Gattsy on Goosebumps

He's back, and he's hornier than ever!! That's right, Slappy, the rude wooden dude you love to hate and hate to love has returned to exploit more preexisting family dysfunction. This time he's set his sites on poor Zane, the anxious cousin of Dan and Trina. I enjoyed this book, because Zane reminded me of the black sheep of our own family, Cousin Dudkis, who wasn't actually our cousin but actually...

This book deals with the pandemic of shrunken head and jungle magic, which our mainstream media shamefully refuses to cover. How I Got My Shrunken Head is the thirty-ninth book in the original Goosebumps book series. It was first published in 1996 .

The Blake siblings have never seen the snow! Well, boo-hoo. Growing up in metropolitan Victoria, I never got to see snow either. The closest we would get was when father let us go to to local sporting pasture after a night of heavy rain and play ‘Bally-Bally Sock and Scud’, an extremely-physical hybrid of rugby and Greco-Roman wrestling originally used to settle disputed on the goldfields. I’ve se...

Come one, come all! Hear the horrific tale of the unimaginatively-titledHill Houe! WITNESS the aging tour guide who clearly hoped he’d be a proper actor! JUMP WITH FRIGHT at the scare he frequent jump scares which turn out to just be cats or other characters or something! ROLL YOUR EYES at the two twelve year-olds who gave themselves nicknames and based their whole personalities on scaring adults...

Halloween; for many, it means sugar-filled candypops, spinetingling cinemafilms and racially-insensitive costumes. But for young Steve Boswell, it means confronting the scariest monster of all: the ravages of time. Will Steve return to his youth by night’s end? Or will he be confined to a retirement home, complaining about his prostate and how the neighborhood “doesn’t feel like it used to” ever s...

Today's Goosebumps book is set in a spooky theme park. I've always been fascinated with theme parks and growing up I wanted nothing more than to experience the magic of Disneyland. Of course, vacation destination such as those offered by Walt and Co. were well beyond the price range of my humble Melbournian family, so we had to instead settle for a bi-annual trip to a place called 'Haystacks Albie...

"Lawn gnomes?" repeated Mr Scholastic, CEO of one of the largest publishing houses of the United States. "You want to do a book about lawn gnomes?" “That’s right,” Robert Stine repeated, holding the other man’s gaze effortlessly. “Lawn gnomes. They cause trouble in the garden and get the protagonist in trouble.” Scholastic puffed his cigar. “You’re a damn fine children’s horror author, Bob; hell,...

As a child, I was never one for sports; while my peers were off playing touch-down baskets or ten-pin jump-up, I was in the safety of my room, receiving a rapturous standing ovation for my one-man version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Cats' from an imaginary audience. No; as I stood upon the school oval, just waiting for the child with severe scoliosis to inevitably get picked before me for kickball,...

Filmed, back-to-back with the previous entry, meaning I am still drunk as a skunk for the recording of this one, but when you hear my slurred summary of what is generously-called a "plot" in this hot, spooky mess, I don't think you will begrudge me that. The Barking Ghost is the thirty-second book in the original Goosebumps book series. It was first published in 1995.

Don't let the fact that I'm drunk as a skunk during recording fool you; this one is actually pretty good. It's a classic tale of family, acceptance, and sentient evil puppets. Top stuff. Night of the Living Dummy II is the thirty-first book in the original Goosebumps book series, and the second book in the Living Dummy saga. It was first published in 1995.

Have you ever been washing the dishes or, if you're a big shot, soaping up your Corvette, and looked down at the sponge in your hand and thought, "Say; what if they weren't a sponge but was instead a mythological beast that fed on bad luck?" No, of course you didn't, because you're not a twisted genius like RL Stine and you'll never have a million-dollar children's-horror series OR a Corvette, you...

How many times does the third entry in a trilogy derail the franchise? 'Godfather Part III' was the only film in the series not to win a Best Picture Oscar, while 'Spider-Man 3' required Peter Parker to dance AND cry, though thankfully never seen in the same scene. How will 'Monster Blood III' fare in comparison? Listen and find out, my fiendish friends. Monster Blood III is the twenty-ninth book...

"In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace," declares smuggler Harry Lime in Carol Reed's noir thriller 'The Third Man'. "And what did they produce? The cuckoo clock." Lime is wrong, incidentally--the cuckoo clock originated in Southern Germany--but it's fair to say he never envisioned a cuckoo clock that could reverse the flow of time itself. The best use...

