This Goosebumps entry is one of the most iconic in the series. The cover alone is one of the best from the original series. Despite being almost halfway through the series, R. L. Stine breaks away from a lot of the usual tropes and tries out a fair number of new things in this entry. In this review, I’ll see if the new plot elements hold up and if this remains one of the better entries. Although, the real question should be, how much does that executioner lift? Dude looks like the Hunchback of Notre dame crossed with Kane Hodder on steroids.

Synopsis:

Sue and Eddie are at Terror Tower in London, not to be confused with the Tower of Terror. They’re with a tour group while their parents are at a conference. Both of them have been touring all day and this is the final location.

Earlier, Sue and Eddie were on a bus ride, at other famous locations, and even went to a pub. Their visit led directly to the writing of the song Little Bastards, which Chaos UK didn’t feel like crediting them for.

Throughout the tour they have had a hard time understanding British, so they have been struggling to keep up.

Eddie is excited to see Terror Tower, since he was the one who convinced the tour guide to let them see it. However, when they arrive, Eddie becomes afraid of the tower. He doesn’t like scary movies or things. This makes me wonder why he wanted to see Terror Tower then.

As they enter the courtyard of the tower, Sue notices an armed guard outside the entrance. Security is taken very seriously in the tower, and trespassers will be politely shot after a cup of tea.

Entering the tower, their tour guide, Mr. Starkes, not to be confused with Tony Stark, tells the children they will be imprisoned in the tower, forever! This was a joke, but Eddie is even more scared now.

An executioner with an axe shows up behind Mr. Starkes and aims it at Mr. Starkes. However, this was also a joke. Fun fact, this executioner is the one on the cover and never shows up again. I’ve been click baited in book format by Stine again.

They head towards the dungeon for the first part of the tour. Mr. Starkes says he lost his last tour group here and they were never found. He is joking again. Mr. Starkes is trying to take my job of making jokes, now I’ll have to make extra jokes and references to keep up.

They enter the torture and chamber. The first thing they look at is the rack. A few other torture techniques are briefly mentioned. However, the brevity on medieval torture and history in this book would surely disappoint Brodequin, in fact, I think I learn more from one of their songs than what is presented in this whole book.

There’s a man in black following Sue and Eddie. His face is obscured by a black hat. I don’t think Sue and Eddie have anything to worry about. It’s probably either a black metal fan or a person who got lost on their way to Hot Topic.

Sue takes pictures of everything for her friends when she gets home, presumably to the United States. She doesn’t take a picture of the creepy man in black, who now ominously stares at her and Eddie. I don’t know, that could be good to show to the police at some point.

Eddie pickpockets Sue and steals her camera. I thought Sue was constantly taking pictures, shouldn’t she have the camera in her hand. Also, Eddie suddenly being a good pickpocket couldn’t possibly become important to the plot at some point. Right?

Mr. Starkes describes a few torture techniques in the background, which Eddie thinks is awful. Just wait until you hear about Guantanamo Bay, Eddie, that’s where the real modern torture techniques… I mean enhanced interrogation techniques are used.

They head up the north tower after learning a brief history of torture. The steps are steep, slippery, small and smooth with no hazard sign. I’m sure if Osha was around for the construction of this building and these steps, the handbook would have exploded.

Mr. Starkes shows them a cell. He says that this is where all of them will be imprisoned. I’m joking, I had to do Mr. Starkes job after he kept doing mine.

Sue feels like she’s been there before. They go into a small chamber at the top of the tower. This is where prince Edward and princess Susannah were held. This is also where the whole plot is given away. Nice! Now we can skip to the ending.

Sue proceeds to drop her camera and breaks it. She misses what happened to prince Edward and princess Susannah. So does Eddie. This isn’t convenient at all.

They then magically get separated from their tour group. I have no idea how long it took Sue to pick up her camera, or for Eddie to not notice everyone else had left, but it couldn’t have been that long.

Sue and Eddie hurry to leave. They reach the staircase heading down the stairs, but it now splits left and right, which they hadn’t noticed before.

They hear footsteps coming up towards them from below. It’s the men in black, I mean, man in black. I wonder what happened to his partner.

Sue and Eddie thinks he’s there to help them or a member of the tour group. After he doesn’t reply, they think he’s a guard. After he still doesn’t reply to them, while getting closer, they run out of things to think about him. He’s there to kidnap them and threatens to hurt them if they don’t comply. Great, it’s British Diddy.

