Attack of the Jack-O’-Lanterns was originally published in October 1996 (Spine #48) and the series adaptation aired on Saturday, October 26, 1996 (runtime: 22 minutes).
In their own way, every Goosebumps book felt like it was about Halloween. Just spooky enough to be exhilarating but never so much so that they ceased to be fun, R.L. Stine’s macabre works reveled in all that was dark, twisted and strange, evoking that crisp gust of energy that a kid could only harness when out and about on Halloween night.
Of course, a few Goosebumps stories did deal directly in the goings on of October 31st, trading in haunted masks and headless ghosts. A special sort of alchemy fusing late October atmosphere and the eerie wonderment of the Goosebumps milieu, such entries were treasured both on the page and the screen as ideal All Hallows’ Eve entertainment.
And when the series’ forty eighth distinctly Halloween themed entry hit shelves one October, imagine young trick-or-treaters’ delight when the corresponding television adaptation aired only weeks later. The book was called Attack of the Jack-O’-Lanterns and from the looks of it, the story would be bathed top to bottom in orange, black, purple and green— the full spectrum of Halloween.
More about the tricks than the treats, Attack of the Jack-O’-Lanterns delivers the October goods. With pumpkin headed creatures and regrettable amounts of candy, the story is exactly what the Goosebumps aficionado would hope to reach for as the reddening leaves crisp over and a chill frosts the ever yellowing landscape. While simplified, the adaptation offers a generally accurate portrayal of the page, despite altering key relationships to enable a streamlined narrative. The result was an unforgettable October of Goosebumps goodies, steeped in all the delightfully ghoulish iconography that makes every horror fan’s favorite holiday and R.L. Stine books so indelibly special.
The Story
Drew loves Halloween. Still, for the last two years the holiday has been a nightmare— and not in a good way. Two kids from school, Lee and Tabby, are always playing practical jokes and ruining the scariest night of the year for Drew and her best friend Walker. But not this year. This year Drew enlisted some help and she’ll finally have her revenge on Lee and Tabby. Revenge in the form of large pumpkin headed monstrosities. Monstrosities that may have more on their flaming pumpkin minds than Drew realizes. If Drew’s not careful, her trick might not be the treat she’d hoped.
Attack of the Jack-O’-Lanterns was published in October of 1996 as the forty eighth entry in the initial Goosebumps run. A fun romp spanning multiple Halloween nights, the story is an October set tale of playful revenge gone wrong complete with all the candy, unearthly decor and costume changes that might entail. It’s a story that values the magic of a flame lit carved pumpkin under the light of a partial moon and in its own strange and mysterious way perfectly captures its ghostly holiday.
The Adaptation
Similar to The Haunted Mask, Attack of the Jack-O’-Lanterns opens on the screen with a conversation between Drew and Walker condensing several chapters worth of information. As they stroll down a suburban street adorned with pumpkins, skeletons, spiders and all manner of Halloween lights and decorations, Drew explains that Halloween is her favorite holiday and brushes off Walker’s concerns about people who have recently gone missing in their town.
Something watches them from the shadows and shortly thereafter the two run into twins Shane and Shana, Drew’s old best friends that had moved away years before. That’s when the true mask-clad foes from the shadows emerge and attack, revealing themselves to be Lee and Tabby, two kids from school that seem to delight in frightening Drew and Walker. Once Lee and Tabby depart, Shane and Shana offer Drew a chance for revenge on her tormentors. The mischievous twins explain that if Drew can get Lee and Tabby to trick-or-treat with them, the twins would take care of setting up something that would scare them for a change.
The book opens with the common Goosebumps monologue as Drew professes her love of Halloween and hatred for the nickname “Elf” that her dad gave her as it suggests she’s small and strange. The following chapters tell the tales of two Halloweens past. The first brings the reader to a lavish costume party hosted by the popular and attractive duo of Lee and Tabby, ruined after the two convinced their older neighbor and his friend to crash the event under the guise of malicious burglars (an event mentioned in passing in the episode). Embarrassed and terrified, Drew and her friends spent the following year plotting revenge, rigging Drew’s house for the sole purpose of petrifying Tabby and Lee. It might have worked perfectly, had Lee and Tabby actually bothered to show up.
These handful of chapters are fun and set the stage for the spooky night to come, offering multiple perspectives of how a kid might spend their Halloween. Ultimately, they build to where the episode begins, with the exception that twins Shane and Shana are there the entire time and a part of Drew’s friend group from the start. In both versions, Drew asks Tabby and Lee to trick-or-treat with them. On the page, they simply agree, rather aloof to how others actually perceive them. Onscreen, Tabby is suspicious, certain that the invite is a trap.
The show progresses with an obvious dream sequence where the group approaches a house amidst various canted angles and distorted lighting. An old woman ushers them inside where she traps them in a room with chained children and a disfigured old man who wants to keep them forever to admire their costumes. This happens in the book as well, however it’s presented as reality, tricking the reader into believing the danger before the real threat enters in.
