kings. I felt defeated until a crowd ran from the statue, and someone yelled “cut.”
It turned out to be an American film crew shooting an Illinois Smith adventure picture. I love those adventure movies, so I jumped at the chance to talk to Goosebumps Harrison Ford. But I was disappointed because I wanted help with the diary, and Illinois Smith wrote his autograph over the page, making it indecipherable. That’s where my journey ended. I assumed I could at least get some help from the film crew and find my way home eventually, but who knows?
This story’s concept was thinner than Tony Khan’s long term booking plans, but what can I say? I got a kick out of it – even if I once again fell victim to R.L. Stine’s shapeshifting shenanigans. It’s hard to complain when your wife gets to chill with Harrison Ford on the set of the latest Illinois Smith flick. I also couldn’t help but notice that, despite having an older and a younger sibling, neither one of them had any significance to the plot at all. They just faded into the background in both of our adventures – which is perfectly fine with me because Goosebumps siblings are spawned from the depths of Hell.
By the time it entered its sixth season, Matlock wasn’t afraid to experiment with changing up its tried and true formula. See what I did there? *Tried* and true? Sometimes humor flows through me like mood slime through Dana Barrett’s bathtub faucet.
There’s an episode where Matlock becomes the prime target of a serial killer, a twisty tale where he defends a client who’s actually guilty of murder but claims justifiable homicide, and even a supernatural escapade where the loquacious legal luminary tackles a murder case on behalf of the victim’s ghost. These shenanigans make the whole “prisoners taking over a penitentiary and demanding a mock trial” seem as grounded and stripped of magic and wonder as Chris Nolan’s Batman movies. But nothing quite compares to The Nightmare – an episode that sees Matlock embark on a quasi-time travel adventure to the Wild West, riding to the rescue of a wrongfully accused man facing the gallows.
So Matlock doesn’t literally hop in a time machine, but it’s close enough. He gets hit on the head while on the way to a dude ranch vacation with his legal team – Michelle and Conrad – and Julie March, his prosecutor girlfriend. They even bring Lieutenant Brooks since he gives the team all that sweet, sweet unsupervised access to crime scenes.
Matlock’s crew has it made. Imagine spending your workdays listening to your boss strumming his guitar and your downtime roping and riding at fancy resorts. Sure, they can’t bring guests or family along like Ben does with Julie, but hey, who needs ’em when you’re rolling with the world’s greatest defense attorney? And let’s not worry about the fact that said attorney is openly dating his opposing counsel, who frequently dismisses his clients. Pure coincidence.
The bus breaks down en route to the dude ranch, and our ornery hero takes a bonk on the noggin – only to wake up in a town straight out of a classic Western flick. Matlock, decked out in a snazzy cowboy-ized take on his trademark grey suit, stumbles upon his friends who are all delightfully different in this Western dimension. Julie owns a boarding house, Michelle runs a brothel, Bob’s the town drunk, and poor Conrad is a farmhand accused of shooting the sheriff in the back after challenging him to a duel. How is he ever going to get out of that pickle? Luckily for him, Pecos Matlock doesn’t stand for injustice.
This episode is a gold mine of procedural television wonders and delights. Sure, we still get the classic “whodunit” formula, but it features Matlock on horseback, cruising through town, stumbling upon black-hatted cowboys in the midst of their Official High-Stakes Poker Game. All black-hatted cowboys are required to participate in at least one High Stakes Poker Game per week. It’s a rule, and they’ll snatch the black hat right off your head if you break it.
Matlock is just the man to bring law and order back to this sleepy little town that he didn’t dream up a name for – even if it means incurring Julie’s unholy wrath since the slain sheriff just so happens to be her brother. She’s completely sure that Ben is defending a guilty man because she’s *always* completely sure that his clients are guilty. And she’s never, ever right. On the upside, at least she’s not working for the DA’s office in this wacky western world.
