The Stand, Episode Two: “Pocket Savior” Thoughts and Impressions

Too tired to type, but not to talk. Enjoy me talking about the second episode.

The Stand, Episode One: "The End" Thoughts and Impressions

Well, a day after saying I haven't seen it yet, I have now seen the opening episode of The Stand, the second adaptation of what it probably King's greatest novel to date. This isn't going to be a review, really, just me processing my thoughts.

And in short, what did I think? Strong start. A very strong start.

I know there are King purists who have issues with how this was handled. They don't like the new anachronic structure, that begins in Boulder, and through various time hopping, begins to fill us in on how everyone got there. I've even seen some really insistent Redditors (and people elsewhere) start in with the whole "Josh Boone just doesn't understand the story", a complaint that always makes me role my eyes and think "Sure, buddy, and if you were ever given the opportunity to do your own version, I'm confident someone would say the same of you."

I used to wonder why I seemed to trust critics more than audiences when it comes to freshly released material. And it's this; no matter how little I agree with a professional critic, they at least take the time to explain their stance on the topic at hand. Well, most do, and when they don't, when a review is little more than a critic belittling those who don't share their opinion, then said reviewer has failed at their job. But for the most part, a reviewer will back up what they say with a thought-out, reasoned argument and, usually, critical consensus will be how history views something. There are exceptions, but in many of those cases, audiences were just as dismissive as critics were. Pick almost any film that has become a cult classic on home video, and you'll likely find that both critics hated it at the time and it bombed at the box office, too.

Viewers, on the other hand, tend to just react. They shout "WHY DID THEY CHANGE THAT!!!??" or "That was the worst thing I've ever seen in my life!" They hold on to these reactions for years, often refusing to re-watch the source of their ire because they don't want their opinion to change. And yes, I think this was the case for a lot of viewers of Andy Muschetti's It films, to say nothing of the reaction to Disney's Star Wars films. I mean, I see the weaknesses there, as well, but come on, guys, "worse than the prequels"?

And that is, for the most part, how the over-the-top screaming reactions to "The End" can be summed up. Anachronic order when the book was chronological! Bad! Flagg held open the door for Campion! Bad! Harold is skinny! Bad! We didn't get to see much of Arnette! Bad!

I'm not saying I think every part of this was successful, but ultimately, it feels like a lot of the complaints are basically people who wanted a word-for-word translation, and I've already spoken at length about how those just don't happen, and it wouldn't work if it did. Or alternately, watch any Mick Garris film based on a King work, especially if King himself did the screenplay. Can you honestly say those films are even good, let alone better?

I guess I should also bring up the discussion of just how should The Stand even be filmed, with a lot of people of the mind that it really deserves to be its own multi-season TV series. One person has even laid it out; it needs four seasons, each season covering a fourth of the novel.

There are various reasons I can't agree here. A lot of it comes from how much of the novel is internal monologue, with various characters remembering events from their pasts that are, in many ways, irrelevant to the story at hand. In a novel they work to flesh the characters out. In an adaptation, they should be the first thing to go. And offhand I can think of passage upon passage that is little more than characters reminiscing about stuff from the past, sometimes decades ago. These can go on for pages and pages, and while that's fine in a novel, it's just not needed. To be honest, I'm not sure why this story can't be covered in 9 hours. I might have preferred ten, but I spotted a lot of filler even in the book (most of Stu and Tom's journey back to Boulder was a big one).

The second big reason I'm okay without this covering multiple seasons is that there's no guarantee of renewal, and would you have wanted an adaptation that got us no further than Part One?

So, I'm fine with the anachronic approach. King even used it himself in other books so I don't see why it can't be used here. King might even use it if he were try and re-write it today. I do think some confused time-jumps with POV flashbacks, however. A time-jump means we, the viewer, are being shown events of a different time. A POV flashback means it's just the memory of one character. One review I read seemed to think that all the time-jumps were meant to be Harold's flashbacks, meaning that flashing back to events and people he wasn't privy to doesn't work, but they weren't Harold's flashbacks, so it does work.

One YouTuber pointed out that at times this seems rushed, and it does, mostly in how quickly the plague spreads. I think this could end up being fleshed out in later episodes, so I won't immediately call this a flaw, but yeah, I could have stood with a more gradual plague spread. Here it seems like everyone just dies overnight. One scene they're coughing, the next they look like Bib Fortuna in the last episode of The Mandalorian.

And speaking of, this time they really do a great job with the "tubeneck" effect. The miniseries kinda ignored this. But not here. Oh, no. At one point, Frannie moves her dad's body and the neck-tube wobbles, and it looks like there's something fleshy and solid under the swelling. I could immediately understand what touching that swelling would feel like. Well done. At one point we get to see a tube slashed with a scalpel, complete with a squirt of blood and pus. Disgusting and awesome.

Some have been angered by showing us that the Dark Man appears to be the author of these events, or at least set them directly in motion, thanks to showing us how Charles Campion was able to escape the testing base. In the book, he just manages to get out inches ahead of the lockdown. In this episode, he initiates the lockdown himself, but then notices the door to his chamber is stuck open. He stares at the door, stares at a picture of his family, and you see him warring with himself over what to do. Finally he bolts from the room to get his wife and kid and go on the run. The moment he leaves, the camera pans down and we see a cowboy boot holding the door open, that lets it close the moment Campion escapes.

Personally, I like this. Flagg, in the book, seems to possess little memory of who he is, and it implies his powers are new to him, but when you consider that he's the same man as the Man in Black from The Dark Tower, it becomes obvious that this is just Flagg taking on a new persona, not the idea that literally he was human until the events of the story began. We'll see how Flagg is handled in future episodes; I thought I heard something about how this will make clear that Flagg was just a normal human before (and I understand that even in King's canon he began as a human, but I also understand that it's been a long time since those early days).

It really does seem, when I examine those complaints, that the chief issues people have with it (aside from it feeling rushed) really do stack up as "they changed it, and that is bad". I've said before that changes are not automatically bad should they be done in an effort to clarify or enhance the story in a visual medium. Fidelity to a novel's spirit, overall story and characters remains a must (a big part of why I hated The Grey Castle) but changes in the aid of making the story fit the medium better? I'm all for that. Again, when King writes his own screenplays and hires utter hacks like Mick Garris to direct them, the result is often crap, or at the very best just sorta okay, and in every case they try for a literal translation, or as close to one as they can get. Meanwhile some pretty damn good Kingian adaptations take great liberties with the translation. Even stuff that doesn't get a lot of credit, like The Night Flier.

So let's talk about a couple of changes that weren't so good. First off, I wasn't a big fan of making General Starkey into a hero. Starkey is a relatively minor character in the book, but his impact is rather large. See, Starkey isn't a bad man, but he is the man in charge of the project that developed the virus in the first place, and is the man tasked with keeping it all under wraps, whatever that may mean. Several times in the book he orders the death of innocent civilians just for speculating publicly on the nature of Captain Trips, and he even orders Stu executed at one point.

In this series, he's played by JK Simmons, who is excellent as always even if I really did want to see him in a larger role, like Glen Bateman. Simmons can play bad guys, or conflicted good guys, but here he's solidly heroic, letting Stu go because he's not about to "just follow orders" when the people who were giving them, and the reason they were ever issued, are gone. In fact, this series invents a person who's the exact opposite, a low-ranking soldier named Cobb (played by Daniel Sunjata) just so Starkey can look even better in comparison. I liked the moral ambiguity better. In the book he is driven to his lowest point, whereas here he goes out like a hero.

But I mean, that's not even really a huge issue for me. I can live with it, even if I'm unsure about it. There's another scene where Frannie (Odessa Young) OD's and is found in the nick of time by Harold, and some have complained that Frannie would not get that low. I don't know, though, it's kinda clear they're going in a different direction with this Frannie; she seems more melancholy from her first moment on screen, and she's clearly less tolerant of Harold than in the book. The book lets us know that she's far from Harold's biggest fan, but outwardly is kind to him. Here she's spiteful to him practically from the first, though I will also say that Harold himself has many creepy moments that likely fueled this.

