Goosebumps Episodes 1 & 2, "The Haunted Mask Part 1 & 2" (1995) TV Episode Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. As you can see from the title, I'm here to review the first two episodes of the 1995 Goosebumps TV series that aired from 1995 until 1998 on Fox Kids in the U.S. and on YTV here in Canada. I'm gonna talk about the episode itself first, then its VHS release, which I own, then the book itself, and then, finally, my overall experience with the Goosebumps TV show. So, let's get into it.

 "The Haunted Mask Part I & II" is an interesting episode. The central character of Carly Beth Caldwell (played by Kathryn Long) is someone I can relate to. At least, I could at the age the character is in the episode. Carly Beth is teased and harassed by two boys, Steve and Chuck (Steve is played by George Kinamis, and Chuck played by Amos Crawley), because she's scared of alot of things, which is something her best friend, Sabrina (played by Kathryn Short), points out to her. But, it's Halloween, so Carly Beth decides to find a costume that will scare the boys in revenge for all the times they scared her and made fun of her. After visiting a mask shop, run by a mysterious Shopkeeper (played by Colin Fox), Carly Beth discovers a mask that transforms her into an evil being when she puts it on and it won't come off.

I can see why I wasn't allowed to watch this show when I was a kid. It's scary as hell. Not like Halloween, Friday the 13th, or A Nightmare on Elm Street scary, but definitely scarier than what I was used to watching at the age of 8, which is when this episode originally aired on TV. First, the mask itself is nearly as freaky as Freddy Krueger's face. But what makes it so fun is that it is tame in comparison to the horror movies that adults watch. At the same time though, it still scares kids. 

Like I said, I could relate to Carly Beth. Carly Beth, Sabrina, Steve, and Chuck are probably 12 or 13 (their ages aren't given), and when I was 13 and 14, I was teased and made fun of at school by my classmates for no reason other than I wasn't like them. So, naturally, I connected to her because of that. On the opposite side of things, I didn't like Steve or Chuck because of how they treated Carly Beth. Sabrina was fine, but, she didn't have a whole ton of screentime so we don't get to know her quite as well as we do Carly Beth. 

Goosebumps: The Haunted Mask was the first VHS release that 20th Century Fox put out for the show in the spring of 1996, only a few months after the episodes aired on TV. From what I can tell, there weren't any changes made in order to edit the two episodes together into a single episode. I think that's just because the episodes were aired together as a single special when it initially aired back in 1995, so they used that version for the VHS release. Before the episode there's a behind the scenes featurette for "A Night in Terror Tower", which was the 16th and 17th episodes of season 1, and the third VHS release that Fox put out. It also starred Kathryn Short, as a completely different character.

  This episode is based on the book The Haunted Mask, which was published in September, 1993. It was the eleventh book in the series. One of the changes mentioned on the Goosebumps Wiki, is that Sabrina was actually dressed as Catwoman in the book, but a generic cat in the episode. This is something I noticed between the books and the show for Animorphs as well. They'd make references to comic book characters, TV shows, and movies in the books, but, the show would refrain from making those mentions usually because of rights issues. For example, in this book Stine references Star Trek, Frankenstein, Freddy Krueger, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and other movies and shows. In the show though, those references are removed.

While I read a few Goosebumps books when I was a kid, this wasn't one of them. I mainly know this book because of the cover showing up in the Scholastic book order forms that we got when I was in elementary school and middle school. It was used as the cover for a box set that contained books 9-12, and that was in the Scholastic book order in early 1995, when I was in grade 2. So it's still an iconic cover for me as that Scolastic book order form was my first exposure to Goosebumps. Though it wouldn't be until grade six that I would read some Goosebumps books. I bought two of them from the Scholastic Book Fair, borrowed at least one of them from the school library, and got a few of them at Chapters. I never had a complete collection of them though. I preferred The Hardy Boys, Animorphs, Star Trek novels, and the Bantam era Star Wars novels. But I did have all three Night of the Living Dummy books though. 

Going back to the TV show, as I mentioned earlier, I wasn't allowed to watch the show because, well, it was scary, and my siblings were only four and five when the show started airing, and this is definitely not a show for that age group. Reading up on the show, and watching this particular episode, there were alot of names that I recognized. Because many of the people who wrote, produced, and directed this show ended up working on the Animorphs TV series in 1998, right after production wrapped on season 4 of Goosebumps. Deborah Forte, the executive producer on Goosebumps was also the executive producer on Animorphs, and both Timothy Bond and Ron Oliver, who directed episodes of this show, with Bond actually directing these two episodes, also directed episodes of Animorphs. And that's because both shows were produced here in Canada. Which is cool.

Even though I wasn't allowed to watch the show, I was very well aware of it because it aired on Fox Kids and on YTV. So I probably saw the opening title sequence a bunch of times during Power Rangers Zeo on Fox Kids as it was used in the commercials for the TV show. So watching "The Haunted Mask" on VHS last night was my first time watching the show.

Overall "The Haunted Mask" was a pretty good episode, for a kids show that came out in 1995. Sure, it didn't have much of a budget, but what live-action kids show did in the '90s? I mean Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Goosebumps, Animorphs, The Odyssey, and other shows like them weren't the blockbuster shows that we have today because the audience for those shows is transitionary due to the fact that, if they were on the air long enough, the kids watching them would age out of them in a year or two. So this was pretty good for what it was.

There's a new Goosebumps TV show starting on Disney+ on Friday, so I'll definitely be checking it out, and reviewing it. But, that's it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for this week's installment of my Marvel Star Trek comic book overview series, then on Thursday I'll be doing my review for the pilot episode of Star Trek: Voyager, "Caretaker", and then either Friday or Saturday I'll be back for my review of the first five episodes of the new Goosebumps series, depending on when I actually watch them. I'm aiming to watch them on Friday morning, right after breakfast, but there's a possibility that I won't get around to watching them until after lunch, depending on what else is happening that day. I also don't know how long each episode is going to be, so that will play a factor into it as well. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.