Sundays in the Cemetery with Stine

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. 

Goosebumps #59 – The Haunted School

The Haunted School is a highly regarded series title, and I was anxious to check it out. By now, I’ve got such a tolerance for these books that you’d have to tell me Vince Russo was secretly writing them to disappoint me, but this one’s reputation is well-earned. The Haunted School is an impressively creepy and pretty damned disturbing story that ends on a downer and leaves you wondering what could have possibly motivated Stine to be such a vicious bastard. Maybe this was around the time Scholastic was alleging that he employed ghostwriters? 

Tommy Frazer’s father gets remarried and decides to move to brand new town, Bell Valley, right after the wedding – forcing his son to kick off the school year in a new town at a new school with a new mom. Tommy manages to befriend a really annoying practical joker named Ben and a “pretty awesome looking” girl named Thalia. She’s also new to the school, and she loves putting on makeup over and over again all day long. I wonder if there might be some hidden, spoooooooky reason she’s doing this? Surely not. 

Anyway, the big school dance is coming up, and Ben and Thalia and Tommy all volunteer to join the Dance Decorations Committee. When they run out of paint for the banner they’re working on, Tommy gets lost trying to find it and winds up in a classroom full of unpainted, life sized statues of children – the Lost Class of 1947. Bell Valley Middle’s first class of twenty-five kids all abruptly vanished into thin air –never to be seen again. So, of course, the best response to such a tragedy is to commission a bunch of creepy statues of the missing students and put them all in a classroom for poor unsuspecting new kids to stumble on.

On the night of the dance, Tommy and Ben try to take an elevator to the art room to get some tape to fix a banner. They get stuck, and the elevator starts to move sideways before the doors open and the two boys find themselves in a colorless classroom full of colorless kids. The kids explain that they’re the missing Class of ’47 and welcome the two newcomers to the fun-filled land of Grayworld – a weird Purgatory type place that mirrors Bell Valley. The vanished kids explain that they were all transported here when the evil Mr. Chameleon used an evil camera to take an evil class picture. Now, just like them, Ben and Tommy are stuck and doomed to gradually turn gray and hang out in a classroom with the others. They’re not supposed to try to leave the school because the rest of the class all roam the streets as mindless savages. 

The dimensionally transplanted duo are desperate to get home and decide to take their chances with the mindless savages outside – which is definitely a more proactive way of approaching the problem than the others’ “let’s sit in this classroom forever” solution. Unfortunately, the crazed children manage to capture our two heroes and haul them off to a big, steaming pool of goo called “The Black Pit.” For some reason, these folks like to drink the goo and rub it on their faces and all sorts of other kooky things. They’re also really excited to toss Tommy and Ben in the pit, but the two are rescued at the last minute when the passive portion of the class shows up. Tommy fends the mob off with a flame from the lucky lighter his grandfather gave him because the goo-drinkers don’t like the color of the fire. 

When everyone gets back to the classroom, the elevator doors abruptly open, and Thalia steps out. The doors slam shut behind her before anyone can get in because that would be too easy, and Thalia’s got some explaining to do. She’s one of the gray kids, too! That’s why she constantly puts on makeup! She managed to escape into the world of color and light when she used the last smidge of remaining red in her lipstick to draw a window, but she had a miserable time and is happy to be back. She’s also happy to draw a window for Tommy and Ben to go home because it’s the 29^th chapter of a Goosebumps book. The two boys make it back to the dance just in time for a big group picture – courtesy of Mr. Chameleon! 

The principal nodded. “Yes. Just about fifty years ago. There were twenty-five kids in the school. And one day… one day, they all disappeared.” 

“Huh?” Startled by her words, I dropped the paint cans to the floor. 

“They vanished, Tommy,” Mrs. Borden continued, turning her gaze to the statues. “Vanished into thin air. One minute they were here in school. The next minute, they were gone… forever. Never seen again.”

Saturdays in the Cemetery with Stine

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. 

Goosebumps #58 – Deep Trouble II 

It’s been awhile since the original Deep Trouble underwhelmed and frustrated me with its bait-and-switch cover art. I went in expecting killer sharks and got a mermaid instead. My expectations weren’t too high for the follow-up – even if the cover suggested that the story may have a Gooseumps-ized Piranha. I learned my lesson the first time around. And, surprise surprise, there were no razor-toothed tropical fish in the story. As a matter of fact, that’s actually a goldfish on the cover. Regardless, Deep Trouble II surprised me. It has a lot in common with Return of the Mummy in that it’s sort of a course correcting sequel. The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb was no mummy story, and the first Deep Trouble was a far cry from horror on the high seas. This one still didn’t give me the R.L. Stine Jaws rip-off I’ve been waiting for, but a giant jellyfish manages to (temporarily) eat Billy Deep’s annoying little sister, and that’s a pretty big win.  

It’s been a year since Billy and Sheena Deep joined up with their insane uncle, Dr. D, to rescue a mermaid from pirates, and they’re super-excited about spending another summer with him aboard his research boat, the Cassandra. Billy is eager for some adventure because he’s, “One year older. One year wiser. One year tougher.” His little sister is eager for some pranks because she’s a younger sibling written by R.L. Stine. She terrifies her older brother at every turn – making him think that he’s being eaten by an octopus, tricking him into believing that there’s a decapitated head in his beloved goldfish bowl, and even breaking out the old “fake shark fin” trick for good measure. Billy falls for everything because Billy never learns. 

