By Cameron Box Published Nov 02, 2019 He keeps hearing the barking of two dogs, but no one believes him. This book is a good example of a forced concept. Because it’s so stressful, it lacks enjoyability. Unfortunately, she did a bad job of faking her death, because she actually did drown. GOOSEBUMPS HOT TAKE ALERT Monster Blood is the most overrated Goosebumps villain and the worst storyline to get multiple books. Trick cards, floating scarves, disappearing doves. Change ). ( Log Out /  What better way to stay scared stiff through Halloween and beyond than with a list of 13 thrillers that will keep you up all night? Go Eat Worms! If you’re of a certain generation, and if you had a penchant for the perverse at a young age, you probably remember R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps books. Mummies aren’t particularly scary, since you aren’t likely to just randomly encounter one on the subway or in your backyard, but Stine makes this story (which borrows a title from a 1960s cult classic film) tense by slowly forcing us into the claustrophobic confines of an old Egyptian tomb and lacing minute details (the main character’s shoes coming untied repeatedly) into the action. Like most kids growing up in the ’90s, I collected Goosebumps books more than I read them. In fact, each time he falls asleep he winds up in a new reality. There’s also a gangly old man, a deadly ghost, and a dog. Top 5 Best and Worst Halloween Candies; The 10 Most Awesome Goosebumps Covers; The 10 Most Ridiculous Goosebumps . RELATED: 5 Best And Worst Episodes Of Goosebumps (According To IMDb) . Forced to rely on Elliot, a fast-talking mule deer, the two form an unlikely friendship and must quickly rally other forest animals if they are to form a rag-tag army against the hunters. The story has some of Goosebumps’ most introspective character psyches. He is gifted a shrunken head by his aunt’s assistant, Carolyn, who’s in charge of bringing Mark to the island for vacation. Growing up, I often referred to it as my favorite book. Sometimes, you'll be halfway through reading a Goosebumps book, and it'll be really scary, and strange, and exciting — and then everyone . A slight step up from the first book, Night of the Living Dummy II has much better momentum. Stine revisited camps and ghosts and scary lakes, all classic horror stuff, for a story about a girl who pretends to drown to make everyone who treated her poorly feel bad. Some kids go to Alaska, where they meet the titular creature, who is hungry and eats their trailer mix. It’s almost a step-by-step retread of the first book, which really didn’t need a sequel. I think if a kid watches this weird . More kids who love scaring kids, this time with a ghost who, as the title insinuates, lacks a head. Maybe it’s just that I was getting older and had more discretion. Contents. 9. . 20. Strange things start happening to anyone who turns the light on above the mirror, but what’s more interesting is finding out why it’s happening. If the kids lose, then they get eaten. One of the better reads towards the end of the series. #10: Say Cheese and Die…Again! Bravo . Weird things start happening around their house and Amy keeps getting blamed. It’s not bad, but it’s not as outlandish as it could’ve/should’ve been. His parents keep thinking that the dogs are a result of Cooper’s active imagination. This story is entertaining and involved, however some of the details of the twists along the way can get a little convoluted and vague, collecting some plot holes. Zackie . Her bunkmates are always bullying her and she doesn’t like the water much. Don’t let the cover fool you. Here, the bratty teen actress Allison Rogers who accidentally runs over a cat named Rip with her bike, which then comes back to life to get revenge. She isn’t. It’s not quite as good as the first two installments, but still decent. In the meantime, bad things happen to him and his friend, Shari. I’d love to hear it! The book basically just features different scenarios in which Kat and her family have bad luck. The dogs keep disappearing before he can prove that they’re there. What do you feel about Monster Blood though?? Ginger Wald and her identical twin brothers, Nat and Pat, are lost in the woods. Solid picks! Ever since then, the play has been banned–until now. But after she helps out an old gypsy lady, she is granted three wishes. A family and their overly-competitive neighbour get into a spat over a garden rivalry, and some nefarious lawn gnomes start to cause trouble because lawn gnomes are jerks. They soon realize that their grandparents have fled the house, leaving them locked inside with the monster. It’s hard to find time to read at this point in my life, so it’s taken me several years (I believe I started in 2013) to complete the task of reading and ranking every book in the original series. It gets to the meat of the story quickly, but never builds much off of it after that. Well, this book is the king of that. His favorite magician comes to town, but his parents won’t let him go to the show. Stine's Goosebumps books. Eddie and his friends are tired of Courtney always making fun of them for being scared, so they try for the entire book to do things to scare her back. New parents. Top 3 Best Goosebumps Books Reviews 1. Strange things start happening at the camp and all the counselors