And this brings me to the highest of high points; the casting. They're all wonderful, but special praise must be given to Owen Teague as Harold Lauder. We remember Teague as Patrick Hockstetter in Muschetti's It, and while he was good there, too, he wasn't given much to work with. But here, he's incredible, and I see a bright future for his acting career, assuming COVID ever goes away. While Book Harold was fat and had bad skin (until he stopped eating chocolate and his physical job in Boulder melted his weight off him) but here, despite being skinny and clear-faced, his Harold just screams perverted creep. The first thing we see him do is stare at the object of his unrequited affections (Frannie) through a knothole in her fence. Later he takes one of his dead sister's photos of the two of them at the beach and folds it over so that only Frannie is visible, and jerks off to the photo. We see him practicing his speech to convince Frannie to leave town with him, and then, combine that with his behavior when we flash back to Boulder and...man, I love what they've done with the character. 

As for the other characters, we haven't met many of them yet. Aside from Harold, Fran and Gen. Starkey, we briefly see Whoopi Goldberg as Mother Abigail, who looks credible enough and I liked her voice-over intro so I think she's going to be just fine, and we meet Stu, already locked up and under observation, played here by James Marsden, who I wasn't sure about when I first heard this, but he acquits himself well. He's a good-looking actor, but thanks to his age being allowed to show (he's 48 in real life, and he definitely has more lines on his face and grey in his hair than I'm used to seeing on him), he comes off more like an everyman than I was afraid he would. This might be his best performance, too. His scenes are very strong. I liked the building friendship between him and Dr. Ellis (a sort of mix of Denninger and Dietz, played by the always likeable Hamish Linklater), that felt real even as short as it was. Some of Dietz as also split into Cobb, the humorless soldier ready to take care of the "problem" Stu represents even after the reasons for it don't exist anymore.

We don't see much of Flagg this episode but what we do see is pretty chilling stuff. I'm not sure what I think of his hair, though. He's played by Alexander Skarsgaard, leading me to wonder what it is about the Skarsgaard brothers that they keep showing up as ageless, mysterious, powerful beings in works by or based on Stephen King? We gonna get Gustaf as The Man in the Black Suit next? Actually, he would...never mind.

But the question I think is being asked by a lot of Constant Readers is, does it hold up to the 1995 original mini-series? You may have already surmised that I think this blows it away, at least so far. The mini-series was, in my view, merely okay, which for a Mick Garris piece is practically glowing praise. I'm crediting the fact that it wasn't bloody awful with the fact that the source material is so good. But again, as is the case with Garris, it felt more like some sort of dramatic reading of sections of the book. It suffered from some godawful casting (I liked Gary Sinise, Rob Lowe, Ruby Dee and some others, but Molly Ringwald, Corin Nemec, the usually reliable Matt Frewer, Adam Storke, even Ray Walston all were either awful or seemed unsure of what they were doing there), not to mention some truly awful visual effects, and the fact that it aired on network TV removed nearly all its teeth. Speaking of casting, whose idea was it to have Kareem Abdul Jabar play the monster shouter? In what universe was that a good plan?

I don't have much yet to compare Skarsgaard to Jamey Sheridan or Goldberg to Ruby Dee, but I can tell you right now Owen Teague destroys Corin Nemec, and I think I believe Odessa Young more so than Molly Ringwald as Fran. I think I would believe a ball of pocket lint in any role more than I would Ringwald, though. How does Marsden stack up against Gary Sinise as Stu? Well, hard to say yet, because while I like Sinise, he always seemed too old for the part, which is odd because he was younger back then than Marsden is now, but Sinise has this lived-in face while Marsden has been playing young guys for the past 20 years and only now is starting to look even close to his age. I guess I also felt like Sinise was too...man, I don't know what to say. Most of his roles have a degree of menace to them, even his good guy roles, and while Stu needs to look tough, he does not need to look menacing. I'm not saying Sinise played Stu as menacing. I'm saying that he came off a little bit that way almost by accident. And again, even though there's more years between Marsden and Young than there were between Sinise and Ringwald, it still felt like Stu could be her dad, while Marsden looks fine as her pseudo-husband.

Future posts on this series will likely contain more comparisons between this and the mini-series. It's sorta unavoidable. At the moment I feel like this is leaps and bounds better, but I also am not a fan of the mini-series while I know plenty are. Again, I think that the approach of the Garris series was to try and just transcribe the book as best he could in six hours, but he's incapable of including the heart and soul of what made the book so special, while I think Boone has already done a much better job there. A large part of that is tone. Garris's tone is never right. In the case of The Stand, everything felt too clean, too sparkly, even thought the entire story is about a disease starting the Apocalypse. Everybody was attractive, nobody was filthy enough from their cross-country trips, scenes were always sunny and well-lit (unless it was night, of course). Here, the mood is dour and dark, and everyone seems tense and on edge. Harold is not just a whiny kid but a potential school shooter who embodies the sociopath. Frannie is not a model, nor is she smiley and happy all the time. Stu manages just the right amount of hardness without seeming the asshole. Like I said, we haven't seen much of the other characters yet, but so far, those that we've gotten more than one quick scene from, I think we're three for three here.

A reading update

Lots going on right now; I had my own brush with COVID when my 19-year-old son let us know he'd tested positive. As I had recently driven him to work, this necessitated the rest of my family getting tested; thankfully we're all negative, but the rules where I live are that if you've been in contact with a COVID-positive person at all, isolate for 14 days in case you become symptomatic, even with a negative test. If you do become symptomatic, those 14 days start over again. So far, we're fine.

You'd think that would enhance my reading time, but really it doesn't to any great degree. I've been working from home this entire year, so I will still be putting in regular shifts (12 hour days) and I still have two small children running around my house, creating joy and utter chaos wherever they go.

But I still am reading, and still plan to keep this blog as regularly updated as I can.

I also have kept watching, and at this point have watched pretty much everything except some stuff I haven't read the book/story versions of, and would rather go in having read them. I have also watched literally King-written film/miniseries in existence, with the exception of that one X-Files episode he wrote (that I understand got substantially re-written anyway).

When it comes to watching TV series based off King, the question is how much do I really want to watch? Unlike my friend over at thetruthinsidethelie.blogspot.com, I don't include "fauxquels" such as Pet Sematary II, A Return to Salem's Lot or the myriad Children of the Corn sequels to be must-watches for this project, but then I did watch The Running Man and The Lawnmower Man, both of which are just barely related to their alleged source material, and I also am watching, and enjoying, Castle Rock. But I kinda quit early with The Dead Zone, the Canadian-produced TV adaptation that stars everyone's favorite 80's John Hughes nerd Anthony Michael Hall. I watched until it was obvious we'd left King's material in the dust and that from here on out we were gonna get passing references at best, and honestly, I wasn't enjoying the show, so I stopped. Maybe if I had enjoyed it, I would have kept watching. I don't know. Or maybe if it didn't run six full seasons. It was easy to get all of Kingdom Hospital watched, and even Castle Rock's seasons are cable series-length.

Write-ups for them are forthcoming, of course, as will posts on what I've finished reading.

Which brings me to my latest reading update. When I stopped the blog last, I was working on Four Past Midnight, which I dropped early, but went back to later on, finishing all four novels in that collection. I burned through The Waste Lands, Needful Things, Gerald's Game, Dolores Claiborne and the remaining stories in Nightmares and Dreamscapes before kinda getting burned out on pure-King-nothing-but-King again, and returned to my first love, which is fantasy.

