When R.L Stine was a young man, he was the class clown, always getting in trouble at school, and focusing more on his own ideas, rather than learning. Granted,me was an excellent student, but he would put out his own newspapers, he would cause disturbances in the classroom, and he went on to become one of the most influential writers of the 90s, even if he was dubbed only a children's writer. Before you had Harry Potter, or Twilight,Mutu had Goosrbumps and Fear Street. Granted, they are still apples and oranges in-comparison,mbut the real co partition fact is that Goosebumps rejuvenated the love of reading for a great deal of children, because of that campy, almost childish style, which could be science fiction,fantasy,horror,mans not actually fulfill the genre. goosebumps were like tales around the fire, but they wee more-importantly akin to oral history in how they wre written. They were like modern fables, tall tales of legend thwt made kis believe that a store could house a disastrous substance called Monster Blood, and it would turn our hamster into a real-life monster. Stine was synonymous with success, and he portrayed himself as creepy, but in hindsight, he was the satrical comedian that wrote outrageous, and sometimes terrifying stories that haunted our dreams, and tickled our funny bones.
Goosebumps was important to me as a child, and I owned every single one of those books, and still have some of them, somewhere, but I gave away the majority of them to charity. I loved to share my love for the series, and I admired Stine, even at a young age. I wanted to meet him so badly as a child, and say how much his work influenced me as a very, very young writer. Granted, if you r e-read his work, he could be considered a little to jolting for most modern children, but for a 90's kid, it was the best way to introduce them to reading. The Ghost of Fear Street series was okay as well, but nothing shined like Goosebumps, and I read them for years. As I grew older, and they were like reading magazines, I decided to put my love of Goosebumps aside, and quite honestly haven't revisited them in a long, long time. I admire Stine's craft, and he did fill a major niche, and is probably the man to thank for so many of the horror comedy stylings we have today, both good and bad. Welcome to Dead House was the first Goosebumps book published in the early 90s, this was followed by Stay Out of the Basement, and Let's Get Invisible, which was my second favorite story about a mirror that allowed kids to turn invisible, Say Cheese and Die, and The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb followed. Those were the first five of the series I ever read, and I may be wrong, cause it swear Monster a blood was also in there at the very beginning, when I got the set in a coveted book slip, which housed all the first books. Monster Blood of corpse became a fan-favorite, and spawned multiple sequels, as did Night of the Living Dummy. Call me the outlier, but I wasn't much a fan of that particular run of stories. I also didn't like The Werewolf of Fever Swamp,which was sort of a homage of a Ray Bradbury concept.
Piano Lessons Can Be Murder was interesting enough to be like a sleuth Agatha Christie meets Tales From The a crypt style, and I remember actually getting Easter Eggs From Mars on an actual Easter Sunday,many although it wasn't my favorite book, I read it quite quickly in about four hours. It Came From Benesth the Sink was also another of those stories that really didn't resonate,mbut was beloved by the other kids, and so was Bad Hare Day, another play on word title that just didn't grasp my attention well enough. Although Go Eat Worms came out around this time,and that heartened back to what Stine was originally intending to do as a storyteller. To be white honest, if everything written from The Beast From The East, up until Return to Horrorland was written by someone other than R.L. stine, it'd not be surprised, becaue they were dreadful in-comparison to his earlier work. Yes, even as a child, I was a connoisseur of consistency, and it was painstakingly obvious that a Stine was growing sour to his own work.
Still,from my knowledge on his works, and even disregarding A Shocker on Shock Street, and Say Cheese and Die, Again! I still take Stine to be one of the most influential authors of my generation,mwhether people regard him as such or not. The man is estranged, and his take on the horror genre is well...noir to say-the-least, but he has inspired me a great deal to become a writer, but to become my own writer. I'll be laughed at for saying this, but I put Stine up there as important an influence on my writing as William Strunk, Jr. is, because he has been a very constant force in my life.
Jack Black is acting in the new movie based.....(and I use the word based very, very, VERY liberally here.) off the a Goosebumps series, and I'm not certain if this is going to be a respect to the classic series, or sort of an homage to the series. Personally it's not one of the iconic stories,mbut a story, which involves a multitude of the original stories. Think of it as a shake that going to taste like green slurpees, with just a hint of surge, and a few kick flips of 90s nostalgia. It's going to be a train wreck and a disgrace of my childhood, but if you're a 90's kid, yourself used to Hollywood raping your childhood by now, and you're used to having everything you ever loved polished up with campy CGI, and shat out onto a 3-D screen. They are trying to make us old and crabby complainers now, rather than Waite for us to actually be old and crabby!
Still,mi don't blame Jack Black, and in-hopes that he'll not take this movie seriously, it will become a huge flop onto itself,and be it's own silly cult following. I don't know the extent of how closely R.L. Stine is working with this project, but something tells me he sold it off for money, or some reimbursement on a fourth mortgage. Then again,nits probably because he has no serious retirement plan thwt would sustain him, so he needs to sell off Slappy and the gang for a movie that's going to be equal to the Ark of the Covenant being opened up in front of a bunch of Nazis.
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