Dr. D and the kids start to notice that the ocean is inexplicably full of giant fish – like a monstrous minnow and the aforementioned Sheena-eating jellyfish. Even Billy’s pet snail grows to gigantic proportions and nearly capsizes the boat. Pets that grow into giants….where have I seen that before? Anyway, the Deep family go on to discover that all these kooky sea creatures are the product of the experiments of the demented Dr. Ritter. Oversized fish means oversized seafood, and that means no more world hunger. Unless you don’t like seafood, of course. I don’t like seafood, so Dr. Ritter’s experiment does nothing for me. It would condemn me to starvation. Awesome plan, Ritter. 

The Deeps get tossed off their boat and wind up spending the night on a life raft that washes up on a deserted island. Before things go full Swiss Family Robinson, a team of heroic dolphins shows up to save the day and take our heroes back to their ship – which Dr. Ritter and his crew have commandeered. The good guys get captured immediately. Then, Dr. Ritter reveals that he’s genetically manipulated plankton in order to pull off the whole giant fish plan, but….the special plankton’s growing effect only works on ocean dwellers. It turns people into fish!! And Dr. Ritter plans to force Billy to drink a vial of it! Oh no!

Billy drinks Ritter’s concoction with no ill effects. The astounded mad marine biologist decides that the best thing to do in this situation is to take a shot of the stuff himself….only to promptly turn into a fish. He hops off the boat and swims away. It turns out that Billy swapped the plankton for tea in preparation for his latest prank. Sheena’s shocked. She was going to play the same prank! Then, for no reason at all, she grabs a bottle and drinks from it. But did she accidentally drink the plankton? Is Sheena about to grow gills? The world may never know. 

I splashed across the water, racing toward the pink blob. It writhed and wriggled with my sister inside it.

What is it? I wondered. What can it be?

And then, as I pulled myself closer, I knew what it was.

I was staring at a jellyfish!

A jellyfish bigger than a human.

Saturdays in the Cemetery with Stine

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.

 

Goosebumps #57 – My Best Friend Is Invisible 

It’s hard to believe that I’ve only got five more original series books to cover. I feel a lot like I do when I watch Ghostbusters and Mr. Stay Puft shows up. I’m ecstatic for the grand finale and desperately trying to ignore the part of me that’s sad to see everything come to an end. Sadly, My Best Friend Is Invisible is a far cry from the pre-chosen form of The Destructor. It’s another one of those Goosebumps stories that would have been better off as a fifteen-page adventure in one of the Tales to Give You Goosebumps collections. Stretching this business out for twenty-nine chapters causes the plot to tediously drag as we slog our way to the been-there-done-that twist ending. 

Sammy loves science fiction and horror and all of the cool things life has to offer, even though his parents and his little brother think stuff like that is stupid because they’re real scientists who deal with facts instead of fantasy. So, when Sammy starts insisting that there’s an invisible kid named Brent hanging out in his bedroom, everyone thinks he’s crazy. Unfortunately for our sci-fi loving guy, Brent really is invisible, and he’s absolutely determined to be Sammy’s best friend. No matter what. He tries to accomplish this by terrorizing the family cat, making a mess in his newfound pal’s bedroom, and even attempting to help him win a race by picking him up and throwing him in front of the other competitors. Brent is terrible at being a best friend.

My Best Friend is Invisible is one of those Goosebumps sagas that features the main character being totally oblivious to the fact that they sound like a raving lunatic. The more Sammy insists he’s got an invisible friend, the more he troubles his science loving family. He probably would have been better off claiming that the piano in the house is haunted or that a puppet is trying to enslave him. Arguing with someone who isn’t there and insisting that the invisible kid is responsible for eating half a pizza before dinner is a great way to raise some pretty big red flags, but Sammy is convinced that if he can just prove Brent is real that everything will be fine – even though absolutely every attempt he makes to prove he’s right only backfires. Eventually, Mom and Dad are ready to send the kid to a psychiatrist, and that’s when the grand finale comes in. Desperate to save himself from near-certain institutionalization, Sammy grabs his dad’s “Molecule Detector” gizmo and uses to it to finally reveal his concealed comrade – only to be horrified by what he sees. Brent’s real alright, but he’s only got one head and no antennae. Brent’s one of those endangered human thingamajigs! The newly exposed boy explains that his parents turned him invisible to try and protect him from the monstrous beings that now rule the Earth. Sammy wants to keep him as a pet, but his dad declares that Brent will have to go to the zoo because they’re better-equipped for human-care. 

So yeah, it’s another “the narrator was really a monster!” endings that Stine seems to fall back on more and more frequently in these later entries. It kinda seems like R.L. Stine uses that as his “I don’t know how else to wrap this up” card, but that idea is just as ridiculous as an invisible kid eating half a pizza before dinner. 

I stared at the pizza slice. Stared as it floated in midair.

