#tim jacobus

[goryhorroor]

part two of my appreciation for tim jacobus: the man whose book covers haunted my nightmares

[peteneems]

[retroscifiart]

Art by Tim Jacobus for Goosebumps The Curse of Camp Cold Lake (1997)

[sandmandaddy69]

Tim Jacobus

[90smovies]

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

𝔗𝔦𝔪 𝔍𝔞𝔠𝔬𝔟𝔲𝔰

[brokehorrorfan]

Trick or Treat Studios will release Goosebumps action figures in December/January. The set of five is available to pre-order for $125 with free shipping.

The line includes the Mummy from The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, Slappy from Night of the Living Dummy, Carly Beth from The Haunted Mask, Mud Monster from You Can't Scare Me, and Scarecrow from The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight.

Each 5" scale toy has five points of articulation and comes with a trading card featuring its respective book's original cover art by Tim Jacobus on a display stand. Collect all five to build a Curly the skeleton figure.

[georgeromeros]

The Monster Squad by Tim Jacobus

[tlbodine]

Overthinking: The Phantom of the Auditorium

The Phantom of the Auditorium came out in October of '94, and is another book I have no memory of form childhood. It's also one I don't hear people talk about much in general, even though there's both a TV episode and a stage production (as I just learned).

So what's the deal with this one? Worth a read, or snooze-worthy? Let's dig into it.

First, the Plot:

Our story centers on long-time friends Brooke and Zeke. Like many Goosebumps heroes, they love both horror and practical jokes, which is why they can't resist trying out for the school play--because the rumor is that it will be spooky.

Turns out the play may be cursed. At first this comes up from Brooke's overly-obsessive under-study (who really wanted the lead part, ok), but it's later confirmed by the teacher.

The basic plot of the play is: A theater owner has a hideously deformed, mask-wearing squatter living in the crawlspace under his theater. But theater-owner's daughter falls in love with this "phantom" anyway, much to the annoyance of her fiancee, who kills him. But the phantom returns as a ghost to haunt the theater anyway.

This play was supposed to be performed like 70 years ago, but on opening night, the kid playing the lead disappeared and was never seen again. They never performed the play after that and reportedly destroyed all the scripts, but somehow they survived! And now we're going to perform it, for...reasons.

Part of the play involves a trap door, which works like a dumbwaiter to deliver the titular phantom up from under the stage. Zeke is instantly intrigued by this bit of equipment and encourages Brooke to stay after school and test it out with him. They plunge deep below the school, way further than expected, and get a little lost. Then they bump into the night janitor, Emile, who shoos them away.

The next day, Brooke befriends new-kid-in-town Brian, who already knows about the play and wants to get involved. It's too late to have a part in it, but he gets a job painting backdrops.

Predictably, weird stuff begins to happen. Threatening messages get left first in Brooke's locker, later scrawled across vandalized set pieces. And a couple of times, Zeke has shown up in a mask on stage, acting creepy and erratic...except Zeke insists it couldn't have been him. Oh yeah, and nobody's ever heard of the night janitor, either.

Alas, nobody believes Zeke, and he gets thrown off the play. Eager to clear his name, he convinces Brooke and Brian to go with him back tot he school to get some evidence of his frame-up. They figure out that Emile isn't a janitor but is actually just some poor homeless dude living under the school. He's been leaving them messages hoping they'll leave him alone.

They call the cops on Emile, but he clears out. Opening night of the production, though, Brooke is joined on stage by a masked phantom who is certainly not Zeke, although she's the only one who notices. The phantom delivers his backstory, and it's totally off-script. We find out that he's the kid who disappeared 70 years ago -- he fell in the trap door and died under the school and nobody found him, but now he's returned to stage to act in his role once and for all!

He disappears in a dramatic curtain call, Brooke runs into Zeke, and then the two of them end up back at her locker to find an old year book that shows a picture of the missing kid from 70 years ago....Brian was the phantom all along, ooooOOOOooooo

Overthinking It:

I imagine that, as an 8-year-old reading this book the first time, the twists may have blown my mind. It's possible that there was a time when I didn't see Brian show up as The New Kid In School and immediately think, oh yeah, this is clearly the ghost of the missing student.

Alas, I am 30 years past that, so I pretty much had the plot of the book figured out within a few chapters.

Homeless-guy-Emile is a nice subversion, though. I am amused that, as far as we can tell, Emile's threatening messages and Brian's ghostly appearance are wholly coincidental and unrelated. Brian actually seems as frightened about the whole thing as anybody else.

What's frustrating about this book is that it is almost really good. But it just fails to tie up its loose ends or smooth over its plot holes naturally, instead taking a jackhammer to exposition to ram the plot along.

Why would the teacher have resurrected a 70-year-old cursed play? Like why that play in particular? And then why tell the kids its backstory? Because it's a necessary plot device and Stine is tired, obviously. But I kept waiting for it to pay off somehow, for it to turn out the teacher was in cahoots with the ghost. Alas, no dice.

It's also not at all clear how Emile the homeless guy is presumably breaking into lockers to plant evidence. And then later when the yearbook shows up in the locker -- that was Brian's doing, right? So was Brian also planting evidence? Why? What is happening here?

I do enjoy the story-within-a-story-within-a-story construct. There's some really trippy multilayered storytelling that could happen here, in a more ambitious work that wasn't going to be banged out over a weekend (no shade on R.L. Stine, banging out a book in a weekend is his whole thing). But it handles it well enough, and the ambiance and theater bits are fun and engaging for what they are.

If You Liked This, THESE Will Really Give You Goosebumps:

Obviously, the title is a nod to The Phantom of the Opera, which you can enjoy in novel format by Gaston Leroux, or in many different film and stage productions -- take your pick.

But the story here as presented is also heavily inspired by The Hunchback of Notre Dame and just a dash of Macbeth, or rather the theater kid legends about the Scottish Play.

There is a 2015 movie called The Gallows that appears to have a lot in common with this book, but I haven't seen it so I can't confirm.

For a very different take on dead students taking the place of live ones (and causing trouble), see the anime Another (directed by Tsutomu Mizushima). Compare and contrast with Stephen King's Sometimes They Come Back (and its film adaptation).

And -- spoiler alert -- for more stories about a haunting that turns out to be some dude in a crawlspace, check out The Boy and Housebound.

[goryhorroor]

put some respect on tim jacobus' name

[peteneems]

[a-book-of-creatures]

Happy Easter weekend?

Confession: this cover used to scare me as a kid. It’s the colors and the warped perspective. It made me feel like I was peering into someone’s nightmare. And that’s before going into the melted hollow-eyed creature…

I never read a single book in the series, only stared at covers. :/

[sandmandaddy69]

Tim Jacobus

[90smovies]

[ambersadventuresinwonderland]

My recent haul!!! 🖤

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]