“And then, to my horror, the wooden lips parted. The red mouth slowly opened.
And Slappy let out a soft, evil, ‘Hee hee hee.’”
Amy Kramer is the middle child of three children and she is miserable. Her older sister, Sara, is a “genius painter,” and her annoying goofball brother, Jed, likes to burp on his siblings. He is pale-skinned with freckles and red hair, and it seems like he comes from another family. The family cat is named George. At any rate, every week Amy’s family gathers for a “family share night” where they each present something to the family. Amy is typically good at telling stories, but lately she has been practicing with her old, tattered ventriloquist dummy named “Dennis.” Amusingly, Dennis’s head keeps falling of his body.
One day, Amy’s dad comes home with a brand-new dummy he purchased at a pawn shop. His name? Slappy (readers of the original Night of the Living Dummy will know what this means). Amy is elated at the new dummy. Whereas Dennis has faded paint on his face with one eye that is nearly white and a torn sweater, Slappy seems newer and sleeker, with eyes that actually move side to side.
“The dummy had wavy brown hair painted on top of his wooden head. I studied his face. It was kind of strange. Kind of intense. His eyes were bright blue –not faded like Dennis’s. he had bright red painted lips, curved up into an eerie smile. His lower lip had a chip on one side so that it didn’t quite match the other lip… As I pulled him from the box, the dummy appeared to stare into my eyes. The eyes sparkled. The grin grew wider” (23-24).
To top things off, Amy’s best friend is Margo (incidentally a massive fan of The Beatles) and her dad owns big restaurant event space downtown called The Party House. He has asked Amy to come and perform, entertaining kids at their birthday parties.
However, Amy finds a small piece of paper inside Slappy with a string of mysterious words written on it. Of course, Amy reads the words aloud and Slappy comes to life, now that the evil curse has been awakened. He frighteningly winks his eye at her. Bad things start happening to Amy. Slappy hits her dad and Sara’s art projects are routinely sabotaged every evening, her rug is ruined, and at one point, Sara’s walls in her bedroom are covered with “AMY AMY AMY AMY AMY” over and over. And Slappy starts viciously insulting people while Amy takes the blame each time. After all, who would believe that a dummy has come to life?
Predictably, the birthday party for Alicia is a nightmare after Slappy grabs hold of the poor girl’s hand and refuses to let go. The scene gets very uncomfortable as Alicia screams and cries and her parents grow irate while Amy is seemingly unable to stop Slappy at all. He starts calling Amy his “slave” and growing increasingly unruly. Eventually, Amy joins together with her sister Sarah. They tie-up Slappy and try to dump him in the sewer, but it doesn’t work, he’s suddenly back at their home in the morning. The climax of the book arrives suddenly in the last six or so pages. In it, Amy and Sara stage a ruse in which they hide their parents inside her closet so they can witness Slappy sneaking out and causing mayhem in the night, while having their younger brother, Jed, dress up like her other ventriloquist dummy, Dennis, and fighting Slappy. The plan unfolds perfectly and Slappy’s head gets split open and a giant white worm slithers out of his body and escapes through a crack in the wall (will we see him again in the series?)
But in this book’s wacky twist ending, it turns out Jed never confronted Slappy. So, who fought Slappy? Did Dennis, Amy’s other dummy, also come to life?
My Thoughts on Night of the Living Dummy II
Slappy, the unofficial Goosebumps mascot, returns! Night of the Living Dummy II is a fan favorite sequel that often matches, and even copies the plot for, the original Night of the Living Dummy in many respects. The victimization of our protagonist, Amy, is laid on thick in this one –we really pity her as she is wrongly routinely blamed for Slappy’s evil antics.
All things considered, I quite liked this one. It features plenty of ’90s nostalgia from Nintendo to CDs, and I even noticed a few classic rock references like Bob Marley and the mention of songs like Bob Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm” and The Beatles “Love Me Do,” but I thought the ending to this book was all-too rushed and completely implausible (for example, why would Amy’s parents agree to hide inside a closet during the night under the hopes of seeing a living ventriloquist dummy walking around when they have been skeptical of Amy throughout the whole book, even on the verge of sending her to a “shrink?”). Regardless, the ending to Night of the Living Dummy II (which is very similar to the ending of the first book) is one of those rare Goosebumps books wherein the gaslighting parents are actually shown the error of their ways and they are forced to apologize to their children, a satisfying conclusion to Amy’s nightmare. And yet we are still left to wonder what will happen to the strange worm living inside Slappy? Did Dennis actually come to life? And whatever happened to Kris and Lindy Powell, the twins from the original Night of the Living Dummy?
Corresponding Episode Review
The Fox Kids episode “Night of the Living Dummy II” is a quick and forgettable interpretation of the book. It’s a low budget, campy, cheap episode that’s not really worth watching (to be fair this is true of most Goosebumps episodes). Also, the voices for Slappy and Dennis are just downright terrible (Slappy sounds like James Cagney in a 1930s mobster film, and Dennis sounds like the Disney cartoon character Goofy).
Stine, R.L. Night of the Living Dummy II. Scholastic, Inc., New York, NY, 1995.