Goosebumps #39 - How I Got My Shrunken Head

Judging a Book by its Cover

Alright so I said I'd have a new review out by February... and it's March.... but not very late into March so I think I'm doing good!

We are back on track with the next entry in the original Goosebumps series. It's #39 How I Got My Shrunken Head. As expected the head in question looks pretty creepy. I think generally in a shrunken head the eyes are sewn shut... since eyes tend to rot away. I'm guessing this one is super natural though? Also its skin is green. Skin usually doesn't turn green. Maybe it's a goblin head. Looks like one to me...

There are some nice details in the illustration. There is a pair of chucks that often grace Goosebumps covers. There is also a "University" pennant. Most people cheer for a specific university but this kid just loves secondary education in general. I also want to know who has purple and blue tiles in their room. Weird color scheme dude.

The tagline give us so head related word play. "Heads up!" says the front illustration. I wonder if the fact that this tagline is next to a baseball glove and ball is coincidental or planned. My guess is a happy accident. Thinking they thought that out seems like giving them too much credit. The back HILARIOUSLY states that "two heads are better than one." I might have to disagree in this case. No preserved human remains for me thanks.

Anyway, it's been awhile. lets see if I remember how to write a a synopsis and review.

Getting Goosebumps

Mark really likes the video game Jungle King. You swing from vines, collect shrunken heads, and avoid quicksand. What an adventure. Incidentally there was a real video game named Jungle King, where you do in fact swing from vines but very little else matches up with R.L. Stine's description. Incidentally that game had to rename itself Jungle Hunt after it got sued by the people who owned the rights to Tarzan. No joke. Anyway, what was I saying again? Oh yeah, kid likes jungle adventure video games. Kid even made up his own jungle cry, "kah-lee-ah!" Kids are weird. So Weird.

So by total coincidence after collecting shrunken heads in the game, one shows up at his doorstep. Not by itself though, it was carried by a woman named Carolyn who apparently knows his Aunt Benna. Aunt Benna it seems is off on a jungle island studying. The shrunken head is a gift, because what kid doesn't like playing with parts of corpses?

Well that shrunken head does some weird stuff. And some of it is his sister playing pranks, but some of it is harder to explain... like at night it started glowing... and grinning! Still it could be his sister pranking, little sisters are so jealous of gross human heads. She even scratched the darn thing in a spat!

So it turns out that Carolyn was sent by Aunt Benna to bring her nephew Mark to visit her in the jungle. Well the word of a stranger with absolutely no warning from the Aunt is good enough for mom, so Mark packs his bags and is off to dangerous parts unknown with a woman they've never met carrying a disembodied human head through the airport. Sounds like everything here is in order. Next stop, the jungles of Baladora.

Once there instead of meeting his Aunt whom he has not seen since he was quite young, he instead gets introduced to a Dr. Hawlings and his daughter Kareen. Benna, it seems, is missing. That is the reason Mark had to come. They didn't contact police, military, rescue crews, the government, trackers, no.... they contacted a 12 year old boy. How can Mark be of any use what so ever? Well it's simple, Mark has the JUNGLE MAGIC. Yup, that's gonna be the plot of this book I guess. Jungle magic. The Oloyan people of the island had the magic. They were headshrinkers, hence the head in Marks possession. Mark too possess the magic only he is... skeptical. I can't imagine why!

Mark uses some of that good common sense Goosebumps protagonists have and decides to explore the jungle a little bit at night. He comes across a seriously creepy pile of heads. Not cool. He retreats pretty quickly and searches headquarters for a flashlight. Instead he finds Aunt Benna's notes. Turns out ol' Benna is hiding on purpose because Dr. Hawlings and co. are EVIL. They want the jungle magic for their own evil purposes. But come on now, what is the jungle magic of a race of ancient headshrinkers for if not for evil? Anyway to keep things safe she gave Mark the magic years ago, and kept he safe 4000 miles away from the island. Sure would be a shame if he showed up at the island for some reason... oh damn!

