Night of the Living Dummy II

Night of the Living Dummy II was the thirty-first book in the Goosebumps book series. It was written by R.L. Stine. It was preceded by It Came from Beneath the Sink! and followed by The Barking Ghost.

The cover illustration consisted of Slappy, the ventriloquist's dummy, sitting on the edge of a pink bed. Two stuffed animals of a bear and a rabbit are on the bed, by the pillows area. In the background, there's a striped wall with flowers on it. The tagline on the front cover was, He's still walking. He's still stalking.

It was released in May 1995 and was 188 pages long.

In this book and all of the other "Night of the Living Dummy" books succeeding it, Slappy is the lead villain.

Plot
In this particular story, a girl named Amy Kramer performs with her dummy, Dennis, every night at her family's little "talent show". Unfortunately, Dennis has become almost unusable with age, and his head keeps falling off. Jed uses it to pretend to be Dennis on one occasion. Soon after, Amy's dad buys her a new one at a pawnshop that just happens to be Slappy. They find a moldy sandwich crammed inside his head, presumably the work of Kris and Lindy.

After Amy reads the little card with the magic spell inside Slappy's pocket (karru marri odonna loma molonu karrano), Slappy starts to cause a lot of accidents, including slapping Amy's father on the cheek, ruining a birthday party, and trashing her sister Sara's room. Amy's sister, as well as her younger brother Jed, repeatedly accuse Amy of doing all these things, and Amy's parents believe them. Amy gets punished for all of the accidents, but one night, she hears Slappy breaking out of the closet inside of her room that she keeps him in, and sees the dummy actually walk out of her room to Sara's room and ruin her watercolor painting even further.

Sara soon confesses that she saw Slappy wrecking her room, and the two decide to prove it by having their parents see him moving, with Jed disguised as Dennis again in order to shock Slappy long enough for the girls to grab him.

When the lights come on, "Dennis" does startle Slappy, and knocks his head into Sara's iron bedpost, breaking it in two. However, when Jed turns out to have been asleep the whole time, it is implied that Dennis himself has come to life to stop Slappy (and he even comments that he's "part of the family again" in the TV series).

Trivia
According to R.L. Stine's autobiography, he got the idea for all three Night of the Living Dummy books from reading Pinocchio when he was young.

Television Episode Trivia

 * This is the first 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.


 * Though the book on which this episode was based was a sequel, the original "Night of the Living Dummy" book was never filmed as an episode.
 * When we see a long shot of Slappy about to smash the guitar on Amy and Jed's parents, you can see that he is propped up on a stand. It's easier to notice if you turn the brightness up and look carefully.


 * Weren't the parents even a little suspicious about Slappy being alive when he was cackling the same time when Amy was shouting to get him off? They don't really believe she's that good a ventriloquist, do they?


 * This episode was put onto the DVD. Night of the Living Dummy.


 * In the book version of this episode, the girls had already made a plan to take out Slappy by having Jed dress up as Dennis and have the parents hide in the closet, while in the episode they didn't. Also, the book ends with them wondering who saved them, while in the episode it is made clear that Dennis was the one who beat Slappy.


 * This episode was adapted into Goosebumps Presents Book #5.


 * The soundtrack to Jed's video is a remix of the opening theme played with an organ.


 * This episode often confuses many in the same way that the previous episode did. However, it is less confusing than the previous episode because of the fact that instead of keeping the same characters, a whole new family was introduced in the books. That, and the book that came before this was never made into an episode.


 * Slappy being a living dummy is much like the two Twilight Zone episodes, "The Dummy" and "Caesar and Me".


 * The title of this episode and book are a spoof of the classic 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead.


 * In the scene of the episode when Slappy is moving around, the camera moves about like the scene in the 1988 film, Child's Play, where Chucky kills Maggie Peterson.
 * Instead of Slappy's head being broken on the bed post, it's the end of the living room fireplace.


 * Instead of the worm coming out of his head, it's actually his green spirit.


 * Margo's sister is only for the episode. The little girl is actually the birthday girl at her party.
 * Caterina Scorsone, who played Sara, also appeared in the only Goosebumps mini-series, Goosebumps: Chillogy (1998).