Goosebumps

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2 Guys And A Chainsaw - A Horror Movie Review Podcast »
Goosebumps

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Spooky Season 2024 has arrived! We kick off our annual Halloween series with a kid-friendly horror flick that the whole family can enjoy, based on R.L. Stine’s kid-friendly Goosebumps series of horror novels from the 90’s.

Did you know that R.L. Stine has sold more books than Stephen King? That’s a cool tidbit we learned from the mouth of the author himself (as played by Jack Black, of course). The movie cleverly avoids the tricky task of which of Stine’s 63+ Goosebumps books to adapt by just throwing the whole lot into one movie.

How will these kids team up with the prolific author to put back all the monsters they’ve unleashed from his books? Watch the movie to find out, then listen in and see if you agree with our assessment of it.

Stay tuned for more Halloween thrills to come!

jack black and rl stine — Jack Black, left, and R.L. Stine on the set of Columbia Pictures’ “Goosebumps.”

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Goosebumps (2015)

Episode 409, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, the Halloween season is upon us.

Craig: It’s so exciting. Oh my god. I love it so much.

Todd: At times like this, I I wish I were back in America every single time, just for this one month, if I could just, uh, have Halloween.

Craig: I know, you say for just this one month, but honestly, Todd, I don’t know why it is, but Halloween is having like a moment, and People are getting so into it that it’s starting in like late August.

Oh my God. Like people, people are getting so excited for spooky season so early. And then like by the very beginning of September streaming services were already featuring like their spooky stuff and their horror stuff. And it’s brilliant. You’re trying to depress me, aren’t you? I’m not trying to depress you, I just want you to know how happy it makes me.

Oh god. Oh god. You know, I’ve got all the fall stuff out in my house, and it’s my favorite time of the year.

Todd: Is

Craig: Spirit

Todd: Halloween already open in a bunch of places?

Craig: I don’t know. I’m not, you know, my town’s not big enough for a Spirit Halloween, so I don’t know

Todd: about that. You get to trip down the road a little bit.

Yeah. Also, Spirit Halloween always feels to me like a little bit of a cop out. Like, we didn’t have that growing up, right? There was no big, giant Halloween store that would pop up around the country when we were kids. No. You had to go to the mall and go to the Walmart or whatever.

Craig: Well, sometimes.

Sometimes. Something would pop up in one of those empty spaces in the mall, like, just Rare. Around Halloween, and it would be exclusively, like, costumes and stuff like that, but Yeah. Not all the time. I’ve never been to a Spirit Halloween. I don’t have any idea what they, like, are like on the inside. I, the, I know what the logo looks like.

I know what it looks like slapped on a big abandoned warehouse, but

Todd: Right. I’ve never been in one. It’s an interesting business model, that, that place. I didn’t even get it, you know, like, how do these just happen? You know, when I first saw them, I thought they were some one guy’s kind of, like, thing that he just did in this one place, and then I noticed, you know, oh, other towns had them too, and then I realized it’s this big intranational thing, and it’s this whole business, and it’s so cyclical, and it’s so weird how they just find places to pop up that are empty.

And the last time I was back for Halloween, which was two years ago, I guess? I went to one of these places with Kenshi, and I was kind of blown away. I was like, man, their selection has grown. Like, they have things that they clearly have made specifically for them, exclusive to them. Animatronics that you can, like, put in your yard and at your house and on your door and I mean it’s kind of elaborate.

I was impressed, but all that shit just sounds expensive to me. When I was a kid, we made our own stuff.

Craig: You know? And then what do you do with it for the rest of the year? Like, um, Home Depot is selling those enormous skeletons. Which are great, and I think they’re, you know, fun. But they’re like, 20 feet tall or something.

Like, where do you put that for the rest of the year? I know, right? Gosh, I don’t know. One might think that we were talking about the movie Spirit Halloween, but we’re not. Thank God. I heard it’s bad. I heard it’s bad too, I haven’t seen it. We’ll cover one of these years. I was really surprised you didn’t put it on the list.

I thought for sure you would, but Eh, let’s get these other ones out of the way first, shall we? Well, I think that the ones that you picked Are really good if we stick to the plan, I think all but one of the ones that we have planned are family friendly movies. Yeah. And I love that. Yeah. I love that so much.

I, you know, I think it’s gosh, you know, I don’t have kids of my own. I’ve got nieces and nephews and like my cousins have kids that call me uncle and stuff. But I think what a better way to spend if you’re a big fan of that, like if you’re a grownup. And you’re a big fan of the holiday season, what better way to celebrate it than to share it with your family, your kids, young people in your life.

These movies are going to be a lot of fun to talk about.

Todd: Well, and we talk about these kind of movies as gateway horror, you know, family friendly, kid friendly movies that are still scary enough, but not really, that you can watch with a younger child as well, but an older child and adult will enjoy it as well.

I think of Halloween as sort of a gateway horror holiday anyway, you know? Yeah, yeah. It’s probably, I would imagine, where I, if not many of us, picked up our love for horror, the horror genre in general. No, at least in part, sure. Yeah, I mean, that’s what got me into spooky stuff, you know? That’s what got me into spooky music, and movies, and books, and all that.

I would say, probably, at least, like you said, a very large contributor to it. And nowadays, Halloween is springing up around the world like it wasn’t even 10, 20 years ago. I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but I could say from experience that when I was living and teaching in Japan in the early 2000s, 2001 to 2004, I was introducing Halloween to my students.

Mm. I did a big unit during October where we would talk about Halloween traditions in America, and I would dress up, you know, for that last week, and I would encourage the kids to dress up, and our English club, we would have Halloween parties, and I’d organize, like, bobbing for apples and other disgusting stuff like that.

And now, the last time I went to Japan in October, which was just a couple years ago, it’s a thing there. They’re almost as big on Halloween as we are in the States now. You did it. I saw Halloween every Yeah, it was me! I planted the seed. You’re all welcome. And it grew! Mission accomplished. Yay me. So yeah, so I, I feel like even our international listeners, if, if by now have probably know a lot more about the Halloween holiday than they would have 10, 20 years ago and can probably relate to some of these movies because some of the movies we’ve picked are very Halloween specific.

This one is not. This one is the 2015 film Goosebumps based on the Goosebumps series of books. It’s so funny because we’ve been talking about Christopher Pike a lot because we do, we have this ongoing Christopher Pike book club now since we did the Midnight Club and all that. Um, we did at least one or two minisodes about some Christopher Pike related stuff for our patrons and uh, so I’m really in that mind space.

Like you and I are now reading a Christopher Pike book like all the time now. We’re on what? Yeah. The sixth or seventh one I think?

Craig: I have no idea. A lot. We tried to figure this out yesterday. We were thinking more like nine or ten. I think you’re

Todd: right. I think you’re right. But like, that’s in my headspace now, recently, and it kind of brings me back to when I was an adolescent.

And I, Chris, R. L. Stine, and the Goosebumps were just a little too young for me when they came out. But I just remember at the time thinking of them as, Oh, this is like the Christopher Pike for the young kids. So, I never read a single Goosebumps book, but they were HUGE! Like, absolutely huge. And my understanding is they were huge around the world, they were translated into like 35 different languages.