I watched as it was chewed up. Bite by bite.

“Tell me who you are!” I shouted. “You’re really scaring me!”

Another bite disappeared from the floating slice of pizza. And another.

“This isn’t happening. It can’t be,” I whispered.

Saturdays in the Cemetery with Stine

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. 

Goosebumps #56 – The Curse of Camp Cold Lake 

The Curse of Camp Cold Lake is the last of the original series’ camp stories. The book’s cover is one of the best in the series. It suggests that you’re in for a terrifying tale of marshmallow roasting gone wrong and vengeful water ghosts rising from the depths. Sadly, there’s no water ghost to be found, and the narrator’s narcissistic antics are truly disturbing. 

Sarah isn’t too excited about spending her summer swimming in the Camp Cold Lake’s icy waters. Her brother Aaron is ecstatic about it, but he’s not an important part of the plot and only shows up to offer occasional moral support by telling his sister what a great time he’s having. Sarah isn’t the first miserable and perpetually unfortunate Goosebumps main character we’ve ever seen, but she’s easily the most unlikable. She’s self-centered and whiny, and she ultimately decides that pretending to drown is the ticket to popularity and acceptance. 

Things get off to a bad start the second Sarah walks in her assigned cabin and demands to have the bottom bunk even though Briana, of her three bunkmates, claimed the bed before she ever showed up. Surprisingly enough, the woe-is-me attitude and incessant complaining don’t earn her any friends. The girls drop a garden snake down her shirt, and she pays them back by putting spiders in their beds and gets them sent to the infirmary. Way to up the ante, Sarah.

Camp Cold Lake operates with the buddy system strictly enforced, but no one wants to be buddies with spider-wielding Sarah. She’s forced to bear the indignation of being assigned an unwilling buddy by Counselor Liz – enforcer of safety rules and recipient of cat calls and whistles everywhere she goes thanks to her super-hotness. That’s when our narrator finally decides to play the tried and true “Pretend to Drown” card to earn the sympathy and adulation of her fellow campers. Only she gets more than she bargained for when she stays under too long, loses consciousness, and has a vision of a ghostly camper named Della – who insists that Sarah is her new “buddy.”

Liz rescues and resuscitates Sarah, but Della keeps showing up whenever the little attention attractor goes near the water – causing her to believe that Della must have drowned years ago and is the reason behind the camp’s safety rules and buddy system. This makes life at camp more miserable than ever because no one other than poor Sarah can see Della. She goes from being the camp complainer to the camp lunatic. Worst. Summer. Ever. Fed up with the whole world and everything in it, Sarah makes a plan to go through the woods and escape. That’s when Della shows up and gives us the real deal: She didn’t drown. She was bitten by a snake in the woods! The same woods that she’s lured Sarah into by making her afraid of the water! And now Sarah can be her buddy…forever!! 

All of a sudden, Briana the Bunkmate shows up. She explains that Della pulled the same routine on her last summer, so she’s back to put a stop to it. This weirdly causes Della to disappear. Then, Briana lays down the real twist: She’s a ghost too! Just, you know, a ghost everyone can see. Not like Della. At all. Ghost Briana wants a buddy, and Sarah is it! 

The final twist is absolute nonsense, but I still enjoyed The Curse of Camp Cold Lake. It feels a lot like a callback to the earlier books, and it even packs in some questionable content with the main character deciding to fake her death and Stine taking the time to detail Liz’s sexy outfits. The 90s were the wild west of children’s entertainment, and Stine was Jesse James. 

“Someone has to trade beds with me!” I cried. I didn’t mean to sound so shrill. But I was really upset.

Before they could answer, the cabin door swung open. A sandy-haired young guy in a dark green camp T-shirt poked his head in.

“I’m Richard,” he said. “I’m the boss guy, the head dude. Everything okay in here?”

“No!” I cried. I couldn’t stop myself. I was just so nervous and unhappy. “I can’t sleep in this bunk!” I told him. “I don’t want to be near the window. And I need to sleep on the bottom.”

I could see that the other girls were shocked by my outburst.

Saturdays in the Cemetery with Stine

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. 

Goosebumps #55 – The Blob That Ate Everyone 

There’s a really good Stephen King short story called “Word Processor of the Gods.” It’s the tale of a man who unwittingly discovers that anything he writes comes to fruition. In the end, the reality-controlling writer uses his power to give himself the life he’s always wanted – at the expense of doing away with his current family. The Blob That Ate Everyone takes this cool concept and does absolutely nothing interesting with it whatsoever. I wanted to like this book. I was excited to get through it, but, as it turns out, I was even more excited to put it back on the shelf. Cool cover art aside, The Blob That Ate Everyone is a lot like Go Eat Worms! and Deep Trouble; I didn’t like it, and I don’t anticipate reading it again. 

Zackie Beauchamp likes to write short stories about pink blobs that eat his two friends – Alex Larocci and Adam Levine Levin. Yes, his name is Zackie. If two friends sounds like one-too-many for a Goosebumps main character, don’t worry. Alex is the nice girl who’s a friend but not a girlfriend, but Adam is a different story. He’s basically your standard Goosebumps bully who our narrator somehow likes despite the fact that he’s never all that nice or friendly. Adam takes every opportunity to mock, laugh at, and play pranks on Zackie. He constantly derides his buddy’s writing pursuits while Alex plays the supportive friend which makes one wonder why Zackie doesn’t just punch Adam in the nose.

