Goosebumps Horrorland #1: Revenge of the Living Dummy - Slappy Lives

Blurb
Britney Crosby thinks her cousin Ethan is pretty weird-and she's right. Ethan won't stop tormenting Britney with an old ventriloquist dummy. And the dummy has plans for Britney, too!

Next, someone will be offered a vacation at a popular "scream park". An entire week for free? You'd have to be a real dummy to refuse that! But some guests aren't allowed to escape Horrorland after 6 days and 7 frights...

Plot
The book opens with our heroes, Britney and Molly Molloy (world's worst parents) in a cemetery fending off raccoons while also trying to dig up one of the plots. This is not the strangest situations with which a goosebumps book opens, which says a lot about the series.

To explain this to those questioning what the hell' s going on in the audience, our heroine takes us back 2 weeks, where she's being forced to move into the sewing room. What the hell is a sewing room? Britney is moving to the made-up room because her cousin Ethan is coming round to stay. Because Ethan is apparently Britney's least favourite person in the universe, she goes and calls Molly Molloy to complain about Ethan. Her call is interrupted by a crashing sound. Is it our titular puppet? No, of course not. This is only chapter 3, and nothing interesting happens until around chapter 5. It was actually her mother dropping a plate on the floor. Horror, ladies, gentlemen and non-binaries.

Britney is apparently not too happy about Ethan's visit, as he is constantly a jerk to her. Like last time, he deleted her term paper. Not exactly the best jerk this series has produced.

Then Ethan shows up with his dummy, Mr badboy. Stellar choice of name there, kiddo. He tries to do a stand up act with Slappy- I mean, Mr badboy (seriously, who's gonna be fooled by this?) but he's not very good at ventriloquism. Then Mr B. punches Britney in the head. Already your puppet is better at tormenting the protagonist than you, kid.

Anyway, Britney tries to escape to Molly Molloy's house, but Ethan and Mr bb go with her. Molly Molloy's dad, "wild man" Molloy, who is not only the worst at naming his kids, but also an explorer, has a museum of weird stuff that he has for no reason, like a shrunken head and weird animal skulls. As you do. Before entering the museum of convenience, Mr Molloy seems to recognise Slappy. He shows the aforementioned shrunken head, which is attached to a wooden body. Apparently, this is called the mind stealer and it promises doom to anyone who touches it. While the glass protecting it is triple thick (whatever that means), Mr Molloy must be thicker than that to bring a shrunken head that means doom to anyone who touches it home with him. Then Britney accidentally bumps her head on the glass and feels a buzzing in her ears. This is at the end of a chapter, so I dont really need to tell you the outcome.

Britney and Ethan go home, and the latter puts on a comedy act with Mr B. Then we get some decent Slappy comedy that entertains none of the family except Britney. Is anyone who read the other books surprised by this happening?

Later, Britney is moving her stuff up to the made up room when Ethan objects to her taking a poster of her favourite band, Skullboy.

Skullboy.

He objects because, apparently, Skullboy is Mr badboy's favourite band. He may be evil, but I suspect Slappy has better music tastes. Britney takes the poster anyway, because she likes one of the members, Buzzy. Clearly the founder of this band was stellar at naming. Later, she finds her poster has been destroyed, presumably by Mr B. She goes to Ethan's room to confront him, but he is absent. Mr BB, who is in the room, tells her he doesn't like her.  Britney goes to her parents to tell them about Mr badboy's antics but, shock of all shocks, they don't believe her. The next morning, the dummy pushes her down the stairs.

Wait, what?

Then he gruffly tells her not to snitch on him again.

A few days later, Molly Molloy calls Britney in the middle of the night and tells her that they need to go and bury the mind stealer. Why? Because a doll expert (I guess that's a thing now) told her the only place safe for the doll was a cemetery. So they go and bury it, which I guess is where we started off.

Later still, Britney gives a painting class to some old folks at a nursing home. As expected, it's as boring as ventriloquism, so Ethan tries to cheer them up with a routine with Mr badboy. It's so obvious what happens that I don't need to say anything.

That night, Britney calls Molly Molloy to ask for her dad's number, but he's in Australia because of course he is. So Britney goes over to Chez Molloy and the girls head into the attic of contrivance to get Mr Molloy's ventriloquism files. Because all explorers are quite knowledgeable on such a topic. When reading the files, they discover that, to the surprise of no-one, Mr badboy is actually Slappy. They also discover the magic words that wake him up and put him to sleep. Thank goodness Mr Molloy knew all this stuff.

