#that was the same night surfing joker almost killed me

[falloutgirlboy]

one thing I can take pride in is the fact i coined Pebe

#i was reallt sleep deprived i was doing an all nighter for college work and I turned to my friend and went #what if we gave wentzporta the grank treatment. wjat if they were Pebe #that was the same night surfing joker almost killed me #anyway my title as the ceo of pebe as discord user wentzporta etc well deserved. im a little delirious #red.txt

[breadknight-likes-things]

Goosebumps (TV) Retrospective #8: Night Of The Living Dummy II

Remember when I told you on the last post that, due to how weird and complex the story of the original Mummy book was, the show just skipped it?  Well here we are again a just a single episode later in the same basic situation.  Night of the Living Dummy II is yet another sequel adapted in lieu of the original book, and this one is a lot more confusing (And not just because it flat out has “two” in the name) as besides needing another puppet, the first book probably wouldn’t have been that hard to adapt.  I’m getting ahead of myself here, lets just take a look at the general idea behind Night of the Living Dummy II and think about why, so many years later, Slappy is still a pretty freaky concept for a kids horror book. 

So if you’re at all familiar with Goosebumps as a thing, chances are the reason you know if it is Slappy, the titular “Living Dummy”(And or Curly the surfing Skeleton, who was never actually in a book).  Lets face it, ventriloquist dummies are weird as they are, they don’t need to be haunted by ancient wizard souls to be freaky, but if you’re like me, you’ll always find yourself looking at a Dummy, waiting to see if it’ll move on it’s own.  Slappy is the scenario wherein it does, but he doesn’t just stop at being alive, he’s a flat out evil force in the world and, bizarrely, openly wants to enslave every new living being he meets.  Slappy isn’t just scary because he’s a dummy come to life, he’s scary because he’s a weirdo sociopath who thinks the world exists to serve him first and foremost.  Sure it’s ridiculous to think that a 3 foot high dummy, one that’s killed multiple times by falling on surfaces that would give someone a light scrape on the knee, could enslave anything, but don’t let him hear you say that!

As far as dummies go, Slappy really is a perfectly constructed one for the purpose he needed to serve.  He looks like Alfred E. Newman and he radiates almost as much terror. But enough about Slappy, what situation has he found himself in this time?  Well, frankly, it’s among the most boring of the Living Dummy stories and it’s something of a bummer that this was chosen to be his big debut.  Amy Kramer is a kid who, inexplicably, is into Ventriloquist Dummies.  Part of her family rituals seems to be a weekly share night and Amy is, as is common in this series, getting resoundingly upstaged by her more traditionally talented siblings.  Her sister Sara dazzles the family with a new painting each week and her brother Jed dresses like Steve Jobs and secretly films everyone doing embarrassing things, which seems like it might be some kind of weird blackmail until he just sort of airs it for the family for a laugh?  You know what forget what I said about Slappy, we need to be watching out for Jed right now.  Amy is given a surprise gift of a new ventriloquist dummy and wouldn’t you know it!  It’s our old pal Slappy, just waiting for someone to read the incantation I’m fairly sure they stole from Army of Darkness to come to life and wreak havoc once more. And havoc he does wreak....and by havoc I of course mean he pulls off a series of pranks I can really only describe as “dick moves” and forcefully tries to grab a young child.  Frankly all the Slappy stories go about one way, Slappy plays a series of mean spirited pranks to make a characters life suck more and more until he finally just shows his hand and reveals himself to be alive, usually not until the very end of the story and usually right before he gets killed for the umpteenth time.  This particular story has pranks ranging from ruining Sara’s painting by crudely scrawling stick figures onto the canvas, brutally dunking on family members with jokes that are sold by the actors as if Slappy is just casually throwing out racial slurs, even though the worst thing he ever really says is “booger brain” and finally, oh yeah, attempting to beat Amy’s father to death with a guitar.  That last one is certainly as grim as the episode gets, and it’s not long after Slappy is defeated by the combined forces of the siblings, but it sticks out like a sore thumb in an episode where most of the “scary” ideas presented were about a threat on par with that one dick you were friends with but never really understood why.

“I filmed you without your permission everyone, this is my creative side, soon I’ll get a job on Impractical Jokers and you’ll all be jealous” -The mindset of the guy writing this script. I guess the only other really notable thing to mention, and it really is a footnote because it never comes into play beyond the very last seconds, is that Amy’s original dummy, Dennis, is the one that ultimately saves the day by delivering the killing blow to Slappy.  There was no foreshadowing or any kind of lead in to this final twist, never an indication that Dennis was also alive, but it’s treated like this grave reveal when the significantly less detailed, likely off the shelf of a party store, dummy reveals himself to also be alive and speaks in a voice that makes Goofy sound smart.  It’s one of those twists in Goosebumps that seems tossed in just to, you know, have a twist. 

Despite my gripes and jabs, Night of the Living Dummy II is far from the worst episode of Goosebumps.  Slappy alone and the excellent puppet work from the crew keeps it way above some of the trash that arrives later in the show, but it’s a bummer to see the franchises most iconic character debut in live action form in an episode like this, one that barely explores why he would even be scary, let alone provide any real scares to prove why he is.

If you have an answer for why Slappy farts out his own evil soul in the form of green gas when he’s killed, please tell me, because 20 years later I still got nothing.

#goosebumps #goosebumps tv show #goosebumps books #rl stine #R.L Stine #kids horror #horror #horror show #kids horror show #90s tv #90's tv #90's nostalgia #90's kids tv #90's kids #90's kid #kids books #kids tv #goosebumps retrospective #retrospective