I think part of what stopped me was knowing what novel was next. I have read Insomnia before and I remember thinking it was not a bad story at all, but one I didn't truly enjoy, and one I didn't relish the idea of returning to. I also knew, if I planned to keep on making this a blog about an interconnected Stephen King Shared universe, that this was one I couldn't leave out, for reasons that will become clear when I talk more about it. At any rate, I have just completed it, and I will be doing a full post on it right away here.

This morning I also read, for the first time, "The Man in the Black Suit", which isn't my first story fully read from Everything's Eventual but it is the first one I've read that didn't seem to be tied to The Dark Tower. So I have already read "Lunch at the Gotham Cafe", "Everything's Eventual" and "The Little Sisters of Eluria", the latter two being obvious and the first being because I heard there was a connection between the insane waiter from that story and the Crimson King. And there is. Kinda.

"The Man in the Black Suit" feels like breaking new ground, and I like that in this collection King tells you some background information on the stories, something I believe he does for all collections going forward. He didn't do this in his previous collections, except for Four Past Midnight, which I thought at the time had mostly to do with the fact that these are four full novels packaged together. I'm thinking that posts on the short stories will still be shorter write-ups collected together, as I've done in the past.

For Insomnia, I'll do a post for it separately, as I said, but I think it won't be a review proper and more just thoughts and impressions I have about it, which is likely how it will be overall here. If something is in need of being filmed, or remade, I may talk about that in brief, but if I cast it at all it will be through the page mycast.io, and will consist of "who I pictured while reading" rather than a full explanation of my cast.

There will also be more posts coming on my Kingian viewing, and would you believe I haven't had a chance to watch the first episode of The Stand? I have it queued up and ready, and I'll definitely expound my thoughts on that one.

Meanwhile, as my picture shows, I also got some new reading material, which at some point will be included on this blog (though don't ask me when). This is reading material that goes beyond "did King or Hill write it". and is more tangentially related to my Kingian studies. For starters, I broke down and bought two Owen King Books, We're All in This Together and Double Feature. I know I said I wouldn't bother including his works, but I was intrigued by both, so I will be reading them, and I'll let you know what that was like. I still don't think I'll be seeking out Tabitha's works. They just sound really dull.

I already talked about having Rocky Wood's Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished, and to add to that I now have Feast of Fear, which sounds like a fascinating dive into King's thoughts and ideas, and finally I have an unexpected addition to my reading list.

I did not know that there was a "novel" of Storm of the Century, and really, there isn't, but King did have the full screenplay published, in paperback, and it looks from the outside just like one of his novels, and has been counted among his novels by Constant Readers for years. I saw the miniseries, and wondered if I should try and pick up the book. I struggled with this, because I've always considered scripts and screenplays to be different from novels, and felt like in those cases seeing the filmed product was likely enough, but then, thanks to having a copy of Nightmares and Dreamscapes, I had read the screenplay for Sorry, Right Number, King's original story for Tales From the Dark Side, which was published years after the episode aired, and I'd also seen the episode, so why would I not want to also have this published screenplay? Well, in part because an episode script included in a collection vs. a full book struck me as two different things. Second, because the copies I found on Amazon were pretty pricey, and I couldn't really justify it. But then, while having a look in the horror section of my local used bookstore (all this happened before my son's COVID diagnosis) I found it. And I wasn't gonna let that moment pass, I can tell you!

Whether I'll read it when I get to it, I haven't decided. I saw the series and I know I'll be talking about it. I think a full read and then post on both the screenplay and the series is warranted.

Continuing to Binge

I did say I'd keep talking about my Stephen King film adaptation binging, and so I shall.

It still makes me feel a little weird to admit that I've seen so few of his adaptations overall. Some of them I'd seen years ago, and some of those I considered myself to have "seen" I had never sat down to watch in their entirety and had instead "seen" them mostly thanks to catching large chunks of them on TV. Take The Stand, which I did see in its totality, but only due to renting the DVD and watching as much as I could here and there. But now my memories are refreshed, and in many cases created, so I'm ready to talk (briefly) about them. 

I left off with Firestarter last, so in chronological order, let's move on to:

Word Processor of the Gods (1984)

What does one do when one cannot find an online version of a TV series that contains two episodes he wants to watch? One buys the entire TV series on DVD, naturally. That's what sane people who don't make a ton of money do. Well, anyway, it's what I did. I read this one a while back, and I've talked about it, and how what mostly affected me was the way the story spent a while warning our lead character not to tamper with reality the way he now could, and the ending has him literally un-personing his son (and possibly wife) and re-writing reality to bring his dead nephew and sister-in-law back to life...as his wife and son. The way the story leaves us on this note feels ominous, but lets us imagine the consequences of what he's just done. The TV episode, which stars the always-watchable Bruce Davison, seems to think this is a happy ending. If you watch the ending scene, it's well-lit with sweet-sounding music playing over it, and it feels like we're being asked to think that everything worked out for our protagonist, whose actions have been purely selfish (even if his actual wife and son are pieces of work). I also did not care much for the actor who played Jonathan (the nephew-turned-son). He was stilted and felt like he was trying to make sure he got all his lines right. But otherwise this adaptation is pretty straight-up faithful. I was kinda surprised at how it played out just like the story.

Cat's Eye (1985)

Drew Barrymore was such a cute kid. She instantly has us hoping nothing bad happens to her, and thankfully, unlike King's books, which has child death out the wazoo, Drew survives this one. (Oh, Spoilers, I guess, for an almost 40-year-old film). This is an anthology film, of sorts, the framing device being the adventures of a stray cat who, after being briefly chased by both Cujo and Christine (and the film makes sure you know that's who it was), has a vision of a little girl saying "it's coming for me" and "you have to stop it", before getting caught by a man working for a company called "Quitters, Inc." And thus we get our first adaptation, the film vignette playing out almost just like the short story, with James Woods as our trying-to-quit protagonist, giving his usually strong performance, but the part of this story that sticks out to me is the scene where he buys his little girl a doll and takes it to her at school, mainly as a way of making sure she's okay. As my regular readers know, I have a daughter myself, who as of this writing is close to the age of Woods's daughter (played by Barrymore), and dangit if Barrymore's glasses and wig don't make her look a little like my daughter, as well! The scene is very sweet, and Barrymore's acting makes her actually feel like we're watching a father and daughter, and not an actor and child actor pretending to be father and daughter. Again, for those who get worried about kids being hurt, don't, because nothing happens to his daughter. His wife, on the other hand...well, you get it. The cat escapes the facility and is picked up by a high-rolling gangster who makes a bet that the cat can cross a busy street and not be run over. After he wins, he takes the cat home and reveals that he's the villain of "The Ledge", which is a pretty harrowing tale that had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. We then move into the original story of the movie, which introduces a supernatural angle that wasn't present before, cat visions aside (one could consider the cat's visions to be a product of its own imagination). In this case, the cat is taken in by a sweet little girl (Barrymore again), named General, and becomes her pet over the objections of her mother. General realizes the girl is being attacked by a gremlin creature bent on stealing her breath, but her mother blames the cat. I didn't hate this film at all, and the first two stories are very engaging. The last one is okay, thanks to Barrymore's intensely lovable nature, but it isn't scary in the least, and in fact is another chapter in King stories usually becoming strangely high on the comedy factor. As his books aren't funny at all, and his attempts at humor are usually forced, I don't understand why his movies tend to pile on the cheese and focus on comedy. His movies from the 80's, at any rate.

Silver Bullet (1985)

When Stephen King writes his own screenplay, the results are often hit-or-miss. I'm gonna call this one a hit. Which is weird, because all the ingrediants for absolute suckage were there. It stars Gary Busey. It It was based on a novella that didn't have a ton of screen potential. It has a King-penned screenplay, which, again, is not only not a guarantee of a winner but has an extremely high chance of being awful (I really don't know why King the novelist vs. King the screenwriter are practically two different people, but they are), its director mostly worked in TV and this is his only big-screen credit, and it's a werewolf movie made in the 80's. But somehow all that comes together to make a charming little movie that's even a little scary in some places, features some not-bad werewolf effects (even for today, seeing as how modern werewolf movies tend to rely on CGI) and it's even a little scary in places. It does not go for the cheese factor in the slightest, Busey is remarkably restrained and believable as the well-meaning drunk uncle, and Everett McGill gives a pretty good performances as the town minister. Considering how forgettable the source material is, and what went in to making it, the movie is better than it has any right to be. Is it truly good? Well, let's put it this way; it doesn't suck and it held my attention.