The plot gets rolling when Alex and Zackie discover that the local antique store has burned down after being struck by lightning. Inside, the would-be wordsmith finds an old typewriter that would be just perfect for typing his scary stories on……even though he just got a fancy new laser printer that churns out a whopping 8-pages a minute. He picks up the typewriter and is immediately electrocuted. He’s okay, though. The shop owner shows up. She scolds the kids for messing around, but gives Zackie the typewriter because we’ve got a scary story to get to! After a tough day at school, Alex shows up at the Beauchamp house to hang out and watch her friend type up his latest story. The second he types the opening line – “It was a dark and stormy night” – the sky darkens and a thunderous downpour begins. Zackie makes the wind howl and the power go out before he starts to believe that his typewriter possesses reality-altering powers. He puts this theory to the test when he makes Adam appear on the front doorstep. Even though the kid has no idea why or how he’s there, Adam still relentlessly picks on Zackie and laughs at all the mystical typewriter hoopla. He heads home, but not before using the typewriter and inadvertently conjuring up a Blob Monster right in poor Zackie’s closet. What a great friend. 

Zackie chalks the whole night up to a hilarious coincidence and uses his old school word processor to finish up his spooky story – not realizing that there’s a big, nasty Blob in his closet just waiting for an opportunity to go through the neighborhood eating anything and everything in its path. Adam gets eaten, and Zackie and Alex desperately try to undo the disastrous story-come-to-life. Before he gets the chance to write a new ending, the monster eats the typewriter and seemingly dooms the whole town. But then, Zackie suddenly realizes that he doesn’t need an old typewriter: He has the power!  Armed with a series of big, tall wishes, Zackie undoes all the damage, and everyone lives happily ever after. Before you ask how Adam managed to successfully use the typewriter earlier in the book if Zackie was the one really responsible for the shenanigans, the whole thing is revealed to actually be a story written by…a Blob Monster! Way to work around those plot holes, Stine! 

“Well? Did you like my story?”

The pink Blob Monster neatened the pages he had just read and set them down on the desk. He turned to his friend, a green-skinned Blob Monster.

“Did you just write that?” the green monster asked.

The pink Blob Monster gurgled with pride. “Yes. Did you enjoy it?”

“I did,” his friend replied. “Thank you for reading it to me. It’s very exciting. Very well written. What do you call it?”

“I call it ‘Attack of the Humans’,” the Blob Monster replied. “Did you really like it?”

Saturdays in the Cemetery with Stine

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. 

Goosebumps #54 – Don’t Go To Sleep! 

Don’t Go To Sleep! is a lot of fun. It’s a little like The Cuckoo Clock of Doom – only twelve-year-old Matt Amsterdam is caught in a reality warp instead of a time warp. Matt’s revolving realities are triggered whenever he falls asleep, so it’s a real mess, and the only thing he can do about it is hope he’ll eventually wake up in his original life. 

The whole ordeal kicks off when Matt decides that his tiny bedroom is too cluttered for comfort. He begs to move into the much larger guest room, but his mom adamantly refuses because she prioritizes her guests’ comfort over her youngest son’s. His older brother and sister relentlessly pick on him, and he’s forced to help his mother make dinner. How’s a kid supposed to catch a break? Fed up, Matt sneaks into the forbidden guest room to sleep the night away. Of all the sneaky things children are capable of, claiming the guest bed without permission doesn’t seem like a big deal. Unfortunately for Matt – and the whole world – sleeping in the guest bed is a super big deal! 

Matt wakes up to discover that he’s suddenly sixteen-years-old, and his older brother and sister are now his younger brother and sister! They still pick on him, though. And, wouldn’t you know it, he hates high school. He’s too young to understand the Math and reading assignments. This embarrassing ineptitude in the classroom gets our young Quantum Leaper sent to the principal’s office. By lunchtime, he decides to flee campus and meets a friendly twelve-year-old named Lacie in the process. The next day, Matt’s back to his original age, but he has an entirely different family and goes to a strange school that starts serving lunch at 8:30am. He bumps into Lacie again and gets chased by two mean looking kids in black. 

Over and over again, Matt goes to sleep and wakes up in increasingly bizarre situations, but, whether he’s a circus performer or a car-eating lizard monster, he keeps bumping into Lacie and getting chased by the Kids in Black. The traveling trio eventually catch our hero and lay down the hard facts: They’re the Reality Police. Matt’s fallen through “a hole in reality,” and Lacie and her cohorts are here to set things right- by putting Matt to sleep forever. Did I mention that the other two kids are named Bruce and Wayne? 

When it comes to enforcing the stability of the universe, the Reality Police are as effective as the Haddonfield PD. All Matt has to do to escape his plight is go to sleep. Since he’s in an R.L. Stine book, he finds himself as a squirrel and, ultimately, “a really, really chubby kid. A real blimp.” Fat Matt manages to sneak back in his old bedroom to catch some Reality Sorting Z’s. The next morning, all is finally right with the world. Matt’s mom even has an awesome surprise for him. All of his stuff has been moved to his new bedroom – the guestroom! Oh nooooo! 

