Hey everyone, PushingUpRoses here and welcome to another Goosebumps thing.
I recently decided to rewatched all four seasons of this series because now that Christmas
is over I’m out of shitty hallmark movies so I transitioned over into low budget children’s
horror.
Seemed appropriate.
Then I decided, why not do another episode retrospective; yeah it’s a little out of
season but so are strawberries and that doesn’t stop me from making a fruit smoothie so why
the hell not.
Today I’m covering an episode of Goosebumps, which was a live action series based on the
extremely popular books by RL Stine.
It premiered on Canadian network YTV in 1995, and some of the more popular episodes include:
The Haunted Mask, Welcome to Camp Nightmare, and One Day at Horrorland, but I’m not talking
about any of those.
I don’t discuss good things, I discuss questionable things, so today I’m presenting you with
“An Old Story.”
Unlike many of the other episodes that were based on individual books, this one was based
on a short story that was part of a collection called “Still More Tales to Give You Goosebumps.”
Our tale begins with a couple of hungry preteens, Tom and Jon, who are looking for food.
Typical.
After realizing that they don’t have any food because their parents didn’t go grocery
shopping before taking an out of town trip, they head on down to the basement in search
of pizza, which is honestly tragic; if you have pizza you don’t keep it in a crappy,
insect infested basement, you build a shrine to it and honor it like the treasure it is.
Jon makes a quip about how the basement is scary because their are spider webs down there.
Jon: “Spiders?”
Tom: “There are… spiders.”
The Heck you say.
The door dramatically swings shut behind them, and after a very brief moment of suspense,
the door opens back up to reveal an intriguing silhouette.
Ohhh look we found Carmen Sandiego...
Sorry, I tried really hard to make that joke work but there’s only SO many times one
can make a Carmen Sandiego reference.
This woman is in fact, not a fortune teller, but the boys Aunt Dahlia, who will be babysitting
them while their parents are on holiday.
Right away, this woman starts making creepy, inappropriate statements.
Aunt Dahlia: “I just know the girls are gonna go crazy for you… when you’re older.”
Also, is anyone else getting a children of the corn vibe from this kid?
I’m not trying to be mean here, he just genuinely reminds me of Isaac.
He wants you too Malachi…
Aunt Dahlia says she’s gonna go whip up some cookies in the kitchen and the two boys
reflect on how weird she is while playing with this super high tech VR headset.
And by high tech I mean someone definitely glued a K’Nex piece to this thing.
When Aunt Dahlia returns she offers them prune cookies, everyone’s...favorite.
Dahlia: “They’re prunes.”
The boys: “PRUNES??”She’s also very insistent that the boys eat these abominations,
and if they DON’T eat them, they won’t be getting dinner, which would normally sound
like a dream come true, but in this case the cookies were moving.
What in the fuck is this kid wearing?
The boys try to get a good night’s sleep under the watchful eye of Jim Morrison, but
keep get interrupted by loud noises.
Convinced their aunt is doing creepy shit downstairs, they decide to go check, but Aunt
Dahlia barges in before they even open the door, ready to assure them that noooo funny
business is afoot and they they need their beauty sleep.
Dahlia: “Now get right back into bed, you need your beauty sleep, heh heh heh heh.”
They wake up in the morning feeling under the weather, sore, exhausted; it’s very
similar to being in your 30s honestly, but after going downstairs they find that it’s
something far worse; they have WRINKLES.
So yeah, this story gets very weird, and that’s probably being charitable.
So if it’s not blatantly obvious, the prunes Aunt Dahlia used in her cooking were in fact,
enchanted.
And the reason she made THIS quip earlier in the episode (Aunt Dahlia: “I just know
the girls are gonna go crazy for you… when you’re older.”), is because her plan is
to rapidly age her two nephews so she can hook them up with two old women who PAID for
husbands.
Woman 1: “Where are those two cute boys you told us so much about?”
Woman 2: “The suspense is killing me!”
And so is my arthritis!
I’m trying to understand this, here; is there a lack of single, older men out there?
Why exactly do we need to age preteens so that these two women, one of whom looks like
she’s spent way too much time at a Vegas casino, can have husbands to retire with?
The real creep factor is that even though they’ve aged physically, they haven’t
really aged mentally; they are still weird preteen boys inside these wrinkled up bodies.
The women seem to know that this is the case, but they don’t care; they just want a hot
partner.
And by hot I mean...this.
The boys are aware that they are aging due to the fact that their skin quality has degraded
to that of an rhinoceros; When Aunt Dahlia notices they are out of milk, Tom offers to
go to the store to buy more and tries to convince her that Jon should go with him in a feeble
attempt at an escape, but these thirsty women won’t allow it.
In a somewhat cheesy first person POV scene, Tom goes through the store looking for milk
while everyone there blatantly treats him like an old man.
Weird Edgy Teen: “Hey Pop, get the lead out, kay?”
I just can't get enough of these dramatic stings they are the BEST.
As he passes by a stand of sunglasses, he catches his reflection in the mirror and figures
out why people are treating him differently.
“I wonder which one of these would look best on me..”
He books it home and finds that Jon has also aged even more, and they try to come up with
yet another feeble attempt at an escape, but because their bodies are so frail they can’t
manage anything, even the simple task of climbing out the window.
So they basically just kind of give up because they are tired and hungry; Tom especially
is very intent on finding something to snack on.
