Television Trauma

October 26, 2013 12:49 PM

If It Were (R.L.) Stine (SLTumblr)
posted by griphus (9 comments total)

Those R.L. Stine covers did not present a true representation of the contents of the book, much to my chagrin.

The first one I read featured a picture of a boy sized bee on the cover, except the bee still had a boy's head. I thought, "Sweet, this book will be about the daily troubles of a boy-bee hybrid trying to make it at school!" Nope, the boy just turns into a regular bee and has to make honey and stuff. He even had just a regular bee head!

The second one I read had a picture of a viny/ plant based hand very creepily opening a door. Turns out there was no vegetable/ man hybrid living in Grandma's basement, she just let her hydroponics get a little out of control. The "evil" plants weren't even ambulatory!

After that, I learned my lesson and didn't read any more R.L. Stine.
posted by GrumpyDan at 1:04 PM on October 26, 2013

What was the one with the cool red helmet head??
posted by Samizdata at 1:08 PM on October 26, 2013

Beyond the Black Rainbow, which is on Netflix, incidentally.

(The titles of the actual movies are in tiny print under the images.)
posted by griphus at 1:09 PM on October 26, 2013

griphus: "Beyond the Black Rainbow, which is on Netflix, incidentally.

(The titles of the actual movies are in tiny print under the images.)"

I so didn't see that. Cheers.
posted by Samizdata at 1:15 PM on October 26, 2013

I thought R.L. Stine did write Halloween 3.
posted by dortmunder at 2:52 PM on October 26, 2013

ATTACK OF THE BALLET WITCHES is amazing
posted by smackwich at 3:23 PM on October 26, 2013 [1 favorite]

I recognized very few of these. And then I finally noticed that the names of the originals were under the pictures. Then I realized why I recognized so few of them.
posted by ckape at 6:41 PM on October 26, 2013

Beyond is a fascinating work of high weirdness. The pacing can be described as either 'hypnotic' or 'soporific' depending on whether the surreality of it all floats your boat, and then in the last quarter or so there's a really unexpected tone shift. It's a film with flaws, but definitely worth checking out for the confidence of its vision of a paranoid alt-future-past.
posted by FatherDagon at 9:41 PM on October 26, 2013 [1 favorite]

Unfortunately I was too old to get into Goosebumps at the time (and I was boggled that the man who wrote this was now the Stephen King for the tweenagers, but I still enjoyed these.
posted by Mezentian at 3:33 PM on October 27, 2013