The Nightmare Room: Camp Nowhere

This Twilight Zone for youngsters is based on a series of spooky kids' books written by popular author R.L. Stine. Premiering on the WB television network in 2001, The Nightmare Room took titles and themes from Stine's novels and adapted them into lightweight tales of the bizarre. They were later compiled for DVD release, with each episode providing good-natured chills aimed directly at juveniles. Pre-teen favorite Amanda Bynes stars in "Don't Forget Me," and this inaugural episode packs a lot into a slim half-hour. Hypnotism, a threatening homeless man, mysterious cracks in the basement oozing suspicious white slime, and the imprisoned souls of lost children are all involved in the swift-moving plot, along with that eternal childhood fear: parental abandonment. A two-part episode, "Camp Nowhere" concerns some campers who try to overcome their irrational fears while spending the night at a "haunted" cabin in the woods. Morning comes and they discover something far more frightening than they had ever anticipated. In "Full Moon Halloween," a group of junior-high students are locked in a house and informed that, at midnight, one of them will become a werewolf. First, however, there's the matter of some pesky rodent-sized creatures from Borneo that zip through walls and gain a taste for human flesh after exposure to light. Adults might find the plot twists a bit pedestrian, but all horror productions rely on a certain amount of predictability, and there are lots of creepy special effects to thrill the youngsters. Parents can rest assured that there's no graphic violence and very little mayhem overall. Still, there are plenty of cheap shocks to make the kids jump and a genuine supernatural mystery at the base of each story, so beware The Nightmare Room. FRED BELDIN

I had forgotten about reviewing this DVD til tonight, when I saw Tyson's post about Harry Potter ... I can't contribute anything to the endless dialogue about JK Rowling and her prodigious output, but when Tyson used the term "R.L. Stiney" it brought me back to my own 1970s-era childhood, when Dynamite and Bananas magazine were a major source of humor for me. You got em cheap from Scholastic Books, and every few months the teachers in the Flint School System would pass out catalogs and order forms for various Scholastic products including Judy Blume, L. Frank Baum, Ranger Rick magazine and the like. But Dynamite and Bananas were boss all the way with pre-teen hipster gags, Star Wars references and centerfolds of assorted Welcome Back Kotter stars ... sometimes even iron-on decals for one of those lousy v-neck tees my maw used to make me wear under shirts no matter what the weather ("I Hate Homework!" et al). Anyhow, R. L. Stine was not only the funniest writer for aforementioned mags, but he also wrote quickie humor books about the lighter side of dating, the low quality of lunchroom cafeteria food and other essential laffs for the kind of kids who buy their own books at age ten.

It's damn hard for me to dig Stine these days, but that's a tribute to his talent and craft rather than a gibe at his worth. Along with Ben Hamper and Lester Bangs, I gotta doff my cap to this peculiar literary inflence of my early years.

P.S. Gotta say, I'd never heard Lester's voice before, aside from Jook Savages on the Brazos. Check it out.