Time travel?? Dark magic??? SEX??? This Goosebumps is JUST like Harry Potter. Except for the sex part. A Night in Terror Tower is the twenty-seventh book in the original Goosebumps book series, and the first book in the Terror Tower saga. It was first published in 1995.

"Ch-cha-cha-cha-changes," David Bowie famously said. "Time to face the strage (changes)." Today's Goosebumps book is all about the changes we start to go through at about age twelve or thirteen (twenty-one, in my case); changes to our friendships, changes to the way we think and changes to our bodies. Fortunately, these physical changes aren't always as horrifying as they're portrayed in this book...

Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe exploded onto our screens and into our hearts, the concept of larger-than-life superheroes existing in a world not-too-dissimilar from our own was explored much more effectively by RL Stine in Goosebumps #25: Attack of the Mutant. For those of us who grew up in the 90's, the exploits of America Man and Iron Downey Jr will always come second-place to the tale of...

One of the most-maligned groups in the Western education system is the so-called "theatre kid". I would know; I used to be one. Oh certainly, we were easy targets for the beautiful people of the schoolyard due to our grotesque physical appearances and social insecurity. More than once I found myself stuffed into the toilet in the disabled stall because I had broken into renditions of popular West...

Mummy's back, and you'd better hope you've not been a naughty boy!! No, it's not a description of my Friday night (well, not just that), but the description of this sequel to the earlier Goosebumps classic 'The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb'. Once again, Gabe and his zany uncle are disrupting ancient Egyptian tombs in the name of archaeology and once again there is something waiting for them in the py...

The beach... dwelling of ignorant tourists who never learned to swim and aggressive locals who confuse being from the coast with having a personality. But in the warped mind of horror-maestro RL Stine, the beach holds something even darker. What could it be??? A zombie lifeguard? A werewolf lighthouse keeper?? A ghostly vagrant?? (It's the last one. The clue was in the title). Ghost Beach is the t...

Oh dear! It seems Uncle Gattsy stumbled on a bottle of happy sauce shortly recording this week's episode, and he's sounding crazier than usual! LOL!! But tanked or not, he's still the perfect guy to give you the rundown on Todd Bartsow, who really likes worms and probably doesn't have a girlfriend. Don't miss! Go Eat Worms! is the twenty-first book in the original Goosebumps book series. It was fi...

These days, everybody loves "gaming"; who among us hasn't spent at least one evening with a big bag of Doritos playing the latest "Call the Duty: Mario Boys" video game?? However, did you know that video games used to come in board format? They were called board games, and families used to play them while they waited for father to come home from the acid mill. Sam and I investigate the Goosebumps...

Ah, the American mid-west; historic home of rolling fields of corn and historic laws concerning who can and can't legally marry. But this idyllic slice of American Pie harbors a bitter aftertaste. For generations, the humble scarecrow has watched over these crops without complaint; what happens when our scarecrows say: "No More"? The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight is the twentieth book in the origina...

Ahoy, mateys! It's Captain Gattsy here on the SS Goosebumps, here to tell ye about the nautical tale of Billy Deep and the mermaid he loved. Get ready to walk the plank (your podcast app of choice) and plunge into the deep blue (pre-teen horror), but don't forget to secure (leave) your pirate gold (a rating on Apple Podcasts). Yo ho ho! Etc. Deep Trouble is the nineteenth book in the Goosebumps bo...

Sequels are tricky; for every 'Empire Strikes Back' or 'Godfather Part II' there is also a 'Speed 2: Cruise Control', which didn't even bring back Keanu Reeves from the original and was reportedly based entirely on a recurring nightmare the director had involving a cruise ship crashing entire an island. Monster Blood II doesn't feature a cruise ship or Keanu Reeves, so how will it fare? Let's find...

Ah, the noble bee; drinker of nectar, maker of honey, stinger of rosy-cheeks. We admire bees. Some of us even love them, as a man loves a woman. But only from a far! For we know, in our heart of hearts, the bee is beautiful but she is also vengeful. Gary Lutz, perpetual loser in life's great gamble, is about to discover this universal truth the hard way... Why I'm Afraid of Bees is the seventeenth...