seem a little weird and brainwashed. It plays as more of a fable than anything else, and is actually a very entertaining story, even if its plagued with an extremely insufferable antagonist. A place to discuss all of R.L. Stine replace one of his Monster Blood sequels with a Haunted School sequel?? Often thought of as the first real Goosebumps book, this engendered scaremonger is one of Stine’s most memorable, if inconsistent creations: a viscous fluid that does... well, whatever Stine wants it to. Todd is obsessed with worms. The cover belies the actual story, which is more of a paranoid delusion than a monster mash. . One of the weirdest books in the series, this particularly paranoid story concerns a kid who plays pranks involving worms on his sister, because he’s a dick. The story twists and turns and veers as the siblings encounter a variety of odd characters and fantastical things. This is admittedly not one of the more popular books in the series, but the images of being pulled into a comic book have stuck with me over the years. Days later, Larry notices that he’s sprouting hair in places that hair isn’t supposed to be. A family moves into a haunted house, as families tend to do in these kinds of stories, and spooky stuff happens. This book plays with the concepts of dreams, and does it about as well as a children’s book can do. This book is everything you’d want from a Goosebumps book. ', Quick Movie Review: Phantom of the Megaplex (2000), My Top 10 Movies of the Decade! As a kid, I always thought of chocolate pastries when I saw this book. Marty will do anything to save his new friend Shiloh in this Newbery Medal–winning novel from Phillis Reynolds Naylor. Unfortunately, her quirk is being invisible so she literally and . Coupled with this being one of the more lazily written books, it’s a real dud. Crystal and her brother Cole accidentally bump into Vanessa, the town witch, spilling all her groceries. Dana’s sister wants an egg hunt for her birthday, and during that egg hunt Dana finds an unusual green egg the size of a softball. It’s chilling at times, but it also takes you on an amazing and curious journey to a different dimension. In this one, Evan and Andy discover a new kind of monster blood. This book could’ve easily taken the route of copying the formula from its predecessor, but instead deviates from it a lot towards the end. Actually, the hamster is only the size of a rabbit for most of the book, but the promise of a giant hamster, especially if it looks anything like it does on the gloriously gaudy cover, is what makes this book so compulsively readable. Bravo, Robert Lawrence. 9 Top 10 Matrix Goosebumps Scenes. However, the book is thoroughly engaging–even amidst the often convoluted details. Jack pouts a lot. Some people hate this book for its lack of horror and the general lack of monsters, but that makes it a refreshing entry in the series. 1. Stine even manages to incorporate more scary living toys into this one, just to hit all the bases. As far as creepiness goes, this one gives me goosebumps as an adult. It's also one that gets amusingly meta for R.L. The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb is the most original Goosebumps book so far, in that it’s the most unoriginal. A lot of Stine's books have pretty literal titles, especially the latter ones (How I Learned to Fly), and the better ones expound on the premise, like the Mummy books. This is another book where its reputation sort of precedes it. This was the 32nd book in the Goosebumps series, and I'm absolutely amazed that it took R.L. Replacing the family of the original book with a coterie of hippies, the sequel to Night of the Living Dummy is basically a retread of the original book, but with more flair. Goosebumps creator R.L. Stine teams up with the pop-culture phenomenon Garbage Pail Kids for the second volume in this all-new illustrated middle-grade series sure to amuse, entertain, and blow readers away! In that far-flung time known as the 1990s, no author was getting kids more into reading than R.L. Max and his friends discover a mirror inside a hidden room in Max’s attic. The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight. I look forward to fulfilling a childhood dream of reading all the Goosebumps. Although I wouldn’t knock anyone who had this book in their top 5 or 10. However, this episode was given a 12 rating due to moderate supernatural threat and animal violence (both seen and implied). Alex’s new friend Hannah says it’s because they’re werewolves, but his aunt and uncle deny it. Piano Lessons Can Be Murder- 4.5. Despite not being a traditional horror story at all, it’s still one of the more page-turning books in the series. But when he wakes up, everything in his life is changed. The narrative moves along nicely and we don’t feel like we’re going in circles without getting anywhere. Towards the end it picks up speed, but in the meantime it merely goes through the motions, piling on plot hole after plot hole. Not quite as scary, but just as creepy, Stay Out of the Basement is more along the lines of R.L. Towards the end, when our childhood heroes fear that the end may be coming (Stine maintains suspense really well here, and never veers into silliness), they cast sunlight upon the coalition of living dead, which is the universal way of thwarting