Phantom Town (1999)

I have always been interested in horror. I grew up in the 1990s, which was a huge time for horror aimed at children. Television shows like Freaky Stories, Tales from the Cryptkeeper, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and Eerie, Indiana made their way onto screens across North America. If you turned on the television on a Saturday morning, you were bound to find one of the many kids’ horror programs. Few of them had the same impact on me as Goosebumps, however.

Goosebumps began as a series of spooky children’s literature written by R.L. Stine. They were easy reads with horror tales, geared towards children. The whole thing began in 1992. By 1995, a television show had premiered and Goosebumps fever was raging. I was a big Goosebumps supporter, reading the books and watching the television show. I watched the other television shows at the time, too. I was a spooky boy who wanted to watch spooky boy things.

The influence that Goosebumps had on things that followed could be seen to this day. Two feature films were made based on Goosebumps and R.L. Stine. They came out in 2015 and 2018. That’s how current the influence could be felt. But there were many other kids’ horror properties to come out since the release of the books and subsequent airing of the television series. Many of them took clear influence from the Goosebumps multimedia franchise.

Phantom Town was one such property. It came out in 1998 or 1999, based on conflicting information. It may have gone straight-to-video. Sometimes it might be referred to as Spooky Town. What I can tell you, however, is what Phantom Town was about. Mike (John Patrick White), Arnie (Taylor Locke), and Cindy (Lauren Summers) were three siblings that threw a party while their parents were out. When their parents didn’t return home the next day, they went searching for them. They discovered a town that didn’t exist, known as Long Hand. It was an 1800s wild west town. The three siblings got tied up in the weird machinations of Long Hand while trying to find and save their parents. Along the way, some horrific things happened.

One of the common themes that ran through a few of the Goosebumps stories was that kids or a family would go some place and discover that it wasn’t quite what it seemed. Kids would disappear and die at a summer camp, and one kid would have to figure out what was happening. An amusement park would be run by monsters and a family would fight to escape. Those sorts of things were common through Goosebumps and had some striking similarities to the story told in Phantom Town.

The first of those similarities was the family aspect. Phantom Town revolved around a family of five, particularly the three kids. There was the older brother, Mike. He was the leader of the three kids as they went on their adventure. That’s because he was a teenager who could drive. Then there was the middle child, Arnie. He was the level-headed one who knew how to think his way out of the problems. He was also the narrator, meaning the story was told through a child’s voice. Finally, there was the youngest, the sister, Cindy. She was there to be that younger child character because all family adventures require a younger sibling to do young child things. They were trying to save their parents. The family dynamic was set.

Compare that to something like One Day at Horrorland, a classic Goosebumps story set in an amusement park. There were five family members, though one technically wasn’t part of the family. There were the two parents, who separate from their children early in the story, only to come back and play a major part in escaping the horror. There was the brother and sister. There was also a friend of the kids. It was the same five person dynamic, with the three kids taking the lead.

Another similarity was the sinister undertone of the location. Long Hand was a wild west town. There was a saloon, an old-timey hotel, and one dusty street where it was easy to imagine a shootout. It was also the 1800s in that town, while it was the late 1990s in reality. There was something strange going on. The deeper the kids dug, the stranger they discovered the town to be. The people of the town were going through the motions, walking the same places, and having the same interactions. Arnie realized that the town was a living organism, with each person a part of it. If someone was injured, they became a pile of goo and melted into their surroundings. If a chair or wall was cut, green goo flowed from the cut. Long Hand was a strange place.

That could be compared to the summer camp from the Goosebumps story Welcome to Camp Nightmare. The setting of the story was Camp Nightmoon, a seemingly normal camp. Only, the more time that was spent at the camp, the stranger it seemed. Kids were being injured and the counselors weren’t doing anything about it. In fact, the counselors were injuring kids as well. People weren’t allowed out after nightfall. People went missing. Strange things happened at the camp. It was eventually revealed that the entire camp was a testing zone for the main character to see if he was ready for an interplanetary expedition. Camp Nightmoon was strange because it was created for an ulterior motive.