I’ve talked to people I know from other countries who’ve said, Oh yeah, I read some of those books when I was growing up too. So, uh, major international phenomenon. I was surprised to learn, uh, the second best book serie uh, selling book series of all time. After Harry Potter? Yeah. Crazy. Wow. 400 or 450 million copies sold around the world and counting, and Harry Potter’s up to 600 million.

It’s just

Craig: nuts. Jack Black, who plays R. L. Stine in the movie, says something really early on.

Clip: You’re him,

Craig: aren’t you?

Clip: You’re R. L. Stine. R. L. who? I don’t know who that is. Oh, really? Well, just as well, because his books suck. What are you doing? I can’t decide which one I hate. Or, go eat worms. I’m so confused. You see the endings coming from a mile away.

It’s like, stop trying to be Stephen King, man.

Let me tell you something about Steve King. Steve King wishes he could write like me. And I’ve sold way more books than him, but nobody ever talks about that! Okay. WAY MORE BOOKS!

Craig: And I thought, that can’t be true. So I immediately looked it up and it is. What? That’s crazy. By a margin of like a hundred million.

Yeah, it blew, it blew my mind. But then I thought about it and I thought, wait a second. Stephen King, as prolific as he is, and he’s very prolific putting out like a book a year. I don’t know. Cause I didn’t follow the Goosebumps thing either. We had book club yesterday and we talked about this and they were all shocked.

You know, they’re all. One of them is, is exactly my age and the rest of them are about five years younger than me. So I think that it just, we, you and I just missed it. Like it was just too young for us. Just barely. So anybody even some, some people even just like five years younger than us who are into the same types of things that we were like, this was touchstone for them.

And they were shocked, shocked that I had never, Read a single rl stein book either you too, huh? Yeah, yeah, not a single one and I do I remember overlooking them because I read mostly steven king or excuse me Mostly christopher pike, but not exclusively there were some other adolescent teen Authors that I read occasionally, but I always looked at the goosebumps books and even just the way that they were published They were They looked like kids books.

They were made like kids books. They weren’t your standard novel size. They were, they were larger and the print was larger. They were shorter for sure. They were shorter. And the, the artwork on the front, what I really enjoyed it. I looked at it cause it was fun to look at, but. It looked more like it was for kids, and the subject matter looked more like it was for kids, like the blob that ate everyone, and Yeah.

Yeah, the titles sounded like they were meant for younger kids. Ultimately, I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t pick them up back then, because I think that I probably would have been pleasantly surprised, but Anyway, coming into this movie, I had seen it before. I didn’t realize how old it was. Gosh, time goes by so quickly when you’re an adult.

It’s true. I would have told you probably this movie came out four or five years ago. Yeah. It’s been almost ten years, so I had forgotten about that. But I know that I had seen it before, but I remembered nothing about it. And I always think, like, that can’t be a good sign. Like, if you saw it and you remember nothing about it, that can’t be a good sign.

But I was watching it yesterday. And I was, I really enjoyed it. Like, it’s not specifically centered around Halloween, but it feels like such, it feels like a Halloween movie. Ironically enough, there’s a sequel to it that is about Halloween. Like Halloween is in the title, but I don’t know anything about it, whether it’s good or not.

But I sat and watched this and I really liked it and it felt more like. Kids horror movies from when we were younger that they don’t really make it was still anymore

Todd: Yeah,

Craig: it was still maybe a little bit tamer, but it felt like the monster squad or yeah

Todd: Where kids are battling against monsters? Yeah that are in their neighborhood,

Craig: right and like action action heavy and Not terribly scary, but no a suspect like like it kept you on your edge of the seat Your seat and like the action sequences and stuff and it’s, it’s, it is action heavy with like car chases and big monsters, you know, running around, destroying the town and like, like a whole horde of months, like there’s a lot going on in this movie.

Todd: It’s, it’s got a madcap pace that kind of just never stops, but also it’s very inoffensive. Y’know, nobody dies, you never feel like anyone’s ever going to die or be hurt in any way, like, Y’know, it just has that tone of, Alright, this is like a, quote unquote, safe kid’s movie. Right. Y’know, my seven year old son might be scared by a few things in here, but not because there are horrible things happening, just because the monsters might be a little scary and he’ll think about them later, y’know?

Craig: Look a little scary, sure. Yeah,

Todd: yeah.

Craig: But I was also thinking, I, I, I wonder, I can only imagine that if you were a fan of the books, that this would be just glorious, like, because it references a countless number of, of his books. And, and I read that people had been interested in Anne R. L. Stine movie for a long time, but I think R.

L. Stine said, like, there were so many books that they didn’t know where to start or which one to choose. And at different. points in time different projects were being talked about like at one point Tim Burton was Toying with doing something with RL Stein George Romero wrote a script. Yeah For an adaptation of one of his books.

Can you imagine? I know

Todd: right

Craig: what of

Todd: course it was one that involves zombies I read a little synopsis of what it was supposed to be It was like the first one, Welcome to the Dead House or something, which involves zombies, I suppose. And George Romero wrote this thing where, yeah, eventually the neighborhood’s gonna be taken over by zombies and whatnot.

That would be interesting to see him doing a children’s movie like that. Did he ever do a children’s movie? I Somewhere in my head I think we did something childlike, but I don’t remember. I don’t know. Part of the genius, I guess, of this movie is that it takes the same approach that the Alone in the Dark movie did.

In that it’s not about any one book, and so it’s basically about the fictionalized other book. R. L. Stine and him writing these books, and in this world, his books are dangerous, you know, the books themselves. It’s

Craig: brilliant. Yeah. It’s a brilliant conceit, I love it. Well, we should, we should talk about it when we get Yeah,

Todd: but yeah, so that’s why this book, this, this movie had, took so long to come out, is because they, everybody was fretting over which book to do, and none of them could really agree or figure out a good story for a full length movie based on it.

Any one of these short books. So yeah, I like that aspect to it too. I think Jack Black is always fun and great in the stuff he’s in. And like you, uh, well, unlike you, I’d never seen this movie before. But, uh, like you, I jumped into it knowing full, full well what it was. I was not disappointed by it. And I was kind of along for the ride.

And not at all scared ever, but uh, enjoying myself nonetheless and, and what better movie to put you in the Halloween spirit, you know, than something like this.

Craig: And it’s fun and funny and, and it’s shot well. One of my only complaints, and it’s like, I don’t know, who cares? The CGI is a little iffy in places.

It’s a little dated. Yeah. And it’s, uh, It’s pretty CG, it’s CGI heavy. So that was a little disappointing, but get over it. Like, okay, great. It doesn’t look that great, but just enjoy it for what it is. Hey, if

Todd: we can handle choppy stop motion animation from an earlier day and, uh, you know, grubby prosthetic effects and things like that, this, uh, we can handle crummy CGI, I suppose.

Less than perfect CGI. Let’s put it that way.

Craig: Yeah. It’s pretty to look at and it’s got. Really good people in it people that you will recognize not necessarily like huge a list stars But I recognize so many people in this movie and it’s funny So it’s got a lot going for it out of the gate. It’s this story about okay, so it starts out I don’t know If now we have to say every aerial shot of a car driving down a road is an homage to the shining.

