The Stinal Countdown: Goosebumps Most Wanted #4: Frankenstein's Dog

Time for yet another random foray into Most Wanted. In this edition, we let the dogs out with Frankenstein's Dog. You know, this concept sounds an awful lot like that one Tim Burton movie Frankenweenie. But I'm sure that's just a silly coincidence, eh Jovial Bob?

COVER STORY

While I'm not a fan of the stock profile shots for Most Wanted's covers, this one is actually really good. I like how messed up the dog looks, from its deranged eyes, monstrous mouth and stitched up head. It actually feels like something Tim would have made. Even the eyeball collar is a nice little touch. I'd say if you don't like the image of abused or hurt looking animals, you might not like this, but given how many times Stine has killed or hurt dogs in his books, he must have found this one to be a hoot.

STORY

Kat Parker is our protagonist. She arrives in a small European village. Her reason being to visit her uncle Victor Frankenstein. And yes, I am reminded of Jekyll and Heidi already. Right down to the fact that when she mentions her uncle to the villagers, they begin to panic, telling her to stay away from Frankenstein as he supposedly spends all his time building monsters in his laboratory. As the villagers advance on Kat, she's saved by a young boy named Robby who is friends with Uncle Victor. He calms the crowd down, saying that the monster stories are just superstition and to show Kat some kindness. Eventually the crowd decides to just move on.

Kat and Robby hit it off pretty well as they head to Uncle Victor's mansion. Kat reveals to him that she came to visit her uncle to do a school project. She hopes to do a vlog of Uncle Victor at work in his lab. As they enter, the two almost get attacked by guard dogs, until Kat blows a dog whistle that Robby dropped. Uncle Victor arrives and greets Kat, while thanking Robby. After Robby leaves, Kat is greeted by another dog, a white terrier named Poochie. That Poochie is one outrageous dude. He's totally in my face! When she asks what Uncle Victor is up to, he says he's going to MAKE A MONSToh wait, this is just a chapter cliffhanger.

But he does drop off one little factoid that his great-grandfather was THE Frankenstein. The Frankenstein that did make The Frankenstein's monster. However, Victor is more interested in AI and robotics. Preferring his creations to not require, you know, corpses. This includes a robot boy named Frank. He looks extremely lifelike down to his synthetic skin which self-heats, and his AI doesn't require Victor to program Frank to do certain tasks. Also he wears a Grateful Dead shirt, which does make him a pretty cool robot in my eyes. Kat then hears a strange loud thumping from a room by the lab, but Uncle Victor tells her to disregard it. Then he hands her a drink which TURNS HER INVISIBLoh wait, that was another joke. Gonna be a bunch of chapters of this, huh?

Uncle Victor powers up Frank, who sure enough is quite smart. Although when Kat introduces herself, he claims that he is named Kat too. Just a little robot John Jacob Jingleheimersmitz humor there. When Kat tries to shake his hand, he doesn't let go, causing her some pain. But when he finally lets go, it was just some knuckle pulling, so no broken bones. Frank gets powered down and Uncle Victor tells Kat that there are still some obvious bugs with Frank, one being that he seems to get angry despite no emotions being programmed. Other than that, he's usually fine to mess around with, but Uncle Victor warns Kat to always keep the lab door shut when she visits.

Victor leads Kat to her room. She then sees Poochie staring at her, and she swears she hears the dog whisper to be careful. She shakes it off and thinks she's just a little worked up after the Frank experience. Victor also warns her to be careful of the window in her room as it's not well guarded. She then talks to her uncle about the planned video project, and he seems fine with it. If anything, things are all a fine. Yeah, a little too Raph. Robby shows up the next day and the two decide to look around the mansion. They find a statue of the original Victor Frankenstein, followed by the library filled with science books. The two get separated until Kat finds what she thinks is Robby lifeless on the floor. However, Robby shows up behind her and reveals that this is just a robot that Uncle Victor must have just left on the floor.