Michelle’s role in this episode continues the show’s bizarre tradition of having Nancy Stafford attempt to seduce an uncomfortable Andy Griffith for laughs. It happens over and over again. Before she was cast as Michelle, she shows up as a prostitute who digs Ben’s vibe in the first season – leading to a hilarious hotel room encounter. In the fifth season, Michelle makes a bet with Conrad over how susceptible her boss is to her womanly wiles. Not very. Conrad wins the bet. This time around, Michelle herself is a woman-of-ill-repute, and she’s eager to add Matlock to her list of clientele. Unfortunately, Mistress Michelle is the real killer, and the only intimate time the real killer gets to spend with the Man in Grey is on the witness stand.
After he unravels the tangled web of the Wild West mystery, Ben is jolted back to reality when he wakes up from his Western dream and stumbles upon an unexpected twist—the bus repairman who fixed their broken-down ride was none other than the judge in his cowboy caper! But….how could the rootin’ tootin’est defense attorney on Earth have dreamed about the repairman before he met him?! Someone call Fox Mulder.
I’m just going to come right out and say it. I want a Western Matlock show, and someone needs to figure out how to make AI create it, stat. And, while they’re at it, let’s get The Adventures of Matlock and Mulder, too.
Give Yourself Goosebumps offered readers an experience they didn’t know they wanted but couldn’t possibly pass up: the opportunity to live a Goosebumps story! This spinoff choose-your-adventure series gave YOU, yes you, the chance to encounter purple peanut butter, beastly babysitters, and knights in screaming armor who can’t wait for you to make a bad choice!
Amanda and I will read each book separately and report back with all the grisly, gruesome, and grimy details of our adventures.
Give Yourself Goosebumps #8 – The Knight in Screaming Armor
Premise:
Your Uncle Will is coming to town with your cousins Kip and Abbey in tow. They’re from England, so your dad amuses himself by using a fake British accent and spouting out stereotypical British phrases with every sentence that comes out of his mouth. In addition to his kids, Uncle Will has also brought two suits of armor packed into two wooden crates – one labeled “Good Knight” and the other labeled “Evil Knight.” Your cousins warn you that there’s a curse on the evil armor that threatens to exterminate your entire bloodline. There’s even a handy label on the evil crate that promises its knight will bring “misery and woe” to any souls unfortunate enough to run afoul of the medieval Michael Myers.
One night, you’re awakened by a mysterious screaming in the basement. You and your cousins head downstairs to check it out and discover the crates are shaking and howling and all sorts of crazy stuff. The most logical thing to do is open them, and that when it’s officially time to make the big, pivotal choice that decides how your story will go: Do you open the crate with the Evil Knight determined to kill your whole family…or the Good Knight who you haven’t heard all that much about, but, hey, he’s good…right?
Nelson’s Story:
I made it a point to throw caution to the wind this time out and boldly dare R.L. Stine to do his worst. So, I opened up the evil crate. After all, the good crate seemed like one of those decoy “safe” choices these books tend to throw at you. I decided that we might as well get down to business.
The evil knight emerged from his prison, reiterated his vow to rip my family tree up by its roots, and then chopped of the back of the crate that once contained his horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad evil. Somehow, this created a portal that the knight promptly went through. This seemed like a good thing, and I was more than happy to go back to bed, but my cousins and I weirdly decided to follow the knight through the newly-opened portal because we were stupid and had a death wish. This was a terrible idea, and there was no reason whatsoever to do it. But, I didn’t have a choice. Literally.
So we found ourselves in sixteenth century England with a bloodthirsty brute determined to chop our heads off. For some reason, the evil knight decided that the best way to accomplish this was by sending a herd of stampeding sheep our way. Everyone knows that there’s no stampede worse than a sheep stampede.
The sheep chased us into a bunch of “prickly bushes” where we were greeted by two pixies eager to lend a helping hand. One of them suggested we go left, and the other strongly recommended heading to the right. I’m left-handed, so the choice was easy for me. Sadly, not everyone learned to love and appreciate The Leftorium. My decision caused a big hedge maze to grow up around us, and, like a pack of teenaged Jack Torrances, we were going to have to find our way out!
