COVER STORY
I've praised the covers for Hall of Horrors, and this one is no exception. Of the covers we've covered, this one definitely has the most Classic Goosebumps feel to it. Particularly with the creepy monster hand cutting the cake. Only problem is we don't get anything like this in the cover. So, some bait and switch to be sure. But regardless, it's one of Dorman's better works.
STORY
Once more we're greeted by the Story Keeper who introduces us again to Lee Hargrove. Lee carries a rabbit's foot (wait, wasn't it a vulture claw last time?). He talks about his run of bad luck, starting with a birthday party that went so bad that he was eventually kicked out.
Lee starts the story by telling us about his best friend Cory Duckworth. He's considered the luckiest kid in Garfield Middle School (I wonder if they hold classes on Mondays?). Cory is so lucky that the kids nickname him "Lucky Duck". Lee wishes he was that lucky. Lucky enough to get a scholarship at summer sports camp. Hey, I know of a great sports camp he can go to, but they have this weird blob mascot... Lee's parents are both high school teachers, but they can't afford it, which might be the most real thing Goosebumps has given us so far. Cory meets with Lee and brags about finding a twenty dollar bill, then goes to speak with their friend Laura Grodin. The janitor is fixing a light fixture when suddenly it begins to fall. But Cory manages to catch it mid-fall, saving Laura while Lee looks on, angered that he's never lucky enough to impress Laura.
Things get worse for Lee when during basketball practice, he's about to block Cory when suddenly a bug just latches on to his eye and gets stuck there., allowing for Cory to get the shot. Not only that, but Franklin Howard, the star player for the town's basketball team the Stampede, saw Cory's shot and compliments him, even letting him come to the next Stampede game at the sidelines. Meanwhile Lee has to get the bug tweezed off his eye. This also caused him to miss getting Franklin Howard's autograph. Lee is now more livid over his bad luck and Cory's perfection.
At home, Lee tells his parents about everything that's gone down. He goes up to his room later and once again thinks about sports camp when his sheepdog, the wonderfully named Arfy, enters his room and pukes on the carpet. I mean, we get it Stine. Kid's cursed. But now Lee wonders how he can change this run of rotten luck. As he cleans the puke, his mom enters his room with a package that was mailed to him. No clue from who, but the package says that what's inside is an instant good luck charm. Lee is skeptical and just throws it in his drawer.
Lee ends up competing against Cory in Tennis, but this time the fates make it so the sun is always in Lee's eyes, making him lose. In frustration, he accidentally lets his racket slip, causing it to smash into the back of the coach, Ms. Andersen's, head. Once again, Lee looks awful. Cory looks amazing. Lee's chances of going to sports camp look slim. So, Lee decides to check out that package from earlier. He opens it to see that it's a vulture claw. Lee is confused about how a vulture claw will be good luck, but suddenly his mom shows up saying he won a free pizza dinner at Pizza Planet. I should have known, Goosebumps is part of the Pixar universe.
In fact, everything seems to just hit good luck for him. He gets his favorite meal for dinner, his dad gets him a video game he wanted, and he discovers he got straight A's on his report. Perhaps his luck changed after all? At school, after showing Laura the vulture Claw that he now keeps under his shirt, Lee challenges Cory to another tennis match. This time he wins. Lee is on cloud nine with all his luck. But when he gets home, Arfy grabs the claw and starts to tear into it. Lee gets it in time, but notices some damage. No harm, right? Except that when he heads to his room, he trips on a lump in the rug, injuring his ankle. And when he's doing homework on his laptop, the laptop suddenly bursts into flames.