Kat decides to show Robby Uncle Victor's lab, which he hasn't been in before. In fact, she's suddenly feeling more defensive of her uncle, what with the whole villager hate and whatnot. They hear the noises again from the door by the lab, but Kat says to pay no mind. Instead, they decide to power up Frank. Frank mentions that he knows Robby's name and tells the kids that he'll show them a trick. That trick is yeeting the hell out of dodge as he runs out of the lab. He gets out the door and almost away from the mansion when the guard dogs stop him. Then the dogs back off from Poochie, because I guess Uncle Victor's comments about Poochie being "the boss" were true. This gives the kids enough time to power down Frank and drag him back to the lab. But as they get Frank back in the lab, Poochie follows them inside. He accidentally causes a beaker full of green liquid to fall on him, causing the little dog to grow. Oh god, if this is another Monster Blood book...

Poochie's body puffs up to the size of a sheepdog. The kids panic, then think to try and wash the green liquid off. Kat has a panic attack after she touches the liquid, thinking she's going to grow too, but Robby calms her down as nothing happens. They wash the liquid off Poochie and the dog shrinks back to terrier size. Kat goes to get her camera because "the incredible shrinking dog" seems like the perfect vlog to post, but when she gets her phone from her room, she discovers it's been crushed. At dinner, she brings up the phone incident (not the giant dog incident) to Uncle Victor who says that it must have fallen off her dresser, which sets some alarms off for Kat. She asks to get a new one from the village, but he tells her it's wise to not go back to the village. Then he tells her that she is forbidden to leave her room at night.

That night, she writes a letter to her parents hoping they can send her a new phone, but as she leaves her room, she gets accosted by a man claiming to be Victor Frankenstein. Kat doesn't understand, especially when the man tells her to leave while she still can. Suddenly Uncle Victor shows up and reveals that the man was one of his creations. He powers the robot down and Kat returns to her room. She hears scratching at her door, but this time she doesn't open it. The next day, Kat once again asks to go to the village, but Uncle Victor tells her she can't. When she mentions the letter, he tells her that he can send it for her. She hands it to him and he makes his leave. Later, Kat starts to disguise herself, hoping she can sneak into the village long enough to get a new phone. But when she steps outside, she sees an overturned trashcan with her letter torn to pieces. She grabs the letter and is about to go, but the stormy weather changes her plans.

Kat begins to suspect that something isn't right with Uncle Victor. Whenever  he visited, he was always happy, charming and honest. Now she begins to suspect that he destroyed her phone, and now is doing whatever he can to keep her from revealing something, that maybe he's even creating some sort of evil robot army. That's why the villagers are afraid. Robby arrives and Kat suggests that they go to the lab for answers. Robby panics, first saying that something could happen to Poochie again, though the dog is nowhere to be found, then just saying it's not a good idea. That's when Kat suspects the worst of Robby. She tells him to raise his arms. She then pulls up his shirt and discovers that HE'S A ROBOoh wait, he's just a normal human boy. Toldya this was gonna keep happening.

They enter the room and see Frank moving. He's been turned on by Uncle Victor to guard the lab. He then tells Kat that his name is Victor Frankenstein. He then grabs Kat, keeping her from escaping. Robby manages to knock Frank down long enough for Kat to break free. They fight with the robot as Kat tries to push the switch, which gets stuck. Frank recovers and is pissed. He says that he will control the both of them. Kat then thinks to grab the green liquid and pour it on herself. Despite the fact that exposure didn't make her grow last time, maybe it will this time? It does not. But before Frank can destroy the kids, Uncle Victor arrives and shuts the robot down. Kat cops to the whole giant Poochie incident from the day before, and Victor tells her that she didn't pour growth serum on herself, it was soap. He then tells her that he'll soon reveal the big plans he has for her, which makes Kat worry even more.