The man reaches out to grab them. He says they know him. They don’t know him, at least not yet. He Grabs Eddie and pulls out three stones. Oh no, he’s going to stone Eddie. While he does this, he warns them not to leave or talk. However, he didn’t notice his hands were too slippery from baby oil and Eddie is able to pull away and escape with Sue.

As they run, they notice the man is chasing them. However, his cardio must be pretty bad, since both kids can outrun him.

They reach the exit, but it’s bolted shut. As we all know, kids in Goosebumps books are on super steroids and can bust down locked doors, which they do. They then bolt the door behind them, which makes no sense, but let’s just ignore that.

The exit turns out not to be an exit, but instead another dungeon. The dungeon has a bunch of dummies in it. The man in black breaks down the door. He says they must come with them. They run away again. Sue stops at a work bench and finds a flashlight. She turns it on, and they keep going.

Eventually they reach a sewer. The man catches up after Sue loses her flashlight. He grabs Eddie, but Eddie is able to escape, since the light illuminates hundreds of rats and causes the man to freak out. Dues rat machina.

The rats start to surround them. I know where these rats are from, they’re the ones from City Baby Attacked by Rats. Either that or their relatives of Mickey Rat. Sue and Eddie climb a ladder to escape. While the man is chased by rats resulting in him losing his hat. The rats eat his hat.

Sue and Eddie climb out of the sewer. They are near the tower wall and notice the tour bus has left.

The night guard comes over to them. He says that the rest of their group left, since Sue and Eddie couldn’t be found. Sue and Eddie try to tell the night guard what happened, but he doesn’t believe them. He is also angry, since he thinks they were playing in the sewers. That’s what normal kids do, play in sewers.

The guard calls them a taxi. Honestly, it may be best to stick with the guard, since he could probably fend off the man in black and may be armed based off of the first guard. Anyways, the taxi arrives for them and takes them to their hotel.

Sue tries to pay the taxi driver with gold and silver coins, but the taxi driver says he needs to British money and not play money. This taxi driver is an idiot, she literally pulled out authentic gold and silver coins, which she doesn’t even know are real yet, but that’s probably thousands of dollars if not more. And yes, I know she doesn’t know the coins are real yet, but later, these coins are important.

Sue and Eddie say they’ll get money from their parents and have the taxi driver wait while they get money. Now he’ll never get paid, and worse, he missed out on a huge payday.

They get up to their hotel room, but no one answers the door. A maid opens the door for them. When Sue and Eddie get into their hotel room, they find it empty with no belongings inside. It’s pretty lucky they didn’t wind up in some random person’s hotel room.

Sue and Eddie go downstairs and talk to the clerk at the front desk. The clerk tells them their room is vacant. He also says that there is no conference going on this weekend, which is why their parents were at this hotel. To make matters worse, both Sue and Eddie have forgotten their last names. I think I had solved the plot by this point, and I think even if I hadn’t read this book many years ago, I would still be able to figure out what’s going on at this point.

Sue and Eddie get dinner at the hotel restaurant, which is luckily free. This is when they realize they can’t remember what their parents look like. To make matters even worse than worse, they can’t remember yesterday, or really any previous days. At this point, go to the police or a hospital, I think this may be a medical emergency.

This is when the taxi driver enters the hotel. Sue and Eddie sneak out through the back exit to avoid being seen by the taxi driver.

The man in black shows up. His spider sense for lost children led him to them. In truth, the book never explains how the man in black finds the children, so I’m just going with that.

Eddie reveals he pickpocketed the rocks off the man. Great, the pickpocketing is important to the plot. He wants his rocks back, wait, is the man actually Wilson? I guess after spending so much time with Skipper, he really crashed out and now chases children.

Eddie says he’ll give the rocks back if the man lets them go. The man in black agrees. However, when he does, he says he meant he’d let them go with him. Wow, this is some generic Marvel villain level of writing. Not necessarily bad, but in this case, very cheesy.

The man opens a portal to the past using the rock and they all get sucked back into time. Somehow Sue and Eddie don’t realize this. This is like Back to the Future, but instead of a Delorean, they use rocks, and instead of an old scientist, it’s a dude whose hat has miraculously reappeared after being eaten by rats.