At this point, the book gave me a maze and tasked me with getting through it in one try. I was honest and admitted that I hit a dead-end. I figured the book would just figure I was lying and hit me with a nasty surprise, anyway. No deal. My cousins and wandered around until we died. Then our dead bodies decomposed into plant food. On the plus side, the hedges found us delicious.
What the hell, Stine?
Amanda’s Story:
I chose to open the Good Knight crate, but we were attacked by lawn care equipment and Abby was knocked to the ground by the Evil Knight crate.
Feeling a bit bitter, I once again decided to open the good guy crate, only to find an empty box – except for a note left by that darned Evil Knight telling us that we’d have to find the missing good armor in order to defeat him. After reading the note, we quickly fell asleep because we just couldn’t help ourselves.
When we awoke, we were in a medieval museum. Mud Beasts started coming out of the walls pelting us with mud. I somehow managed to figure out that these guys weren’t real at all and hoisted one into the air and threw his fictional ass to the ground. We were instantly back in the garage and all agreed that nothing weird had happened. A dream? A drug trip? Who knows?
Maybe we just didn’t make choices that resulted in good stories because The Knight in Screaming Armor was pretty underwhelming. It offered up the least interesting premise so far, and the ensuing adventures felt a little “been there, done that.” At least Amanda got the “it was alllllll in your head” ending, though. I rotted away into plant food.
Give Yourself Goosebumps offered readers an experience they didn’t know they wanted but couldn’t possibly pass up: the opportunity to live a Goosebumps story! This spinoff choose-your-adventure series gave YOU, yes you, the chance to encounter purple peanut butter, beastly babysitters, and knights in screaming armor who can’t wait for you to make a bad choice!
Amanda and I will read each book separately and report back with all the grisly, gruesome, and grimy details of our adventures.
Give Yourself Goosebumps #8 – The Curse of the Creeping Coffin
Premise:
It’s the summer, and you’re “so bored you could eat flies” because you’re too cool to appreciate a shocking new twist to a tried and true Goosebumps formula: your parents are off on vacation and have left you behind to stay with your grandmother – who just so happens to have a cemetery in her backyard! Unfortunately, this is no ordinary cemetery. You immediately realize that the headstones are moving towards the house! Or the coffins? Or both? Or maybe R.L. Stine believes that headstones are attached to coffins? It doesn’t matter because a ghost shows up in the house right in the middle of a conversation with Grandma. She’s Elvira Martin, and she’s getting ready to take over your room thanks to the eeeeevil Curse of the Creeping Coffins! All of the headstone/coffins are slowly converging on the house, and a whole mess of ghosts are planning to move in! Waitaminute. Isn’t this book called The Curse of the Creeping Coffin? Now they’re all creeping?
Nelson’s Story:
I quickly realized that I was the only one who could see Elvira, so there was no use trying to tell my grandmother about her and being called a “goose” for the millionth time. My grandmother loves calling people gooses. It’s one of her things.
Anyway, I followed Elvira upstairs to my bedroom only for her to be super rude. I wasn’t only dealing with a ghost, I was dealing with “a ghost in a very bad mood!” The spiteful spirit warned me to stay far, far away from a local ghost hunter named MacFarling before kicking me out of my own room. She may have been rude, but it was awfully considerate of Elvira to give me the neat tip about the spiritual specialist. Conveniently enough, the Mysterious MacFarling was listed in the Yellow Pages under ghost hunter. Kids today can have their Google. Nothing beat the good old-fashioned Yellow Pages.
MacFarling turned out to be a cool college guy with cool piercings, cool sunglasses with cool blue lenses, and cool ghost catching equipment. I was so enamored by his coolness that I hardly noticed the fact that his office was actually a garage. It didn’t matter. This guy was practically an adult, and he believed my kooky story about moving coffins. An adult who believes you….in a Goosebumps story? That’s like tripping over the Ark of the Covenant on the way to the bathroom or beating Dark Link without using Din’s Fire or the Biggoron’s Sword. It just doesn’t happen.