I have no idea, but that’s how it starts. An aerial shot of a car driving into this small town. So typical, dragging a U Haul, classic horror movie setup. Exactly. Oh, we’re, we’re moving to a new place, right? Okay, great. So it’s, it’s Zach played by Dylan Minnette, who was in, I think he’s most famous for like the 13 reasons why series, which I haven’t seen, but he was also in one of the new screams that I’m.

I think you and I talked about, I don’t remember, and his mom, single mom, I don’t know if they, did the dad die? I don’t remember. I think

Todd: that, I mean, we never get it clearly said to us, but, uh, it seems like he did. The way that they’re kind of like, uh, staring at his picture, and his son is looking at old videos of him, it seems more like he died rather than he left.

Craig: Yeah, single mom Gail, played by Amy Ryan, who was great in The Office, and she was also in Only Murders in the Building. She’s so funny. She doesn’t have a huge role here, but I just, I’m a big fan of hers. So, they move into this big house in this little small town, and it’s, it looks, you know, like Grover’s Corners, like, you know, like, every, every back lot, small town set you’ve ever seen.

Todd: By the way, it, it’s, uh, Did it strike you that this beautiful house on this street was impossibly large for these two people? I mean,

Craig: Oh, it’s always that always like that, right? I mean, it’s huge houses.

Todd: You’re a school teacher. Do you think that an assistant principal at the local public school would be able to afford

Craig: like this?

Oh, gosh, no, no, especially now like that house would be over a million dollars. Oh, yeah. Oh, gosh. Okay, so it bit right away. Zach sees The somebody next door, like, like close the blinds really fast or something. And then he meets the guy next door, Jack Black, who introduces himself as Mr. Shivers, but he’s R.

L. Stein. And there’s an Aunt Lorraine who is played by Jillian Bell, who I recognized just last year. There was, I think it was just last year. There was a new Christmas movie starring Eddie Murphy called Candy Cane Lane, and she’s the funny antagonist in it. And that’s a really cute movie. If you haven’t seen it, you should watch it this Christmas time.

We also meet a young girl, you know, apparently Zach’s age. Hannah, played by Odeya York, I didn’t really recognize her from anything, but there’s obviously a connection between these young people right away and they’re gonna be little cute love interests or whatever. But R. L. Stein warns Zach.

Clip: Do you see the fence?

I, yes. Stay on your side of it. You stay away from my daughter. You stay away from me. And we won’t have a problem.

Craig: Yes. Multiple times. If I’m being totally honest, I’m a big Jack Black fan. I think that he’s a hilarious actor and he seems to be a really cool, genuinely good guy in real life. I just wasn’t feeling his choices in this movie.

And that’s just a personal opinion. I read somewhere that Jim Carrey was a At one point in time considered for the role. I’m not as big a fan of Jim Carrey as I am of Jack Black, but R. L. Stein, the actual man makes a cameo in the end of this movie. And he, Jim Carrey would have Jim Carrey looks like he would have kind of nailed it.

Todd: The best that Jack Black can do is some dark, uh, glasses. Some dark rimmed glasses. And he’s affecting what he said was more of an Orson Welles type of approach. And it, I mean it does. He sounds like he’s affecting a kind of Orson Welles accent. And it’s fine. I mean, but you’re right. It’s nothing special, I guess.

It’s not Particularly endearing or funny. It’s just kind of vanilla. I don’t know. What can you say about it? Yeah.

Craig: Yeah, I mean he made a choice and that’s fine. It’s just I didn’t particularly care for it but and then there’s also You know the mom is the vice principal at the school and the son goes to school and like meets people and stuff and he meets this Dorky kid named champ who’s played by this kid Named Ryan Lee, who was doing a lot of work at this time and just before he was in a hilarious TV show with Malin Ackerman called Trophy Wife, which got canceled after one season.

And I was so mad because it was hilarious. Bradley Whitford was in it. Gosh, some other really good people were in it. That was so funny. Alan and I liked it so much and it got canceled. He was in that and he was doing a lot of other work as a kid. I don’t know if he’s still doing a lot of work now, but he’s really funny.

He’s so

Todd: funny. He was in Black Friday, which was one of our holiday picks. Was it last year or the year before? Yeah. Yeah. He played one of the. One of the employees in the store. Yeah, whatever it was.

Craig: So I guess what Zach and Hannah though They’ve been forbidden to see each other immediately see each other Yeah, you know, she doesn’t go to school with them and she’s like what’s high school really like or something and he’s like What do you mean?

She’s like, well, I’m homeschooled. Okay, whatever but she’s like, come on Let me show you something and they go out into the woods behind their house Behind their house, I guess, which like overlooks the whole town. Like it’s gorgeous. And there’s an abandoned carnival out there and it’s apparently been abandoned for a long time.

He’s like, Whoa, you know, what’s this place? And she’s like, Oh, they built it a long time ago, but then they ran out of money, but then she goes on to like flip a switch on a generator and like the whole place lights up,

Todd: the whole thing. As improbable as, uh, this little abandoned carnival in the middle of the woods right behind their house with a giant Ferris wheel that goes up above the tall treetops and this cool looking farmhouse. And

Craig: it’s like her secret place. Yeah,

Todd: right? Like, uh, as cool as that is, as unlikely as that was.

I would have loved to have that to explore as a kid.

Craig: Oh my gosh. It’s an amazing set piece. Like there’s like a fun house and it’s really fun. And for a movie like this, it’s a great set piece and they return to it later, but they have a cute little moment or whatever. And I don’t really remember. So I guess when they come home.

They get caught? Is that what happens? No, when

Todd: they come home, she just goes into her house, he’s sleeping, and uh, he wakes up to hear arguing across the way. And when he looks out the window, he sees the shadow of her and her dad, R. L. Stine, and she screams. And he panics, he thinks that maybe she’s in trouble, and he runs over there and bangs on the door.

Doesn’t really get a response, gets and then ends up calling the cops.

Craig: Yeah, and these dumb, dumb cops come over. Oh

Todd: my god, the cop thing was so stupid. Like, look, I don’t have high expectations for the, you know, this movie being particularly clever, witty, or realistic. I know they’re throwing in a lot of slapstick and a lot of these jokes, and it’s a it’s a very kid type humor with a lot of this stuff.

But those cops were just Almost offensively dumb. I mean, come on. One of them is so stupid. The guy opens the door and she whips her gun out and says, Freeze! And the other cop’s like, Calm down, calm down. I’m sorry. She’s our cop in training right now. No, we don’t need guns at this point, ma’am. Like, oh my god.

Craig: And the kid says he heard a scream and Jack Black shows them a TV with like, I don’t know, like he’s watching a horror movie and a girl screams. I don’t know if one of them says, why is it so loud? And he says, Freeze! I’m sorry, is it against the law to be an audio file? And she like freaks out and rips out her gun.

Oh, what a file. Like he insulted her. No, like she, like she thought he had a file. Yeah. Like she didn’t know what the word meant. Right. Cause she’s a dummy. Like that’s the whole gag. She’s a big dumb dummy.

