Compare and Contrast: Goosebumps

Reader Beware, You're in For a Scare: A brief history of Goosebumps

Before we get started, I feel it's important to get acquainted with the series as a whole. Goosebumps is a young-adult horror anthology series primarily aimed at children.

R.L Stine, initially wrote the first two books in the series; Welcome to Dead House and Stay Out of the Basement in 1992, under Scholastic publishing. Since then, the series has had multiple entries in its 25 year run.

As I write this, the current Goosebumps series is Slappyworld.

Since publication, the Goosebumps books have sold millions of copies across multiple regions of the world, inspiring stage shows, videogames and the subject of this review; TV shows.

Premiering in 1995, the Goosebumps TV series ran for 4 seasons, adapting many of the famous novellas into 25 minute episodes, with many being 45 minute specials or two-parters. Contrary to popular belief, not every episode is based on one of the original 62 books. The episode "An Old Story" for example is taken from one of the many anthology collections: Tales to Give You Goosebumps.

In particular, all episodes of the show are based off books from the original set of 62, as well as two from Goosebumps series 2000, which I'll talk about more in detail when I get to them.

Now, for the sake of this Compare and Contrast, I'll only be reviewing epsiodes clearly based off the books, so An Old Story, Click, Chillogy, Strained Peas and Teacher's Pet will not be covered, as all of these stories are not part of the original 62 books. For example, Chillogy was a miniseries while the other ones listed came from the Tales to Give You Goosebumps books.

When I started this project, I had the following candidates in mind:

The Haunted Mask
The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight
Cry of the Cat
Night of the Living Dummy II,
Night of the Living Dummy III
Bride of the Living Dummy

I have other potential candidates in mind but, I'm sticking with these.

Eagle-eyed viewers may notice a book missing, the "original" Night of the Living Dummy. Before I get swamped with comments saying "You missed the first Living Dummy book" I will clear this up. The first Living Dummy book was never adapted for a TV episode, plain and simple. I'll link an article about the show that talks about the original Night of the Living Dummy not getting adapted. I find this fact quite odd, as Slappy's appearance in the show is much closer to Mr. Wood's design from the first book. Interesting. 🤔

So, enough of me babbling on, let's begin fittingly with the very first episode of the TV series, based on arguably one of the most popular books: The Haunted Mask.

A word of caution going forward; this may have every chapter listed, but they are currently under editing. Please understand!