The final big similarity between Phantom Town and Goosebumps was the twist ending. Phantom Town heavily relied on a twist ending to give one final scare to the children, both those that were in the movie and those that were watching it. The kids saved their parents from pods in the caves under Long Hand. The entity that was the town collapsed and died as the family fled home. They held a party to celebrate. Mike and Arnie played music while the parents prepared a cake. When they cut into it, it oozed green goo. All the children whipped their heads in the direction of the cake and the story was over. The twist was that they hadn’t escaped. Long Hand had simply morphed into their home and their parents were a part of it.

Welcome to Camp Nightmare clearly had a twist, when the summer camp was revealed to be a testing zone for the main character. That was an easy twist to find. One Day at Horrorland featured a twist as well. The family escaped Horrorland, the theme park run by monsters, by pinching the monsters. This deflated them, allowing for an escape route. They stole a bus from the parking lot and headed home. Unbeknownst to them, one of the monsters made it to the bus and clung onto the back the entire trip. They piled out of the bus, found the monster, and had some understandable concern. It wasn’t warranted. The monster simply wanted to give them free passes for the next year. That was the twist. It was the opposite of the Phantom Town twist (one was positive to negative, while the other was negative to positive). But it helped to highlight how the twist ending was a fundamental part of any classic Goosebumps tale.

Phantom Town was a movie that featured the hallmarks of any Goosebumps story about a kid or kids going on an excursion. The kid(s) had a well-defined family unit. There was the older brother, the younger sister, the middle child, the mom, and the dad. The location wasn’t all that it seemed to be. Long Hand seemed like a wild west town but was really a living entity trying to absorb the family. Finally, there was a twist ending. They thought they had safely gone home, but Long Hand had come with them.

Goosebumps influenced many people throughout the 1990s. Children like me grew up watching the horror shows that aired on Saturdays and reran at various times during the week. It helped us grow into horror-loving adults so many years later. Filmmakers were inspired to tailor their stories to fit a similar mold. They played horror into their stories in a way that wasn’t going to scar their child audiences but would simply send chills through their bones and leave them wanting more. Goosebumps wasn’t intended to outright frighten. Neither were Are You Afraid of the Dark? or Freaky Stories or Tales from the Cryptkeeper. They were meant to spook, like the ghosts and ghouls on Halloween. It was family level horror.

I grew up on these shows through the 1990s. I remember watching them repeatedly because they were the horror I was allowed to watch. The Goosebumps books were the horror that I was allowed to read. As I got older, I got into horror geared at older people. Stephen King, Michael Crichton, slashers, haunted houses, all kinds of things. My world opened to a seemingly unlimited source of scary stories. I was ready for it. I dove right in. I was prepared, all because of the children’s horror shows I watched and children’s horror books I read in the 1990s.

Now it’s time to get prepared for a few notes:

• Anaconda: Offspring (week 80) featured Serban Celea of Phantom Town.
• That wasn’t the only person from the Anaconda franchise to appear in Phantom Town. Phantom Town had Dan Badarau from Anacondas 4: Trail of Blood (week 80).
• Dyer McHenry returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies in Phantom Town after being in Zarkorr! The Invader (week 123).
• Jimmy Herman was in both Santa’s Slay (week 263) and Phantom Town.
• Phantom Town was the second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance of Dorina Lazar, who was also in Transylmania (week 297).
• Finally, Constantin Barbulescu was in Phantom Town after showing up in Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (week 330).
• Have you seen Phantom Town? Did you watch shows like Goosebumps or Are You Afraid of the Dark? when you were a child? What did you think about Phantom Town or those television shows? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
• If there are any movies that you think would fit into the Sunday “Bad” Movies, get a hold of me on Twitter or in the comments. Tell me all about them. Let me know that I should seek them out, watch them, and write about them.
• Sunday “Bad” Movies is on Instagram, sharing some fun things from the movies that have been covered.
• We have come to the end of another post. That means it is time to look forward to what will be coming up soon. There’s a director that has popped up twice in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, and it’s about time that director gets a third appearance. I’m talking about none other than Godfrey Ho. His Brucesploitation flick Enter the Invincible Hero will be the subject of next week’s post. I hope to see you then, ready for more Sunday “Bad” Movies fun.