Chicken Chicken Review
In my last two reviews, I looked at both Frankenturkey (1994) and Frankenturkey 2 (1995). It’s coming up to Christmas, so I thought why not review one final poultry-themed horror before getting into the really Christmassy stuff?! My third and final choice was 1997’s Chicken Chicken. The book has received a fair amount of criticism on GoodReads and Reddit as being one of the worst books in the Goosebumps original series!
According to the Goosebumps Fanwiki, R. L. Stine took inspiration from Stephen Kings’s Thinner when writing Chicken Chicken. Will it compare? Surely not?! Let’s scratch a little deeper…
Plot
Crystal loathes chickens. I personally think chickens are adorable, little creatures… but not Crystal! Despite living on a farm and having to feed these “greasy wing[ed]” birds (Goosebumps Collection 17, p.129), Crystal and her brother Cole have much bigger problems. There’s a goth woman who lives in the woods nearby, called Vanessa. She has the credentials for being a witch – she wears all black (including black lipstick) and she has black hair – therefore she must be a witch! It’s fair to say that Vanessa gives strong The Craft (1996) vibes!
The local kids like to play pranks on her all in an effort to show who is the bravest. Crystal saw that Cole had teamed up with some of the other children to play a prank on Vanessa, but the escapade ended with Vannessa believing that siblings Crystal and Cole are to blame! All of the other children were fortunate enough to have escaped!
Crystal and Cole bump into the witch again, and she curses them, whispering “Chicken chicken”. The two children immediately begin to feel strange. They begin acting like birds and start growing feathers! Will they fully turn into chickens?! Will they ever be able to reverse this curse?!
Review
Chicken Chicken features a smidge of body horror, but left us wanting more. This aspect could have added more spice by expanding on the horrifying and emotional aspects of feathers pushing their way through the protagonists’ skin, and the lips of the kid’s crusting into beaks! The idea of this is truly horrifying, but the lack of detail made this book feel more like a fairy tale than horror. In addition to this, it felt like there was a moral somewhere in this book. It felt like a morality tale.
Despite this, I had a good laugh whilst reading the basketball scene. Yes, even as an adult! When Crystal is running like a chicken and making an absolute fool of herself under the witch’s spell, I couldn’t help but imagine this kid running up and down the court like an absolute twit! In retrospect, this is where the humour peaked for me. The book was not exactly a laugh-a-minute, but some moments made me chuckle.
In summary, this book is very tame. If I were to create a Venn diagram of what genres this episode would fit in, it would sit in the absolute middle of three circles of horror; fairy tale; and comedy. It has elements of all three of these genres, yet would be considered an unremarkable example of any one of these genres when considered on its own. If you’re looking for scares, I would skip this book. However, if you’re looking for a kooky read with some laughs thrown in, you may want to try your cluck with this book. It’s not exactly Thinner, but you’ll still get a thick slice of fun.