Todd: Not only a big dumb dummy, but a big dumb dummy who just is gonna whip out her gun at every small infraction.

Yeah.

Craig: Oh boy, oh boy. So stupid. But he says Hannah’s not even there. He says she flew back to London.

Todd: He said that she’s visiting him, like, because she’s on holiday from her mother.

Craig: Her mother’s getting remarried or something? I don’t know. So he says she’s gone. The cops leave. But then, Zach sees him arguing with somebody again in there.

So, he’s like, He, he calls champ over and, and lies and says, they’re going to go to the dance. By the way, this is the night of the dance. That’s so funny. Right?

Todd: Cause like they’re making this big deal about the dance and Zach has no indication of he’s going to go to this dance at all. No. Well, I mean, they just got there.

He doesn’t know what he, I don’t know. But his mom’s got to go there and like chaperone the thing. There’s like no mention made of it, except that she says to somebody, well, I gotta go chaperone the dance now. Also, Are they having

Craig: a dance on like the first weekend of school? Like, didn’t school just start?

I think so, yeah. Like the first night.

Back to school dance. It’s formal. That good old fall

Todd: dance that

Craig: gets earlier and earlier every year. So he calls champ over to, and says like, I’ve got a couple of girls and we’ll go to the dance. So champ, champ comes over in a full suit. Like, and so he’s wearing this suit and he’s such a goofy looking kid anyway.

So then to put him in a full suit for the whole movie, it’s, it’s. It’s pretty hilarious, but they set it up that I guess Zach set it up. He called R. L. Stein’s house and claimed to be the police and said he needed to come down to the station. And then he and champ break in through the cellar. Where there are bear traps?

Lots of bear traps. Down there,

Todd: yeah. I’m

Craig: not exactly sure why.

Todd: I think by the end of the movie it might be, that might be why. Like their protection for him, not, not about people coming in, but about things getting out. Also, who would do that? You know how dangerous those bear traps are? Right. Yeah, you’ll shatter your leg and permanently injure yourself break your leg to come downstairs and but yeah He makes his way through the bear traps and I’m sure I am sure there are tons of little Easter eggs down there with all The detritus that’s sitting around.

I know there’s a cuckoo clock that pops out at him that references one of our L Sine stories and whatnot, but they make it through the basement they come up into the house now It’s really funny to me that The conceit here is that R. L. Stine and his daughter there move around a lot, like every few years or every couple years or something like that.

Like, they’re always on the move. But when you look at this house, it looks like they are set up and have been living in there for centuries. Ha ha ha ha ha. Yeah. It’s got all this antique y furniture in there. It’s your classic, almost like a spooky mansion type set up with things. Yeah. Including, what they come across is a bookshelf that lights up and is filled with manuscripts.

Bound manuscripts, all of them with the same just plain black cover and taped on the side. And

Craig: handwritten titles.

Todd: Yeah, there’s a lot of care put into these books, including having his name stamped at the bottom of every one. R. L. Stine. But when it came down to the title, he had to hand write it on and And they’re all locked.

These are all Goosebumps manuscripts. What’s he doing

Clip: with a bunch

Todd: of kids books? But,

Clip: but, these aren’t kids books. Okay, kids books help you fall asleep. These books keep you up all night. Okay. Carl Stein, whatever happened to that guy?

Craig: That’s a good question. Like, is, is he still writing? Do you know?

Todd: Yeah, he’s still writing.

He’s still doing, he’s been a writer since forever. Even before the Goosebumps. You know, the Goosebumps books, because I was very curious about this. He was almost 50. When he started writing the Goosebumps books and then he he pumped out like 63 of them and plus some spin off series and you know normally Writers who do this kind of thing, like even the big writers, will have ghost writers.

The Nancy Drew and Hardy Boy books were written by so many different people just under one pen name. But R. L. Stine literally sat down and wrote every single one of these books. He’s super prolific. And before he started writing the Goosebumps books, he was writing for television, he Do you remember a Nickelodeon show called Eureka’s Castle?

Vaguely, I don’t think I watched it, but the name sounds familiar. The late 80s and stuff. He created that show, and uh, wrote most of the material for it, and was writing Humor. Books for kids, and, and, always kids stuff, it seems like. He got into writing these Goosebumps things at the request of a publisher who I think wanted to start this series, and, uh, that just really, really took off.

65 books, I mean, can you imagine? Now, the guy apparently was at his height here at this era, and this would have been from the 92 to 90. I mean, this was right when we were in high school, and I think that’s why it just kind of bypassed us, but it’s like 92 to 95 or 96 at his height. He was making 40 million a year.

Craig: Oh my gosh.

Todd: You believe it?

Craig: He’s so widely known, and his properties are used all the time, like, Netflix is still doing those Fear Street movies. There’s a new one coming out soon, I think. Is there

Todd: really?

Craig: I’m happy to hear that, because I liked the first three. I really did. Yeah, I’m pretty sure. But yeah, so there’s all these books, and they’re all locked.

But there’s a key in, under a bell jar, just in plain sight, like, lock that up, bro!

It’s so dumb. So they get it out. And they pop open one of the books and it like falls to the floor and then Hannah appears and she’s like, what are you doing here? And they’re like, we thought you were in trouble and I don’t know. And she’s like, you didn’t open a book, did you? And he’s like, yeah, but it’s fine.

And he picks it up and it starts to like match. I really liked this sequence. Like the, the letters start to like bleed off of the page into the air. And then they are kind of like smoke. And it was awesome. They start to fall. Yeah, it was really cool. And it eventually forms the Abominable Snowman because that’s the book that they opened and it’s not great CGI.

I mean, It looks fine, but it looks, it doesn’t look like a real thing in the

Todd: room. I know what you mean. It’s early CGI, earlier CGI. It’s not that early. It’s 2015 for God’s sakes, but it’s still not, I read that this was Sony picture animations, first film that wasn’t an animated film, correct? So I assume that their animated film division did a lot of this.

And so I assume that they didn’t have. As much experience with doing something that was a mix. Yeah. So probably getting that mix of live action animation right, it probably was a little, a bit of an earlier effort for them.

Craig: Well, and maybe it was a choice. Maybe it was a choice to make it a little bit more cartoony.

Maybe if it had been too real, it wouldn’t have been. Well, that’s true. For kids. Yeah. I don’t know. Whatever. It’s an Abominable Snowman. Okay. So, you know, it. I don’t know, what, chases them and stuff? And then it busts out of the house, like it busts like the whole side, the whole side out of the house. And then Jack Black comes back, he’s like, See, I told you something bad would happen!

Todd: Well, I just think it’s funny because the minute they leave the house and they go to, I guess, I guess they follow the path of destruction or something. It’s just so hilarious because it’s the middle of the night. So of course they, you know, they want to situate at night cause it’s more fun. And I guess the whole neighborhood, they’re just very, very heavy sleepers because this abominable snowman has apparently stomped through the whole neighborhood, led a path of cars with their alarms going off.

Nobody ever pops out of a house to see what’s going on and leads them somehow to the ice rink. Of course the Abominable Snowman is gonna make a beeline for the ice rink, right? Yeah. And the minute they pop into this old ice rink, I’m thinking, Oh, this is cute. So I wonder, how many different little set pieces are we gonna have around town?