Kareen interrupts things. She believes in Marks jungle magic and despite being Dr. Hawlings spawn convinces Mark she truly cares about his aunt. She helps him escape to the jungle, alone... which is a great place for a 12 year old city boy to be. No joke, the dude passes out and gets covered by huge angry ants. Way to go Mark, your aunt is going to die because you are inept.

In desperation he shouts "Kah-lee-ah!" that stupid jungle cry he used in the video game. Turns out that is a plot point too. His jungle cry. It saves his ass somehow. Next his dumb ass falls into quicksand. He never saw the Mythbusters where they proved you don't drown in quicksand so he panics. His little shout won't help him because he dropped the shrunken head, which is part of the jungle magic. Then he thumps the head his way and grabs on to it. His shout works and summons vines to the rescue. But where is his aunt? Well lucky for him that his shrunken head works as a Benna seeking compass.

Next our dude gets attacked by an angry momma tiger. Never fear though because a literal hole rips in the earth to protect him. Course now he is stuck in a hole. Out of the frying pan into the fire. He can't figure out a way to get out of this one. What do you do when jungle magic fails you? Count on Kareen.

The duo walks in a Benna-ward direction while Kareen tries to convince Mark her dad isn't so evil. Then they find Benna and then Kareen tries to convince the old woman of her dad's not evilness too. Then Kareen pulls a total heel turn and reveals that she is totally evil herself, and had been helping her dad find Aunt Benna. Kareen tries to justify it by saying kids gotta help their parents even if they are evil.

Aunt and Nephew get put in a shack til they reveal their jungle magic. Luckily the shrunken head didn't get confiscated. They have one last shot to use the jungle magic to save their asses. I am getting really tired of typing the words "jungle magic" by the way.

They get one last chance to spill the secret or they are gonna get their heads shrunken, shrinked? shrank? shrunk? Their heads are gonna get smaller. The plan to save their asses goes awry when the head gets swatted away into a pile of heads. How can he tell which one is the right one? Oh right, his dumb sister scratched up his, that's how! Hey lookit those details coming back into play.

With the right had and a fierce "kah-lee-ah" the head shrinkers become the shrinkees, except not just their heads shrink but their whole bodies. Odd. Anyway as tiny Stuart Little sized people they are powerless and Benna is free to return to civilization with her nephew. She does the responsible thing and takes back the jungle magic she gave him years ago, but he can keep the shrunken head.... hey did that thing start talking?

My Thoughts

Fundamentally this is the kind of Goosebumps book I should like. There tend to be "location" books, where kids go on an adventure far from the normalcy of home. The Mummy books were a good example of this, exploring ancient pyramids and tombs. Likewise, this explores a jungle. of course it's not a very realistic jungle. It is a jungle right out of old timey adventure movies I bet RL Stine grew up watching. If Tarzan swung by on a rope it wouldn't be out of place.

If this is the kind of Goosebumps book I should like, then why didn't it? I think "jungle magic" had a big part to do with it. Stine loves to put really dumb plot points like this in. I mean, there is probably a really cool way to reveal a magic of the island. Shouting "kah-lee-ah" and calling it "jungle magic" is not really that way. More than just a magical device, it kind of serves as a means to just magically solve any problem by shouting some words. It's a nifty little Swiss army tool for making sure the protagonist can get out of anything.

Sometimes Stine just really drops the ball on things too. It's a book called how I got my shrunken head. It's all about shrunken heads. So when Mark defeats the enemy what does he do? He shrinks their heads them entirely. Whhhhhy? It doesn't make any sense.

Plus he doesn't really flesh things out. For example, why does Dr. Hawlings want the jungle magic? Like, ok... yes he wants to strip mine the area.... why does he need jungle magic for that? Trust me, standard industry has been doing a great job of ripping apart the jungle for raw materials without any need for magic. All you need is bulldozers and chainsaws. Easy peasy.

So lets go over what is scary/creepy. Shrunken heads are creepy. Thing is, I don't know if they go far enough to really convey how creepy that are. Real ones are ACTUAL HUMAN FLESH. Like a real person got murdered and their skin got preserved. It's creepy as fuck! And it's a real actual thing too. Of course probably 80% of so called shrunken heads in collections are thought to be fakes. To be honest if I had a shrunken head I'd be revealed to found out it is a fake.

