Nightmare in 3-D
Yes, the Dash is Part of the Title
Previous Ghosts of Fear Street Reviews:
Who’s Been Sleeping in My Grave?
Nightmare in 3-D is the 4th book in the Ghosts of Fear Street series. It was written by Gloria Hatrick, who also wrote Creature from Club Lagoona. She doesn’t seem to have a lot of works outside of Ghosts of Fear Street to her name. Mostly just a YA book called Masks that was published in 1992.
This book is another creature feature, like Attack of the Aqua Apes, so that means the mood music will be Mommy’s Little Monsters again.
Original Cover:
A praying mantis coming out of a poster with some books in the way. Lots of yellow and green, with a bit of blue, yellow, and orange for contrast. It’s okay, but definitely not my favorite. At least the title stands out from the background nicely. They seem to have gotten the color contrast right now.
New Cover:
This might be the first one where I actually like the new cover better. The “it’s coming right at you!” gimmick of the original cover was cool, but the overhead view here with our protagonist in his bed is also effective, and the color scheme is nicer. Also, the mantis is colored with gradient dots, to make it look more magic-eye poster-y. The dark colors contrasted with the glow really pop. Neither is my favorite, but this one edges out ahead.
Characters:
Wes Parker - Our protagonist. Wears glasses, not good at magic-eye puzzles. There’s not a whole lot to him, but at least he feels a sense of responsibility when a rampaging monster gets loose in the school and does some actively heroic stuff.
Lauren - Wes’s obligatory platonic best-friend. Actually a supportive friend, which makes her one of the better “best friend” characters.
Corny and Gabby Phillips - The obligatory bully characters. Twin girls who live next door to Wes and like to harass him.
Clawd - Wes’s cat. Get the pun?
Fluffums - The Phillips twins’ dog, who chases Clawd a lot.
Sal - Weird, grumpy guy who owns the Five-and-Ten shop.
Wes’s Mom, Dad, and Little Sister Vicky - Just there.
Plot Synopsis:
Wes is in the school cafeteria trying to see one of those 3D hidden image posters that were a hot fad for a few minutes in the 90’s. He can’t, and says he’s never able to, despite a pep talk from his friend Lauren.
The Phillips twins sit down next to them and start talking about the cow eye that they dissected in science class, before saying they’re bored and leaving. Wes sees an eyeball in his food and screams, but it’s a plastic eye the twins put there. The whole cafeteria laughs and applauds him, and he vows to get payback on the twins.
On the way home, Wes and Lauren stop at Sal’s Five-and-Ten store, where Wes notices a magic eye poster that the Phillips twins had is on display with a sign saying it’s part of a contest. Someone who sees the image can send a letter to the company saying what it is, and win a prize. Wes figures if he can beat the twins at the contest, it will be a decent revenge. He takes the poster to Sal at the register, who from his physical description and name, might actually be based on Salvador Dali
Sal complains a bit about people these days only wanting to shop at the mall before getting a bit weird on Wes about buying the poster, telling Wes that his eyes might have the ability to see things that others can’t, and that some things are better left in 2D. He still sells Wes the poster, even though he seems to know what’s up with it, because this story needs a plot.
Wes goes home and tries to look at the poster, but once again he can’t see the image. Wes shows his mom and his younger sister Vicky, who tells him that there’s another magic-eye poster on the back of their serial box that she was able to see. It was the mid-90’s, so these posters being everywhere is slightly more plausible than it is now. She tries to give him some tips on seeing it, but once again, he can’t. Her and their mom can though, and even the cat, Clawd, can see it. When they try to see the image in Wes’s poster though, they can’t. When they show Clawd the poster though, he freaks out and runs away. Also, the poster smells bad.
Wes goes into his room before dinner and stares at the poster till finally he sees a praying mantis in it. Then the mantis reaches out of the poster and eats a real moth that was flying around his room. When Wes looks again though, the mantis is just dots. Wes gets called to dinner, where he spends his time freaking out about seeing the mantis move. He tries to tell his parents, who tell him his eyes must be playing tricks on him. Then Clawd runs through the flap on the front door, chased by the Phillips twins’ dog, Fluffums. Clawd and Fluffums run up to Wes’s room. Wes goes in to find Clawd freaking out and Fluffums is cowering in the corner, missing a chunk of fur, which the Phillips sisters threaten to sue his family over (yeah, they’re those kind of people). When they take their dog and leave though, Wes finds out that the 3D poster has a chunk of dog fur coming out of it. Wes freaks out, takes the poster off his wall, and puts it in his closet. Then he mails out a letter to the poster company for the prize.
That night, Wes gets swarmed by red dots from the closet that buzz around him like flies. Then the closet door starts to buckle and crack, and he sees a giant feeler coming out. Wes screams cause the mantis is coming for him, but when his mom comes into the room, his closet door is fixed and everything is back to normal. This is totally inconsistent with everything we see about how the mantis works later, btw. Wes’s mom tells him he had a nightmare and he thinks maybe she’s right.
Wes decides to take the poster to school the next day to show Mr. Gosling, his science teacher, figuring out that maybe he’ll know what’s up with it. He tells Lauren about what happened on the way to school, and while she’s skeptical of a giant praying mantis coming out of a poster, she also knows it’s not like him to make stuff up, so maybe something weird is going on.