Even though he didn’t accuse me of being crazy, MacFarling was no exception to the “no one older is going to be of any help” Goosebumps Golden Rule. After pulling up to Grandma’s house and conferring with his Spirit Counter, the paranormal investigator and eliminator declared that there were ten ghosts on the scene, and ten is way over his limit! Guess he missed the whole “no job is too big; no fee is to big” lesson in Ghostbusting 101.
Before splitting the scene, the Junior Ghostbuster Reject took some time to offer up some key expository details on my plight. I was going to need to locate and battle someone called the Keeper of the Sword, take their sword, and plunge it into the grave of the MPG (Most Powerful Ghost), and I needed to act fast because MacFarling mapped out the cemetery and discovered that the first letter of the last name on every moving tombstone spelled out “YOU WILL DI_ SOON.” Once the message was complete…I’d die! Soon!
I went back inside and managed to escape a mischievous pair of spectral twins before finding myself trapped between two fearsome phantoms – a sword-brandishing Civil War general and a fencing champion. It was up to me to decide which one of these ghouls was the all-powerful Keeper of the Sword. I figured a soldier was a pretty solid choice for a sword keeper, but, sadly, I figured wrong! Nooooooo!!!
The soldier chased me out of the house and forced me to take refuge in a barn. A barn full of chickens. Vampire chickens. Vampire chickens that swooped in, bit me, and left me “in a fowl mood. Better cluck next time.”
So I didn’t exactly score the “happy” ending, but I can say that I was ecstatic to have been spared a “you’ve turned into a chicken!” plot twist.
Amanda’s Story:
I chose not to call the ghost hunter because I ain’t ‘fraid of no ghost, obviously. I instead went upstairs to the attic where I encountered a ghost horse named Glory and discovered that I wasn’t able to lasso because I’m from the wrong state. R.L. Stine can be very judgmental.
My lack of skills ultimately didn’t matter because a ghost cowboy showed up and gave me an hour-long lesson in the art of lassoing. Once I had the Glory lassoed, I decided to show my gran. She was thrilled by my trick, but thought it was just that. She’s up to date with those “holograms and video games.” So, she aimed her remote control at Glory and, with the click of a button, the house shook and the ghost horse doubled in size.
My grandmother was totally cool with the giant horse and decided it was time for a soda. She asked if I’d like one, but book me was more interested in which button on the remote she pressed. It turned out that she had turned up the volume. I just knew book me was going to take this too far, and I was right. I couldn’t be satisfied by just turning down the volume and returning the ghost horse to normal size. I had to push the channel up button – which turned the ghost horse into a ghost Kungfu master, then a ghost Egyptian Pharaoh, and even worse, an angry Neanderthal that also happened to be a ghost.
I wound up being beaten to death by the Neanderthal because, like my real grandparents, Book Granny only had 3 channels. I hope she at least got to enjoy her soda before discovering my body.
So there you have it. Amanda and I both failed in our quest to save Grandma from getting kicked out of her house by crew of spiritual squatters. Did she go on to discover that her favorite grandchild was attacked by vampire chickens or beaten to death by an unrelenting savage? That, dear readers, is up to you.
When I finally managed to beat A Link to the Past, I thought I was satisfied. I’d tackled a game I’d been trying to finish since I was in high school. I’d conquered one of the legendary old school Zeldas that didn’t offer as much handholding and easy access to power-ups as the later entries. I wasn’t just a casual anymore; I was a real, dyed in the wool Zelda Vet.
Except I’d never beaten the NES original. Ever.
It confused and frustrated me the first time I played it as a kid, and I made minimal progress anytime I tried to re-play it as an older gamer who’d survived the horrors of King Bowser’s invasion of Dinosaur Land and brought the evil Shredder’s time travel schemes to a screeching halt.
