Moviemakers have lived by the belief that its biggest performers shouldn’t be wooden. But that’s a credo that could be thrown out the window when it comes to the unquestionable star of the Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween: Slappy the Ventriloquist Dummy. Who else could conjure dozens of monsters to wreak ridiculous havoc?
Slappy was first introduced in the 1993 Goosebumps book: Night of the Living Dummy. R.L. Stine drew inspiration from other authors, including Ray Bradbury and Rod Sterling, but the real idea came from his memories watching a classic fright flick. Stine says, “Sometime in my childhood I saw an old British movie called Dead of Night, which had three horror stories in it -- one of them was about a ventriloquist whose dummy comes to life and just takes over the ventriloquist’s life and ruins it. And I think was one of my inspirations for Slappy, remembering that old British movie.”
