The Nightmare Room

The Nightmare Room is an American children's horror anthology television series that aired on Kids' WB. The series was based on the short-lived children's book series that went by the same title created by Goosebumps author, R. L. Stine. The Nightmare Room originally aired in the United States from August 31, 2001, to March 16, 2002.

Premise

The Nightmare Room is based on fears that children have, such as ghosts and monsters, which normally ended with comments by the narrator whose final words always ended with the words "the nightmare room", then a door with The Nightmare Room logo appeared, closing. In many instances, the series resembled the television series The Twilight Zone with teens taking the role as the main characters, many of whom portrayed the characters were popular child and teen actors at the time, including Amanda Bynes, Frankie Muniz, Justin Berfield, Drake Bell, Brenda Song, Lindsay Felton, Shia LaBeouf, Kaley Cuoco, Dylan and Cole Sprouse. In addition, David Naughton, Robert Englund (famously known as Freddy Krueger from the Nightmare on Elm Street films), Betsy Randle, Tippi Hedren, David Carradine, and Angus Scrimm also worked on some episodes.

The Nightmare Room is one of the only two live-action shows (the other being Brats of the Lost Nebula) that ever aired on Kids' WB. The show was produced by Parachute Entertainment, Tollin/Robbins Productions, and Warner Bros. Television.

Book titles and summaries

1. Don't Forget Me: Danielle Warner, and her brother Peter, move into a house where the basement is haunted by the ghosts of children who have been forgotten by their friends and families. And lure living children in by making their friends and families forget about them.
2. Locker 13: Superstitious Luke Green gets assigned Locker #13 on his first day of school and tries to quell the bad luck that goes along with it by finding a good-luck charm. But the good-luck charm has a twisted secret of its own.
3. My Name is Evil: A carnival fortune teller accuses Maggie of being evil. Maggie brushes it off as a joke — until accidents occur in school and all signs point to Maggie as a suspect.
4. Liar, Liar: Years of lying suddenly catch up with Ross when he finds himself in a parallel world where an evil twin tells him that he will die in two days.
5. Dear Diary, I'm Dead: Alex Smith discovers a diary in a desk that predicts the future, leading to disastrous consequences.
6. They Call Me Creature: Laura must find out why the animals she cares for are attacking her - and discovers a horrible creature living in her father's shed.
7. The Howler: Self-proclaimed electronics geek Spencer Turner buys a machine called "The Howler" that lets humans communicate with the dead... and summons three ghosts that want to possess Spencer and his friends.
8. Shadow Girl: A bored girl named Selena discovers that she's really a superheroine named Shadow Girl, and, like all superheroes, has an arch-enemy who wants her dead.
9. Camp Nowhere: At summer camp, Russell rows over Forbidden Falls — and finds himself in a summer camp haunted by the ghost of an evil Native spirit.
10. Full Moon Halloween: It's a frightful Halloween night as a teacher gets four of his students and tries to discover that one of them may be a werewolf.
11. Scare School: Sam is haunted by an imp at his new school that preys on new students.
12. Visitors: UFO enthusiast Ben Shipley discovers that aliens are covertly invading Earth.

The Nightmare Room Thrillogy

• Fear Games: Twelve kids with special abilities have been selected to take part in a reality show called Life Games, set on an island haunted by a psychotic witch.
• What Scares You the Most?: April (one of the contestants) is stranded on the island and must fight her biggest fears in order to escape.
• No Survivors: After her escape in What Scares You the Most?, April must return to the haunted island in order to rid it of the witch's spirits.

Opening narration

At the beginning of each episode, R. L. Stine gives an opening monologue of sorts –in a manner very similar to Rod Serling's iconic opening narration for The Twilight Zone– that acts somewhat like a theme song for the series.

Despite the claim of being R. L. Stine, the narration was provided by James Avery of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air fame. Avery also did the closing narration for each episode.

Episodes

Production

The Nightmare Room marked the first new series from author R. L. Stine with Avon serving as publisher for the books following Scholastic discontinuation of Stine's previous series Goosebumps. Stine's publisher, Parachute Publishing, who had worked on packaging other Stine works like Goosebumps and Fear Street described the series as a modern update on The Twilight Zone and was in the process of negotiating promotional partners as well as a television series to promote the brand. In March 2001, it was announced The WB had acquired The Nightmare Room for their Kids' WB programming block's 2001-02 television season marking the network's first ever live-action series.

Releases

On August 20, 2002, 8 episodes were released on 2 DVD volumes. 5 episodes remain unreleased.

Awards and nominations

References

External links