You know? Is there gonna be the arcade? A lot. Is there gonna be, obviously we’re gonna be at the school at some point. We gotta end up at the carnival, probably at the end. And so I, just in my head, I was kinda checking off the boxes of all the different places they could go. And by golly, they hit almost all of them.

Ha ha ha ha! But it’s at the ice rink and so she opens the book and she gets close enough to it The whole movie feels like one big chase sequence after a while. Yeah, it does but it’s fun. It is exciting Yeah This is the beginning of it and so she sucks the ends up they end up together getting that thing sucked back into the book Because Jack Black shows up

Craig: right?

Yeah, he’s there with them. He drove them there. I think But that’s, that’s the setup is that I guess if you get, it’s like Ghostbusters, like you get close enough to him and you open up the book and it’ll like suck them back in before they leave the house, Jack Black monologues about what happened, like when he was a kid, he was lonely and he didn’t have any friends.

And so he had to invent his own friends and, and he invented these monsters and he wrote about them and then. They came to life

Todd: because his imagination was just so vivid. It’s a real ego stroke for R. L. Stine. Let’s put it that way.

Craig: Well, it’s better than the real story. Well, one day I was approached by a publisher.

I suppose so. But he has to keep them, he has to keep them locked in the books, that’s the only way to be safe, they have to stay locked in the books. And also before they leave, you see another book just pop open, I’m not really sure why that is. Yeah. But another book just pops open, so. That seemed

Todd: Like, cheating.

I didn’t get that at all. If they were all locked by the key, and the key was keeping them safe, and he screwed up by unlocking the book, why does this one book, that just because it fell on the floor, gets to pop open on its own later? But they all kinda do, I guess, don’t they? It’s not the only one.

Craig: Well, no, because I feel I don’t remember when it happens, but you see, when that book opens up, it’s Night of the Living Dummy.

So, Slappy, the ventriloquist dummy, Is out like I feel like slappy’s doing his own thing back at the house Like he burns his own book and he’s like talking to He says i don’t papa. He calls rl stein papa He’s like papa all of your children are coming out to play and he takes all the books and I think He opens them.

Yeah, I think you’re right. It’s a little tenuous. I think he opens some of them, but then there’s also a big reveal at the, like, not a reveal, but there’s a big moment at the end where they open all of them. So some monsters come

Todd: out first. Yeah, I guess you’re right. Well, he takes all the books and he ends up driving off.

We don’t get to see how the dummy drives the car, but, you know, he’s magical. He gets he can do what he wants. He drives off and leaves them to come home. And when they all get back, they find that the books are open and something’s burned. He’s like, oh no, this is my biggest, uh, Basically, I think that Night of the Living Dummy was one of the most notorious of his books, right?

It’s one of the most recognizable characters and covers.

Craig: I think in large part because of the TV show. I think that And I may be wrong because I didn’t watch the TV show either, but I think that Slappy was a big part of the TV show. I think, I could be making that up. But yeah, I think it’s one of his most iconic ones.

Yeah. I can picture clearly the book cover, that character is, and I think that it’s an iconic character for a certain generation. I think that Well, you know, ventriloquist dummies, this isn’t new. That’s the thing, like, his books aren’t particularly novel, for lack of a better word. Like, they, immediately when they get back, they get attacked by garden gnomes.

At some point, there’s a blob, like literally the blob.

Todd: It’s

Craig: literally

Todd: pink and big and

Craig: veiny, just like the blob is,

Todd: yeah.

Craig: And I just remember seeing Seeing those book covers and I remember seeing all of these specific ones. I remember seeing the the lawn gnomes the The giant praying mantis the man eating plants and yeah, the venus fly traps that are the venus fly traps I remember seeing those and just thinking Oh, that’s cute.

Like, like that’s taming down horror for, for kids. Yeah. But I didn’t feel like it was for me. But it is cute. And like, the aliens that freeze the cops, you know, like there’s these aliens walking, they, they kind of look like, kind of, not really, kind of like the Mars attacks aliens running around, like freezing people in the street and stuff.

All of this is. It’s cute. It’s cute, but it’s also super fun. Like, I don’t want to make it sound like it’s stupid because I didn’t find it stupid at all. I was really into it. I’m like, this is fun. Well,

Todd: I mean, I think, you know, what you and I are kind of talking about, it’s probably why we didn’t pick up the books in the first place.

It’s because we looked at them. We’re like, yeah, that’s cute. But you know, I’m just like, I’m not going to pick up a kid’s book about Frankenstein’s monster or a mummy. I’m Probably going to give these a pass, but when you throw them all together in this movie, like you said, like the monster squad or whatever, it becomes kind of fun.

It’s, I’ve heard this movie described as sort of a cabin in the woods for kids.

Craig: Yeah, yeah, sure.

Todd: All the monsters of all different kinds have been released and they’re wreaking havoc and it’s, that’s fun. I really actually, I really like this garden dome sequence. I thought it was one of the most clever sequences in the whole movie.

Because, you know, these garden gnomes are made out of, you know, they’re ceramic and they’re hollow and so there’s all this cuteness of where they kind of come out of the book and they assemble themselves and they’re going to work like as a team doing things and then Jack Black and the kids come home and they’ve got to fight them off and they’re breaking them and they’re shattering them and they’re Chucking them in the oven and watching them burn up, but then like the pieces of them are able to reassemble

Craig: Yeah, but they can’t be killed.

Yeah, they can’t be killed at all. None of the monsters can correct Yeah, I guess that’s what the bear traps are for But all it does is slow them down because they Hannah told them told the boys When they were chasing the abominable snowman, they can’t be killed. The only thing that you can do is get them back in the book.

So, and, and again, like you said, nobody dies in the movie. Literally nobody, like not even the bad guys die. Like, uh, if, if your, if your kid gets attached to those little gnomes, he’ll see them get crushed, but they just. reassemble themselves and are fine.

Todd: The monsters don’t seem to give a care. The people, you know, you know, are gonna be fine.

It’s just that kind of movie. I love it that, that Slappy now goes to, I think the only other two characters in the movie they can possibly do something to, and that’s the two cops. Who are apparently the only two cops on the force in the town. And they come back, and their police station I think is dark or whatever, and they flip on the light, and there is Slappy sitting in the chair.

And immediately, of course, the cop draws her gun on him, and he looks at her, And he says my favorite line in the whole movie.

Clip: I come in peace, unarmed! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Craig: Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Oh

Clip: god. He’s

Craig: funny. Slappy is funny. And I do like Jack Black’s performance as Slappy. Yeah, his voice, right. He’s not credited.

Yeah, it’s his voice.

Todd: And thank God that for most of it, too, they didn’t use CGI on Slappy. That was an honest to God puppet, and you could tell it was really, it was really good that they did it that way, I think.

Craig: Loved him. Loved that he was the, uh primary antagonist. Because, basically, he’s leading this army of monsters, and, and, the aliens come in and freeze the cops, and, you know, we just, we keep kind of cutting back and forth between people.

