The seventh entry in the Goosebumps series introduces the most iconic villain of the series. While other villains may have recurring appearances, Slappy is the most well-known of the series. In this review I’ll see if the original stands the test of time.

Synopsis:

At the beginning of this Goosebumps entry, we are introduced to identical twins Kris and Lindy Powell. The two of them are always competing as well as annoying each other. The first example of this is on the first page where Lindy pops Kris’s gum and Kris slams Lindy’s book shut.

Their mom gets on them about always arguing and competing. This is when their mom suggests they get outside and bike or take the dog Barky for a walk. Somehow, the dog names keep getting worse in the series.

The twins head over to a house being built next door. As they check out the half-built home, they get jump scared by a squirrel. Lindy is looking around and finds a corpse… Wait, it’s just a dummy, even worse!

As Lindy looks over the dummy, she finds a card that says Slappy on it, wow, it’s the infamous dummy, I’m sure he’ll be the central focus of this novel. Lindy decides to keep Slappy.

As Lindy and Kris head home, they run into Amy and Ben Marshall, which is pretty unimportant to the plot.

A week later after dinner, Kris is thinking about her sister’s dummy. Everyone at school seems really into Slappy, and finds ventriloquism cool, huh? What kid finds ventriloquism cool, and no way is everyone at school going to be into that.

Kris is especially upset her crush Robby, who never shows up in the book and gets around two sentences dedicated to him, finds Slappy cool. I’m only including this, because I thought this was going somewhere, with maybe Robby becoming important, never happens.

Kris decides to ask her parents for a dummy. This makes Lindy upset, because she wants to be known as the ventriloquist of the family. Honestly, who cares this much about ventriloquism?

During a performance, Kris is slapped by Slappy. Lindy says she didn’t do it, which is totally unbelievable.

That night Kris wakes up to find Slappy in her room, but she shares a room with Lindy, so this makes sense. While Kris is up, Lindy pranks her by grabbing her, which somehow Kris thinks is Slappy. I would assume small wood hands would feel different than human hands.

On Monday morning we learn that there’s a spring concert rehearsal coming up. Lindy and Kris’s dad is going out of town to Portland. Kris goes up to her room and discovers a new dummy in her room, making her think somehow Slappy is replicating. Yup, that was my first thought as well.

The new dummy is from her parents. Kris names the dummy Mr. Wood, which is a name of all time. I promise, I won’t make any double entendre from me for the rest of the book.

Kris has Cody come over to practice her act on him the next day. Cody doesn’t like it that much and calls ventriloquism weird, finally, a normal kid.

The next day Mr. Wood is missing. Kris finds Mr. Wood in her doorway wearing her dress, which is now crumpled.

Later Lindy and Kris run into Alice and Cody, both of whom find ventriloquism weird, so there’s at least two normal people in this book now.

Amy is having a birthday party later and has invited Lindy to perform. Who are these children? Who wants a ventriloquism act as entertainment for this birthday party, Jeff Dunham? Before she does this, Lindy takes Mr. Wood, which upon being used says “You’re a stupid jerk.” Lindy says this wasn’t her, but come on.

Lindy goes to the birthday, which goes so well she gets more gigs and gets paid. Who are these people?

Kris has good news of her own, she will be hosting the spring concert ceremony with Mr. Wood. Sure, at this point this book must be in a weird universe where ventriloquism is the peak of entertainment.

After dinner Kris finds Mr. Wood posed chocking out Slappy. Kris separates the dummies.

The next morning, despite Mr. Wood being in the closet, Kris finds the dummies sitting next to each other. Lindy has also received an offer to go on TV, sure, I don’t even know what to say now, ventriloquism must be cool.

That night Kris is getting a drink of water and screams. This causes Lindy to come downstairs to find the kitchen covered in spilled drinks and food thrown all over the place with Mr. Wood standing in the center of the mess. After a talk with their mom, they clean the kitchen.

Later, Kris hears Mr. Wood from the closet saying, “Let me out.” This ends up being the type of ASMR to cause Kris fall asleep.

The next day, Lindy admits to this all being her doing, which is fairly obvious, since Lindy has been upset the whole book about Kris getting into ventriloquism. Surprisingly, their mom doesn’t really do anything about this.

Days pass, until Kris investigates Mr. Wood some more, she discovers a card in his pocket. And just like in the Evil Dead movies, she reads the strange language out loud, “Karru Marri Odonna Loma Molonu Karrano.” Half of these words according to spell check are real words. After a quick search, that isn’t the case, but some cities and last names are the same or common after checking. Kind of cool.

The Millers come over. The twins are encouraged to perform their act for the elderly neighbors. Mr. Wood becomes rude during the act. Kris says she isn’t doing it. The Millers don’t understand insult humor, so they probably aren’t the biggest fan of Comedy Central roasts. Kris runs upstairs.

The next night, the big concert is going down, which with everything that has happened, I can’t believe Kris is performing. Kris is nervous about performing.