They are now in an old hallway. The funny thing is, Sue and Eddie were teleported through history to the exact spot they’re in now, but at that time. It’s really lucky they didn’t end up inside a wall or another solid object. Also, for some reason, the man in black has disappeared.

They think they’re in some special part of the hotel that is older and only illuminated by candles. I think anybody else would realize they aren’t in the same place or at least realize that something major has changed.

A robed man they bump into tells them not to leave, since there is evil around them. He fails to elaborate, which of course means, Sue and Eddie won’t listen to him.

They wander down the hall, to only find a wall, so they walk the other way. The other end of the hall leads into a large room with tons of people all eating and talking. However, they’re clearly not in modern times with the dress of the people and the differences in table, food, and even floor. Sue and Eddie still don’t know they’re in the past.

Sue tries to talk to them, but she can’t understand them well and the people are weirded out by their clothing. The people then realize who they are and try to capture or kill them. Eddie and Sue run away. Lots of running in this book.

After being chased and escaping, Sue realizes it’s now daytime. Eddie has gone missing, presumably captured.

The man in black shows up. He tells her not to worry about Eddie. Sue worries more about Eddie. The man insists they know each other. I think he’s become the drunk guy in a bar who insists he’s seen you somewhere before, but every time you deny it, he doubles down.

He grabs her before she can run away. However, an ox pulling a cart comes close to them. The man in black freaks out and let’s go of Sue. I think this guy has a case of zoophobia with his reactions to all of the animals in this book.

Sue finds a woman and pays her to hide her from the man in black. She comments on the authenticity of the gold and is thankful for the money. The woman hides Sue in a box. The man in black shows up and the woman immediately sells Sue out. This is the type of person who would snitch to the police after one question, lame.

This is when we learn the man in black is the Lord High Executioner. That has got to be one of the sickest names in these Goosebumps books so far. Too bad he is constantly foiled by two children who are able to outrun him. Also, a fun fact is the Lord High Executioner isn’t something Stine made up, he likely took it from the play The Mikado or possibly from Albert Anastasia.

Sue is then taken to Terror Tower. Eventually she is locked away at the top of the tower. Eddie is also there and had been captured.

An old man then shows up, his name is Morgred. Big twist, they are prince Edward and princess Susannah, as if that twist wasn’t easy to find out with the multitude of clues in the story. I’d be more surprised if this was a case of mistaken identity, and that might have made for an even crazier twist. However, if that were the case, both of these main characters would have to be brain dead.

Morgred says he sent them both into the future to escape and wiped their memories. Wow, what did he think would happen? Two kids whose erased memories convinced them they were on vacation, but who had no parents, no money, no history, and no memories would somehow end up not getting into trouble or captured again by the Lord High Execution?

Morgred explains their parents are dead, their uncle is the king, and they are set to be killed, since their uncle doesn’t want any competition. Further, the executioner stole the stones from him, so that he would be able to travel into the future and capture the kids and bring them back. Why not just kill them in the future?

Morgred then gives them back their memories. During which, Eddie steals the three stones from Morgred, which he somehow got back from the Lord High Executioner, and then Morgred freezes them. However, Morgred doesn’t realize Eddie has the stones.

Morgred apologizes, and says he is helpless. He also says he can’t send them back into the future, since he would be executed. This guy is lame. Clearly, he has a ton of power, but doesn’t use it, he could easily take out a ton of people, and he’s scared of being executed, but hasn’t considered traveling with the kids into the future.

Later, the executioner shows up. Before Sue and Eddie are executed, Eddie performs the magic spell and saves them. The stones explode in the process, preventing the Lord High Executioner from getting the stones.

Sue and Eddie reappear in the future, in the same spot, right as a tour group is coming in the room. Eddie and Sue are able to join the tour group without being noticed. The tour guide tells the story of how prince Edward and princess Susannah disappeared right before their executions, never being seen again.

Morgred is also there with them and somehow Eddie was able to bring him back with them. Maybe, Eddie is actually the magician. Morgred is also now their legal guardian. I’m also left to assume Sue still has all her gold, so they are pretty set up for at least a while.

The book ends with them going to get burgers.