At one point, we check in with Aunt Lorraine, and she hears something at her door, and she opens the door, and There’s a, a poodle there with like a, something on it’s forehead, I couldn’t tell what it was, like a pink flower, just a pink, or something, and she goes to get water and she comes back and it’s floating and then it like turns into an evil, like, like it’s face like monsters out, oh, and I loved that, and I’m sure, I’m sure that poodle the video.

Of course it is. Everything is, is, is from the book, but, oh, it’s just, it’s so funny.

Todd: I

Craig: think Zach is the one that figures out that the way that they have, the only way that they can solve this is if R. L. Stein writes a book about capturing all the monsters at once. And then, and then they’ll all be captured or whatever.

And he’s, he’s like, start writing. And he’s like, no, I need my magic typewriter, which again is also from one of the books. It’s a typewriter that makes stories come to life or something. And for some reason, his magic typewriter is in one of the trophy cases at the school. So was he like an alumnus of

Todd: this university or something

Craig: of this

Todd: school or

Craig: something?

I have no idea. Cause you said they moved around and stuff. I miss that part too. I miss that. I don’t remember. Well, she’s talking maybe she was lying.

Todd: When she’s talking to, to the, to him, they’re opening up, right? She’s talking to Zach and Zach’s talking to her. Her name is, uh, Hannah, right? They’ve got their budding little love, cute little young love romance boo going, and she says to him something about how she knows how he feels about feeling alone sometimes because.

She has been moving around every couple years. I don’t know if that means that she’s been bouncing back and forth between him and his supposed mother in London, or if Okay. I thought it meant that the two of them had been moving around a lot.

Craig: So here’s the deal, like, there’s a whole Great scene with the werewolf that if you want to talk about it, we can, but it’s very soon after that it’s when they get to the school, it happens a couple of times, I think the first time they’re running through a graveyard, yeah,

Todd: cemetery, the,

Craig: the, the moonlight shines directly on her and she becomes.

Like ethereal and ghost like. And after seeing that happen a couple of times, he figures out that she’s a ghost or a monster or something. And eventually he confronts R. L. Stein about it. And R. L. Stein’s like, yeah, I wrote, cause he was lonely or something. He just wanted a daughter, but he says, she doesn’t know I wrote her.

To believe she was a real, alive girl. Right. So, maybe all of her memories are just a construct, because she is just a fiction, she’s a written character.

Todd: It could be, that’s true. So maybe he did grow up in that town, and everybody knows him as the author, which begs the question, why is he using some weird alias?

Mr. Shivers or whatever. I don’t know. I don’t, I guess we don’t need to look too deeply into it. But who cares? It is a big surprise when it’s like, Oh, the typewriter was at the school in the trophy case with his name on it. All right. Yeah, you’re right. There’s a deal with those, with the werewolf at the supermarket and Lorraine, Aunt Lorraine shows up.

Craig: I loved it. It’s great. The werewolf chases them all around the supermarket and it’s, It’s, it’s fun and, and again, not great at CGI, but it’s a super fun scene and, and Lorraine

Todd: takes one glance at R. L. Stine and seems to suddenly get so smitten and, and he likewise that it’s a, it’s like a Disney movie. Oh, oh my God, what’s your name?

I’m R. L. Stine. It’s really funny. I’m Lorraine.

Craig: Okay. And I think he starts to run away with the kids and, She says something like, do you want to exchange the numbers? And he says something like, yes, but this isn’t a great time. Something like, it’s really cute.

Todd: Yeah. So supermarket with werewolf, cemetery with zombies.

Craig: Exactly. That’s what I was just going to say. You said it’s a lot of set pieces, supermarket with the werewolf, cemetery, then they run through a cemetery and there are a bunch of zombies, all like thriller style. And it looks great, but it literally takes, it’s like 30 seconds. Like it’s a, they literally just run through the cemetery, the zombies chase them, and then they’re out the other side.

And right into the high school, where a formal dance is happening, high school dances in movies always look like so much fun. They’re not like that in real life, guys. I wish they were half as fun as they

Todd: looked in the movies,

Craig: that’s

Todd: for

Craig: sure.

Todd: With

Craig: all the drama. Yeah, it is not a bunch of gorgeous twenty something looking People in couture.

Their best clothes. Right. Like

Todd: super expensive decorations hanging up

Craig: everywhere. And amazing like DJ and like lights. It looks really fun. It’s really just a bunch of awkward sweaty teenagers in a cafeteria.

Todd: With some

Craig: paper streamers. And handmade signs. Oh boy. It’s pretty

Todd: pathetic. They have their own charms.

I actually miss high school dances a lot. I used to have a lot of fun at those, but not everybody did. It could be very awkward.

Craig: You’re welcome to come take my chaperoning dude. One, if you need to relive that experience. That’s a high school student. I miss them. I don’t think I’d want to be chaperoning one.

Anyway, okay, so then they end up at the high school. They take the stage. They, yeah, he does. I guess he kind of runs off on his own. For some reason, the teenagers all end up like in the dance. I guess their champ wants to like warn everybody. Like he gets on the mic and warns them all about something bad happening or, or something.

And they don’t believe him. But then some kid. Is standing up, looking out the window and he starts shouting, Oh my gosh, there’s something ripping something’s head off or I don’t know. And everybody thinks that he’s joking in response to their announcement, but then doesn’t, does the praying mantis bust in?

Is that what happens?

Todd: Yep. And now all hell breaks loose. In the meantime, Jack Black’s character, R. L. Stine, has his typewriter, and he needs to sneak away to write. And what better place for him to go is in the theater, where he opens the door, looks at the stage, and they’re set up for a production of The Shining.

Craig: I didn’t catch that. Did you catch that? I read about it, but I didn’t notice. No, it said The

Todd: Shining in big letters over the stage. Oh, gosh. Yeah, and he goes, oh my god. That was so funny. That was so funny. Oh my God. I just, that was my second favorite part of the whole movie. The first one was that line, I’m, I’m unarmed from the ventriloquist dummy.

The second thing was him sitting down at a typewriter on a stage production of The Shining.

Craig: Well, he, his animosity towards Stephen King. Like there, it, it, there are like two or three different jokes. Yeah. That that’s funny. That’s funny. Yeah. But also

Todd: that the shining is about, you know, a guy who’s trying to write a story.

A writer.

Craig: Right, right,

Todd: right. And I just, again, I love the conceit. I’m just going to go with it. We all know it’s crazy, but this guy can plunk out cause he’s like, it’s got to be a real goosebump story. You know, I can’t just like write three sentences and they say the end. It’s got to be a full story with a twist in it and that whole deal.

And within the course of five minutes, this guy has pumped out all, but maybe the last three sentences of his story.

Craig: Slappy shows up there and they have a confrontation, but Slappy has also, Gathered all of the monsters outside the high school, like on the football field. And that’s when they also open all the rest of the books.

So there’s literally like a horde of them in there. I would like to watch it again and just. Almost just pause that scene where they show the whole horde of them because it is like cabin in the woods there at the end when it’s just a whole sea of villains and but they’re all specific like a killer clown stands out but oh gosh there are just so so many and and they all attack the school I don’t remember what happens with Jack Black and Slappy in the theater.