In the middle of the night he wakes up and thinks his hand turned into a claw, but it was just him being stupid. Suddenly, Lee sees the claw start to move, then it starts to choke him. His mom shows up and Lee tries to tell her, but she thinks it's just a nightmare and maybe he should get rid of the claw. But despite the strangulation attempt, Lee still thinks this is still a good luck charm. He wakes up the next day and things get worse. His shirt tears at the armpits, he combs his hair only for the comb to break, and at breakfast he hallucinates and thinks the eggs have claws inside. The kids go bowling the next day, with Cory now bragging more about being a shoe-in for sports camp. The kids get ready to bowl and Lee kisses the claw, hoping for good luck. Instead of Fred Flintstone-like grace, he drops the ball hard on his foot. And to make things worse, Cory ends up finding a cell phone. Oh god, we've had enough cell phones for a while, Stine! But this just leads to Cory getting rewarded yet again.
Tired of the claw, Lee stuffs it back in the drawer. His mom shows up again to give us some new exposition that Cory's birthday is coming up. Hey, 76 pages deep and we actually mention a birthday. Later that night, Lee nearly breaks his hand when pulling the vulture claw out of his desk and is ready to chuck it out the window when he gets a devious idea. He'll give Cory the vulture claw as a birthday present. It'll give Cory bad luck and at least even out the karma that's befallen Lee.
The day of the birthday arrives and Lee heads to Cory's birthday party, thinking to himself that this will be the "Insert book title here" for Cory. He gives Cory the claw, but Cory just says he has a vulture claw already. That's why he's so lucky. He just gives Lee back the claw to Lee's bewilderment. Later, Lee plays Wii and suddenly the remote slips from his hand and smashes the TV. Dude, that's why the wrist strap exists! Then he ends up breaking the refreshment table and sitting on the cake. Mrs. Duckworth is furious, ready to throw Lee out. Cory asks about all the bad luck, then asks Lee if he read the instructions when he got the claw. Turns out that it wasn't Arfy who broke the claw, Lee made his luck worse by kissing the claw all the time. Lee also admits to trying to sabotage Cory's luck, which yeah, dick move.
Lee is about to head home (yes, this is all the birthday party we're getting in this book called The Birthday Party of No Return) when suddenly a freaking vulture enters Cory's room. A vulture missing a foot. It tries to attack Lee, but it disappears. Another hallucination? But as his mom takes him home, Lee can see the vulture is still following him. He then has to walk Arfy, but the dog drags him into the street where he gets hit by a car and died. He doesn't actually die because of course not. After he survives that, he learns that he has to play tag football the next day for his last shot at sports camp. Also he walked in dog poop, meaning he's probably going to die for real this time. Lee throws the claw in the trash, but that night he thinks he sees the claw moving back to the house. He goes outside to see it's just a box turtle. Wait, what?
The day of the football game arrives and Lee and Cory talk in the locker room for a bit. Cory leaves his vulture claw out for a moment and while he's distracted, Lee, who already has lost any redeeming qualities, kisses the claw twice in hopes that it will transfer the bad luck to Cory. During the game, Cory and Lee end up crashing into each other and possibly giving each other concussions. They're both out of the game while Laura is still in and looking good. Cory asks Lee for his cell phone, but when Lee checks his backpack, he sees that his vulture claw is inside. It returned. The two kids aren't concussed at least.
The next day, the three finalists for sports camp are announced. Laura, Cory and Lee. Cory then decides to give Lee his vulture claw for luck, but Lee, knowing what he did, is really against it. When they get to the podium however, Lee suddenly sees Cory begin to turn into a giant vulture. Are we sure he wasn't concussed? And then Lee turns into a vulture, and the two start to fight and... was R.L. Stine high when he wrote this book?
TWIST ENDING
So none of that happened. None of that actually happened. We didn't suddenly get Lee and Cory suddenly going full Animorphs on us. We learn that the two kids suddenly hallucinated and started wrestling each other on stage, which caused them to be disqualified. Also we learn that it was Laura who was the mastermind behind this. She sent the claws, she kissed both of them, then made sure to retrieve the one Lee threw out in order to ensure her win. So, moral of the story is, if you can't win, give your friends bad luck charms because cheating is the better option? And that applies to both Lee and Laura (and maybe Cory too when he gave Lee his claw?). Good lord, this book sucks.