Back at home, Britney corners Slappy and reads the magic words that put him to sleep (has this ever worked?) But then, she discovers a remote controlling Slappy's speech and motion and realises that Ethan has been pranking everyone the whole time. This makes the random museum of weird stuff at Casa de Molloy look plausible. She swears revenge on Ethan. But whoops, Britney read the magic words that bring him to life. Nice job, lady. Maybe these books are the reason why the internet believes 12 year olds are complete doofuses.

Slappy overhears Ethan talking about the mind stealer and realises that it would be better at making slaves. Honestly though, anything else is a better strategy for making slaves than his usual one of just telling people that they're now his slaves. But I guess he's a creature of habit, as he goes and tells Britney just that. Obviously, she refuses, so he proclaims that he's going after the doll and that she will be its first victim. Did Mr wood's death make him a thousand times dumber as well as ruder and eviler?

The puppet goes to the cemetery and digs up the doll. Somehow. Britney, however smashes the WOODEN DUMMY'S HEAD through TRIPLE THICK GLASS (again, whatever that means) and the 2 dolls bump heads, causing Slappy to lose his mind. If I was going after a mind stealing shrunken head, I would probably take the necessary measures to make sure that it didn't, you know, steal my mind. Britney goes home, but hears the doll calling out to her with Slappy's voice. That was a lame twist ending, but get used to that; almost all of them are in this series.

Enter horrorland
Britney gets an invite to horrorland, along with her parents and Molly Molloy. The author of said invite is subtly named Di Kwickley. Hahaha. Molly Molloy questions how the park knew to invite her, but Britney's dad tells them it's normal for theme parks to know a lot of people. Because that's how theme parks work.

When they arrive at the park, Mr Crosby praises the buzzards flying overhead, claiming they must be robots or something. At the ticket booth, the horror running eats their invite because scary. He can't let them in until they scream, so he sets their luggage on fire. How this park hasn't been sued yet is anyone's guess. Another horror pulls up in a themed cab to drive the Crosbys and Molly Molloy through horrorland. They pass many terrible puns such as the vampire state building, dancing with the squids and gossip ghoul. They should rename this place bad pun land. The horror crashes the taxi and everyone gets out to walk round the park and look for the hotel.

Britney and Molly Molloy come across a mask shop that features masks with their faces on. Ok, to be fair, that is sort of creepy, but this goes nowhere. Next scene, please.

The gang finds the hotel, which is another bad pun: the Stagger Inn. While waiting to enter, a horror comes up to Britney and Molly Molloy and tells them to find the other park. He doesn't say why, but I'd imagine it has less bad puns. The horror leaves, and the hotel's guide (which is now a thing, I guess), Druella, comes to take them to their rooms. She leads Mr and Mrs  Crosby to their rooms on the 2nd floor, then Britney and Molly Molloy to their room, which are on the 13th floor. Good grief. They go in and find a flat screen tv and a wardrobe full of clothes in their sizes but no mirrors. They want to go and tell the Crosbys, but they can't find them anywhere. The horror at the desk tells them they checked out. To be perfectly honest, that's what I'd really expect from goosebumps parents. Britney and Molly Molloy go to the parents' room to investigate, but they only find a camera going through the camera, they find a picture of Slappy, ending the book on an extremely mundane cliffhanger.

Fear file
After the story, there's a fear file for horrorland, consisting of various bad puns. Weeee. The only reason I bring it up is because of a note in it, by someone with the initials LM. And it actually contributes to the series' arc. You dont need to care about it, but it doesn't contain any bad puns, so it's better than the rest of the fear file.

Noteworthy stuff that I couldn't find anywhere else to put
Molly Molloy's parents are divorced. Probably something to do with the fact that one of them chose to name their kid Molly Molloy. Maybe the one who did went on to found skullboy.
Britney enjoys painting pictures, then printing out pics of celebrities and sticking them on said paintings. Because painting the celebrities would be too hard, I guess.

Conclusion
Revenge of the living dummy is a very back to basics book, which makes sense. Rl stine needed to introduce the series to a new generation of kids, so he needed to show them the basic formula for a book. The main story is pretty good, though its just the same old living dummy book we've seen again and again, and the twist ending isn't really a twist ending at all. However, the enter horrorland story was mundane at best, owing to not much happening and another lame twist ending.  A solid 6/10.