Gramma (1986)

This short tale was adapted as an episode of The Twilight Zone, and Barrett Oliver, best known to my generation as Bastion from The Neverending Story, stars as young George, who's left in charge of his ailing grandmother when his bullying older brother ends up having to be driven to the hospital. His only job is to bring her a cup of tea if she wakes up, but the longer he's left in the eerily quiet house with Gramma, the more he begins to remember stories about her, and the rumors about dark entities she associated with. The story is very creepy, and very well told, but I wondered how it could be translated to film, since most of the action is just Georgie, hanging around the house and sneaking down to check on Gramma every so often, with all the bulk of the story being remembered overheard conversations (and his own internal monologue) until the very end. So how is it handled? Not great, overall. At least until the ending, which is very much worth sticking around for, but up until that moment, nearly all the dialogue is in voiceover, which rarely works when overused to this extent. And Oliver is just not up to the task of all that line delivery. For that matter, the relevant information is communicated to us in a much more rushed, confusing voiceover that, if I hadn't read the story, would leave me going "huh?" But...that ending. Oh, man, that ending. I did not expect that, and it worked so well. Very frightening, and it makes the entire thing worth a watch.

Maximum Overdrive (1986)

I'm facepalming right now. I'll be honest, I don't know at all what to make of this movie. See, this is the one that infamously had Stephen King himself not only writing the screenplay but also directing the entire movie. He's not the first, or last, author to do this. Clive Barker directed three movies based on his stories. Frank Miller has done the same since. And so here we have King directing a film based on his short story "Trucks", about some folks trapped in a truck stop when vehicles of the world suddenly gain sentience and go on a rampage. The story itself is tight, serious, and mostly about the implications of "what's going to happen to the world now that the machines we rely upon to live have risen up against us?" That's...not this movie. It's instead a broad, silly semi-comedy with a lot of cringe. Some have speculated that this is what King intended; that it was a loving homage to the B-movies of yesteryear. The problem is, nothing about this seems to be an homage to anything; it may be over-the-top silly but nothing about it harkens back to the age of the drive-in movie for me. Secondly, the ad campaign for this movie featured King himself saying things like "You want to do something right, you have to do it yourself" and "I just wanted to see someone do Stephen King right" and "I will scare the hell out of you!" If that was his intent, it failed miserably because he doesn't even give us a genuine adaptation of his work, and he hardly ever uses that broad, comic tone when writing. It's been suggested, even by King himself, that the biggest problem was that he was about 85% cocaine back when he made this, and honestly, that's as good an explanation as any. The ad campaign though, I seriously wonder how anyone thought it was a good idea, because Maximum Overdrive is not a scary film. It doesn't even seem like it's trying to be one. It really does feel like a sorta whacked-out scifi comedy, with more of an emphasis on humor, but it's not even really humor, either, unless you think a woman (twice) screaming "WE MADE YOU!!!" is funny, or a toy truck with the face of the Green Goblin covering the front of its cab, or a jack-in-the-box going off at the wrong moment, or Yeardly Smith (yes, Lisa Simpson) as a whiny newlywed, or a kid flipping one of the trucks off just after being forced to fill its tank. And this brings up another point; why does it seem like so many King-related adaptations seem so broad and comedy-focused? I mean, it was intentional in the Creepshow films but it's also there in Cat's Eye, The Running Man, Tales From the Dark Side: The Movie, Silver Bullet to an extent and here all over the place.

The Running Man (1987)

As I said when I discussed casting a film based on the novel, this film isn't based on the novel at all, aside from the central conceit of an innocent man on the run for his life, filmed for the benefit of viewing audiences at home, plus a few character names. But in no other way, shape or form does this film resemble the Richard Bachman novel about a man from the near future trying to earn money for his poor family by competing in a reality competition where he's turned into an enemy of the state. Arnold Schwarzenegger stars here in what's basically a pretty standard Ah-nuld film wherein he's a cop who refuses to fire into an unarmed crowd of protestors, so he's sent to prison, while the public is told he did fire, and against orders at that. He escapes, and is instead recaptured by the host and producer of The Running Man, Dan Killian (played by Richard Dawson), who wants him as a competitor, going up against themed "stalkers", essentially Batman-style villains, who chase him through a "kill zone". It's essentially a long excuse to pit Arnie against other strong men of the era like Jesse Ventura and Jim Brown. It moves the setting from 2026 to 2008, and I gotta say its version of 2008 looks a lot like...1987, with bubble-screen TV's, cassette tapes and fashions right out of the late 80's. It always makes me chuckle when films try to predict the future and get it so, so wrong. Heck, even King's novel (which did better) didn't predict the rise of cell phones and has our hero use a payphone (well before going on the run).

Sorry, Right Number (1987)

The second of his two Tales From the Dark Side episodes, this one was actually written directly for the show, and King's script is included as part of his collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes, which I had already finished, so I got to read the script before seeing the screen version this time. And...well, being a script he wrote directly for the show, it reproduces what he wrote almost exactly. But to be honest, I've always felt this was one of his weaker efforts, because once again, he's not really trying to scare you here, and the supernatural event of this story...well, I've said before that leaving some things unexplained in horror is more satisfying than if you explain it, and I'm not even saying that it needed an explanation here, but it needed more...I dunno, awe, or something, some sort of "holy shit, did that really happen" moment that doesn't come. Discussing what I'm talking about would give away the ending, but I will say the main plot concerns a mother receiving a call from an unidentified woman who's weeping and in clear distress, but she can't tell who it is. She rules out her daughter and sister after managing to contact them, but in a twist, her husband later has a seemingly-unrelated heart attack in the middle of the night and dies. He could have lived if he'd gotten to the hospital in time. So, flash forward several years where, at her daughter's wedding, she runs to make a phone call and realizes, too late, that she is the one who called herself all those years ago. It's a sad story, but honestly not top-drawer King. Seeing it acted out didn't elevate it any.

Pet Sematary (1989)

This one has kinda gone down in history as one of the best pure horror adaptations in King's career. Sure, The Shining probably beats it, but here we have King adapting his own work and, while what I said about King adapting himself definitely still stands, here it works out very well, and is at least as good a film as it was a book. Dale Midkiff stars as Louis Creed, and makes me wonder, what happened to him? He's not a bad actor at all, and he's fairly attractive, so why the sudden career nosedive? Surprisingly good is Fred Gwynne, that's right, Herman Munster himself, as Jud Crandall. If there's one thing I would have changed it would have been keeping the Wendigo, which, if the way the deadfall is shot is any indication, could have been bloody terrifying. I mentioned in my casting post for it how hard this book is for me to read, considering I have small kids and the idea of one of them dying almost makes me BSOD, and I wasn't sure if it would be easier or harder watching it acted out. And the answer is...it is so, soooo much worse. I was a blubbering mess by the end. I haven't had much of a chance to talk about this yet, but since my last break from blogging, my wife and I had another child; a little boy. And if you've seen this film, you know why it probably hits even closer to home now than it did then. And Miko Hughes, who plays Gage, and was only three years old, gives the best performance of any three-year-old I've ever seen. What probably sent me over the edge and made the next several scenes harder to see through the blur, was when the demonic infant is finally taken down. He immediately responds with a very toddler-like reaction; crying (so realistically I wonder if they didn't do something to make him), then toddling away saying "no fair!" And now I'm moving on or I may break down again.

