Hello, Spongey here.

Welcome back to Goosebumps Ripoff Month! This time we’re switching gears a bit. I said I wanted to avoid ones that did their own thing but we’re making an exception for this one. Why? I’ll address that at the end. Anyway, here’s Strange Matter.

Running from 1995 to 1997 with about 30 entries from what I could find, this series was created by Marty M Engle and Johnny Ray Barnes Jr, with both taking turns writing entries, although the covers just put them both. This followed the basic formula of these, with the catch that they are all set in the same town of Fairfield. So I imagine there are various references and cameos, kind of like what Fear Street does.

This series actually spawned a spin off called Strange Forces, where the protagonists from the first 10 books have to team up to defeat this big evil. Huh, HorrorLand wasn’t so original after all. This is one is pretty well liked by those who read it. There was even a very 90’s website at the time for fans to gather and talk to the creators. It’s supposed to get pretty dark at times, which of course interests me.

So I will be hopefully reading more from this one but for now, we’re focusing on book 15. Again, I have my reasons for picking this book and talking about the series at all, but we’ll get there in due time. For now, let’s see if this book hits the spot for some good creepy fun.

This, is Creature Features

(Also, this is a Marty Engle one)

I don’t know who did these covers but they used CGI, which was pretty cool for the time. And honestly, they generally hold up okay. I like this one, with this skull in a drive in movie theater. Hey, these CGI covers look way better than the ones Ghosts of Fear Street did at least.

The book starts with our protagonist Jonathan Drake watching a movie called Bloodinator IV: Renegade with his friends. Anything that has a subtitle that starts with R can’t be trusted. Jon …has opinions.

“That was absolutely the worst of the series!”

He spends most of the time bitching about the movie and how trite and predictable it all is. Oh joy, he’s that kind of film fan, I’m overjoyed. As far as his other friends, Albert tends to just blindly agree with Jon, Simon White is a an artist who only cares about the special effects, and Nate just enjoys movies and doesn’t get caught up in all the silly arguments. Nate is my favorite.

I like that they got all the main types of film fans, they basically predicted Film Twitter here. After the movie, they head to the Drive in, where they go to often. There’s a throwback, although it seems like they’re going back in style at the moment. I really like the description of this place, you really get a feel for it.

Before they even sit down, they get into an argument about a bunch of movies that I was surprised to find out are actually real, like Dr. Cyclops and The Devil Doll, although they get the year for the latter wrong. Before the argument can get more heated, they feel the ground shake.

The speakers start hissing and the screen suddenly flickers back to life. They go to the projection booth and see that the projector appears to be brand new. It starts playing a bunch of previews, than after a flash of white, Simon is the only one left standing in the booth. Oh come on, he doesn’t get to join the adventure?

Suddenly, Jon and the others find themselves outside facing a flying saucer. And everything is suddenly in black and white. The army shows up to shoot the thing and they take the kids into custody. Yep, they’ve somehow found themselves inside an old movie. I’m digging the details Jon is pointing out, likehow the effects still look obvious to them and how the actor playing the general is clearly too young and handsome.

The movie doesn’t exist but it does seem like one that would exist, and the title, Invasion of the Saucer People, is close to some that are real. Thankfully, the general says their top scientist is working on a secret project that will help them defeat the aliens.

“Why would you tell a bunch of kids about a top secret project?”

I hope these kids won’t keep stealing my job.

The professor comes in, telling them that he has news that will change the course of the war. But before he can say anything, an alien laser comes in and melts him. …Yikes, that’s a bit dark for a cheesy B movie. But hey, it’s nice to know that even a more fun entry like this can have dark moments and stakes.

Thankfully, the poor professor Raymond finished his project before he died, and it will allow them to communicate to the aliens so they can hopefully stop the fighting. I feel like peace may be out the window after they murdered someone but whatever.