The other scares are largely "real" scares. Jungle mayhem. Vicious tigers, swarming aunts, fictional deadly quicksand. To me these are largely the more interesting scares of the story. A shrunken head is just gross, a tiger will maul you to death. It could have used a snake squeezing the life of him though. That would be my suggestion.

I think perhaps one of the big reasons I didn't enjoy this is the same reason I didn't enjoy many of these books on the reread. I'm thinking with my adult brain not my child brain. Still, adult brain me wonders if even child brain would think shouting "kah-lee-ah" is pretty dumb.

At the end of the day I guess this book just isn't that memorable to stand out in the field of the near 40 other original series Goosebumps books that were out at this time. If you like the jungle setting it my sit well with you, but otherwise it doesn't have much else to offer.

Rating: 2 out of 5 shrunken heads

Up Next

Ideally I'll have my next review up April 1st. It won't be a Goosebumps book, or even by R.L. Stine, but it's from a series I've wanted to review for awhile now. Excuse me for these little deviations! I think it'll be a fun one though. Until then, thanks for reading.

Goosebumps #35 A Shocker on Shock Street

Judging a Book by It's Cover

At first glance it seems this book is about a giant praying mantis wrecking up a town. When you look a little bit closer you see that the mantis is metallic. So why is there a giant metal mantis? Is it some kind of alien race? Did a mad scientist build a robot for revenge? Did a regular giant mantis fall into a giant puddle of molten metal? Also, who names a city street "Shock Street?"

According to the tagline Shock Street is a "real dead end." Get it? Like literally dead, because you will die on that street. It actually works as a pun. Good job. The back tagline is "talk about shock treatment!" I assume because the monsters will give you a figurative shock rather than a literal electric shock. Though they do seem to be robot bugs. Genuine shocks could be in store. Who knows. Lets find out.

Getting Goosebumps

We begin with best friends Erin and Marty being scared witless by a wolf headed crab monster. A crab monster with a wolf head? I am imagining what that looks like and it seems really really stupid. Like isn't the dangerous part of a huge crab monster the claws? What good is a wolf head without the mobility of a wolf? Crabs just kind of scuttle around. Oh hell, whatever. The wolf crab is on a movie screen. They are watching a horror movie. It's Shocker on Shock Street VI. The cinematic masterpiece ends with the wolf crab being boiled alive and the citizens dining like kids. I expect it to sweep the Oscars. Erin's dad works with "movie people" and got them tickets to an advanced screening. While they talk about how great the special effects are they ponder what it would be like if they monsters they saw were real. Then they walked into the wolf crab monster! He of course turns out to be a guy in a costume. Chapter 3 and already someone tried to scream but no sound could come out. I should keep track of the earliest instance of this Goosebumps trope.

Up they go to dad's office. He has a sweet job designing rad theme parks. His office is filled with toys and awesome stuff. He is basically the coolest. Unfortunately he has bad news. Very bad news. The bad news is that he tricked you! Heeeyoooo what a kidder. He actually has supremely good news. He's been designing Shocker Studio's tour and the kids get to go on a test run of it. In their excitement Erin asks if mom can come too. Dad seems perplexed and a little concerned by this question. It's decided they should go alone. Not even dad is going with. They are slightly dismayed to learn they have to stay on the tram and all times so they can't go walking around on Shock Street. Mostly though they are psyched. What kid wouldn't be? They are even armed with Shocker Stun Ray Blasters which seems like 1 word too many for the weapons. Apparently they can freeze monsters at up to 20 feet. So they don't even have the range of a Super Soaker? Lame! They are effective though, Linda who handed them out fumbled with one and shot herself, freezing up instantly. Oh wait, she was joking. Isn't any mother fucker in Goosebumps capable of not kidding around?

Onto the automated tram they go. First stop, the Haunted House of Horror. That sounds both super generic and also a little redundant. It seems pretty much like a regular haunted house. Skeletons, jumpscares, general spookiness. Erin is already getting freaked out but Marty thinks it's pretty funny. The lights go out. Marty Disappears, except not really. Some kind of special effects or something? That doesn't really make sense to me. Oh well. The tram turned into more of a rollercoaster zipping around the house in darkness. The tram goes out of control and they bounce around the seats flopping all over. Marty thinks it's great. Marty is an idiot.

