I’m doing another post! It’s a miracle! And it’s a theme on the blog I haven’t done in quite some time! Here we do underrated, color theory, cinematography focused posts, book reviews, movie reviews, watchlist and one of my personal favorites, retro rundown. And that’s what we’re doing today.
Retro Rundown is basically me as an adult re-watching past episodes of horror television series, mostly anthology ones and reflecting on them. I’ve done The Twilight Zone, Are You Afraid of the Dark, Tales from the Darkside and today’s episode comes from Goosebumps! I’ve read some past Goosebumps books (Welcome to Dead House, The Werewolf from Fever Swamp) and I have others in my collection I haven’t read yet or read as a child and haven’t gotten back around to it and that kind of energy is present with episodes. I think I have seen most of Goosebumps but it’s all a blur minus a handful of standout episodes.
But today’s episode, I wonder if I just dismissed it at one point or I don’t remember it well enough but I was kinda into it. We’re talking about season one, episode fourteen, “It Came from Beneath the Sink! ”
Spoilers beware!
First off, Katharine Isabelle (of Ginger Snaps, American Mary, Hannibal) is in this episode! Well, she’s credited as Katharine Isobel and it was a pleasant surprise to see her. I loved seeing her on screen, she is the main character, as Kat. And she, along with her younger brother and parents move to a new house. They have a dog named Killer and her brother has a best friend named Carlo. Everyone is thrilled to be in a new house, except Kat. There’s always ONE child that is not the biggest fan of moving in these stories.
Right off the bat, the dog knows something is up. Killer, a German shepherd, is immediately on the case if something is not right in this house. Things to note: new house, if your baby (or toddler) and/or pet is acting weird, something’s up! And Kat, exploring the house, goes to the kitchen, well, the kitchen sink. And as Killer is put outside, whining and whimpering, red eyes peek from underneath the sink. Kat thinks it’s a kitten but um, kittens don’t have red eyes. And it turns out to be…a sentient sponge?? Killer sponge?
My first thought written down about this reveal is that it looks like a “creep” from Calling All Creeps with the same color scheme and teeth. It’s so goofy looking and I think that’s just the comedy aspect of RL Stine’s work creeping in? It’s so ridiculous that it’s funny. And of course, we had the typical, no one believes the main character of what they saw but bad things were continually happening. Killer goes missing, Kat trashes her bike (with the sponge finding its way into her helmet) and until her brother and his friend see it for themselves, they are the only three who are witnessing this.
Shoutout to Carlo who says “this is better than the x-files!” at seeing a sentient sponge. They think of getting rid of the sponge, how to do that and they decide to bury it in the backyard. Well, the “luck” which is the motto of this episode, goes from bad to worse. Their family dog is STILL missing and then the garden is basically dying. And it’s dying from the sponge. This section here reminded me of one of the stories in The Essential Tales of HP Lovecraft. Something falls from space and it festers in a man’s land. All the dirt is unlivable, plants are dying and void of color, animals are affected, the water from the well is and then it spreads to the family because it needs outside LIFE to survive and flourish and this gave me the same vibe. I wonder if RL Stine was inspired by Lovecraft in this story. 
Back to the story, Kat decides to show the sponge to her science teacher who basically tells her it is a “kitchen sponge” and she promises she’ll look at the sponge more thoroughly. Well, locked away in a school, the sponge causes chaos for the science teacher, the janitor, but in the midst of the chaos, the three kids figure out that the sponge LIVES and LOVES negativity. But when you do the opposite, it shrinks down and becomes complacent.
And in the end, Kat is the owner of a killer sponge, a second pet. Killer, the dog, returns happily and you think the episode ends on a happy note but the dog brings a gift… a killer potato.
It just ends on the random note that made me go, of course this episode is a fever dream! Now I cannot compare it to the book since I don’t own it and I haven’t read that one but… it wouldn’t surprise me if it ended like that in the book too. It’s ridiculous, campy, didn’t take itself too seriously but there is some underlying very sci-fi specific themes. Lovecraft themes.
And Carlo is just having the best time of his life with these lines. I will end one with Kat saying “things just kept getting weirder” CUT to Carlo reading a book called the Encyclopedia of the Weird where he figures out about the sponge’s origins?
This gets a 3 out of 5, just plain weirdness and bizarreness and I liked that.
Shots of Horror 
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