What could I do? I had no idea what was going on. I went for the foolproof escape.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said.

Everybody laughed except the teacher. He rolled his eyes.

“Go ahead,” he said. “And stop by the principal’s office on your way back.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” the teacher said. “You’ve got a date with the principal. Now get out of my class.”

I jumped up and ran out of the room. Man! High-school teachers were mean!

Sundays in the Cemetery with Stine

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. 

Goosebumps #53 – Chicken Chicken

Chicken Chicken is terrifying. The cover pretty much gives you the score; the main character turns into a chicken. It’s a lot like Why I’m Afraid of Bees but without all the fun facts about bees. Nevertheless, Chicken Chicken offers up a healthy dose of disturbing along with a grand finale that manages to take two of Stine’s favorite plotlines – transforming kids and growing/shrinking kids – and combine them to teach readers with an important lesson. 

Crystal and Cole live in the tiny farming town of Goshen Falls because their parents hated living in New York and abruptly decided to fulfill their lifelong dream of abandoning their big city computer programming jobs, moving to the country, and becoming chicken farmers. And guess what? Crystal and Cole hate chickens. They don’t like Goshen Falls too much either. There’s nothing to do except join the other kids in their never ending series of pranks on Vanessa – the local weirdo who wears all black and lives in a cabin with her big, black cat. Cole, Crystal, and their ruthless, delinquent friends fill the poor lady’s mailbox up with water even though they all think she’s a witch, and you wouldn’t think they’d want to provoke her. When the kids flee the scene, Vanessa manages to catch sight of the C siblings.

Later, the chicken farming duo and their good buddy Anthony (who isn’t all that important to the plot so don’t worry about him) bump into Vanessa in town and cause her to drop her groceries. Anthony quickly apologizes and runs away, but Crystal and Cole stick around long enough for Vanessa to whisper “Chicken Chicken” to them before heading off. And, wouldn’t you know it, the two kids start growing feathers and involuntarily clucking and eating chicken feed over the course of the next few days. Cole winds up ruining his big solo in the school chorus when he clucks his way through it, and Crystal has an absolutely horrifying experience trying to play basketball while losing the use of her arms and legs. Despite all this, Crystal and Cole don’t bother doing much to solve their plight even though they’re waking up each morning picking the feathers off of each other, and Crystal’s lips are hardening and slowly turning into a big ole beak. 

By the time the kids’ knees are starting to bend the opposite way and they can barely take two steps without lowering their heads to the ground in search of food, they decide that maybe they should beg Vanessa to reconsider her cruel punishment. So they break into her house when she’s not home and rifle through her books desperately in search for a spell to save them. Way to get on her good side, kids. One spell turns them into gigantic birds, and the next one shrinks them down into tiny chicks. Vanessa returns before her cat can eat them, but she sadly reveals that it’s too late to undo the transformation. Resigned to life as a chicken, Crystal hops on a typewriter and composes a message apologizing for all the trouble. Luckily for her and her brother, it turns out that Vanessa is a big fan of manners. If the kids had just apologized the other day, everything would have been fine! She happily reverses the spell – even though she just insisted that this was impossible. Lying apparently doesn’t count as bad manners. Life is back to normal right up until Cole burps, and the two kids laugh about it. You’re supposed to say “Excuse me.” Vanessa whispers “Pig pig,” and that’s the end. 

Good manners are important, and R.L. Stine wasn’t shy about writing body horror for kids. It may seem a little silly, but Crystal being forced to flee a basketball game because she can’t bend her knees or move without bobbing her head is absolutely terrifying and is going to mess up my dreams for years to come. 

The action moved to our opponents’ basket, and I ran down court. My head bobbed up and down. I realized I was running stiff-legged. My knees no longer bent!

The ball came sailing toward me.

I couldn’t catch it. My hands were tucked under my armpits. My elbows were poked out like wings.

I let out a loud cluck as the ball bounced off my shoulder.

My head bobbed up and down.

(Still) Grounded in October: My Halloween Essentials Part 2

by Nelson

In the immortal words of the good people at Silver Shamrock: “It’s almost time, kids. It’s almost time!”

Halloween is officially upon us. There’s no escaping. Naysayers and October Grinches are like terrified teens who trip over piles of leaves while trying to run from the inevitable. The Festival of Samhain is going down, and I couldn’t be more excited if you told me that what the world thought was Halloween Ends was really an elaborate trick and that we’ll be treated with the actual movie on the 31^st. 

But you can’t Corey Cunningham my holiday – not when I can fall back on the tried and true, the titles I keep coming back to every year, the Official October Essentials….Part 2!!! 

Scars of Dracula – It’s an objective fact that you’re not going to get a better portrayal of Count Dracula than Christopher Lee’s. He looked fantastic; he sounded cool, and his eyes turned red when he was being really evil. Beyond the superficial stuff, Lee brought a presence to the role that isn’t likely to ever be matched. He didn’t even have to utter a word in Dracula: Prince of Darkness – a movie that is regarded as one of Hammer Horror’s quintessential titles. 