They burst outside coming to a stop between two bushes. Then the monsters come out. Luckily, they are just there to sign autographs. Autographs aren't very scary. Still who doesn't want an autograph from "Ape Face" or "the Toadinator." I better not see those autographs on E-Bay, kids!

Next stop, Cave of the Living Creeps! Erin is worried there will be bats. She should have been worried about the bunches of foot long worms that fall all over them. Are those real worms? PETA is
gonna be pissed! Next they are covered in spiders. Is this a studio tour or an episode of Fear Factor? Won't get get expensive to keep buying tons of spiders and worms to dump on people?

Finally the tram comes to a stop and then... nothing. While pondering what the deal is, Marty spooks Erin by disappearing again, this time merely stepping off the tram onto the cave floor. Dad said stay in the tram at all times. This can't be good. It could start back up any moment now! It doesn't though and they decide to walk and find help.

So at this point are you confused as to why the cover of the book has a giant metal mantis on it? Well just then a giant metal mantis shows up. Two actually. They try to go back to the tram now that the spooking seems to have resumed but their exit is cut off by the bugs. Two more mantises appear. One of them headbutts Erin. You would think a headbut from a 16 foot tall robot bug would hurt more than Erin lets on. They're surrounded and the mantises are spitting super hot black goo at them. They consider using the stun guns but realize they are still in the tram. They decide to deal with them the way you deal with real bugs, by stepping on them. A stomp to the toes makes them reel back and allows them to make a break for it. Why would you program robot bugs to feel pain? And if they aren't robots, they are still metal. Surely a meager stomping wouldn't hurt?

Thankfully they finally get outside. But wait, one of the mantises is eating Marty. April fools. Seriously? Fuck you Marty. Now is no time to be joking around. Also "April fools" is a dumb line. Come up with something clever kid. After some consideration as to whether or not the whole ride has gone haywire they realize they are on Shock Street. THE Shock Street. Soon they find the cemetery from the movie Cemetary on Shock Street. Marty wants to see it. Erin has a bad feeling about this. Bullheaded Marty wins. He openes up the gate, takes a few steps, and falls straight into an open grave. Serves him right. Erin should just leave his ass there. She is a better person than I am though. She checks on him and the moron thinks falling into an open grave is super cool. They examine their surroundings and find spooooky gravestone names like, "Jim Socks" and "Ben Dover." Classic.

Suddenly hands shoot up from the ground. Voices beckon them to come down. They grab at them but Erin breaks free. Marty is not so lucky. Thankfully once again Erin proves she is a good friend and doesn't ditch him. Then heads start rising up from the ground. The zombie hordes are enough to finally scare Marty and they book it on out of there.

Running for their lives they find an unfamiliar mansion. Unfortunately it is not their salvation it is their doom. They sink into the ground. Mud covers them and they nearly abandon hope but they are rescued. Who is their savior? Dad? No of course not, it's Wolf Girl and Wolf Boy. It seems their rescuers are more interested in scaring and possibly eating them though. Erin has had enough of their shenanigans. She goes to rip off their masks but discovers only real fur and real flesh. They climb a wall to get out of reach but that won't keep them at bay for long. Erin takes out Marty's ray gun. Because I am terrible at what I do I neglected to mention that while escaping the mantises they grabbed their guns. Sadly it proves to be utterly useless.

But wait! What's that? The tram is coming back! They run to the vehicle as fast as they can, motivated I assume by sheer terror. They manage to catch up to it, saved at last! Except Marty falls over his own fucking feet and then trips up Erin. I told her to leave his ass behind! But you didn't listen to me, did you book? Up fast Erin  manages to catch it again and jump in. Marty is behind her but manages to do the same after a while. How did the Wolf People not catch them? Are they slow as shit? They are supposed to be unequaled killing machines! I am disappointed. Two kids can catch up to a tram but Wolf People can't? For shame.

