Goosebumps: Creepiest Horror Books Series of the ‘90s and 2000s

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Do you remember back in the days, way back in the elementary school when you were still going to the book fairs? Those days when you would spend hours in the library flipping over books.

Back then, the book fair was where I would go to get scary stories to tell in the Dark. Goosebumps books by R.L Stine were among my favorite. I would read the horror stories without fear while in the library. But later in the evening when I went to bed, that is when the horror replays in my mind is a scary manner. Most of my friends are still afraid of such books until now.

Around 1995, a TV series of the book was developed, which took it to another level because you would have a look and feel of the horror in the past safely placed within the book covers!

As it turns out, many children loved the Goosebumps Books Series that it was adapted into a movie and a TV series within a decade. In this article we will explore the:

  • Goosebumps Comic Book Series (1992 – 1997)
  • Goosebumps TV Series (1995 – 1998)
  • Goosebumps Movie (2015)
  • Goosebumps Video Game series
Let’s jump right in…

"Viewers beware, you are in for a scare," Do you remember than line?

Goosebumps Comic Book Series (1992 – 1997): The most sort after horror comic book series of the 90s.
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If you are like me, the pandemic has allowed you to look back in time and read the comic books of the '90s. Since I was a teenager around that time, I can easily relate to most of the books, films, and TV shows that were released.

My love for horror movies and scary Zombie TV shows was sparked by the Original Goosebumps Comic book series released around 1992. It was one of my first horror books to read at the time and happened to be favorite. I fell in love with horror-based storylines since that time.

The original Goosebumps series was a collection of children's horror stories written by R.L. Stine. There are 62 Goosebumps books from 1992 to 1997, beginning with "Welcome to Dead House and ending with Monster Blood IV.

33 Goosebumps books were re-released under the new Classic Goosebumps title. Thirteen made it into a popular Goosebumps comic book series. The last book was titled the “Four Goosebumps books in one”.

Two hardcover collections were released at the time: The Goosebumps Collections and the Monster Edition. Three books were written for the series entitled “Living Dummy Collection”, “Campfire Collection”, and “Monster Blood Collection”.

Another dozen books were published under the Monster Edition title. They were divided into four categories, with the first three being numbered while the last was known as Fright Light Edition. Around that time, 57 books were reprinted using the original artwork, and some were adapted for TV.



Understanding the background of Goosebumps TV Series – (1995 – 1998)
At around 1995, the Goosebumps TV series was released. At this time, Goosebumps Books were famous worldwide, not just in Canada (place of origin). The best-selling Goosebumps series by L. Stine was a favorite of children at the time. It was a collection of tales of young teens finding themselves in odd and magical circumstances.
The original Goosebumps TV series originally aired on YTV and Canal Famille from 1995 to 1999 in Canada, Australia, and the United States. Each October, Cartoon Network aired the episodes between 2007 and 2009. The Hub Screened the series from September 6th 2011 to October 5th 2014. Seventy-four episodes of the series were streamed on Netflix from 2013. Although only the first season was broadcast in the United Kingdom, some were out of order, and some were incomplete.

In 2004, the 20th Century Fox Home Ent. They released the series on DVD in one volume containing one two-part episode on each disc. Later versions have more than one disk.

Towards the end of 2008, twelve of the sixteen discs were released in the new double-feature collection.


The revival of the series

From 2008, new DVD sets of Goosebumps were released. Unlike the previous release, these DVDs contained at least 3-4 episodes that were 22 minutes long instead of two. Many of the earlier titles have been re-released, and only new releases were included here. Out of these 69/ 74 episodes were released on DVD in the US except parts 1 and 2 of the Haunted Mask, Werewolf Skin and Cuckoo Clock of Doom. Though the Haunted Mask and Warewolf Skin had not yet been released on DVD, they had been on VHS.

The books of the original Goosebumps series were later re-released to make new episodes of the Goosebumps TV series. The key difference between the books and their original version is that they contain pictures of related episodes.

Eighteen books were published in the year 1996 to 1998.



Goosebumps Movie (2015): All you need to know about the Goosebumps Movie
The success of the Goosebumps book series and the TV series led to the development of a film based on the Goosebumps book series. The Goosebumps Movie (2015) was a scary American comedy horror movie. The movie was written by Darren Lemke and directed by Rob Letterman. It featured Jack Black, a fiction character representing Stine who gangs up with his neighbor (acted by Dylan Minnette) to save the town from Goosebump monsters that let loose from their book and cause havoc in the town.

Other actors that made a special appearance in the movie include Odeya Rush, Amy Ryan, Ryan Lee, and Jillian Bell.

The production of the Goosebumps features movie began in 1998, with Tim Burton as director. The scriptwriters failed to find a script to establish which book to adapt for the project, and therefore they had to shut down the project. In early 2008, Columbia Pictures had acquired the rights to produce the movie base on Goosebumps, and the project was added to the development queue again.

Goosebumps hit the US theatres on October 16th, 2015. The move was really popular, and many people liked it at the time. It had a great response from the audience and even critics. Goosebumps made over 158 Million dollars with a budget of over $84million. Later in October of 2018, a standalone Goosebumps Sequel was released.


Goosebumps Plot
In September 2013, Zach Cooper and his Mother Gale moved from New York City to Madison, Delaware. This was after his father's death. Zach doesn't want to meet his neighbor Hannah, but her father warns him to avoid meeting them.
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The next morning, at Madison High School, where Gale serves as vice-principal, Zach becomes close friends with Champ, a sweet high school girl. Hannah invited Zach that night to an abandoned amusement park where they started their friendship.

When they return home, her fathers warn again that Zach should stay away from their family or something nasty will happen.