The Legend of Zelda didn’t attend recess because it didn’t have time to play. It wasn’t a friendly, colorful video game. It was a grueling gauntlet that refused to let you breathe. You either struggled through it or hung your head in shame as you switched over to a rousing game of Bugs Bunny’s Birthday Bash. Or Kirby. Or even that godawful Beetlejuice game. Anything to make you forget the horrors of the Lost Woods and the absurdity of Monster Bait.
If you’re like me and eager to prove your mettle to the Kingdom of Hyrule and save the princess, then here are some tough truths to keep in mind:
Rupees Mean Something
Rupees are the official currency of the Zelda series. Beyond upgrading Link’s wallet to allow him to carry more, they never seemed like a big deal. There wasn’t much of anything to buy that you couldn’t find for free with a little exploring. Games like Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess threw Rupees at you like you were Oswald Cobblepot delivering a political speech to the people of Gotham….and, you know, the Gothamites were throwing video game money instead of tomatoes. Forced references aside, the point is that you could fight enemies, cut bushes, roll intro trees, or even hop across platforms successfully to easily stuff your wallet to maximum capacity and keep it that way.
That’s not the case with Zelda 1. At all. If you want money, you’re going to have to fight for it, and you’re going to need to fight quite a bit. You can’t get some pretty essential upgrades without cash in hand. You get a handy bow in the first dungeon, but if you want to shoot some arrows, you’ve got to hit up a shop and buy them – except you’re not buying sets of five or ten. You’re buying the ability to shoot arrows from your bow…..at a rate of one Rupee per shot! If you want to one-shot some of the more frustrating enemies like the Poe Voices, then all you can do is pony up the dough.
Arrows are the least of your worries though. Want to upgrade your defenses and get a nifty white outfit? 260 Rupees, non-negotiable. And you definitely want to up your defense, by the way. Need a shield that deflects nearly every enemy projectile in the game? The shield you start with is nearly useless, so of course you’re going to want that sweet, sweet Magical Shield. For 130 rupees. Or 140 if you’re in the wrong shop. It may not sound like that bad of a deal, but by the fifth time you’re buying a new Magical Shield because a slug in a dungeon ate the one you had and you don’t get it back after it’s eaten like you do in Ocarina, you’re a little tired of buying that damn thing. Especially since you’re also going to need to cough up 68 bucks for a red potion, and you’ll want one of those. Only one though. Stocking up on multiple life elixirs isn’t a thing in this game. Deal with it.
You’re Going To Die
Making it through Ocarina without dying a single time used to be a big deal to me. I’ve deleted entire save files over moving the death counter up from 000 to 001. I took pride in overthrowing Ganondorf and saving the world without watching Link collapse in defeat and staring down that evil Game Over screen. In other games, I’m content to die five thousand times en route to the final stage, but Ocarina was no game. It was an experience. Dying ruined that experience for me.
I died in Zelda 1. I died a lot. Over two-hundred times, actually. I’m not ashamed of this number. I’m proud of it because it means that I refused to quit even in the face of the game telling me, point blank, “you’re awful at this.”
Later titles in the series have a knack for giving you just what you need right when you need it. Don’t have any bombs to take on the boss in the next room who can only be defeated by bombs? No worries; here are two bushes you can cut to find enough explosives for Renny Harlin to start working on his next film. Out of magic, or hearts, or arrows? Check those breakable pots that just so happen to be in every corner of the room you’re fighting the big, mean monster in. Even in an absolute worst case “I don’t see any bushes or pots or rocks” scenario, you can backtrack a screen or two and kill a bat who will conveniently drop whatever you happen to be lacking.
NES players didn’t get that advantage. There aren’t pots to break. There aren’t bushes to cut or rocks to lift. You can’t even rely on killing bad guys to pick up enough hearts to stop that unrelenting “you’re almost dead!” beep you get when the life meter gets too low. If you’re in a dungeon and are running low on life, be prepared to leave, find a shop, and lay down some of your hard earned rupees for a red potion. Of course, you’ve got to have the Rupees to do that, so you may need to go on a money-gathering run before you can buy the potion and find your way back to the dungeon for another shot at reclaiming a shattered piece of the Triforce and restoring piece to the ruined Hyrule.