After showering, Kat is led by Uncle Victor into a secret room and given some cookies to eat. It's a room filled with monitors, His spy room, where he can see what goes on in all parts of the mansion, meaning he was well aware of the Poochie incident. He then reveals what he's doing. He reminds her that he's fascinated with creating a robot with AI so perfect it doesn't need human control. So, he eventually managed to use his own brainwaves to power a robot's AI and mind. And it worked. So, not leaving well enough alone, he began making more and more robots that looked like him, had his same name and shared his brainwaves. The robots all wanted to take over his life, so he powered them down and locked them in the room in the lab. But they try to escape, so he has Frank guard them. So, everything's fine now. Oh, and now he wants to turn Kat into a robot. Well, that escalated.

He reveals a female robot that looks just like Kat that he plans to bring to life with her brainwaves. Kat realizes that this is a pretty dumb thing to do since she might take over her life, but Uncle Victor thinks it's all fine. He then suggests calling the robot Kitty, since her name is Kat. Even Kat thinks that's dumb, responding with "kill me now." She tries to escape, but Uncle Victor reveals that he spiked the cookies to put her to sleep. She awakens attached to wires and cones, while being tied down. She tries to escape, but she can't. Robby arrives and sees what's going on. He goes to untie her, when suddenly the door of the failure room bursts open and another Victor Frankenstein arrives, saying that he's the real uncle. Ohhhh, my mistake, I think I accidentally picked up a copy of Stay out of the Basement.

The two Uncle Victors fight until eventually the first one overpowers the other. Frank grabs the second uncle and begins to drag him back into the failure room, when the second Uncle Victor grabs Frank's head and tears it off Sub-Zero style. Kat then has a stupid idea. Stupider than the growth serum. Confused as to which Uncle Victor is real, Kat gets Poochie to pick the real Uncle out. Poochie goes to the first one and that's enough for Kat to be like "oh, the one who roofied me and tried to make a femmebot of me is the REAL Uncle Victor. Okay, send the one who tried to save us into the failure room." Then suddenly Poochie pulls up the first Victor's pants leg, revealing a switch. Well, that was a mistake. The kids still manage to take down the robot and go to the failure room, only to find tons of the same robot that look like Uncle Victor.

TWIST ENDING

The kids panic and make a run for it, only to run into a man in a black suit who also says he's Uncle Victor. He tells Kat that she came a week early as he was in France. She checks to make sure there's no switches, and he seems legit. He apologizes for all the robot wackiness, then shows off several more terriers just like Poochie. That's because they're clones of Poochie. This Uncle Victor is into cloning and suggests cloning Kat. He says he's joking and everyone has a good laugh.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This one was odd. The comment I made earlier about Stay Out of the Basement fits my thoughts on this book as it does feel a lot like that book with the sinister family member who turns out to be an experiment gone wrong. Which is fine, it did lead to some decent mystery up until the finale, where we just went with the "I'm Spartacus" conclusion. Not to mention the twist feels weird. So, he just up and stopped doing robotics and went with cloning dogs instead? I dunno, it just feels really flat after everything the book built up. Kat's an okay protagonist, but makes really stupid decisions. Namely the whole growth serum incident, which was stupid to retread given the book established it didn't work on her.

And then there's my real issue with this book. Why is it called Frankenstein's Dog? Poochie plays such a minor role in the book itself that focusing on him in the title feels like a bait and switch. We don't even get the creepy version shown on the cover, which is just as lame. Was this a Say Cheese and Die situation where the cover was a creation of the artist and hardly had any bearing on the story? At least with Say Cheese and Die Stine added the skeleton dream. Here, it's just a nice piece of art, but utterly pointless. That comment about this title sounding like Frankenweenie seems to make more sense. It was clearly named that way to sell copies. Yikes. And as for the book overall, it's not the worst book, nor the worst bait-and-switch book at that, but it still feels like a failed experiment. Frankenstein's Dog gets a C+.