Goosebumps: Episode 15 Say Cheese and Die

Just a personal theory: I think I may have found an example of a good actor, playing a bad actor, playing a character, without the makers knowing. Or maybe with. Who knows, really. Director Ron Oliver actually has a pretty long history in children’s television, so I have trouble believing that he was completely unaware when a young Ryan Gosling played Greg Banks, our protagonist, in a dull “read my lines and emote” manner that seems to be copied directly from standard Tales from the Crypt episodes.

A fun fact: This episode was based on a Twilight Zone episode called A Most Unusual Camera, which was also the basis of an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark called The Tale of the Curious Camera. Goosebumps wiki acknowledges this, and as of this writing incorrectly claims that two actors from this episode are shared with the original Twilight Zone episode, but somehow misses the fact that Ron Oliver also directed the Are You Afraid of the Dark version.

This is a pretty fast-moving episode, with a surrealist feel. Greg, and several of his friends, have apparently become interested in a local homeless man nicknamed “Spidey” (Richard McMillan). They decide to break into the abandoned building where he lives, and discover...a camera. It’s weird looking, but they’re able to figure out pretty quickly that it’s basically a Polaroid. Greg takes his friend Bird’s (Akiva David) picture, right before he has a tumble off a flight of stairs...then, Spidey shows up, and they all run. After leaving, Greg is amazed to find that the picture shows Bird falling off the stairs, although Greg is convinced he took the picture before it happened.

To be fair, this is an episode where the short length does help somewhat. We have an evil camera, and it doesn’t take the characters long to figure out that it’s evil. Greg has one nightmare where his family is killed by the camera (or as close as can be implied by a kids’ show), and it causes two disasters. His father’s (Marvin Karon) new car shows up in a picture damaged, after which the family has a near miss, and the father eventually crashes the car alone. He also photographs his friend Shari (Renessa Blitz), who doesn’t show up in her picture at all. He also finds that the camera is undamaged when thrown onto concrete. I can imagine that in a longer film the protagonist would have kept “experimenting.”

There are definitely some weird moments in the episode. The aforementioned dream has Greg taking his family’s picture at a picnic, and then looking at the developed photo to see skeletons standing in their place. Also, he finds out about Shari’s disappearance when two cops (Karen Robinson and Scott Speedman) show up at his house to literally interrogate him without the slightest shred of evidence he had anything to do with the disappearance. That said, it works to get the kiddies hyped up, and as an adult I guess I can just say “meh, surreal” and move on.

The ending of the episode is quite strong, and probably the most memorable part. Greg decides to return the evil camera to the place where he found it, and finds Shari along the way. Apparently she reappeared at her home after he tore up her picture, which makes the camera a lot less impressive, but they continue on their journey.

Back at the abandoned building they’re confronted by Spidey, who gives his villain speech. He’s one of the more interesting villains. He attempted to make a camera that could predict the future, but instead produced one that made horrible futures come to pass. There’s a certain sympathetic touch to the idea that he became homeless to keep the camera hidden and unused when he discovered it was indestructible. However, I can’t see any particular reason he couldn’t have put it in a weight metal box and dropped into the ocean, where it would have likely been undiscovered for a period much longer than his human lifespan.

Overall, though, he comes across as a jackass with some vague notion that he wants to be a good person. He gives us a line about “primitive tribes” believing that cameras can steal souls that I will politely assume was an intentional attempt to paint him as a racist. He also believes, of course, that the two children now know too much and cannot be allowed to leave.

Shari snaps his picture, in a move that’s both surprisingly smart and ruthless for a children’s show protagonist. He disappears, and we see him screaming to be released from inside the camera. The protagonists leave the camera behind, and we get our final scare when two bullies from earlier in the episode find the camera, and take their own picture...and then Spidey is behind them.

I recommend this episode. Each episode of this show seems to have it’s own tone, and here the tone I get is, as I mentioned earlier, very Tales from the Crypt. It’s a scary story, compressed into a product that bears little resemblance to the real world, and I could seriously imagine Crypty laughing and throwing out a few puns (if complaining a bit about the lack of blood, sex, and curse words). It’s cheesy, everyone knows that it’s cheesy, and they make it work.