(Don’t Go Looking for) Cracks in the Pavement
One of the defining aspects of the series is all of the hidden wonders just waiting to be uncovered by inquisitive gamers with eyes for detail and the ability to spot cracks in the walls that, in some instances, are large enough to see the secret room and secret contents “hidden” on the other side. Eventually, the games progressed to the point where you could “test” whether or not something would blow up by smacking it with your sword and getting a distinct “this will explode!” sound cue. While this made things a little transparent, I always thought those sorts of red flags were necessary for things like Zelda. I mean, what was I supposed to do, go around bombing every wall in desperate search of a dungeon key or an item I’d missed? Of course not! No game would be that dastardly!
Zelda 1 is a sneaky scoundrel of a game. Wanna find secret rooms and hidden caves or find your way out of that dungeon that you’re stuck in after spending an hour going through every single door and taking every possible path to the boss room? Start planting bombs. Everywhere. Did you run out? Go buy more.
The Legend of Zelda doesn’t just refuse to hold your hand. It smacks you in the knuckles with a ruler for even asking.
It’s rigorous. It’s harsh. As the old guy in the cave who gives you the wooden sword warns: it’s fucking dangerous.
Give Yourself Goosebumps #7 – Under the Magician’s Spell
Premise:
You’re ready for a fun day at the mall with your best friend Sid, but your mom forces you to take Joanie, your annoying little sister, with you. I don’t even have any siblings, R.L. Stine. Stop forcing this on me.
Anyway, Joanie runs off the second you step foot in the mall, and you and Sid manage to track her to the latest and coolest store in town – The Magic Shop. It turns out that both your best friend and your sister are the kinds of people who can’t keep their hands off of store merchandise. Joanie’s immediately using the trick finger guillotine. Sid decides to slap on a pair of handcuffs because that’s definitely a good idea and a surefire way to make a good first impression on the shop owner – a cape-wearing guy with a thin mustache. He introduces himself as The Magician. Give him a break. All of the good magician names were taken. Instead of doing the proper thing and kicking you and your friends out of the store, The Magician disappears in a puff of smoke.
You leave the shop only to realize that Sid’s still wearing the magic handcuffs, and they’re getting tighter. That’s okay, though. Joanie made off with The Magic Book of Spells. Your shoplifting sister’s solution to Sid’s situation is to try a spell from the stolen book. But is that such a good idea?!
Nelson’s Story:
Of course, reading a spell from a book stolen from a shop owned by a disappearing magician with a terribly uncreative name isn’t a good idea – especially not when I’ve got a perfectly good clubhouse full of perfectly good tools at home. Despite my best efforts, the cuffs wouldn’t budge. Sid is an idiot. At least Joanie stole a potentially useful book. My best friend decided it’d be hilarious to slap on a pair of handcuffs. It’s a good thing there wasn’t a taser in the store. I finally gave up after trying to smash the lock with a hammer, but then Sid fell down and the cuffs magically opened. Turns out that falling down was the secret to getting them off. What a weird trick.
We decided to head back to the mall and return the Magic Book of Spells, but we were intercepted by Larry Green and his two pals, DJ and Buddy. They’re the school bullies. After a brief struggle that caused a few pages to be torn out of the book, they managed to snatch it away before running off to “the old chemical factory” where they all hang out like preteen versions of Clarence Boddicker’s gang in Robocop.
After a brief discussion over whether or not we should all go dumpster diving, we decided to try and sneak in the factory and snag the book when Larry and pals weren’t looking. Unfortunately, my attempt to crawl through the window found me face to face with a snarling German Shephard. Joanie offered to try and calm the dog down with a spell from one of the pages that got torn out of the book, and I figured “why not?” I like dogs, but there’d been a decided lack of magical hijinks up to that point in the story. It was time to see what The Amazing Stine had up his sleeve.
The dog went from snarling canine to playful puppy right before our eyes. Hooray! We made it through the window, and, for absolutely no reason in the world, I suggested that Joanie read the spell again. Then Sid and I turned into dogs because the spell Joanie was reading was the “Spell to Turn One into a Playful Dog.” Dammit, R.L. You got me. At least dogs are better than bats.