Tales From the Dark Side: The Movie (1990)

This movie has frequently been called "The REAL Creepshow 3", and see what I said about the actual movie with that title in my Creepshow post. This is another film where the scares are mostly balanced with laughs, and nowhere it that better demonstrated than in the framing device, where a young woman is going home to make dinner, and we find out that she is in fact a witch, right out of "Hansel and Gretal" and that her "dinner" is a young boy. He has been given a book of scary stories to keep him quite while she was out, and as an escape ploy, he offers to read her some of them as a distraction, and thus we have our setup. There's only one King story in the bunch, The Cat from Hell, which was collected many years later in Just After Sunset. It's never been one of my favorite stories, but I do like how it's presented here, with a big creepy house and two actors who are always fun to watch; David Johanssen as the ruthless contract killer and William Hickey as his creepy client who wants a cat dead. I've never been able to make heads or tales of Johanssen; he's the lead singer of the New York Dolls, a punk band I know little about, but his alternate musical persona is the guy behind the obnoxiously catchy 'Hot! Hot! Hot!", and when he acts it's always in offbeat roles like this. And he's so...weird looking. Overall, I don't know if I recommend this movie. It's not bad, but again, it seems more to be intentionally cheesy than scary, but removed from the trappings of being an ode to old horror comics.

It (1990)

I've made my feelings about this well-intentioned misfire known before. I own a copy, so why not watch it again and re-evaluate it, from the perspective of a mid-40's man who's read the book numerous times and seen the more recent film versions. Did time heal this wound? Not only didn't it, I think I found it worse than before. I still can't get past the bad casting, the hammy over-acting from Tim Curry, the chopping up and dumbing down of a really complex story, the by-wrote storytelling (he gets a call, he has a flashback, repeat) the laughably awful visual effects, even for 90's TV, etc. The results of the more recent film versions from Andy Muschetti have yet to reach a consensus; I thought both movies were pretty good, and for the most part, people seem to agree with me about Part I, but most just despise Part II, and I have yet to hear a coherent reason why. Between this turkey and both Muschietti films, I can tell you right now this one's the loser. One of the chief complaints I hear about It: Chapter Two is its ending, but its ending was a thousand times stronger than this. Nothing about this ending works at all, from the metaphysical battle just becoming three adult men staring at lights until one of them starts spouting, for no reason "I believe in Santa Claus! I believe in the Easter Bunny!", to the absolutely hysterical stop-motion spider. That's all I'll say now as I ranted and raved about it at length in my main post for the casting.

The Moving Finger (1990)

Of all the stories I never would have thought needed to be adapted, I'd put this near the top. Only "Here There Be Tygers" strikes me as less adaptable. Okay, I'm joking, but seriously. This is a pretty simple story that was even kinda just funny when all it was was words on a page. Watching Tom Noonan mug his way through a mostly silent performance was just grin city. Dumb as a brick, but it kinda didn't mean to be anything else. And hey, I bought the finger effect!

Sometimes They Come Back (1991)

I'd heard this one was kinda "meh" but I didn't hate it. Honestly it worked as an adaptation and as a movie. Some have had some really harsh things to say about it. I don't know; I thought it was pretty moody, intense when it needed to be, and had an appropriate sense of growing dread. That train tunnel had me going "oh no" the moment it was introduced, and I even thought Robert Russler gave a good performance, and I've always just thought of him as blandly brutish. Tim Matheson and Brooke Adams are our leads, here, and I'll level with you, I've always found both of them to be astoundingly forgettable. Like "oh, he/she was in that? Didn't notice." Never once has either been the draw or reason to see a movie, even The Dead Zone, and I know I'm gonna get some pushback from at least one person I know is a Brooke Adams fan. I'm not saying I have a problem with either actor; just that both of them are pretty bland and standard. But I did sympathize with them here, Matheson in particular, who made me realize he's actually not a bad actor.

Holy shit, this is two posts on this topic now, and I've still got a ton to go. I think this is an appropriate place to pause, and the next time I return to this topic we'll be getting into an era where filmmakers at least mostly started taking the source material seriously. Though the results were still hit and miss.

Back When He was Still Stephen Prince

It's been a neat experience to see where ol' Uncle Steve was at when he was a boy. It's also pretty rare for a major, best-selling author of any sort to have so much early material out there, circulating in the public, some of it even with his knowledge and approval. After all, two of the stories I'm going to explore today were included in King's own Secret Windows as an example of the writing he used to do for his brother's "magazine", Dave's Rag, the circulation of which must have been about half their immediate neighborhood.

The others are from a "collection" that King and his friend Chris Chesley "self-published", by which I mean they typed out numerous copies and circulated them among their friends for a small fee. My understanding is that many of those childhood friends and acquaintances held on to their copies (or found them many years later, likely in their parents' attics; a much more likely scenario) and now that King was a household name, allowed their copies to be shown around, as a sort of "I knew him when" kinda thing.

Said collection, titled oh-so-imaginatively People, Places and Things, contained nineteen short stories and those Dark Tower aficionados out there are likely sitting forward in great interest at this point because...well...nineteen stories! Maybe don't get too excited yet, though, as King himself only wrote nine of them, and co-wrote the final one with Chesley. Also, that number only counts if you include the forward, which King wrote, which takes it down to a far less interesting eighteen stories, eight written by King alone. Also three of the stories he wrote have been lost to time.

When I say "short stories", I mean it. All of these are very, very short. The two from Secret Windows, titled "Jumper" and "Rush Call" are only a few pages, while the stories from PP&T seem even shorter.

"Jumper" and "Rush Call" seem an interesting choice when it comes to stories King was ready to make available to the public himself. Both stories are very simple and not at all what King would become known for in later years, despite PP&T being around the corner and being much closer to the King we know today. It's actually a bit interesting to consider; King's output at this point was far more geared toward fantasy and science fiction, with his first known story (see previous entry) being a fairy tale and the titles of other stories he wrote around this time (but are lost) seeming to point toward a more sci-fi flavor, and it really wasn't until he started working with Chesley that his work became darker and more horror-infused. Might Chesley have influenced him in that regard? I mean, we know that King was always fascinated by horror, enjoying EC Comics and horror films, but he didn't start writing it until he worked with Chesley. Just some food for thought.

"Jumper" is a tale about a psychologist who has a patient that frequently climbs to tall places and threatens to jump. In this story, the psychologist (alternately named Jeff Davis and Dr. Castle, King using both names likely due to forgetting he had already named the character) is called in to talk his patient off a ledge, and does it by confronting him, saying that he really doesn't want to jump, and this...works. Yeah, King was biting off a bit more than he could chew, trying to write about pathological issues at that young an age. The story doesn't really end, either, it just stops, with Dr. Davis/Castle informing us that this was one of the "most harrowing cases I've handled; The Case of the Jumper Who Could Not Jump". Yep, sounds harrowing alright. He was going to jump. And then he didn't. Wheeee.

This story was...not good. It wasn't very well-written, it didn't really have a conclusion that was satisfying or made sense. I tend to judge these early stories by the bar of "If I were his teacher and he'd handed this in, what would I grade it?" And I think the answer is a C or even perhaps C- due to these issues. I wouldn't deduct points for his lack of understanding about psychological issues, but I would suggest that he try to write about something more in his wheelhouse.

"Rush Call" is the story of Dr. Thorpe, an emergency room doc who is, in young King's words, "a grouch", but we don't really get much in the way of grouchy behavior from him. He's in a bad mood, but in the one patient interaction we see before the main bulk of the story begins, he is able to keep his outward demeanor professional, even as a patient regales him with worries from her personal life (this one part does show King's future a bit, as having characters complain about issues in their home life is a recurring theme). Then he's called to the scene of a very serious accident where the victim is a young boy. The experience...sigh...teaches Dr. Thorpe the True Meaning of Christmas. I'm not even exaggerating; those exact words are used.