That night, Gale was going to take part in the dance in school and leave Zach to be with his aunt Lorraine Conyers. Worried that Hannah is in danger, Zach deceives her father and breaks into his house. While investigating, they found a bookshelf with various Goosebumps series books, each of them magically locked. In response to Zach's curiosity, Champ lets loose the Abominable Snowman of Pasadena. With Hannah's help, they agreed to track the creature to a nearby ice rink where Hannah's father came, and she re-arrested the creature in the book.

The popularity of the Goosebumps TV series inspired the production of Goosebumps movie. Tim Burton was nominated to direct the film for 20th Century Fox Family Films. In mid-April 2015, a film crew of six journeyed through the city of Madison, Georgia to gather visual data for the film. The team did a three-dimensional survey of the city using a theodolite. The photos were used to create a CGI 3D background for the town in the movie.


Goosebumps Video Game Series (1996 – 2020)
There have also been several game releases of Goosebumps over the years. Starting with the Escape from Horrorland that was released in 1996. All the games produced were based on the original Goosebumps book series.
Other Video game series released based on the Goosebumps book series include:


  • Escape from Horrorland (1996) - is the sequel to the Goosebumps book called "One Day at Horrorland.". It was released as a PC version. It features faces like Erick Llyod, Wylie Adam, Isabella Rossellini, and Jeff Goldblum. Lawrence Guterman directed it. He is famous for directing Cats and Dogs in 2001 and Son of the Mask in 2005.
  • Attack of the Mutant – 1997 – The game Escape from Attack of the Mutant is based on the book "Attack of the Mutant" written by R.L Stine. The game was developed and released by Dreamworks Interactive back in 1997. It was among the first games to use cel-shaded animation.
  • In this game, the hero ends up at the wrong stop, and he gets into a confrontation with the Masked Mutant. In the comics, he is supposed to work with comic book heroes to stop the mutant's transforming the world into a comic book.
  • The cast includes many of the main characters from the original book. The Galloping Gazelle, the Masked Mutant and the Magnificient Molecule Man, and the original characters such as mobster villain Pinky Flamingo. The hero, a quiet child, is a passive protagonist. Adam West voiced the Galloping Gazelle, and James Belushi voiced the Masked Mutant in HorrorLand in 1996.
  • Horrorland (2008) – This was released as a Goosebumps HorrorLand video game towards the end of 2008 on the Nintendo DS. It was later released for PlayStation 2 on October 2009. HorrorLand is a new horror video game, developed by the young team of Gusto Games in Derby. It is reported that the game is similar to the original Goosebumps Horrorland game called “Goosebumps Escape from HorrorLand”
    HorrorLand in the game includes five different areas:
    • The Vampire Village
    • Mad Labs
    • Terror Tombs
    • Fever Swamp, and
    • Carnival of Screams.
  • The game (2015) – Goosebumps: The game of 2015 is an adventure video game, and it puts players in charge of choosing which type of character they would like to be. It is a prequel to the film: Goosebumps that Wayforward Technologies developed.
  • Night of Scares (2015) – Night scares were released in 2015, it was a mobile game where players are assigned the role of a "Twist" who moves into a supposedly haunted house by weird characters from the original Goosebumps book series. It features R.L Stine who is trapped inside a typewriter ( Slappy did this). They are wished best of luck in their attempts to obtain pages from "Night of the Living Dummy".
  • Horror Town (2018) – This game was released in 2018 for smartphones. It features Slappy and many other monsters as players who build their Goosebumps-like town.
  • Dead of Night (2020) – The game Goosebumps: Dead of the Night was released in the summer of 2020 for all game consoles including; PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One PC. Goosebumps Dead of Night offers additional content not seen in the first Goosebumps game "Night of Scares". The Switch version has a gyroscopic controller, High-Definition rumble functionality, and can support touch screen devices.
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Interesting Facts that you should know about the Goosebumps movie.
  1. The Goosebumps world premiere was on June 24th,2015 at the CineEurope trade fair in Barcelona, Spain where it was presented on stage by Black.
  2. Goosebumps was released on Blue-ray, DVD, and 3D In the US on January 26th, 2016. It included deleted scenes, a blooper reel, an interview with the crew and cast, an alternate opening, and an alternate ending.
  3. Goosebumps made over 80.1 million dollars in North America and 70.1 Million dollars worldwide against a budget of 58 million dollars.
  4. On Rotten Tomatoes, the Goosebumps movie scored an average rating of 6.38 out of 10. The score was based on 161 reviews.
  5. The author R.L Stine started writing at the age of 9 when he found a typewriter in his attic.
  6. The first horror book that R. L Stine every wrote was the Blind Date (1986) under the Scholastic Point Horror series.
  7. It takes R.L Stine three weeks only to write a Single Novel from start to finish.
  8. R.L Stine Started writing horror book series to scare Children.
  9. The Chinese call the Goosebumps book series “Chicken Skin”.
  10. There are seven different Goosebumps book series, including the original series:
    • Original Goosebumps book series.
    • A tale to Give You Goosebumps
    • Give Yourself Goosebumps
    • Goosebumps Presents,
    • Goosebumps Series 2000
    • Goosebumps HorrorLand,
    • Goosebumps Most Wanted
Final Thoughts

By writing one Novel every three Weeks helped R.L Stine to release many books. Back in the 90s, it felt like he was releasing a book every week. The titles would follow each other in close succession.

Which one did you like most? The Book, the TV series, the Video Game or the Movie?
 
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We used to have a bunch of these when I was a kid. I remember my first one: Legend of the Lost Legend!
 
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Had most of the books back when I went to school. We had library book days and would be able to buy them.

My daughter now watched the movies they will never beat the books version.
 
Had most of the books back when I went to school. We had library book days and would be able to buy them.

My daughter now watched the movies they will never beat the books version.
Did she get introduced to the show too? Its on Netflix! ;)