Amanda’s Story:
I wound up with Nelson’s exact story, so I decided to do it all over again. To think, I was happy being a good doggo. Dang.
My first alternate decision was to strangle my sister for playing with the guillotine. It’s a bit extreme, but I was up for it until R. L. Stine told me to cool my jets, go back, and choose again.
This brought me back to figuring out how to get the cuffs off Sid. I opted for the magical way, which is unfortunate since I happen to know all the kid has to do is fall down.
The magic book was written in a non-English language. I read a bit of something in the back not knowing what was going to happen. Smart. The result was booming thunder and cracks spreading through the mall. The floor opened up, and we fell down into the Earth…but not before I shoved the magic book in my pants.
Joanie, Sid, and I found ourselves in a black room with a coffin and a velvet curtain. Out of nowhere, three men in red tights summersaulted in and started juggling balls of fire. One of them decided I looked as though I might want to juggle as well, so he threw me a fireball. The book asked if I could juggle, and I figured that book me could probably pull it off. The men and I threw the balls back and forth for a bit before they informed me that the magician wanted his book back, or he’d be eating us for dinner. Oh, why couldn’t I have just been a good boy like my beloved dog George. One of the jugglers removed Sid’s cuffs with a “trick,” and let us know that The Magician was on his way before disappearing in a puff of smoke.
My next decision was a bit frustrating. Even though I knew it was probably best to give the book back, I was forced to hide it in either the coffin, a bird cage, or a fish tank. You can’t see through a coffin, so that was my best bet. We managed to get it in the coffin before a crow swept into the room and transformed into The Magician. We told him that we didn’t have the book only for him to inform us that we wouldn’t like him when he was angry.
He flipped us upside down with magic and shook us like saltshakers to see if we had the book. He let us know that, if we didn’t give it back, we would join his collection….of shrunken heads! I thought we were going be eaten, but whatever…
The velvet curtain blew open to reveal twelve shrunken heads, and the magician disappeared. Joanie suggested that we give the book back, but the decision fell on me. I’d been wanting to return this book for quite some time, but, when we opened the coffin, it was gone. We heard something, so we hid in the coffin…which turned into some sort of magical chute that sent us racing downwards.
We hit bottom and found the book, but, before Joanie could get her hands on it, a masked man appeared. Joanie managed to get the book after we introduced ourselves as his new assistants, but we were forced to help with one of his tricks – the cabinet of swords or the old sawed-in-half bit.
I chose to help with the cabinet of swords because being stabbed in several places might be better than being sawed in half. The Magician hypnotized Joanie and Sid, but, somehow, I managed to do the trick successfully. Unfortunately, the masked man wouldn’t tell us how to escape this place. Instead, we’d have to ask Mr. Knowledge or Mrs. Cardsharp.
We had to climb a rope to get to Mr. Knowledge, but it turned out to be a waste of time when Mr. Knowledge proved to be totally useless. With no other choice, we make our way to Mrs. Cardsharp.
Cardsharp was waiting for us to join Mr. Lucky Luck, Ms. Nine Lives, and Mr. Rambler Gambler at a table for a game of cards. Mr. Luck suggested a game of Kaboobie, but I countered with a game of Draw. The book actually tells you to go get a deck of cards, shuffle them, and then draw one card – keeping it face down before turning to the next page. You find out that you need an Ace to beat Mr. Rambler Gambler’s King of Spades. I lost.
Joanie, Sid, I were forced to polish Rambler’s rhinestone suit. There were over 4,000 rhinestones that needed polishing, and we were doomed to become shrunken heads whenever we finished this tedious task. I also assume that the magician will eat our bodies for dinner. I still wish I could have remained a good doggo, but alas.
The number one lesson of Under the Magician’s Spell is a simple but valuable one: sometimes it’s best to just take the animal transformation ending and be done with it.
Doubtfire 