Review:

I really enjoyed most of this Goosebumps entry. However, this Goosebumps entry had some really weak story elements. The biggest being the Lord High Executioner traveling into the future to bring the kids to the past. Why not just kill the kids in the future. I mean, even the Terminator knew to do that much. Could you believe the Terminator traveling into the past, then bringing Sarah Connor to the future to kill her then instead of in the past.

Also, the kids are already gone to the future, it’s not like they’re a threat to the crown that far in the future, so why even time travel to bring them back. Seems like his problem solved itself, so the Lord High Executioner is just being extra for no reason.

I’d also argue that most of the characters are irresponsible in this story. For example, the tour guide abandoning the children, the taxi driver waiting a long time to check on the kids, the night guard not believing the children’s story, or the new tour guide not noticing two kids and an old man joining her tour group.

However, despite some critiques, especially on the central story, there are still great aspects to this Goosebumps entry. Both of the protagonists are relatively likable. The setting works really well for the story and is pretty cool. The tower itself is pretty interesting and is utilized well. The ending works decently well. The characters in this book are in actual peril and the Lord High Executioner is an imposing villain that brings danger to the story.

I think this Goosebumps entry works in many ways. Especially when it tries new things. The time travel actually works logically in the story, the memory loss works for the most part, having the parents in the story be dead works well for the plot, and the fantasy elements in this entry works better than many of the others.

I think the good aspects outweigh the bad of the story. If I were to make one change, I’d have it so that the Lord High Executioner goes into the future to get the children because in the past the execution is planned to be public. Since in the book, the execution was going to be done in private without witnesses. I would also add a story element where the new king needs the children publicly executed to cement his rule and add into the plot that not everyone is convinced the new king is a good ruler. This would result in the plot making a bit more sense.

I usually don’t like time travel stories, or stories with a medieval fantasy plot, but this works well, especially for a Goosebumps book.

I’ll give this Goosebumps entry a 7/10. I think if the plot was slightly tweaked, this would have been my first 9 or 10 for a Goosebumps book. However, despite all of the good, I can’t overlook the weaker parts of the plot.

Twist ending:

Not much of a twist, but the kids are actually prince Edward and princess Susannah.

Memorable line:

“We’ve lost our memories.” Double Amnesia.

Memorable moment, cliffhanger, etc:

The Lord High Executioner is attacked and chased by rats. They eat his hat. Well, that’s new for a Goosebumps book.

Bad parenting:

Since Morgred is basically the only parental figure, him saying he can’t help the kids at the end and essentially allows them to almost be executed, I’d say that’s some pretty bad parenting.

Random References:

Harrods. This is all we get for references, unless you count random streets, locations, and things from the 1500s. I’m now starving for references.

Tropes in book:

Character is 12, sibling pair, pranks, executioner jump scare, crazy cliffhangers, and nobody believes a character’s crazy story.

TV tie-in:

The TV adaptation of this Goosebumps entry is faithful to the source material. It does some things better and some things worse. However, this is one of the episodes that has more going for it than others.

Despite bad CGI, this episode had a higher budget than most. There are a ton of extras, there’s an actual location, which looks pretty good, and the acting is better than most episodes.

None of the plot issues are fixed, but everything from the book is mostly still present. I think the most unfortunate thing is the episode has some pretty bad acting and bad accents at the end, despite the rest of the episode having good acting. This is also one of the few two-part Goosebumps episodes that makes sense to be 45 minutes long.

They do a good job of adapting the peril and the memory loss from the Goosebumps book. Which is nice to see.

The biggest changes from the book to the episode include Morgred is a force ghost at the beginning of the episode. CGI bats instead of rats appear in the tunnel. The clerk is unhelpful and rude, opposite of the book. The ending is different with the Lord High Executioner coming back to present time again.

I think the ending is actually worse than the Goosebumps book. Considering the same problems persist, it doesn’t make sense for the High Executioner to travel forward in time. I think that makes the episode overall a bit weaker, as well as some of the other changes being unnecessary.

I’ll give this episode of Goosebumps a 6/10. Definitely better than most, but the changes for the most part end up hurting the episode.

Memorable episode line:

*Force Ghost Screaming* Yeah, the kids have no idea what you said.

Famous cast:

Corey Sevier, Bathsheba Garnett, and Jayne Eastwood.

Come back soon for more Goosebumps fun and reviews.

To read the last Goosebumps review: https://goosebumpsblogger.com/goosebumps-26-my-hairiest-adventure/

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