GOOSEBUMPS Movie By George Romero Has Risen From the Grave In Newly Released Details
Angelique Bone
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Many of us know and love the R.L. Stine Goosebumps series of books that debuted in 1992. The series allowed a younger audience to explore horror and introduced many of us to some supremely creepy stories that impact us to this day. In newly released details by the University of Pittsburgh Library System Horror Studies Branch, a Goosebumps movie written by George Romero has risen from the grave.
Goosebumps books sold millions of copies around the world, and spawned a television series in 1995 that continues in different formats to this day.
In 2015, Goosebumps finally made it to the big screen in a movie starring Jack Black as R.L. Stine, set in a town that he must save from all the creatures from his books.
What we didn’t know is that George Romero was among many filmmakers who had explored the possibility of producing a feature film based on the first Goosebumps book, Welcome to Dead House– even writing a script- during the initial wave of the series’ success.
Tim Burton eventually helmed the production; but, according to Stine, the project was delayed by Burton’s short-lived Superman project, and the Goosebumps feature was abandoned.
RELATED: What does R.L. Stine Think of the Goosebumps Flicks?
In Welcome to Dead House, the inhabitants of Dark Falls are not regular people, but the living dead. They are not quite zombies and not quite vampires, and every year they must feed on the blood of a new family to sustain their existence. The Benson family moves to town, and young Josh and Amanda discover the town’s secret. They do their best to fight against the zombified townspeople, discovering that a flashlight beam will make the undead crumble into dust, releasing them from their curse.
In the Stine book, the townspeople into these creatures after exposure to a mysterious gas that escapes from a local factory, much like the 2-4-5 Trioxin in Return of the Living Dead.
Romero retains the premise and all of the major character names, but tweaked the story in the ways we recognize from all of his films: emphasizing the social, political, and capitalistic horrors in the guise of zombies risen from the grave.
The long-dead town patriarch, Foster Devries has possessed the town, imposing his supernatural powers on the residents. “Living in Dark Falls means living a fundamentally compromised and circumscribed existence, one that forces you to contribute to the predatory, parasitic system by finding further victims.”
“Romero liked to talk about his Dead movies as taking stock of and analyzing America every decade or so.” Welcome to Dead House “wasn’t a sequel to Night, Dawn, and Day, but it was a zombie movie…a truly hellish nightmare: being stuck in an awful job with an overbearing boss for all eternity.”
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