Goosebumps (TV Series)

Goosebumps (TV Series) “Viewer beware, you’re in for a scare!” Genre: Horror Paranormal Fantasy Thriller Running Time: 24 minutes Country: United States Canada Release Date: October 27, 1995 – November 16, 1998 Network(s): Fox Kids (USA) YTV (Canada) Created by: R.L. Stine Distributed by: 20th Television YTV Scholastic Seasons: 4 Episodes: 74

Goosebumps is a Canadian-American horror anthology television series based on R. L. Stine's best-selling horror-book series of the same name.

Summary

It's about an anthology of kids, pre-teens, and teenagers finding themselves in eerie and unusual situations, typically involving supernatural elements based on the terrifying book franchise.

Why You're In For A Scare

1. Very memorable, spooky and unforgettable theme music.
2. Wonderful acting, mainly from the child actors like Nicole Dicker, Hamille Rustia and John White.
3. Has tons of amazing and unforgettable episodes such as The Haunted Mask two-parter (which started the series on a high note), One Day at Horrorland, The Werewolf of Fever Swamp, Welcome to Camp Nightmare, Stay Out of the Basement, Night of the Living Dummy II, Say Cheese and Die!, A Night in Terror Tower, The Headless Ghost, The Haunted Mask II, Welcome to Dead House, Click, An Old Story, The Ghost Next Door and many more.
4. Excellent casting choices. Which is truly astounding given the fact that every episode introduces new actors (if not just uses completely different ones for each one). And given how there are so many episodes of this show, it's truly remarkable how they were able to hire so many amazing actors that were casted so well for each role.
5. Has many loyalties toward it's source material, the books the episodes are based on. While many of the episodes did cut out certain details (but given how every episode only has a 20-minute runtime to try and adapt their books into, that's kinda unavoidable) and alter certain events from the books they were based on, for the most part, follow the events of the books relatively well.
6. The characters in most of the stories are pretty likable and even pretty relatable in certain cases.
7. Much like The Twilight Zone (another anthology horror-thriller series), almost each and every episode has it's own spine-chilling twist ending.
8. A few decent special-effects, such as with the mirror's alternative universe in the episode Let's Get Invisible and the ghosts in The Headless Ghost.
9. The monsters are absolutely terrifying and also pretty creative. From werewolves, living masks, and ghosts of children to cursed cameras, blob monsters, and sentient plants masquerading as people (and that's not even scratching the surface). And of course, the mascot of the Goosebumps series as a whole, Slappy the living dummy.
10. The author of the books himself, R.L. Stine, has made a couple of guest appearances in a few episodes. Such as The Haunted Mask Part 1&2.
11. The Goosebumps franchise became so popular due to the books and TV show that it even got it's own film adaptation (along with a pretty OK sequel) a couple of decades later, which was just as good if not better.

Bad Qualities

1. The special effects can get cheesy at times and didn’t age well. For example, in "Be Careful What You Wish For...", Judith wishes for everyone to admire her and she gets turned into a statue which looks terrible.
2. There can be a few disloyalties to the books here and there. For example, in "Stay out of the basement", the kids kill the plant clone dad by spraying him with weed killer, but in the book, he is chopped with an axe.
3. Many books from the original series never got an episode, such as Night of the Living Dummy and Curse of the Mummy's Tomb which the show skipped straight to their sequels.
4. Season 3 is arguably the weakest season, as not only was it home to episodes such as Say Cheese and Die... Again!} & Strained Peas, but even aside from them, most other episodes tended to be weaker or more forgettable than the ones from the other seasons.
5. Much like the book series it's based off of, there can be some scenes that are a little too scary and/or intense for younger viewers. For example, the ending of the TV adaptation of An Old Story has one of the boys splashing a pitcher of cursed prune juice on Aunt Dahlia which causes her to shrivel up into a skeleton before exploding into dust. This scene might be a little too intense for younger viewers.

Episodes With Their Own Pages

• Haunted Mask II: Parts 1&2

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