I mean...he was just a kid...

Unlike "Jumper", there's no obvious wrongness to this story, it's just a sort of a Touched-By-An-Angel sorta story, and decidedly not what one expects from a Stephen King piece. But, it was 1960, King was a child and we can cut him a little leeway here. Just a snidge. He writes well in this one, for a boy his age. But he had a lot to learn about storytelling.

I will give him this; his introduction to his "column" for Dave's Rag does show his seriousness about writing. Clearly it is something he had already to decided to pursue with diligence.

This is also on display with Nouns...sorry, People, Places and Things in which King's newest motif is to give us a short, scary story that ends on a dramatic cliffhanger that's supposed to make your jaw drop. Sometimes it works, at least on some level. Several times it does not. Let's examine each story in the order shown in the Table of Contents:

I'll be ignoring Chesley's contributions, primarily because I don't have them, but also because I don't really care about them. I might have cared, had Chesley grown up to become a writer even on the scale of, say, Bryan Smith, but he isn't, so I don't.

Also, it should be noticed that "The Dimension Warp", "I'm Falling" and "Curiosity Kills the Cat" have been lost. Also noting page numbers above should give you an idea of how short these things are.

We start with "The Hotel at the End of the Road", which has a nice, ominous title, and a nice combination of the potentially supernatural and the more likely natural, yet still horrifying. Two criminals, the brilliantly named Kelso Black and his partner, Tommy Riviera, are on the run from the cops when they decide to cut onto a non-paved side road. Here's where the potential supernatural element creeps in, because when they do this, the police behave as if they had completely disappeared. Have they crossed over to a new plain of existence that only they could see? Once they turn off, they come to an isolated hotel and believe the cops can't find them here (they're right, but still wrong because they have no way of knowing that the cops can no longer see them at all). The hotel is run by a single old man who shows them to their rooms and then in the middle of the night, reappears to inject them with a paralyzing agent. He plans to make them part of his museum of "living specimens". A museum of people? For whom? What kind of being would find a human zoo amusing? Pretty dark thought for a kid that young. "Tommy Riviera could not even express his horror." No, I guess he couldn't!

After that comes "I've Got to Get Away!", in which our narrator, who introduces himself as Denny Phillips, wakes up in some sort of slave galley with no idea how he got there. He tries to escape, and is brought down by two guards who wonder why these robots keep going haywire and their reactions seem...almost human. I've got some more questions. Like why does this robot have the name "Denny Phillips"? Apparently it's actually marked on his casing. Why does he gain self-awareness so frequently, believing he's human? Is this a Cyberman sort of situation, where in fact he was human, but placed inside a metal body with his memories suppressed/removed, but every now and then able to access that part of his brain that tells him who he was and that he's alive? King later re-wrote this and titled it "The Killer", but I don't really have a way of getting ahold of that. I do have Rocky Wood's Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished and perhaps I'll learn more about it from there.

Next up is "The Thing at the Bottom of the Well", another tale with a moral to it, in this case about a horrible little boy named, yes, really, Oglethorp Crater, who enjoys torturing small animals, but is able to behave like a perfect little angel whenever his parents are around. One day, he goes missing, just after hearing a voice from the bottom of the well tell him to come down "and we'll have some fun". He's found eventually, and...take a guess at what condition he's in. This one was kinda "meh" because how many campfire-type stories are very similar to this? Again, though, the fascination with the dark parts of human nature show up here, and King will continue to explore this in the future. But honestly? Name a kid Oglethorp and you reap what you sow.

In "The Stranger", Kelso Black returns, either having escaped the evil hotel owner or perhaps this is another level of the tower. In this case, he's escaping the scene of his latest crime, and apparently makes a pact with Death (or the Devil?) himself should he get out of it. Then Death comes to collect his due pretty much immediately! For a preteen, young King does a pretty good job making it clear who has come for Kelso, but without spelling it right out for us. I mean, if some other 12 year old had written that I'd have been suitably impressed, so I'm equally impressed here. He'd get even better at it, naturally, but there's some real promise here. Not that it's a very original or creative a story, just told better than I'd expect an average 12 year old to be capable of.

"The Cursed Expedition" could serve as a forerunner to "I Am the Doorway" and "Beachworld", with a pair of astronauts landing on Venus and discovering it's basically paradise, except that the planet itself is a genius loci...and it's hungry. Simple tale, well-told and certainly beyond the sort of thinking I'd expect from a child. In fact a lot of these stories seem like there's some actual depths to plumb, and some pretty nightmare-inducing implications if you think too hard about them. King would revist the idea of an expedition to Venus in "Doorway", but as he was then a grown man and knew better, he didn't have the ship touch down. His sci-fi story "Beachworld" really explores the concept of a living planet to an even greater degree. It's neat to know he was already thinking in those terms as a young man.

The next story, "The Other Side of the Fog" is not as great, unfortunately, with a man leaving his house and being immediately enveloped by a fog, and each time he comes to a spot where the fog lifts a little, he finds himself in a different time. By the end of the story, we're asked if we ever find ourselves in the fog, and we see him, to help him out. Could this story have been a forerunner to "The Mist"? Maybe. In fact, almost certainly, but writ large, with a greater sense of fear from what might come out of the fog. But here, the concept is only barely explored, with our hero seeing a futuristic city (from the distant year of 2007, heh heh), then prehistoric times, and then it's just over. 

Finally there is "Never Look Behind You", which he co-wrote with Chesley and is easily the worst of the stories because no matter how many different times I've read it, I can't make sense of what happens. It concerns a man named George Jacobs who apparently cheats people out of their money but no one has ever been able to "hook him on a charge". From this, I gather that he's a money lender who charges exorbitant interest or perhaps a crooked landlord. Or gangster? I don't know and I doubt King or Chesley knew either. At any rate, one day he's in his office, counting up his money, and counts by hand, apparently, to the amazing sum of $55,973.62! I mean, with that kind of dough...actually in 2020 that works out to $489,243.71 so that's a pretty tidy sum. But anyway, a woman with a scar on her cheek walks in and kills him, in an apparently supernatural way. Who is she? What was her motivation? What was her method of killing? We'll never know. Then, two young men who were never mentioned before, and who were apparently in the room, suddenly speak up, one wondering who or what could have killed Jacobs, while the other just says he's glad Jacobs is gone. "That young man was lucky," says the text. "He didn't look behind him." As best as I can tell, it's implying that if he had been looking behind him when Jacobs was killed, he would have died, too. But it doesn't say more than that, and what about the other young man? Did he look behind him? Where are they, even? The story says Jacobs was alone in his office. And I'm spending way too much time thinking about the worst story in this collection.

In summation, King was definitely showing promise as a writer early on, despite not being ready for the big time yet. But what 12 year old is? What astonishes me is how many of these themes and ideas King would return to. I guess some ideas just don't leave your mind, and King came back later to perfect them into what we have now. One aspect of King's modern writing is how he can leave certain things a mystery and it's almost more satisfying than if he'd explained everything. He hadn't really come into his own on that score yet, but he sure tried to. About the only places it works are in "The Cursed Expedition", "The Thing at the Bottom of the Well" and "Hotel at the End of the World", but even there I think the ideas could stand some fleshing out. It doesn't work at all in "Never Look Behind You" where at least some explanation of the woman with the scar is needed, and it also doesn't work in "The Other Side of the Fog" and not really in "The Stranger".

Final observation; once King quit dicking around with his high-toned dramas and fairy tales, he became a much better writer. The promise he shows in PP&T had not shown up in Dave's Rag, which is odd because these stories all were written the same year.

Updated Bookshelf; Is it Not Beautiful?

So I may have been reading other stuff for a while and avoiding ol' Uncle Steve, but that doesn't mean I've let my collection slide.

I'm almost as proud of this bookshelf as I am my kids. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but I've never been prouder of any bookshelf I've owned.

