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Episode


"Night of the Living Dummy III" is the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth episodes of Season 2 of the Goosebumps TV series, and the 43rd and 44th episodes overall. The episodes aired on Fox on July 20, 1997, as a one-hour special. They were directed by Timothy Bond.

Cast[]

Blurb[]

Trina O'Dell's dad used to have a ventriloquist act. Now he stores all his old dummies in the attic. He calls it his Dummy Museum. Trina and her brother Dan think dad's dummies are pretty cool. Until one day they notice one of the dummy's hands is warm, humanly warm! Then they hear eerie voices coming from the attic. Could the dummies be leading lives of their own?

Differences from the book[]

  • Zane actually finds out that Slappy is alive, gets in on the adventure, and is more friendly with the kids as he helps them get rid of Slappy. By the end, they plan on seeing each other again. In the book, he never discovered Slappy was alive and caught the kids with the dummies, assuming they were behind everything.
  • In the book, the other dummies attack Slappy, but in the television episode, he gets destroyed in a different way. After Rocky throws him out the window, he is struck by lightning and explodes.
  • Rocky's design in the book and episode differs greatly. In the book, Rocky is depicted wearing a red and white striped shirt and blue jeans. In the episode, he's wearing a pinstripe suit and fedora, reminiscent of a 1930s gangster.
  • Rocky's role is expanded, as Slappy brings him to life to be his partner.
  • The ending of the episode is different. At the end, Zane's head twists all the way back. In an evil voice he says, "I’ll be seeing you real soon, cousins…”, just before he enters the car. This implies that he is still part dummy somehow and that Slappy has some control over him. In the book, he merely receives Slappy as a gift, and Slappy is revealed to still be alive.
  • In the book, Uncle Cal stays over along with Zane. In the episode, he drops him off and doesn't stay.
  • In the book, Mr. O'Dell found Slappy in the trash. In the episode, he found him at a junk store.
  • In the book, the prank the kids pulled during his last visit was that they made him think the house was haunted. In the episode, they dragged him out to the middle of a field while he was asleep.
  • In the episode, Slappy has powers that he did not have in the book. He can turn people into the dummies, and he is seen being able to repair himself.
  • In the book, Slappy is initially called "Smiley". In the episode, Mr. O'Dell knows his real name from the start.

Home media[]

Title Release date Media type

Night of the Living Dummy III


January 13, 1998 (US)

October 1, 1999 (UK)

VHS

Night of the Living Dummy III


Nightofthelivingdummy3-DVD
September 7, 2004 DVD


Trivia[]

  • Rocky's voice actor, Eugene Lipinski, played Mr. Mortman in The Girl Who Cried Monster.
  • This was the final special to include R.L. Stine as the host for wraparounds.
  • In "Night of the Living Dummy II" when Slappy's head falls on the fireplace, his entire face breaks off. But when they show what is left of him in the sequel, only the part around his eye is missing.
  • Blair Slater (Daniel O'Dell) played Cooper Holmes in Season 3's "The Barking Ghost".
  • In some camera shots, Slappy has moving eyebrows, and in other shots, he does not. In these shots, he has a different-looking face. This is because two dummies were made to appear in different scenes.
  • In certain camera angles in the scenes of Zane's bedroom and the hallway as Trina and Daniel swept, a black line can be seen at the bottom of the screen. This is clearly a crack in the special camera's lens, as it only appears in the two types of angles, while the camera shots made from other angles were made with a different one.
  • Slappy is bigger in this television episode (and the continuation) than he was in Night of the Living Dummy II. This is because, in this installment, Slappy needs an actor to properly animate him (in the previous installment, he was simply a puppet with limited motion). For consistency, they made the puppet the same size as the actor.
    • If you pay close attention, you will be able to tell when Slappy is a dummy or an actor in a costume. The costume's face stretches like rubber when the mouth moves, and it can't move its eyes or eyebrows. The dummies also have human hands when actors wear costumes.
  • Most of the "dummies" featured in the episode are actually dolls.
  • Notld3 Zane Marker Lines
    When Dan and Trina talk to Slappy in Zane's bedroom, some camera shots are of Zane's dummy, while others are of actor Hayden Christensen as human Zane with marker lines drawn over his mouth to simulate that of a dummy.
  • Goof: While Slappy tries to squirm away from Trina and Dan as they wait for Zane, black wires can be faintly seen moving his arms.
  • On the VHS/DVD release of the episode, the music recording is cut short, stopping before the credits are actually over, though just by an inch.
  • Rocky is the second dummy to defeat Slappy, following Dennis from "Night of the Living Dummy II," and later followed with Mary-Ellen from "Bride of the Living Dummy."
  • Near the end, when there is a scene with Rocky in the chair, there is some "Godfather" music playing in the background.
  • When Slappy shows off his "friends" to Trina and Dan, Dennis from "Night of the Living Dummy II" is briefly seen.
  • The cracked Slappy head used at the beginning of the episode was later reused in Season 3's "Bride of the Living Dummy," in the scene where Slappy and Mary Ellen are destroyed in the workshop.
  • In a scene where Trina and Zane are having breakfast, a box of cereal named "Aunt Deb's Wacky Wheat Cereal" is seen on the table. The name "Aunt Deb" is a reference to Goosebumps' producer, Deborah Forte.
  • This episode is the 6th and final special to air in Primetime on Fox, as opposed to Fox Kids.
  • When they created the R.L. Stine dummy for the intro, they were unsure if they should include his mole, fearing Stine would be offended. He ended up loving it. [1]
  • While Mrs. O Dell was not named in the book, the episode gives her the name of Patty.
  • Trish and Dan try to defeat Slappy by saying his chant backwards ("Onarrak Unolom Amol Annodo Irram Urrak"), though it has no effect. The concept of reading the chant backwards would be reused in Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween and Slappy, Beware!. Haunted Halloween reveals that in the film universe, if Slappy says it, it can turn living things into inanimate objects like dummies. Slappy, Beware! reveals that in the book universe it would put Slappy to sleep forever so he could never awaken again.
  • "The Blob That Ate Everyone" and "Don't Wake Mummy" were rumored to have either been made for season three, or as a test of season three's new marketing strategies (more intense and adapted from different sources), but aired at the end season two, with "Night of the Living Dummy III" being moved to the season finale, perhaps to capitalize on Sweeps Week.[2] This is further corroborated by the fact that the NOTLD3 shooting script is dated July 2, 1996, a whole year before the episode finally aired,[3] and was reported to have been originally scheduled for February 1997 but was held-off.[4]

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