The Story Keeper thanks Lee for the story... and that's it. No more guests. Get out. See you for Most Wanted.
CONCLUSION
It's been a while since I've read a book this messy. It has a good concept with the vulture claws being a bad luck charm. Gives me a bit of a Say Cheese and Die/It Came From Beneath The Sink vibe of cursed objects that cause horrific events. And some of the bad luck that befalls Lee is interesting. But other than that, this book just gives off a lame feeling of Stine not knowing what the hell he wanted out of this one. Like, the vulture hallucinations that Lee and Cory have. Are they an effect of the claws, and if so, why? We know that bad luck is caused by kissing the claws, but does that also lead to hallucinations? It does makes for interesting imagery, particularly whatever the hell the ending was about, but that's all. It just feels like a hollow addition to try and make this book seem scary. Although the thought of these two kids suddenly flapping and crowing like birds and fighting in front of their school makes for a hilarious scenario.
There's also the clear bait and switch with the title as the birthday party really had no major bearing to the plot other than reminding us that Lee is cursed. It's just smack in the latter half of the book and feels no different than the tennis scene or the bowling scene or any other time Lee's bad luck makes things worse for him. The title feels like Stine having nothing substantial at the last minute and throwing that in there because it sounded cool. And having read some of Most Wanted, I can tell you this is far from the last case of this.
There are no likable characters in this one. Lee sucks. Even with his bad luck it's hard to pity him when he tries to sabotage Cory on multiple occasions. By the time he double kisses the claw, it's game over for even caring about what happens from here. Cory isn't that bad, but does give off a very Gladstone Gander level of arrogance with his good luck. And Laura has no real character to her other than she intentionally screwed her friends over with bad luck charms, including Cory who freaking saved her life from a falling light fixture, for a trip to sports camp. I hope it is Jellyjam. Enjoy mopping a giant blob of pudding, jerk!
It's a bad book. Not the worst, not a book worthy of an F rating, but it is an example of Stine not knowing what he wanted out of a book and pulling something out of his ass to make deadline. So what we're left with is a really bland slice of life book with some poorly conceived magic and sucky characters. Aren't we lucky? The Birthday Party of No Return! Gets a D.
CONCLUSION: HALL OF HORRORS
Hall of Horrors is a very mediocre, but thankfully short series of books. I don't know if maybe Stine wanted to do more with this concept, that maybe there was going to be more ideas behind the hall and the Story Keeper when this was initially given the HorrorLand label, but in the end, it's pretty forgettable. At least with HorrorLand we got arching stories that made reading the books a bit more interesting to see what would happen next. Not here. The Story Keeper adds nothing to these books. He doesn't control the fate of what happens to the narrators, he barely adds anything other than lame puns. He's Stine's Cryptkeeper and it's really, really lame. But sadly it sets the precedent to every series that follows. Not as notable in Most Wanted, but far more utilized in SlappyWorld.
The stories are a range of mixed quality in this batch. None that hit F territory, but our final book came awful close. Night of the Giant Everything worked well in a fun "shrinking adventure" tale, while I also thought Claws! warmed on me with its bizarre concept. But once we got to The Five Masks of Dr. Screem we hit a light post and just kept driving. Why I Quit Zombie School ended up bland, while Don't Scream! at least was intriguing. And then there's this book that I was gelling with until that hot mess of an ending. If I were to give a comparison to the original era, I'd say this feels like a batch that would exist in the forties, nestled with messes like Egg Monsters From Mars and Say Cheese and Die - Again! Feeling like books from when quality began to waver and you could feel these becoming more a commodity than anything even showing an ounce of love and interest. Make Quota books is the best way to describe Hall of Horrors. Amazing covers, but Plain Jane stories that will satiate kids for another couple months or so. The most middle ground series you could possibly ask for.
But, on the plus side, we didn't get any books featuring Slappy, so Hall of Horrors wins there.
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