In both versions the threat suggested by real-life missing people near the town lingers menacingly, causing Drew’s mother to request she stay in before her father undermines the decision. While the book dwells more on the emotional weight of those missing, the show simply informs that the people are adults and from one town over. In the book, there’s one last scare in the form of the same boys who had conned the kids attending Lee and Tabby’s party two years back before the pumpkin headed menace emerges. The teenagers leap from the hedges wearing masks, terrifying Drew and Walker, something that the episode repurposed for its opening, supplanting the neighbor boys for Tabby and Lee themselves.
After hitting a few houses they encounter two, tall robed individuals with bulbous carved pumpkins where their heads should be. In the book, the pumpkins are illuminated by dancing flame which licks the exposed flesh of the oversized jack-o’-lantern faces, spitting fire from their orifices in inhuman ways. Unable to recreate this for an extended period of time in the episode, the pumpkin faces are generally dark, however imposing and strikingly haunting creations all the same.
In both versions, Tabby and Lee are unimpressed with the scare but approving of the costumes, following who they assume to be Shane and Shana through the woods to what they hoarsely whisper to be a “new neighborhood” and “a better place.” All the while Drew and Walker grow increasingly less certain that these pumpkin headed things are their unimposing twin friends at all.
The episode presents their destination as nothing short of a Halloween wonderland. A neighborhood crammed with houses all decked out in blinding Halloween brilliance. In line with the book, the seemingly endless rows of houses spouting candy is the perfect place for trick-or-treating. The episode quickly reveals its hand by depicting the homeowners as expressionless and robotic, their heads transforming into large pumpkins with exaggerated carved faces the moment the kids move on.
Regardless, in both cases the group begins to grow tired of trick-or-treating but discovers that their two pumpkin headed guides refuse to let them stop. In the book, this happens in stages, with the pumpkins swirling around them in a wall of flames and forcing them back to gather more candy. Eventually, Lee and Tabby yank off the monstrous heads, expecting to find the twins but stumble back in shock to see empty shoulders staring back at them. More flames encircle the group and they’re told they’ll be trick-or-treating forever. The pumpkins force the beleaguered trick-or-treaters to eat handfuls of candy to make more room in their sacks and the people in the houses surrounding them finally reveal their own jack-o’-lantern faces.
The show streamlines these chapters. Like the book, Tabby grows tired of trick-or-treating and confronts the pumpkin headed pair. Certain that it’s the twins, she removes one of their heads, dropping it in shock as it continues to talk and its headless body stands before her. They run but quickly return, accusing them of being the ones who took the missing people. The pumpkins chase the kids back into the woods and then fire ignites from within, providing a moment of awe just as they reveal their plans to transform the kids into pumpkin people. Tabby and Lee run off as the pumpkins shout after them, promising that they will not be far behind.
The book, on the other hand, spares no expense on production value. Jack-o’-lantern heads emerge floating from the houses and encircle the kids, a wall of flaming pumpkins slowly closing in. Four figures approach, carrying four giant pumpkin heads toward them for assimilation. They shove a pumpkin onto Lee and Tabby’s head, causing them to scream and run off blindly into the night.
In both versions the two pumpkin headed creatures transform back into Shane and Shana. The twins reveal that they are of alien origin, remarking on the page that they need to tell their “brothers and sisters” to hurry home before anyone sees them. In the show, Walker had no idea, but on the page they were all in on it. Other than the visual of them turning into spindly green creatures and boarding a spaceship to leave, the book and the page conclude in the same place. After offering them candy, Drew realizes that what her alien friends eat tends to be plump adults, like the four that recently went missing.
As it is, with Shane and Shana around, or coming back next year as they suggest on screen, candy and its fattening effects suddenly seemed far less appealing.
Final Thoughts
Perhaps Halloween is inextricable from those creations which manage to embody its spectral spirit. Books like Night of the Living Dummy, Monster Blood and It Came From Beneath the Sink are definitely not set on that most phantasmal of eves, but there’s no denying the sense that rises while reading them that October 31st cannot be too far away.
Attack of the Jack-O’-Lanterns is one of only five of the original Goosebumps books that tackle Halloween head on, engaging directly with the folklore, emblems and spooky suburban motifs that collide under October’s imposing shadow. Fun, odd and constructed out of as many jack-o’-lanterns as the title and Tim Jacobus’ cover art might suggest, the tale is wonderful Halloween entertainment.
While the television adaptation struggled to capture the full grandeur of the pumpkin headed beasts and their fiery gaze, what appears on screen is striking and memorable in its own unique way. Every second of screen time oozes with Halloween spirit and the empty, leering glares of the enormous jack-o’-lantern skulled creatures plant themselves firmly in any Halloween dreamer’s mind, much as Carly Beth’s sneering mask did on some distant Halloween past.
Populating any story with costumed kids going door to door looking for candy and hoping for adventure all while the moon shines dimly against a pitch black sky is a recipe for greatness. Still, that alone does not a classic Halloween story make. There are few properties as undeniably linked to Halloween’s hallowed halls as Goosebumps and even fewer that don’t directly relate to the holiday at every turn. No, that relationship is a bond forged in playful eeriness, whimsical frightfulness and the unexpectedly strange, the kind of connection that could only come from talking ventriloquist dummies, living, breathing masks and the occasional pumpkin headed alien looking for some fun on All Hallow’s Eve.