It is then they realize they aren't alone on the ride anymore. Dad said they would be the only passengers but it looks like the tram made a detour and picked up some skeletons. Also the tram seems to be going the wrong way. Also the tram is now going too fast for them to jump out. Also the tram is going to smash into a wall. They jump after all. Wait, they said it was going to fast to do that. And they said it picked up even  more speed after they decided that. Well either way they jumped and the tram went THROUGH the wall somehow, and everything seemed to be fine for it. Holograms perhaps? They go up to the wall to check but it is totally solid. Confused and frightened, Marty wants an explanation. Erin just wants to get the fuck out.

Lost they wind up back on Shock Street. Strange wisps of smoke with eerie faces start popping up all over. Unable to take it anymore Erin freezes up totally. Thankfully their scene is over? Huh? Russ Denver movie director explains that it is all special effects. Really her dad should have told them in his opinion. He directs them to where dad is, in Shockro's House of Shocks. They are a bit worried they'll get shocked, like in the movie, but he puts their minds at ease. He turns away to go about his business and Erin notices a power cord plugged into him. He's a robot! And not even a good robot, he needs an external power source! And Marty entering Shockro's House! Exclamation point! She tries to save him but in a flash he is laid out on the floor. Too late!

Unable to save her best friend she realizes quickly she is not alone. Dad is here. He is confused why the kids are also in the building. She tries to explain quickly how everything has gone wrong. As she looks closer, she realizes it isn't her father after all. She can't function anymore. She has a complete system failure. Literally. Because she is a robot. Yup. Mr. Stine you've done it again! "Dad," has a conversation about the two kid robots malfunctioning. Such a shame because all the monster robots were working perfectly. Oh well, with some repairs they'll be good as new in no time.

What I Thought.

Oooooh boy, what a ride. Literally. Get it, cause the book was about a ride? Anyway this story reminded me in some ways of HorrorLand. Obviously because it involves rides, a studio tour instead of a theme park this time but they are a little interchangeable. This comparison is good, because I think this sort of book works well. You have a good excuse to throw in several different types of scares. It also works to take something that is purposely scary but turn it up a notch when the fake frights prove to be real.

The premise of the kids being movie fanatics and getting to experience things first hand goes over well. I think Stine misses opportunities on this though, as they should be able to get themselves out of some trouble based on their previous movie knowledge. For example, to get away from the giant mantises they decide to stomp on them because they are bugs. This is stupid logic that only flies in a Goosebumps book. I think it would be more clever if they thought back to how the movie monsters were defeated in their movies, and tried it out for themselves. At least once. You could even subvert the trope and have them try it only to fail.

So the plot. It's very "on rails." Almost literally, though the tram has been described as railless. The plot is literally that all these events in a tour are happening to them. It's like you're experiencing the ride for yourself. I don't think this kind of plot would work if repeated too often in the series, but I think it does it's job here. Frankly the plots of these books are never outstanding, so having it just be a sequence of scares that happen one after the other doesn't hurt.

Of course there is the twist ending. Now some twist endings make me groan. This one make me chuckle and say to myself "Stine you son of a bitch!" I think the kids turning out to be robots actually kinda works. Of course it doesn't bare a whole lot of scrutiny. When you think about it you're like, "well why would they need to program robotic kids just to test a ride?" When it gets right down to it it actually doesn't make any sense at all. But I'll allow it this time. It's ridiculous in a way that entertains. He did drop a couple of stupid hints early on. First he described the kids as both looking extremely similar even though they weren't related. Also, Erinbot mentioned her mother and "dad" got confused but at the end he mentioned he should have realized they were malfunction then since obviously the robots have no mother.

Now I like to talk about how I'd try to fix these books, but besides the little details  I've already mentioned I don't know that there is much I'd do. I think it works for what it is. It's the most enjoyable Goosebumps I've read in quite awhile.

Rating: 4 movie monsters out of 5

Up Next

It's October! Scientists have proved that October is the spookiest month of the year. Because of that I am HOPING to get out 3 new updates to my site this month. Two special book reviews and another entry looking at alternate cover art. I can't guarantee it, but I'll try my darnedest. Until next time.