Slappy

Todd: confronts Jack Black and leaps up onto his typewriter to interrupt his writing and then slams the lid of the typewriter down on his fingers, which apparently breaks all of his fingers, and that’s gonna prevent him from being able to continue his story. I think the kids burst in, somehow the dummy disappears, and they run away.

With the typewriter, but Jack Black’s like, you know, eventually like, You’ve gotta finish the story or I’m gonna dictate it to you, and that’s kinda how it goes. But you can’t forget the moment where Champ gets his girl too. In the hallway.

Craig: Oh, yeah. He saves her from the werewolf, right? Oh, God, that was so cute.

Todd: This girl who we only saw in the very beginning.

Clip: And

Todd: here

Clip: she’s getting attacked

Todd: by the werewolf. The werewolf has her cornered. And Champ, in this big bout of uncharacteristic courage, leaps up onto his back. And I’m thinking, how in the world is this guy gonna fight off this werewolf, you know? And he bites into the werewolf’s neck, and the werewolf completely freaks out, becomes very incapacitated, and sort of scurries off.

And like, what was that? And she pulls him aside and he’s like, opens his mouth and he goes, Silver fillings.

Craig: Yeah. He’s got, he’s got like at least one whole silver tooth. He’s like, yeah, when I was a kid, I didn’t brush my teeth for a whole year.

Oh boy. That was really funny. And then they

Todd: kiss because she is so overtaken by him suddenly in his act of bravery that she’s ready to mound him right there in the hallway. So. Oh gosh,

Craig: yeah that was sweet, and he’s such, he’s funny, that kid, that actor is really really funny. He really is. And so, endearing.

So charming, I, I, yeah, I was so happy to see him get his kiss, that was sweet. But then, okay, so they have to, they, the monsters are all converging, so they have to figure out a way to get out of there. Like, Jack Black is, like, Slappy just wants me, I’ll go out there, and you guys, the rest of you can get away.

And Zack’s like, no, no, I have a plan. Ten, you, you explain the plan, cause I, it’s a little fuzzy to me.

Todd: I’m not sure, I’m not sure if I looked away from the screen at this moment. I feel like I must have, because the next thing I know, they’re driving away in a school bus. Jack Black is going some other direction.

And then, the monsters have attacked another school bus and got down on its side.

Craig: It’s a mislead. It’s an intentional mislead because, like, it looks like Jack Black is driving. A bus away, and I guess he is, but, but the bus that the, the first bus that the monsters think is Jack Black, they attack it, and it’s empty, there’s not even a driver, right?

I don’t think there’s a driver, like, but it drives a long way.

Todd: It drives a long way, it doesn’t have a driver, they leap onto it, and when it’s, it’s kind of on its side, and so when I think it’s the werewolf opens the door in it, they can peer inside and see. I What is in there is some kind of weird Rube Goldberg type contraption that apparently these kids were able to rig up in two minutes.

In seconds. Yeah. A

Craig: bomb.

Todd: Yeah,

Craig: that explodes. It’s a huge bomb, like, it’s a huge explosion that like blows up. Tons of the monsters, again, they just regenerate, so it doesn’t really matter. But, it, it was a decoy, it was a decoy bus, and the rest of them really are on a bus.

Todd: But also, like you had said earlier, in the way the monsters assemble, I like the way that they de assemble that way as well.

Like, when it blows them up, they all kind of explode into ink, which then just, you know, is on the ground. And then, of course, that ink just reassembles itself back into the monsters. But it’s so cool, like, it’s, it ties really well into the theme. theme of the words coming to life from the page, but also makes this movie extremely non violent for kids, right?

There’s no blood, no bits of monster going anywhere even. It’s a neat conceit and it works.

Craig: It almost, it, yeah, it kind of reinforces, subtly reinforces that they’re just make believe. Yeah, yeah. This is just pretend, this is just imagination, nobody’s getting hurt. It’s fine. True. And

Todd: also that they’re immortal, you know, like the words on the page in our imaginations, they’re immortal, you know, you can’t kill these things.

It also adds this element of what in the world are they going to do to it that I really liked, you know. You see the big bomb go off, and I thought for a minute, Oh, now they only have Slappy to deal with. Because Slappy wasn’t there. Right. But, nope, they all reassemble, and I was like, Oh shit, no, there’s still a full on horde coming at them, so.

Craig: Yeah, so they go back to the carnival for the big final showdown, I guess.

Todd: They run into the funhouse first, and they’re all inside the funhouse, and Jack Black is dictating the rest of the story to Zack, and he’s typing furiously away. But then Slappy immediately appears in the funhouse, and all these different mirrors, and at one point there’s kind of a superimposition where, you know, the way the reflection in the mirror works, it looks like half of R.

L. Stine and half of, Slappy go together in the same person. I

Craig: found that hilarious. I like they’re treating it like a psychological thriller in this moment. And I, the way that it’s shot, that’s what it looks like. And I don’t remember any of the lines, but I just remember it’s Jack Black talking to himself.

Yes. And honestly, like I actually like that component of it too. Like. He really is talking to himself, you know, this is his creation, you

Todd: know. It’s a little heady for the kids, but it’s kind of a nice little throw in there to make it more interesting for the adults, I think, you know.

Craig: But it’s, it’s kind of like slappy and I like that part that you mentioned where they do kind of, it’s not split screen, it’s, it’s meant to be like, you know, part of the illusion of the mirrors in the, the fun house, but their, their faces are.

You know, one half is Jack Black, one half is Slappy, and well, it was cool. I liked it.

Todd: He makes some comments earlier, and I don’t remember the context and exactly when he said them or why he said them, but he does make some allusions to the fact that Slappy was his most, um, um, Like, the character he related to the most, or the one that he thought was the most like him, or There’s something along those lines that is said more than once earlier in the story.

Like, this is gonna be his nemesis, because this is sort of like the dark side of him, or the character in his book that is able to say the things he can’t as a person, you know, I don’t know, but Mm hmm. But yeah, it was a nice image. A lot of this kind of detail put into a movie that didn’t require it.

That’s nice.

Craig: Yeah. Oh, gosh, yeah, I think that’s great. The writing is excellent fan service.

Todd: Mm-Hmm. .

Craig: And I think that’s fantastic. But yeah, I said they had to get to higher ground. Now I remember the reason because Slappy opens the blob book. Mm-Hmm. . And so the blob, you know, fills the whole fun house and starts coming out of the fun house.

And so the kids say they had to get to higher ground, so they climb the Ferris wheel, but because Jack Black tells them go and he tells Zach to finish the book. He’s like, I don’t remember. Yeah. And he’s like, just finish it.

And, and he runs off to what, I don’t know, confront slappy, I guess. He

Todd: just, he just stands out. I was a little puzzled by this, but he just literally stands outside and lets the blob overtake him. And he kind of pops his head out of it. So he’s not like dying in there, but. He just succumbed to it, and I’m not sure if that was supposedly a distraction?

Or what that why he did that.

Craig: I know, I just have yeah, in my notes, I just have the blob eats stein. Eheh, and then it carries on. The kids climb up the ferris wheel, the monsters all converge, he finishes the book. And locks it. It instantly binds it by the way. Yeah. Oh, that was hilarious. Like it just like, he just like stuck it in binding and it was done.