The only thing they have in their pantry is a jar of baby food, which wasn’t there before
and no one knows why it’s there, but whatever, when you’re hungry you’re hungry.
I’ve eaten old stale Cheetos out of my bra, so I get it.
Tom shovels some of it into his gob and suddenly, the aging starts to reverse.
“Wow, squash really does have anti-aging benefits.”
The baby food is the antidote for the enchanted prunes, because you know...baby food is for
babies, prunes are for old people; the clever use of these items is just killing me.
Though I am slightly confused that the antidote is in PLAIN sight; not sure what Aunt Dahlia
was thinking, there.
The women hear the commotion and scurry into the kitchen where Aunt Dahlia tries to intimidate
them into eating more enchanted prune based meals.
Okay, go long!
Go long!
Jon: “CATCH!”
Oooo and it’s out of bounds.
Just when it seems like Tom is within the clutches of Aunt Dahlia again, he suddenly
remembers the PRUNES.
He reaches into the fridge and pulls out a fresh pitcher of prune juice and douses her
in the face.
(Aunt Dahlia screams.)
I guess because Aunt Dahlia is already a little older and this is such a concentrated dose
of prune, it ages her until she turns to ash.
Wow, that’s brutal; I never thought Goosebumps was particularly frightening, even in childhood,
but this rotting skull aesthetic is quite nice.
Seeing as though Aunt Dahlia has disintegrated and the boys are back to normal, the woman
decide to pretend that this murder has not taken place and make a run for it.
It would seem that everything is fine, but alas; there is a problem.
For some reason that I just can’t wrap my head around, Jon decides to eat another jar
of baby food.
I don’t know where it came from, it was implied that there was only one earlier on,
but since he ate the entire thing he aged down into a baby.
I just have NO idea why he decided to do this, it’s not explained.
Was he afraid he was getting crows feet or something?
This is bothering me, what the fuck was he thinking?
Tom runs to the kitchen to get some trash cookies and tries to get lil baby Jon to eat
it, but the episode ends ambiguously, leaving the viewer wondering if things get resolved
or not.
That’s something I’ve always liked about a lot of the Goosebumps episodes; even though
they weren’t the most spine tingling stories, I do appreciate some of the unhappy conclusions.
Let’s also look at some of the differences between this episode and the short story because
there are a few significant ones.
In the short story the boys are given prunes instead of cookies; just straight prunes.
I think the prune cookies were probably a good way to go; I can’t really see many
kids realistically wanting to snack on plain ones, and the addition of the cookies also
helped to aid the ending.
The baby food was not the antidote in the short story; instead, it was wrinkle cream,
which again, makes a lot less sense to me than baby food, as most wrinkle creams are
snake oil bullshit.
Sorry, I know I’m nitpicking as the wrinkle cream was enchanted but I’ve been trying
to get rid of my eye wrinkles for years and none of this crap works.
Anti-aging, my ass.
In the episode, the kids already know Aunt Dahlia, as well as their parents who aren’t
shown on screen but when Aunt Dahlia speaks with the mom on the phone it is clear that
she IS their biological Aunt.
In the short story, nobody had ever seen Aunt Dahlia, and the parents were under the impression
that she was related to the other.
The biggest difference is the ending; obviously in the episode we got our vague baby food
eating ending, but since there was no baby food in the short story, nothing even close
to that happened.
Instead, Tom goes to school the day after Aunt Dahlia perishes and sees his crush eating
a ton of prunes, he goes up to her, warns her to stay away from them, and they share
his sandwich.
I do prefer the episode ending as it is a little more ominous, a little more exciting,
but it makes VERY little sense.
I have SO many questions…
First of all, how in the world are these boys going to explain to their Dad that his sister
turned to dust as a result of splashing her with enchanted prune juice?
I think it makes more sense in the short story where Aunt Dahlia was just a stranger, NO
blood relation to the family, so if she dies nobody is gonna give a shit.
And it also makes sense that a random psychopath is trying to exploit these boys; it’s very
strange that their own aunt would want to sell them off to a few older ladies so they
have someone to play cards with.
Seriously, are there just...no older gentlemen available in this universe that are willing
to play a thrilling game of bridge?
When the boys are playing this incredibly fake VR game, Jon asks Tom if Dahlia is really
their aunt, and Tom says yes and adds that his father never wants her to come over.
This is followed by Dahlia trying to persuade the boys to eat the cookies, saying it’s
a family tradition and that their father LOVED them when he was young; good lord, was she
also trying to rapidly age her OWN BROTHER so she could sell him to horny old women??
What in the world is going on in this episode, this is so fucking WEIRD.
I mean, I’m the weird aunt in my family too but I’m definitely against selling my
nieces and nephews for a small fee.
Well, I don’t know maybe if the offer was REALLY high-
BUT I digress - I do like the original story, but I think the episode is weird as fuck.
It stands out to me because of how bizarre the plot is, and again I do like the up-for-interpretation
ending.
Also, this death scene really did strike me, I did think that was disturbing the first
time I saw it.
It’s worth watching if you are a Goosebumps fan, or a children’s horror fan; not the
best episode in the series but definitely one of the weirdest.
Hey everyone, thanks for watching my episode retrospective on An Old Story, I hope you
enjoyed it.
If you want to talk Goosebumps episodes with me, then check out the social media links
in the description.
If you want to support the show, find me on Patreon and you can forever listen to me rant
about weird shit.
It’s appealing, I know.
Thanks again and see you in the next one.