Scars of Dracula wasn’t so warmly received. It’s got cheaper production values and veers more towards 70s slasher schlock than the refined, beautifully shot classics that preceded it. There’s also a laughably bad puppet that slightly resembles a bat and makes way too many appearances. Scars injected a healthy dose of sex and gore into Hammer’s Dracula movies. The result is a movie that almost feels like a weird Transylvanian version of Friday the 13^th, and I absolutely love it for that. Scars offers viewers a well-balanced horror feast with a little spookiness, a dash of corniness, a sizable helping of sex and violence, and a Dracula so powerful that God, Himself, is forced to step in and handle the situation. And there’s a bat puppet guaranteed to put smiles on faces across the globe. 

House on Haunted Hill – There aren’t many movies featuring Vincent Price that I don’t love, but I’m Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance levels of insane for this movie. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the opening. The perpetually terrified house owner and Vincent Price appear on the screen as giant talking heads to give the audience a brief description of the “only real haunted house in the world” and introduce the characters and “whoever spends the whole night wins $10,000” plot. 

Things get rolling from there. There’s a pool of acid in the basement that, despite being used in a murder, remains untouched and is surprisingly well-kept. Someone puts a Halloween decoration on wheels to create a hilariously horrifying ghost/witch thing that rolls across the room. There’s a staged suicide attempt, and, in my favorite part of the movie, Vincent Price puppeteers a skeleton that shoves his wife into her well-earned corrosive crypt. Price’s relationship with his scheming spouse gives him a chance to slip into the verbally vicious bastard role he plays so well, but, in a fun twist, he winds up emerging as the mean spirited, murderous hero of the story – clearly inspiring his role as Vincent Van Ghoul in 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo. 

The Adventures of Pete and Pete: “Halloweenie” –  Pete and Pete was a show that fearlessly tackled kid issues that needed tackling. Abolishing bedtimes, extended Christmases, and having the perfect sick day were matters of serious consequence. But nothing hit quite as close to home as the show’s Halloween special. Little Pete is determined to break Wellsville’s trick-or-treating record – 374 houses in one night. Unfortunately, Big Pete is at war with the dawning realization that he’s getting too old for the festivities and is obsessed with the potential consequences of being caught and labeled a “Halloweenie” by a nefarious gang of jack-o’-lantern wearing Halloween Haters calling themselves the Pumpkin Eaters. Ordinarily, I’m a big fan of pumpkinheaded bad guys, but not when they’re out to sully the sanctity of All Hallow’s Eve. 

Outgrowing Halloween is a frightening prospect when you’re a kid who’s too young to have developed the all-important “I don’t care what anyone thinks” mindset, and it’s even harder to handle when you start to realize that you’re legitimately going to get grounded two weeks before the big day. Every. Single. Year. You’re tragically susceptible to shame and peer pressure – particularly when you’re surrounded by a mob of Halloween blasphemers who insist that you smash a jack-o’-lantern to show your disdain for the sacred holiday. That’s why a character like Little Pete was a beacon of hope for so many. He was wise beyond his years; he had a forearm tattoo before he was ten, and he dared challenge the shackles of society for the betterment of kids, small town superheroes, and teenaged trick-or-treaters everywhere. 

Trick ‘r Treat – I wish I could say that I’ve been a fan of this movie since it came out. I love anthology movies – especially when the stories interconnect with each other. A Halloween-themed Cat’s Eye is the sort of thing that my dreams are made of. I’d have loved to have told all of my friends and associates and the random people I say weird things to in Wal-Mart how awesome this movie is and how they should reevaluate their priorities to ensure that watching Trick ‘r Treat is at the top of the list. But I can’t. It’s not fair. Before my wife got me to watch it, I never knew Trick ‘r Treat existed. I don’t know how something like that could have happened. It’s an injustice. I should have been contacted the second a movie featuring weaponized candy became a reality, and I’m still mad that I wasn’t. Well, maybe “perturbed” is a better word. It’s tough to be mad when you’re watching Sookie Stackhouse rip her flesh off and transform into a werewolf before eating the evil, kid-poisoning high school principal and bringing a formal end to his reign of terror. 

And then, of course, there’s Sam – the burlap sack-wearing tyke in orange footie pajamas. By now, my love of folks with jack-o’-lanterns for heads is well known, but Sam’s a little different. He’s no jack-o’-lantern; underneath the mask, the guy is a living, breathing pumpkin, and he’s not about to watch his holiday get disrespected by empty-headed imbeciles with no regard for tradition. Sam administers a harsh – but fair – justice upon anyone who dares bend the official Rules of Halloween and makes it clear that Jack Skellington needs to sit his ass down because Sam is the real Pumpkin King. Sorry Billy Corgan. I didn’t mean it. At all. That said…..