evil, and the flesh melts from the ghosts' faces. When Margaret and Casey see their father become weedy while working on his botany experiments, they worry that his plant-testing may not be entirely harmless. Camp is supposed to be fun, but Sarah hates Camp Cold Lake. THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN OF PASADENA (38). However, there was a solution in the first book for how to get things back to normal after the bad things happen. October is known for being the scariest month of the year. Lucy is always making up monster stories, but nobody believes her when she finally sees a real one. A kid who gets picked on a lot goes to a local body-swap doctor (?) She whispers to them, “Chicken chicken,” and then over the next few days they both start growing feathers and clucking. It's not the worst book in the series, but it's close. Edit: By designed, I mean everything except the original artworks, although that said, several of them took hours of painstaking reconstruction work, for this reason or that. 6) The Blob That Ate Everyone. It’s so hard not to put this book higher. We don’t end up seeing this monster until about 20 pages til the end, but it builds the suspense decently well and has the trademarked R.L. Things get out of hand when other kids begin finding out. I will admit that certain stories are more objectively good than others, but I probably have some higher ranked books that aren’t as popular to some. So one night Matt sneaks into the guest room and falls asleep. There are a couple of Goosebumps series that follow this one (Goosebumps 2000, Give Yourself Goosebumps), but we won’t be talking about those. Get Goosebumps with the startling repackage of a best-selling classic. The fish are biting . . . everyone! We also love the Quidditch World Cup, Tri-Wizard Tournament, and expansion of the wizarding world! But it’s nice to see parent and kids in it together for once. Unfortunately it never lives up to its potential. Hmmm… It’s like the Halloween movies combined with Pumpkinhead and that one episode of Pete and Pete, but with a Twilight Zone twist. That means that the characters, plotlines, and topics are suitable for children. The scariest one, though, is probably the titular Headless Ghost, a young boy . Stine always has solid ghost stories, and this is one of his best. Stine. Still a solid installment and one of the scariest in the series. That cliché wouldn’t be totally inapt here, as the story literally concerns an amusement park, but also because One Day at HorrorLand is Stine's most relentlessly-paced Goosebumps book. A pair of kids visit the legendary Tower of Terror (no, not the Disney ride) in London and their tour guide, jerk that he is, ends up luring them back in time, where all sorts of back-in-time terrors occur. Today, I review 62 Goosebumps books in order from worst to best, with the added challenge of only talking about each book for 30 seconds before moving on to . But that cover! Lizzy and her family stumble across a strange theme park in the middle of nowhere. Look how bad it is. It’s a story ostensibly about peer pressure, which could have been a great Goosebumps book, but, like its disappearing characters, it’s completely forgettable. Cooper and his family move to a new home in the woods. Werewolf Village. The Doom Slide. The Coffin Cruise. These are just a few of the terrifying attractions that await Luke and Lizzy Morris at HorrorLand. Give Yourself Goosebumps: A Ranked Dissection of the Original Goosebumps. It follows Matt, who’s been begging his mom to let him sleep in the guest bedroom instead of his own closet-sized room, but she refuses. Which isn’t so bad. It's a story about the worst invention ever, a camera that seems to predict or make bad things happen, you be the judge. 16. Michael’s sister, Tara, is a compulsive liar (actually she’s a child, but same thing) and constantly gets Michael in trouble by making stuff up. (2010 - 2019), Quick Movie Review: X-Men: Apocalypse (2016). Apparently the clock is able to send you back in time. Though this comes fairly early in the series, it has the kind of silliness that marks the latter entries. The siblings’ father is a grumpy writer who apparently hates being a father, but drags his kids along on a poor-conceived sojourn to find a long-lost manuscript. It’s like Benjamin Button and Stephen King’s Thinner conflated. There are only so many ways you can twist the lycanthrope tale into interesting new shapes. Actually, Vampire Breath takes place in a basement, too, as two kids playing air hockey accidentally knock over a jar labeled “Vampire Breath,” which contains a benevolent vampire named Count Nightwing. I can’t read the title without wanting to listen to The Crystal Method’s “Name of the Game.” Calling all freaks, motherfucker. Ready Player One meets the action of battle royale video games in this middle-grade sci-fi perfect for fans of Fortnite. It’s an interesting concept, but there’s definitely a lot of meandering. October 13, 2015 Just how scary? You'll never know unless you crack open this classic prequel! Evan visits an eerie old toy store and buys a dusty can of Monster Blood. But then he notices something weird about the slimy green ooze. It keeps growing. ’ ve/should ’ ve been about half as long 4 ), you ’ re for... 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