Bride of the Living Dummy/TV episode

"Bride of the Living Dummy" is the sixteenth episode of season three of the Goosebumps TV series, and the sixtieth episode overall. It premiered on February 14, 1998 on Fox Kids Network.

Cast

 * Andreanne Benidir as Jillian Zinman
 * Sophie Bennett as Katie Zinman
 * Wayne Robson as Jimmie O'James
 * Michael Vollans as Harrison Cohen
 * Karen Waddell as Connie Zinman
 * Philip Shepherd as Bob Zinman
 * Ron Stefaniuk as Slappy (voice)

Plot
At night, a man named Jimmy O' James is wandering through a junkyard, and he finds a brown case. It is locked, but just then, a bolt of lightning shoots down on it, and breaks it open. He lifts open the lid and sees a ventriloquist dummy inside. This dummy is named Slappy and he's no ordinary dummy. Inside Slappy's jacket pocket, Jimmy finds a piece of paper. He read the six strange words, Karru Marri Odonna Loma Molonu Karrano. Slappy then appears out of the case and tells Jimmy that he has an offer that he cannot refuse.

Then there is a ventriloquist show with the Amazing Jimmy O' James and Slappy. All of the main human characters are at the show, including Katie's doll Mary-Ellen. During the show, Slappy sees Mary-Ellen and doesn't pay attention to Jimmy's questions. Later, he makes something up, and everyone laughs.

After the show, Jillian, Harrison, and Katie walk out, but then Katie realizes that she doesn't have Mary-Ellen with her. Then, Jillian tells her to look for her dumb doll back in the seating room, while Harrison and her go to look for it throughout the building. Jillian hears Jimmy and Slappy arguing in the dressing room, and goes to listen in further.

Just then, the door swings open and Jillian almost falls to the ground. Surprised, Jimmy looks over at Slappy and finds that he is back to his doll-form. Jillian asks Jimmy if the fight was real or not, but then Jimmy tells her if she would like an autograph from him. She then walks out to the main lobby, and finds that Katie has Mary-Ellen, and she explains that she found her "wandering about" looking for Slappy and then got lost. Jillian then throws the signed autograph with Slappy on the front in the trash.

At home, Jillian tells her dad to come for dinner, but he is too busy making wooden bird houses with his cutter. After dinner, a large package arrives in the mail, and it is addressed to Jillian. It is Slappy, sent by Jimmy. She takes Slappy down to the basement, and finds that Katie and Mary-Ellen are downstairs as well. Katie says that Mary-Ellen wanted to be with Slappy. Then, Jillian says that that dumb doll of hers talks too much. She throws Slappy onto a pillow, and goes upstairs. Then, Slappy raises his head and looks toward the top of the stairs.

At night, Jillian hears the sound of her dog, Kevin, barking, and tells him to be quiet. Then Slappy sees the dog and stuffs him into his case. The next morning, Katie wakes up and screams when she sees that Slappy in in their room on top of their dresser. On the mirror, written with red lip sick, reads the phase "I want my bride!" Jillian cleans it off and tells Katie that it feels like she's in a psycho toy store. She then decides to take Slappy back to Jimmy O' James.

Her mother tells them to come to her, and she says that her wedding ring is missing. She also says that Kevin hasn't been seen either. Jillian later takes the Slappy's case with her back to the showplace, and finds that there is a mess of other broken ventriloquist dolls littering the area. Jimmy tells her that they were Slappy's rivals, and that he destroyed them all. He also states that Slappy is no dummy and that he's pure evil. He says that you can't destroy the evil spirit within Slappy.

Jillian then opens the case to give Slappy back, but Kevin leaps out, and scares both her and Jimmy. Then, Jillian realizes that if Kevin is there, then that must mean that Slappy is still back at her place. Katie and Harrison are watching old scary movies, and Harrison goes to use the bathroom. The phone rings, and Jillian explains that Slappy is still there. Then, Slappy interrupts the call. Slappy then locks the bathroom door and takes the key. He also turns off all of the lights.

Jillian arrives seconds later and also tries to get Harrison out from the bathroom. Slappy then appears and says that they can run, but they cannot hide. Jillian gets tired of Katie's warnings about Mary-Ellen. She lifts hte doll of the ground, and finds that she is also alive. Then Slappy comes and tells them that he stole their mother's wedding wing for his bride. But it turns out that he wasn't thinking of Mary-Ellen, but instead Jillian.

Mary-Ellen gets mad, and pushes him into the wooden stairs, and then Jillian turns on the power saw and the dolls fall in the cutting blade and get chopped up. Then, Jillian takes the ring back, and sees the spirits of the dolls float up, and leave the room. After her parents come back, they realize that Harrison is still locked in the bathroom. When they unlock it, they find that Slappy's evil spirit had overtaken Harrison's body, and Slappy says, "Sorry folks, Slappy doesn't live here anymore!" Then, he laughs maniacally.

Differences from the book

 * At the end of the episode, it was Harrison that got the evil spirit, not Jillian.
 * Amanda is absent in this television episode.
 * Jimmy O'James is a grown man rather than a teenager.
 * In the episode, Slappy wanted Katie to be his Bride, not Jillian.

Home releases
"Bride of the Living Dummy" was released on VHS on September 15, 1998. It was released on the Night of the Living Dummy DVD on September 11, 2007, which was later rereleased on September 11, 2012. It was included in a 3-Pack Thriller DVD on August 26, 2014.

Trivia

 * To fit the theme of the episode, the television episode was first aired on Valentine's Day of 1998.
 * This is the second time that Ron Stefaniuk provides both the puppetry and voice for Slappy the dummy. He had previously done the puppetry for Slappy in "Night of the Living Dummy III" two-part story. But Cathal J. Dodd provided Slappy's voice in Night of the Living Dummy III, when Stefaniuk was too busy to voice the character.
 * At a certain point of the episode, Katie and Harrison can be seen watching a scary movie in the Zinmans' living room; the footage is actually from three previous episodes of the show. They are "The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight", "The Werewolf of Fever Swamp", and "Welcome to Camp Nightmare".
 * When Slappy is seen in the basement, his head is completely different. This is because this is the mask used by the actress that was Slappy in Night of the Living Dummy III. It was used on a dummy double, when Jillian bangs Slappy's head on the work table after he bites her, to keep the dummy's head from cracking.
 * Three of the dummy heads used from Night of the Living Dummy III appear in this story. The broken, severed heads of Slappy's "rivals" in Jimmy O'James' home are the heads of the Rocky and Zane dummies. Slappy's damaged, severed head in the finale is actually the head from Night of the Living Dummy III, when Mr. O'Dell tries to glue Slappy's broken right eye back on his cracked face.
 * When Jillian goes to return Slappy to Jimmy, she is first seen to be standing behind a gate. As the gate lifts up to let her in, the viewer can see that someone had written in black paint 'Don't worry, be happy.' However, someone had taken some red paint and had written 'SL' over the 'H' so the message can be read as 'Don't worry, be Slappy'.
 * In the previous dummy episode, "Night of the Living Dummy III", Slappy is very tall and long in that episode; presumably as tall as a 12-year-old. But in this episode, Slappy is very short; about as tall as a baby.
 * In "Night of the Living Dummy III", Slappy gets hit by lightning and explodes into tiny pieces. But in the beginning of this television episode, he is repaired. It never explains how he was fixed.
 * Andreanne Benidir (Jillian Zinman) also played as Stephanie in "The Headless Ghost" in Season 2.