We begin with an introduction from the man, the legend, R.L. Stine himself! “Oh, hello!” he says, as if we’ve just crept up on him and he’s not filming in a studio, trying to remember his lines [Why do only The Haunted Mask and this episode have these little Stine intros?].
We then cut to the main story, where in the early sometime in the past, two guards are dragging a prisoner somewhere to the titular Terror Tower, presumably to be tortured.
In the present, protagonist Sue [Played by Kathryn Short, AKA Sabrina from The Haunted Mask!] and her pickpocketing brother Eddie [We’re not told their last name, which is very out of the ordinary] sightseeing on a tour of London. They’re headed for Terror Tower with their tour guide, Mr. Starkes, and some other tourists, but Eddie thinks it’s so sucks that their parents are too busy at “that business conference”, to which Sue replies “Yep, we’re on our own!” because I guess the writers could think of no other way to let the audience know [It doesn’t really make sense for Sue say that to her brother when they’ve been on the tour all day already].
Outside Terror Tower, Eddie’s creeped out about how they used to torture prisoners up there and leave them to starve, and as the tour group moves inside the building, he spots a g-g-g-g-ghost [!!!] standing on a terrace, warning him to “Go back” [Gotta love that ’90s CGI!]. But when he tries to alert Sue, the ghost has disappeared [Of course it has].
Mr. Starkes explains how the tower became a prison hundreds of years ago, which kicked off all the torture the building is now known for. He leads the group up to the tower where he locks them all in and gives them the bad news — they’ll be imprisoned in the north tower and tortured “Until you tell us the real reason you chose to come here” [Oh no!]. It’s just a bit of British humour though [Cheeky little devil], much to the relief of the tour group.
The tour continues up another staircase leading to the torture chamber, where Mr. Starke warns the group to stick together because there’s lots of passages and secret chambers, so it’s easy to get lost [Surely there’s less opportunities to get lost the higher they get though?]. They explore the torture chamber, and Eddie poses with a lifelike wax figure [That looks like the executioner from the book’s cover!] so Sue can take a picture, but the stupid girl can’t point and shoot and through the camera’s viewfinder, she sees the figure move towards her!
The figure’s back in his first position when she lowers the camera though, and no-one else saw it move [Spooky!]. After Eddie runs off to look at something else, the executioner lunges towards her again, striking the ground with its axe. Everyone else comes to investigate the noise and the tour guide scolds Sue for touching the displays before complaining about unsupervised kids [Big mood tbh. Also, we never see that masked executioner guy again?]. As the siblings follow the rest of the tourists, no-one notices that one of the wax figures in a Kung Lao hat [How good’s ‘Mortal Kombat’] is actually a real person [Even though Eddie literally just said it’s made of wax. OK].
The tour moves to the top of the tower, the chamber “where the most important political prisoners were kept.” He explains that in the early 1500s, a young prince and princess were brought here, where the Lord High Executioner’s men followed orders to kill them as they slept. Eddie and Sue find “Long live freedom” carved int the stone wall before the g-g-g-g-ghost from earlier appears, warning them of danger [!!!!!].
He disappears again and Sue and Eddie realise the tour group has gone [That was quick]. The Kung Lao guy appears and orders them to come with him before performing some sort of ritual with some white stones. The kids use this distraction as a chance to escape and hurry down the stairs, apparently going too far down and stumbling into the king’s dungeon. Kung Lao easily catches up to them, offering no explanation other than “You know why” when they question why he’s chasing them [I’m too impatient for this]. He explains that he won’t hurt them if they willingly come with him [Maybe they’d be more willing if you told them why they have to come with you?], but if they don’t, he’ll “have no choice”. Then he grabs Eddie, forcing Sue to use a an arm that fell off one of the displays to fend him off [Hahahahaha]. Kung Lao chases them deeper into the tower, but the siblings finally escape his greasy mitts when a swap of bats come out of nowhere and attack him [Tag yourself, I’m the plastic bat glued to his shoulder].
Sue and Eddie emerge from a manhole in the road by the Tower and flag down a cab who takes them to their hotel. Short the British pounds needed to pay their fare since they apparently don’t have real money, the kids agree to find their parents inside the hotel so they can come and pay him. The cab driver really wants his 12 pounds and 60 pence, so threatens to come find them if they’re not back in five minutes [He’s super rude about the whole thing so I wouldn’t pay him xoxo. How does he expect to find them in a huge hotel anyway?].
Inside, they realise neither of them have their room key and don’t remember even taking it with them before they left [Weird]. Wanting to find their parents, they go to the concierge, who tells them there’s no conference happening at the hotel, and when they ask for the key to room 1415, he tells them “That room is vacant!” [Ooky spooky!]. He asks for their last name so he can look them up in the system, but neither kid remembers what it is! The episode ends with Sue declaring “Eddie, there’s something wrong with us” [Yeah, it’s that you still wanna pay that rude cab driver when he was so rude].
You can find my final thoughts of the episode at the end of Part 2, which will be uploaded in a few days, but so far, not bad, although not much really happened storywise.
