Showing a kid a horror film is not always the best thing to do. I was started at a young age, and for myself fear was always a factor. I hated horror films as a child mainly because they scared the crap out of me so bad I always needed to sleep with the light on and the door open. But when I was younger they really didn’t have horror films that appealed to children. Then in the 1990’s there were shows such as ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK and of course this series GOOSEBUMPS. Fox studios and Scholastic are now releasing the classic GOOSEBUMPS episodes on DVD, and have been for the last few years.

This DVD has three episodes on it, and is titled THE SCARECROW WALKS AT MIDNIGHT; which is also the title of the first episode. In this episode a brother and sister go to visit their grandparents on their farm as they do each year. This time around thing seem different. Their grandparents are acting strange and at night seem to lock up the house as if something was going to get them. Well it is in fact true, thanks to a farm hand and his spell book, the scarecrows are coming alive at night and scaring everyone they come across.

Episode two on the disc is titled DON’T GO TO SLEEP. In this episode a boy named Matt wants to move his bedroom into the attic. When his mother tells him no, he decides to go up there and look around. While up there he wishes that his family were different and that they will do different things for him. He falls a sleep up there and when he wakes up things are very different. He finds himself going back and forth between certain realities where he a hockey player, a doctor who’s going to do brain surgery on the president and even a member of a the bomb squad. But when each thing is about to go wrong he is sent into an even more difficult part of life. Meanwhile there are some mysterious men in black following him around making sure he does not get away.

The Third episode is titled CALLING ALL CREEPS, where a kid named Ricky Beamer get revenge on a mean girl in school by putting her phone number in the personal ads. However the jokes on him when at midnight he starts getting some scary calls.

Each story is different than one another and some are better than others. On this DVD I personally liked CALLING ALL CREEPS the best. While the stories are very good, the production value is nothing special. I mean these were shot for television so the production value is nothing special in terms of camera work and the acting is nothing great. The make-up effects are actually pretty good however and the scarecrows looked really good and scary.

I remember seeing a few episodes on television when I was in my college years and thinking that even for kids some of them where pretty scary. So really I can’t recommend these films for younger children but kids maybe ages eight and older these episodes would be more suitable for. They don’t have the polish and scare of a Hollywood horror film, but they do have their freaky moments, especially on this DVD. The scarecrow episode is kind of freak, as the scarecrows do look menacing. CALLING ALL CREEPS has a fun horror element to it, that did have a freaky element to it. Overall, I think the R.L. Stine books are better than the movies, but they are a lot of fun and are a great introduction to the horror genre for future fans.

– Horror Bob