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness – The Smashing Pumpkins’ magnum opus – the best album of the 90s, the alt-rock version of The Wall, the record that changed my life forever and ever – came out a mere seven days before the 31^st. Is there really a more appropriate band to listen to in October? Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is an untouchable masterpiece. Go in a dark room, put on x.y.u., and crank the speakers up. If you don’t feel that the forces of Hell are threatening to converge on you during that outro, then I can only assume that you’re in with the Pumpkin Eaters, and I’ll need to ask you politely, but firmly, to leave. 

Saturdays in the Cemetery with Stine

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. 

Goosebumps #52 – How I Learned to Fly

How I Learned to Fly is widely regarded as one of the best titles in the series, and I definitely agree with that. It’s not very Goosebumps-y, but, then again, you’re going to find a lot more stories about rapidly growing and/or shrinking kids than goblins and ghouls and other supernatural terrors in these books. 

Jack Johnson has sort of a thing for his friend Mia – “the cutest girl at Malibu Middle School.” Unfortunately, his attempts to impress her are always one-upped by his “friend” and neighbor, Wilson – who *also* has sort of a thing for Mia. Jack draws a superhero, but Wilson draws a whole team of superheroes. Jack struggles to save Mrs. Green’s cat from a tree and winds up taking a plunge – only for Wilson to immediately dart up the tree and save the cat while Mia looks on in approval. Wilson is basically a more obnoxious male version of You Can’t Scare Me‘s Courtney. No matter what, Jack cannot catch a break whenever he’s around. Things take a turn at Mia’s birthday party. First, Jack splits his pants during a game of Twister, but he sticks around to see Mia open her presents because he just knows she’s going to absolutely love the Purple Rose CD he got her. They’re her favorite band, after all. She gushes over the gift for all of two seconds before Wilson steps in and offers up two tickets to see Purple Rose LIVE in concert! Completely crushed, Jack jumps up and runs out of the party. Despite his incredibly rude behavior, all the partygoers try to chase him down – forcing him to hide in an old abandoned house where he discovers a dusty old book called Flying Lessons.

Flying Lessons turns out to be an instructional manual for human flight. Apparently, any person can soar through the air if they follow a few simple steps. Jack follows the book’s directions and whips up a weird blue potion that his dog, Morty, promptly eats because that’s what dogs do in R.L. Stine books. Morty instantly begins to float around the kitchen and, eventually, the neighborhood – forcing Jack to take the potion and rescue his beloved pet. Despite the near disaster, Flying Lessons lives up to its name, and now our hero is a cool flying kid who is totally going to put that dastardly Wilson in his place. 

Of course, the minute he tries to show off his newfound abilities, he discovers that Wilson has also learned to fly by sneaking the book away when he wasn’t looking. So now both the kids can fly, and Jack’s dreams of finally outdoing his obnoxious neighbor are shattered. The two flying boys become famous, but only Wilson enjoys all of the attention. Jack would much rather be a normal kid, but that’s just not in the cards anymore. His dad arranges a race with Wilson, and thousands show up for the big event. Wilson takes to the sky, but Jack can’t leave the ground no matter how hard he tries. Somehow, he’s lost the power of flight! Wilson goes on to become a huge celebrity. He leaves school to make appearances all over the world and even gets his own TV show. Jack doesn’t mind at all because he’s so happy to have his old life back…..and because he didn’t tell anyone that he can still fly!! 

It’s not really a “scary story” in the traditional sense, but it’s hard to be mad at How I Learned to Fly. It may not be a scary story, but it’ll absolutely keep you up all hours of the night dreaming of all the terrible things you’d like to do to teach Wilson – that ridiculous, overbearing showoff – a lesson he’ll never forget. I hate you, Wilson, and, one of these days, I’ll get you. 

Thank you, Jack!” She set my present down on a table beside her. She reached for the next one. An envelope—just an envelope. No gift.
“That’s mine,” Wilson leaned over and whispered to me.
I can’t believe Wilson only brought Mia a card, I thought as I watched her tear open the flap. Only a card for her birthday. What kind of present is that?
Mia stared into the envelope for a moment. Then she screamed. “Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow!”
She held up Wilson’s present.
Two tickets.
Two tickets to the Purple Rose concert at the Hollywood Bowl next month.
Front row seats.
“Oh, wow!” she shrieked again. “This is totally awesome!”
Wilson shot me his big Wilson grin.

Grounded in October: My Halloween Essentials – Part 1

by Nelson

I love Christmas. It’s sort of impossible for me not to. I was born a week before the undisputed Holiday Champion of the World and grew up as a spoiled only child that the world revolved around. December is my month. The toy collection grows, the alcohol consumption goes unchecked and unjudged, and Smashing Pumpkins are added to the household playlist with nary a gripe or snicker because my favorite band of all time recorded a Christmas song, and that means that we’re going to hear Billy Corgan sing about watching kids open presents and enjoy every sacred second of it. You could say it’s my favorite time of the year, but you can’t because October 31^st exists, and I spend 364 days a year waiting for its arrival. Even when I’m going through my latest Santa haul, I’m thinking about how I can still pull off a solid Joker costume while also hiding my shamefully bald head from onlookers.