And indeed peace is not an option as the aliens announce that they are here to destroy us. Whoops. The good news is that Jon remembers how this movie ends, so they follow the general’s daughter, as she can leads to a device that emits a high pitched noise that the aliens can’t stand. That’s about as silly as I expected from a movie like this.

An alien grabs Jon but before he can be melted, the kids are saved by Simon. Yeah, back in the projection booth, he smacks the thing a few times which causes the movie to change. It’s not home, but it’s something.

Suddenly, they are underwater and get rescued by a net that puts them aboard a boat. They are greeted by some follows that tell them they are in the Amazon. They don’t know what these kids are doing here but they plan to dump some somewhere safe so they can continue with their search for the “Missing Link”. Again with the telling kids exactly what you’re doing.

The kids figure out they are in The Return of the Beast, which again does not exist but seems like a Creature from the Black Lagoon type thing. Apparently no one lives in this one, which doesn’t bode well for them.

Sure enough, a fish man emerges from the water and starts chasing Rebecca, the only woman on board I think. The book tells us this is the first woman he’s seen and of course he’s angry and horny. Boy ain’t that relatable. The creature takes Rebecca underwater to his underground cave, so now they gotta go rescue her.

Some guy named Steve gets in a cage and is lowered down into the water, but is attacked by the creature. Soon there is no sign of him, so I guess he died. Damn. Poor Steve, I bet he was only two days away from retirement. The captain gets especially pissed about Steve and fires his spear gun at the creature.

The creature snags the barb out of mid air and throws it the captain, which kills him. Jesus, I was not expecting one of the more ‘fun” books from this month to have so many deaths, The creature sets his sights on the boy’s but thankfully Simon is there to conveniently hit the thing hard enough to get them out of the movie.

You’d think he start doing that earlier.

The kids now find themselves in a lab. They are approached by a military man, a millionaire, and a reporter woman who tell them they are in the island lab of Dr. Zorn. Dr. Zorn comes in and he’s a basic mad scientist type. I love how the kids can see the film grain and hear the bad audio.

Dr. Zorn takes out a device and shrinks down the adults and gloats about how he’s gonna take over the world. I wish this was an audio book so I can really enjoy how hammy he is. The worst news is that Jon and the gang haven’t seen this movie and don’t know what it is, so they have no idea what to do. Because knowing the movie really helped last time.

While the other two have stopped shrinking, the military guy keeps shrinking until he vanishes for good. Zorn calls this the “ultimate in death”, yikes. Also, the guy’s “No!” is stylized weirdly but I like it.

Don’t worry, reporter Janet is getting the key to free the kids from the cage. Oh wait no, Zorn spots her and then crushes her. …Yeah, at this point I need this.

Body Count: 5

He zaps the kids and they shrink. The kids scramble and Zorn struggles to crush a bunch of kids. This causes him to start having a legit nervous breakdown, while holding a shrinking device. Not a good combo. Eventually he drops it but he shrinks a spider which goes after Jon.

Before I get serious Night of the Giant Everything flashbacks, Simon comes to the rescue again and moves them to the next movie. His timing is truly impeccable, isn’t it? Now the kids are in the middle of a street full of screaming people. At least they’re in color now!

After teaching the kids reading what technicolor is, they see that people are running from a giant reptile monster. This movie they know about, not that it will help them much. I like how the monster’s movements seem odd, since he’s stop motion. The kids run into an alley, but the monster breathes some atomic breath.

Thankfully, Simon finally kicks in early and he’s especially good as this time they actually end up back at the drive in! Whew. Oh wait, this is page 93 of 120. I don’t think we’re done yet. Sure enough, their jubilation is interrupted by the monster stepping out of the screen and into real life. Whoops.

The boys scramble to figure out what to do but Jon eventually has it. He tells Simon to put the Dr. Zorn movie back in and I already know where this is going. Jon goes back into that movie and easily takes the shrinking ray away from Zorn.