At school, the Phillips sisters steal Wes’s glasses, and then when he looks at the poster again, the mantis monster comes out of it completely. Lauren can’t see it, and accuses him of playing a prank, but she can feel it when it bites her wrist, so she believes him after that. The mantis grabs Mr. Gosling’s ankle, but since he can’t see it, he thinks somebody tripped him. Wes and Lauren throw books and do other weird things to try to distract the mantis, baffling Mr. Gosling, before finally convincing him that they all need to get to class. The mantis comes into class, and starts lurking over the animal cages. Wes and Lauren figure it’s goign to eat the animals, so they freak out and start letting all the animals out of their cages, starting what’s basically a riot in the classroom. Mr. Gosling leaves the room to chase after the animals. Then the lunch bell rings and everyone bolts, including the mantis.
Wes and Lauren chase the mantis to the cafeteria, where it starts flipping trays and throwing things around, but since no one can see it, everyone thinks it’s other kids doing it, and it starts a massive food fight. The mantis pins Corny down and is going to eat her, when Wes makes her give his glasses back and stares at the mantis till it breaks into dots and goes back into the poster. Wes staring at the poster without glasses makes the mantis coming out, staring at the mantis with glasses makes it go back in.
Wes and Lauren go home to Wes’s house where they cut the poster in pieces. Then Wes pulls down his glasses, puts his face real close to the poster, and stares at it to make sure the mantis is destroyed.
A little mantis arm knocks Wes’s glasses to the ground and hundreds of tiny mantises come out of the poster and start flying around. They all start clumping up in a ball and reform the giant mantis. Meanwhile, Wes accidentally steps on his glasses and breaks both lenses. Getting the extra durable lenses could have prevented this, but so could not being stupid.
Luckily, Vicky, Wes’s sister, comes in just then, so Wes swipes her glasses and stares at the mantis. The mantis lifts him in the air, which causes Vicky to freak out cause she sees him floating. Wes thinks Vicky’s glasses don’t work, but fortunately it just takes longer cause they’re a weaker prescription. Wes and Lauren go outside and burn the poster. They see a mantis shaped cloud of smoke rise up and disperse.
The Twist:
Wes and Lauren are hanging out weeks later. There’s no mention of them getting suspended from school for releasing all the lab animals, so I guess the school admins decided that day was so chaotic that all the students got a mulligan. Wes gets his package in the mail and finds out it’s another magic-eye poster, with a tarantula in it. But since Wes knows how they work now, he just puts his glasses back on when it starts crawling.
Then Wes and Lauren see the Phillips sisters playing outside, and they’re running a toy cat on wheels around while encouraging their dog to chase and attack it. Yep, they’re training Fluffums to attack Clawd. If you’re thinking that Wes should have let the mantis eat them, I have good news. He heads outside with Lauren and tells the twins he has something to show them while holding up the new poster and handing Lauren his glasses.
Themes and Symbolism:
Eyes are mentioned throughout. They’re learning about eyes in science class, and of course there’s Sal’s little speech to Wes about his eyes. It doesn’t really seem to mean anything deep though.
Review and Analysis:
Nightmare in 3-D isn’t anything special, but it understood the assignment where Attack of the Aqua Apes (and many others) didn’t. If you’re going to give us a creature feature, give us plenty of the creature rampaging around being scary and/or cool. The latter half of this book is almost nonstop, 7-foot tall, invisible, praying mantis monster action, and it’s better for it. The first half setting everything up is a bit bland, but at least it’s not too padded.
I also liked the ending, with the implied comeuppance coming to the bully characters, who we’re given just enough nastiness from for it to be enjoyable. It reminds me a bit of the twist ending in Calling All Creeps.
There’s a bit of inconsistency between the two halves though. Why does the broken closet door fix itself instantly when Wes’s mom comes in? The mantis monster never displays this power again, or any concern with hiding itself, beyond its natural invisibility. Why does the mantis take so long to come out of the poster after Wes sees it the first time, only to go back inside on its own, for that matter? This doesn’t match the “glasses off, mantis comes out-glasses on, mantis goes back in” mechanic we see in the latter half of the book.
Also, as is a common standard throughout these books, explanations of why any of this stuff is happening are almost totally absent. Sal seems to know or at least suspect something about the poster and Wes’s eyes, but he makes it clear that he doesn’t have anything to do with this contest. It’s all being handled by the unnamed poster company. We learn how the mantis works, but nothing about why this nameless company is making bug monster magic-eye posters, or why Wes has some kind of special sight that can bring them to life, or why it reverses when he’s wearing glasses… you get the idea.
Oh well. It’s a novella for children about a giant invisible praying mantis that comes out of a 3D magic-eye poster. It’s not deep.
I give Nightmare in 3-D (don’t forget the dash) a passing grade, but with 6 billion kids’ horror novellas out there, the only real reason to read this one is if you think praying mantises are particularly awesome.
Next time: I’m gonna take a little break from these and review Cirsova, Volume 2. Then I’ll finish the first half dozen with book 5, Stay Away From the Treehouse, and write a first impressions article.