Like, look, Oh my gosh, it was funny. But then the mantis sends the Ferris wheel rolling, which is fun, but they would have been dead. That would all have

Todd: died a hundred times over in this rolling Ferris wheel. I

Craig: feel like they keep showing the kids as it’s rolling and rolling, like it rolls Far they conveniently never show close ups when the kids would be at the bottom right because they couldn’t because they would be dead Of course But they I guess when they land they’re gonna you know The monsters are coming and they’re gonna open the book and Zach is hesitant and Hannah’s like it’s okay I know so it turns out she really knows that she’s just a story and And she tells him to open the book, but he won’t.

So she does, and the monsters all get sucked in and he grabs hold of her. And he, and I love this. I love, you know, a big, all the bad guys get sucked into it. The portal vortex at the end of the movie. I love it. Uh, I love it. And he’s trying, he’s gosh, this is so monster squad. I didn’t even think about it until now.

Like he’s holding onto her just like Phoebe holds on to. Frankenstein at the end, and she’s starting to get sucked in and Slappy gets sucked in and he says, Slappy’s not happy. See you in your dreams. Oh my gosh. That was great. And then Hannah, oh gosh, sorry. I, I’m just excited. It’s so funny. Go on. Hannah tells Zach that she’ll always be in his imagination, and she kisses him, and then she gets sucked in, and then everything is just back to normal, like, I have no idea how much time is supposed to have passed, like, it almost seems like it’s the next

Todd: day.

Right. That’s how it’s almost presented, really. They’re all back in school and R. L. Stein is the new English teacher. Okay. And he walks down the hall and he passes by a guy who walks by and he goes,

Craig: Oh, hey. Oh, wait, real quick. While he’s in class, he’s the new, he’s the new English teacher. And he had, I thought he had such, I love the line.

He said, every story has three components. The beginning, the middle. And the twist.

Not what I was expecting. I loved that line. Yeah. No, not me either. I loved that line. I thought that was such a clever, fun line. I liked Jack Black’s delivery of that particular line. It was good. But yeah, go ahead about Mr. Black, Mr. Black, the, uh,

Todd: drama teacher. Oh yeah. He just walks by the drama teacher says, Oh, Hey, Mr.

Black. And Mr. Black looks up as he’s walking by and goes, Oh, Hey, uh, Mr. Stein. And it turns out that’s R. L. Stein’s cameo. So Jack Black is calling R. L. Stein, R. L. Stein, Mr. Black, and R. L. Stein is calling Jack Black, Mr. Stein. It’s kind of funny.

Craig: It is funny. I was looking away from the screen when I heard that line.

Oh, really? Yeah, and I, I, but I heard it and I turned back to the screen and they had already gone on with the scene, Zach and Jack Black talking together. And I said, I bet you money. That was R. L. Stine that he said, Hey, Mr. Black 2. So I rewound it and I saw the guy and like, I don’t know what R. L. Stine looks like, but I saw him walk by and I’m like, that’s him.

Like that, that is such the, the, the cameo at the end of the real guy. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And so they talk about Hannah. And Jack Black says, she’ll always be in your mind and in your heart, but also over there.

And he points back and she’s standing there and Jack Black as R. L. Stine says, yeah, I wrote her back. Todd, I almost cried. Are you serious? Yes, yes, I almost cried. I thought it was serious. So sweet. It

Todd: was sweet. He holds up his book and then he, then he lights the book on fire. So I guess it can’t, she can’t get sucked back into it anymore.

And then immediately drops it into a garbage can and closes the lid on it. And I, my first thought was. That’s going to put out the fire, bro. You need to, you need to let that burn a little longer, but yeah, she’s back and, uh, her and, uh, Zach embrace. And that’s the end.

Craig: Well, and then, but then Stein is just walking his new, his magic typewriter is back in the showcase and he’s walking by it and we see and hear the, a click of the typewriter and he stops and he starts looking at it and it starts.

I don’t remember if it starts to type or.

Todd: Yeah, it’s typing.

Craig: It’s typing. It says the Invisible Boy’s Revenge, and then he’s like, yeah, you forgot about me or something, and the Invisible Boy, I guess, attacks him, and then that’s the end, and the credits roll, and it rolls over. Artwork by the guy who did all the cover artwork.

I mean, it’s it’s the R. L. Stine imagery, but mm hmm

Todd: So how much sense does that make though? I mean wouldn’t the invisible boy have gotten sucked in with all the other monsters like what one would think I don’t know Was there some loophole in the the end of the story that Zack wrote that excluded the invisible boy?

Craig: I don’t think we should overthink it. I think it was just, it was just a stinger. It’s just a stinger.

Todd: Fair enough. I just thought maybe, maybe they accounted for it somewhere and I missed it.

Craig: That moment where I almost cried almost didn’t happen because they filmed. That she didn’t come back But he just happened to meet a girl that looked strikingly like her But test audiences didn’t like it.

So they Reshot it with her actually coming back and I like it that way. It’s sweet. It’s good for kids cute. It is good for kids I I liked this movie. It really did. Like I really enjoyed it and I’m glad because I couldn’t find it streaming free anywhere, so I bought it. So I’m glad if I hadn’t liked it, I would have been really pissed off that I paid 8 for it.

Todd: Well, I mean, everybody else seemed to like it too. It got very, very favorable reviews from audiences. It seemed like the critics all said, yeah, this is really nothing groundbreaking, but it’s super cute and it’s good for kids. And, and it’s, it’s a nice little nod to R. L. Stein and all of his work. And it did really well as far as money goes.

And all around the world. Enough to spawn a sequel, Goosebumps 2 Haunted Halloween. Which will probably do another Halloween season, I’m sure. Maybe. I don’t know. That movie apparently only has a brief cameo with Jack Black’s character in it. So, I guess R. L. Stine didn’t end up becoming a central figure in the sequel.

The sequel. So yeah, I think he shows up at the end. That’ll be a little disappointing, honestly. But anyway. Yeah, no, I enjoyed it too. I, for the same reasons you did. It was just a nice, fun, cute little movie. Nice little popcorn kids movie, something the whole family could sit down and watch. And like I said earlier, perfect to kick off your Halloween, I think.

Craig: Yeah, me too. And I’m glad, I’m glad you picked it because I wouldn’t have, because it, like we said at the very beginning, it’s not specifically said at Halloween, but it may as well be, it feels. So much like a Halloween movie. I mean, it’s definitely definitely a fun one for this time of year to get you in the mood.

Yeah, for sure.

Todd: Well, thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. Find us online. Two Guys in a Chainsaw podcast is all you need to Google to get to our website. Find our Patreon at patreon. com slash chainsaw podcast. And of course our website, chainsawhorror.

com. Leave us a comment there. Let us know what you thought and let us know what you’re planning to do for Halloween. It’ll be a lot of fun. That’s something we’ll certainly be talking about behind the scenes with the patrons. So if you want to get in on some of that conversation, consider becoming a patron over at patreon.

com slash Chainsaw Podcast. All right. Happy kickoff to the Halloween season, everyone. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

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Goosebumps

2 Guys And A Chainsaw - A Horror Movie Review Podcast

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