It’s always been that way. I like candy; I like costumes, and I love scary stuff with the sort of burning passion that drove Rocky Balboa to KO Ivan Drago in Russia. As a kid, my parents played Drago to my Apollo year after year by ruthlessly snatching trick-or-treating away from me at the last minute thanks to my traditional “Needs Improvement” grades in conduct on fall report cards. Without the comfort of a stack of freshly rented horror tapes, I’m not 100% sure that I would’ve been able to cope with the trauma of sitting in my bedroom, in full costume, with an empty candy bucket in the corner. I can count how many times I’ve been trick-or-treating on one hand, but I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve been pulled back from the brink of madness by my morbid musts of the season. 

Beetlejuice

What better movie to celebrate the night spirits are permitted to freely roam the land than a movie that shows us just how dull and tedious the afterlife really is and why the dearly departed can’t wait to take a day off? Beetlejuice is legendary. Michael Keaton is amazing. Winona Ryder is a badass. The living sculptures are pure, unadulterated nightmare fuel, and Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O” is as important as “The Monster Mash” and “Somebody’s Watching Me” on any self-respecting October playlist. This all helps make Beetlejuice a Halloween Must Watch, but finding out that, once you die, you’re presented with a complicated manual that reads like stereo instructions and forced to take a number and wait for an appointment with your assigned caseworker is a lot like winning the Nickelodeon Super Toy Run; you’ll cherish the memory and relive it in your dreams forever and ever. 

The long and short of it is that Beetlejuice is one of the most essential Halloween Essentials of the season. The movie’s version of a DMV-esque eternity is such a brilliant twist that the inclusion of Keaton in a black and white striped suit comes off as a bonus – a lot like the pickle spears Firehouse includes with their sandwiches. Sure, you’ve already got a meal that tastes like it was touched by the hands of God, but it never hurts to add a little extra oomph to an already divine experience. It’s showtime. 

Halloween Havoc 95

“Astoundingly huge man runs over orange man’s motorcycle with a monster truck” may not sound like the set-up for the most Halloweentastic wrestling event in human history, but this foul deed led to the horrifying, the ghoulish, the UNSPEAKABLE battle for ultimate supremacy: Man vs Man and Machine vs Machine!!

WCW’s Halloween Havoc ‘95 is a perfect snapshot of what the company was like before the New World Order changed the pro-wrestling landscape forever. Fans who complained about the WWE going “PG” have zero idea what actual cartoony wrestling is and wouldn’t be able to handle Earth-shattering developments like the 400+ pound Avalanche realizing that he was part-fish all alone and decreeing that no Hulkamaniacs’ toes would ever be safe in the water again. WCW’s Dungeon of Doom consisted of a bunch of guys who looked like they traveled forward in time to raid the discount bin at a Spirit Halloween Store, and Havoc ‘95 was their show. We saw The Giant plunge from the top of the Joe Louis arena into the Detroit River after being defeated in one of the most gripping Monster Truck battles ever – only to reappear, like Frankenstein’s monster, for his main event showdown with The Hulkster (who just so happened be wearing black as a part of his “Dark Side Hogan” phase because Hulk likes Halloween, too). All that, alone, makes WCW’s signature October event the spookiest wrasslin’ show in town, but Eric Bischoff’s 90s ambition knew no bounds. October 31st is just another day on the calendar without a 7-foot-tall mummy emerging from an iceberg to destroy The Mega Powers and end Hulkamania forever, and, dammit, WCW wasn’t about to under deliver on one of their signature pay-per-view events. Thanks to the emergence of The Yeti, Halloween Havoc 1995 will go down in history as the wrestling equivalent of Jason Goes to Hell. 

Halloween 1 (TV Version) & Halloween 2 Back-to-Back

Halloween is the perfect horror movie, and Halloween 2 is the perfect horror movie sequel. I will die on that hill (only for my body to mysteriously disappear when Dr. Loomis looks away). An October 31st that passes by without watching these movies back to back is more tragic than the growing realization that there’s never going to be a Beetlejuice 2. Together, these movies are the definitive “Night HE Came Home” spectacular. Anything after Halloween 2 is a lot like the movies after Terminator 2 – really cool “what if” sequels that you can take or leave if you want. Of course, if you opt to “leave” a Halloween film featuring Donald Pleasence, then you’ve probably got no business watching a Halloween movie at all. 

The television version of the original film added new scenes that better connected it to its follow-up and gave credence to the sequel’s reveal that Laurie Strode is the long lost sister of Michael Myers – which, as verified by the latest series entry, is clearly the superior approach to Tommy Doyle’s pumpkin-toting babysitter. The additional footage offers the chance to combine the two movies and create The Godfather Saga of slashers and firmly establish the fact that there wouldn’t be a chaotic Halloween Multiverse full of conflicting timelines and Busta Rhymes if they’d just left well enough alone and allowed the smooth sounds of The Chordettes’ “Mr. Sandman” mark the definitive end of the world’s most committed trick-or-treater. 

….then again, it’s frightening to think of the barren wasteland we would most assuredly inhabit today without Halloween 5 and the cookie woman scene. 

Of course, it took more than The Yeti, Dr. Loomis, and The Ghost with the Most to get me through year after year of October cruelty, and I loooooove sequels, so tune in next week for more sanity-preserving monstrous madness!