As soon as the act starts, Mr. Wood starts insulting Mrs. Berman the music teacher. He calls her fat and ugly. It seems insult comedy is the only type of comedy these dummies and children know. Berman becomes angry.

Before the show gets ended early, Mr. Wood remembers he’s a fan of The Exorcist and begins to spew green nasty liquid all over the audience, this is worse than Gwar, at least the stuff they spray isn’t Oderous. Yup, puns.

Berman tells Kris, “You’re suspended for life.” That’s not a suspension, that’s called being expelled.

Their dad tells Kris he’s returning the dummy on Saturday. That night Kris can’t sleep, which I think calls for some Mr. Wood ASMR. Kris doesn’t have to wait long as she sees a shadow in the hallway. Upon checking it out, she finds Mr. Wood, who hisses at her. Okay.

Wood says he’ll throw Kris down the stairs; however, I don’t think the dummy has the strength to throw a child down a flight of stairs. Kris does get beaten up by Mr. Wood.

Lindy wakes up but doesn’t believe Kris. Kris tackles Mr. Wood, which must look weird to Lindy. However, this causes Lindy to call for their parents, since she believes she saw Mr. Wood move during the tackle.

Of course, the parents don’t believe Kris. Their parents go back to bed and tell the children to stop messing around.

Mr. Wood comes back to life and says he’ll make the children his slaves. Okay. There’s evil and then there’s slavery evil, Mr. Wood falls into the latter.

Kris grabs the letter from Mr. Wood’s pocket and reads it, this does nothing.

The twins try to pull Mr. Woods head off; this doesn’t work. Mr. Wood responds by biting Kris and laughing.

The kids then try to cut Mr. Woods head off with scissors, this doesn’t work either.

Running out of options, the twins go over to the new house next door and buries Mr. Wood.

The next morning, Mr. Wood is in the kitchen, covered in dirt. After Kris and Lindy are scolded by their parents, Mr. Wood goes back into his slavery speech, book censors must have had a field day with this one.

Mr. Woods says it’s punishment time and tries to kill Barky by choking the dog out, (not the dog!). Kris saves the dog, since she is stronger than a 3-foot dummy.

The twins grab Mr. Wood and takes him to the new house, with intentions to throw him under a bulldozer. Too bad Barky isn’t the brightest dog as he follows Lindy and Kris, before chasing after a bulldozer.

This allows Mr. Wood to get free, somehow none of the construction workers notice a dummy running around. On the other hand, somehow Mr. Wood doesn’t notice any of the bulldozers or workers either, what a dummy.

A construction worker, having a Tobias Beecher moment runs over Mr. Wood. The construction worker thinks he just ran over a child, but luckily for him, Mr. Wood isn’t a child, nor a person, though he may be a dummy.

After getting yelled at by the construction workers, the kids leave with Barky, who is fine. Upon arriving home, Slappy is now alive. He calls Lindy and Kris his slaves and asks if the other guy is finally gone. The end.

Review:

Slappy isn’t the main villain, he’s actually barely even in this book, no wonder Slappy didn’t catch on until later. However, that shouldn’t detract too much from the quality of the book, it’s more of a Friday the 13th scenario, where in the first movie Pamela Voorhees was the main villain and only in part two onwards would Jason be the main villain.

That’s not saying this book is perfect. Lindy is somewhat annoying, most of the side characters are barely in the book and have no effect on the plot, the first half of the book is pretty forgettable, and only the ending starts to offer anything interesting outside of the concert chapter.

Does this mean the book is weak, not really, there’s plenty of good, such as the dummies being creepy, especially at the end, the reveal Lindy was behind the first half was decent, if not predictable, and there aren’t really any continuity errors or plot holes in this Goosebumps entry.

Overall, 6/10. Could have been better, but not the worst I’ve read yet. Goosebumps Night of the Living Dummy is a foundation to hopefully better Slappy stories in the future.

Twist ending:

Slappy is also alive and is also evil. Will this be the set up for a sequel, or will R. L. Stine be uninterested in continuity, only time will tell.

Memorable line:

“How drippy can you get?” I can get really dripped, have you heard of Gucci?

Memorable moment, cliffhanger, etc.

Mr. Wood gets crushed by a bulldozer.

Bad parenting:

The parents don’t do anything in this book. Like anything.

Random References:

Coke, Talent Search, and Stephen King. I hope we get Slappy vs. Cujo, or more fittingly from this book, Mr. Wood vs. Cujo.

Tropes in book:

Twist ending, sibling pair, pranks, crazy cliffhangers, squirrel jump scare, dark ending, nobody believes a character’s crazy story, and newly added, animal abuse. From my memory, R. L. Stine includes animal abuse in a fair number of Goosebumps books, especially getting into the 2000 series, plus this trope has happened already in Welcome to Dead House.

TV tie-in:

None, no Goosebumps tie-in here for Night of the Living Dummy. 0/10.

Come back soon for more Goosebumps fun and reviews.

To read the last Goosebumps review: https://goosebumpsblogger.com/goosebumps-6-lets-get-invisible/

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