As you can see, it's pretty fully up to date, even adding Joe Hill's comics, and Rocky Wood's Stephen King: Unpublished, Uncollected, which I'm considering part of this collection, even if King didn't write it himself.

I've added all the non-fiction after years of insisting King's non-fiction didn't interest me. Some of it has had to be in digital form only, such as Guns and A Little Silver Book of Sharp, Shiny Slivers, and I don't have a copy of Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, which in part I feel like I should get, but in part balk at the amount I would have to spend for it, when it's really more a John Mellencamp CD than it is a King "book".

If one looks closely on the drum at the right, you'll see the copy of Esquire magazine with "On Slide Inn Road" within it. I feel like I'll probably get to the end of this before King publishes another collection, so I can remain as up to date as I have tried to be thus far.

If one thing does kinda make me shake my head it's that this shelf makes it seem like I haven't gotten far at all in my reading. The last book I finished was Dolores Claiborne, which, if you can see it, is just before the mammoth copy of Nightmares and Dreamscapes. That's...not even two shelves worth. Out of five. Of course, I've actually read most of the third shelf in the past, and will be re-reading it now, but the world of Shelves 4 & 5 are going to be almost entirely new to me. I say almost because I read the first four volumes of Locke & Key, and the story The Cat From Hell, which was contained in Just After Sunset.

Still excited to be on this journey!

Binging Uncle Steve

Working quiet night shifts gives one a lot of time to kinda just do whatever he wants, as long as it doesn't involve leaving your post, so for the last several nights, I've been binge-watching nothing but Stephen King adaptations.

I'm gonna confess something that you may find hard to believe; prior to doing this, I had seen comparatively few Stephen King movies or TV series. I'd seen quite a few, but nowhere near all that was available, and even after this weekend I've got a lot to go. Why had I only watched a handful of them? I'm not sure. I think some of it had to do with preferring the books to the films, which is a little odd coming from a guy whose blog was once all about adapting King's works into films, but I also think that was part of my motivation.

So many of the existing King adaptations tended to catch the letter of King's works and miss the spirit entirely. They suffered from lazy translation from page to screen, bad casting, directors who didn't take the work very seriously, and of course, they tended very strongly to ramp up the cheese. The whole purpose of this blog was to go back and do it right this time. This seems to be happening anyway, though I would strongly have preferred my approach of connecting the films to each other. But cest la vie.

Anyway, I had seen the "big ones", so to speak, but in many cases it had been years since I'd seen them last. I saw Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining (multiple times now), Christine, Pet Sematary and others that were more recent like The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and of course the films that have been released since I started this blog (some of them, at any rate). But as my blog's focus has changed, I thought I'd better catch myself up on these films and talk about them as I go. I'm a lot behind now, considering just how many I've watched, but here goes nothing.

Carrie (1976)

Of course, I'd seen this before, but I'd forgotten almost everything except Sissy Spacek's performance in the title role and Piper Laurie's unhinged performance as her mother, Margaret. For instance, I'd forgotten how the opening sequence, set in the girls' locker room of a high school, is basically what feels like an hour's worth of slo-mo pans past naked teenage body after naked teenage body, finally focusing on Carrie herself, the camera lovingly panning up and down her nakedness as she runs her hands all over herself, including one shot that I'm sure is meant to evoke masturbation. The whole scene felt pervy to me, almost voyeuristic. I'm no prude, and yes, I'm certain all these girls were in their 20's, or maybe even 30's, but they were meant to be high school age, and the camera spends a lot of time showing us as much of their nudity (including full frontal) as it can before the story starts. Some may think this scene is meant to symbolize Carrie's sexual awakening, but she's not actually undergoing a sexual awakening, or at least, not in any way that has to do with sexual desire or expression. Anyway, that's all I'm going to harp on. (Another thing I forgot; Edie McClurg is in this movie. As one of the students. Edie McClurg, who played countless Karens throughout the 80's and 90's. And no, she doesn't look young or un-Karen-esque here.) Otherwise, the adaptation is pretty straight-up, with the only real difference being how obvious it is that Carrie is attractive. The weight issues and acne she had in the novel have never transferred to film, despite three (count 'em, three) adaptations. I experienced again, however, the feeling I had the last time I watched it, in which I was very much on Carrie's side when she finally snaps, being less afraid and more "you go girl" because nearly everyone in the movie except Sue, Tommy and Ms. Desjardins (Ms. Collins here) is just horrible to her. The novel sold the horror aspect of this scene much better, by letting us into Carrie's head a little, letting us know that she was literally ready to kill everyone, but the movie shows us some pretty bad people who mistreated a quiet, shy girl, getting just what they deserve.

Salem's Lot (1979)

Another I'd watched before, and I have some very mixed feelings about. I guess I don't mind all the composite characters, or changing the characters of Straker and Barlow to be all but unrecognizable from the novel, but I still wonder why it spent so much time for its first like hour and a half on the various subplots around town. I checked the time at the "look at me, teacher!" scene and realized the movie had less than an hour left in it, and Barlow hadn't even been seen yet! I get the idea that we're supposed to care about the town before it all goes to hell, but did we need all that with Cully Sawyer, his wife Bonnie and Mr. Crockett? That's like a third of the movie devoted to that subplot. Some didn't like how Barlow was made non-verbal and more like Max Schreck's Nosferatu rather that the erudite, terrifying mastermind of the book. I understand this was on purpose because at the time, the idea of vampires as being overtly charming old-world types was becoming cliche. Nowadays the cliche is that vampires are tortured lovers. Straker was re-written so that he could be played by James Mason, who is fine here but failed to give me the creeps, which book Straker did. Matt Burke (Jason Burke here, played by Lew Ayers) has his role cut down but that's nothing compared to Father Callahan, who's practically not even in the movie, barring a couple of scenes. But those scenes of Ralphie Glick floating outside windows...man, that shit will stay with you forever. Very well done there. Ultimately, I don't dislike this adaptation, but I feel like it could have been better, and from what I understand, the 2004 adaptation is actually much worse, which I can believe, but I'll see when I get there. I hear Gary Dauberman (who wrote the screenplay for It) is getting another adaptation of this going, and I hope this time it can finally capture the spirit of the book, which I feel this film falls well short of.

The Dollar Babies

Curiosity brought me to this; I have now watched four of the more "historically important" Dollar Babies, primarily to see what they were like but also because they have become cult favorites over the years. Specifically, I watched The Boogeyman, The Woman in the Room, Disciples of the Crow and The Lawnmower Man, and I was...almost impressed. I'd been told the Dollar Babies were all basically on the level of student films and were clearly made on budgets that barely deserved to be called "shoestring", but what I got were some pretty well-made, if definitely low-budget, short films. About the only one that made me think of some guy with a camcorder filming in his back yard with a few of his friends as actors was The Lawnmower Man, which appears to be more an adaptation of the 1981 comic than the original story, seeing as the LM is given the name Karras, and the dialogue comes almost word for word from the comic. The sound quality in the copy I saw was very poor, and the film quality was almost as bad, grainy and fuzzy. The one scene showing the LM's goat-like feet was embarrassingly awful (he's clearly wearing furry slippers). Andy Clark's performance as Karras is a little off, in that the LM is supposed to remain folksy and chummy, even as he's getting ready to sacrifice Harold. Clark's becomes malevolent at that point, laughing maniacally and everything. And honestly, he's not fat enough. The LM is supposed to be so morbidly obese that his weight alone is unsettling. Clark is just...kinda stocky. I did enjoy Disciples of the Crow, and it didn't even seem that low budget. Eleese Lester and Gabriel Folse are much more in tune with the tone of the original story than Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton were, and more believably redneck as well. I feel like it also copped out on the ending, but I need to go back and re-read the story to see if the ending I remember is the real one. My recollection is that Burt and Vicky don't make it out alive, but I could be wrong. But I deeply enjoyed The Boogeyman and The Woman in the Room. The latter, of course, was directed by Frank Darabont, who would go on to direct The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile to Oscar nominations for Best Picture, as well as just make a name for himself in Hollywood in general. This early short shows his skill, and his ongoing working relationship with actor Brian Libby, who appears in a majority of his films, including Shawshank and The Mist. I'm not sure what to say about it other than that it was well-made, well-acted on all fronts (though special mention must go to Dee Croxton) and deservedly a cult classic. The Boogeyman, I've read, is the first Dollar Baby of them all, and it's out-and-out horror. I've talked about the short story on this blog before, and again, I think it could make a good feature, but I did enjoy the film, which was appropriately moody, with a nice score, and a terrific performance from its leading man, Michael Read. Because I don't think much of Lester Billings, the character, having him played by a bald, rat-faced man was the correct approach. We're not supposed to like him, and we don't. Read is pretty good at playing scumbags. I wonder why his acting career went nowhere after this? Bert Linder is okay as Dr. Harper. I enjoyed the way the film kept you guessing right up until the end whether or not Lester was crazy, and killing his kids himself, or if the Boogeyman was real. The kids playing Lester's doomed children were pretty convincing as well. I do recommend this double-feature, which can be watched on YouTube for free.