“This is for Janet Westlake”

He then shrinks Dr. Zorn. Okay, that’s awesome. They don’t say exactly if he shrinks so much he vanishes but Jon says Zorn has been “Destroyed” so…

Body Count: 6

Jon gets out of the movie, and he shrinks the monster.

“Chew on this!”

Eh, work on it.

Well, that about wraps that up. Oh wait, somehow a bunch of monsters from other movies saw the Discount Godzilla escape and follow in his footsteps. Whoops. This is starting to feel like padding. They’re trying to hold them off but there’s only so much they can do before they escape the booth.

All seems lost, until they remember there’s only so much left on that film reel. Sure enough, a few seconds later, the reel ends and the monsters return to their movies with the booth shutting down. Well, that was anti climatic.

“We were in a feature Albert. A creature feature”

The italics were not mine, guess they wanted to emphasis that it’s the title, one S aside. With that, the kids get ready to leave the drive in. But as they walk away, the omnipresent narrator informs us that the screen is flickering back to life behind them.

“No one counted on a double feature”

The end. So I guess it’s gonna start all over again? Meh. Not much of a twist there. At least we’re done here.

Final Thoughts:

Boy was that needed after Spinechillers. For all the flaws I’m going to mention, this was still a fun read. The concept is a solid one that they explore fairly well. It’s a solid homage to old school B movies and they clearly know their stuff. It doesn’t come across like a shallow parody, and they did their homework in places. They explore different kinds of movies and there’s a few variety.

The pace is very fast and for the most part it allows things to flow fine and not get stale. It gets a bit padded near the end though, despite how short this already is. I also like how dark it gets, showing just how dangerous it would be to actually live in these movies.

But again, there are some problems. For one, for a lot of it, the characters don’t have a lot of agency. Simon gets them out of the jams and the others don’t really do much. For the most part, their knowledge of the movies doesn’t really play a big part. I also feel that the personalities they set up well at the start didn’t matter much, everyone felt the same once the adventure started.

None of that matters too much for this kind of book, just had some missed opportunities here and there. Also, there’s some slightly annoying writing things here and there, like an overuse of CAPS and italics. Plus, lots of spaces which are usually used to indicate a new scene…used when it’s still the same scene.

Also, I don’t get why this happens in the first place since they’ve visited the drive in before and this has not happened. But whatever. Overall, this is a quick and fun read that makes for a nice homage of something the writers were clearly passionate about. I’d recommend this one, and I’ll be sure to check out more of this series when I can.

Rating: Good

But now for the reason I even reviewed this one..

TV EPISODE:

I know what you’re thinking, but no, this is no Strange Matter TV show. According to their Facebook, they did pitch one in 1997 but had no takers. So what is this episode I’m referring to? Well, this book actually got adapted into an episode of an anthology horror series that otherwise had no connections to Strange Matter.

That show was The Haunting Hour. Yes, that Creature Feature episode? It’s based on this book.

I’m not sure why they call it a short story though. But yeah, for some reason they randomly adapted this random book. Marty and Ray were involved and seemed quite happy about it…even the episode has basically nothing to do with the book. Seriously, the only things they keep is the protagonists name and the vague concept. That’s it.

The episode has them only going in one movie, and it’s none of the movies from the book. It’s pointless to compare them because they have so little in common. It’s so weird, why even adapt it if you’re gonna just do your own thing anyway?The episode was still fun at least and it being a two parter allowed them to do a bit more and let the characters stand out more.

I feel if my flaws were cleaned up, I’d like the book more but right now, they are about the same. Both very different but pretty fun experiences. I suppose this was the stepping stone to doing a Strange Matter show but that fell through. But yep, I only did this just to show ya’ll this weird-ness.

Worth it. Some of the Strange Forces books are on Kindle but you’ll have to go physical for Strange Matter if you wanna get hold of them. Weird. That about wraps it up for this series. Next time we or go for a more proper ripoff, as I regal you with a Deadtime Story.

See ya.