Cujo (1983)

Yes, this is one I had not seen before. For whatever reason, I was sure I wouldn't enjoy it, even after reading the book. I was wrong; it's very good, even if not entirely flawless. Danny Pintauro wrings out my heart as poor young Tad, who thankfully does not meet the same fate here that he does in the book, though it's a close call. Dee Wallace is a powerhouse of an actress, giving a performance I didn't know she was capable of, and making me wonder why her acting career seemed to fizzle along with the 80's. Apparently King himself thinks her performance is the greatest in any adaptation of his work, including Kathy Bates in Misery. I can see why, even if I don't want to go that far myself. Bates was just on another level, but Wallace is great here. The way they make up Cujo as he goes rabid is...simply gross, but in a good way. A rabid dog is scary, but Cujo is nightmarish. If there's one thing I wished, it's that we had more scenes of him before the rabies hits. One of the heartbreakers of the book was that Cujo was a big lovable old pooch that was adored by all, and then he turns into a monster. Also, there's no mention of Frank Dodd, for obvious reasons, and Sheriff Bannerman is kind of a walk-on here.

The Dead Zone (1983)

No, I don't know how it's possible I didn't see this movie until this week. Hell, I even own a copy. Actually, that might be why. I'm notorious for buying movies I then never watch because I know I own a copy and can watch it at any time. It's kinda nuts that a movie that Stephen King wrote the novel of, that David Cronenberg directed and that Christopher Walken stars in, is not even kind of a horror movie and instead is a heartfelt drama. I've discussed the book at length before, and the movie doesn't change much (substituting a hockey game for a celebratory dinner, creating the now famous scene where Walken cries urgently "The ICE is gonna BREAK!" Walken is excellent here, earning rave reviews and apparently Oscar talk, though he ultimately was not nominated. None of the quirks we like to make fun of about his acting style are really on display here. The one issue I had was also present in the book, and that concerns the villain, Greg Stillson, (Martin Sheen), as a politician who's about to win election to the state legislature in a landslide, and has his sites on the Oval Office. I still think it would have been more effective to portray him as a man that everyone instantly likes and trusts, even Johnny, until he shakes his hand and gets a vision that a future plan, executed with the best of intentions, goes horrifically awry. As it is, Stillson is just a sneering villain who only sorta dials it down when in the presence of voters. But he is more understated than in the novel.

Christine

So John Carpenter didn't end up directing Children of the Corn, as was the plan, and took this one instead. It's the only time one of the masters of horror filmmaking worked with the master of horror writing, and the result is...not bad. Not great, either, but that's mainly because Christine is probably a 7 out of 10 even as a book. I liked Keith Gordon as Arnie Cunningham, though it was plainly obvious that he is an attractive young man they tried to make look dorky. I could not understand why they hired an actress as beautiful as Alexandra Paul, and put her in the role of the girl all the guys at school want, but then put her in these frumpy mom outfits that do nothing to flatter her. I was also more on Arnie's side when he started standing up to his parents, even if that was supposed to be a sign that he was going bad. It's not that cut and dry; his mother really is a controlling bitch, but later in the film when Arnie basically tells both his parents to go to hell, we're supposed to be worried about him but instead it's more like he finally grew some balls. Now let's talk about Christine herself; there's a question among CR's if Christine is just an evil car or if somehow she's possessed by the spirit of her owner, Roland LeBay. It could go either way, but the book always made me think that LeBay and Christine were kindred spirits who fed each other's evil, not that Roland made her what she was. This movie has her start off murdering people while still on the assembly line, but to me, even her origins should be mysterious. I'd like to think of her as one of the Low Men's cars, gone rogue.

Children of the Corn

God, this movie is fucking dumb. Based on a short story, the expansion mostly happens thanks to fleshing out the villainous Isaac, who in the book gets like one page, and a mostly passive role. Here, played by actor John Franklin, whose growth was stunted and who was actually 25 while filming this, even if he looked about 10, Isaac is an evil minister right out of a Nathaniel Hawthorne story, and he's truly something to behold. His henchman, Malachi, played by Courtney Gaines, is also an interesting character to watch, as long as he keeps his mouth shut. Malachi, who has this odd, gargoyle-like face, is a very frightening character when used as a silent killer, but when he starts talking you realize that Gains isn't much of an actor. Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton are our leads here, and they've been turned into yuppies we're supposed to sympathize with. The movie is fairly boring, has some awful pacing, and ends on a very lame note.

Firestarter

I've heard King really doesn't like this one, and I don't know why because there's nothing really wrong with it. As an adaptation, it's very faithful, and Drew Barrymore gives a powerhouse performance in the lead role of Charlie. George C. Scott is very good, as is Martin Sheen (again!), though ultimately the experience of watching it was...meh. It was a bunch of nice pieces that added up to a rather forgettable whole. I understand there's a plan to remake this with (gulp) Zac Efron as Andy. I try to be fair when judging actors. I know that being a heartthrob doesn't automatically mean you can't act, and honestly a lot of recent heartthrobs are trying to shake off that status and turning in some great performances (hello, Robert Pattinson). But Efron, while I think he probably is a better actor that I'm giving him credit for, doesn't excite me about this new effort. Also I doubt anyone will top Drew Barrymore.

There's lots more movies to talk about, but I'm getting kinda tired, so I'll go over the rest in a Part II post.

Anatomy of a Creepshow Segment

"Or if ya wanna make friends at the ATM, you do the..."

This weekend has been Creepshow Weekend at Casa de Blogger, as I've spent time watching, or in one case re-watching, all the titles in that now-famous series, except for Creepshow 3, which I refuse to acknowledge as part of this series (I mean, seriously, Stephen King wasn't involved, George A. Romero wasn't involved, Michael Gornick wasn't involved, Tom Savini wasn't involved...in what way was that a Creepshow film? It didn't even have the comic book transitions and the Creep didn't show up!).

On the watch list were Creepshow, Creepshow 2, Creepshow the Shudder series and Creepshow Animated Special, the last of which I've already talked about.

I feel like the TV series has honored the spirit of the original in every important way. The ode to classic EC Comics, the appearance of the Creep, the involvement of King himself and Joe Hill, even just as writers allowing their material to be adapted, the embrace of comic-book cheese, etc.

Having refreshed my memory of all this, I thought I'd break down what makes a Creepshow segment.

Downer Endings: In nearly each case, the resolution of a Creepshow segment ends with a death, punishment of some sort or just a general feeling that not everything is okay. If there are exceptions to this rule, it's still kind of a sad ending, or at least one in which no one really gets what they hoped for. The only exceptions that I see are "House of the Head", "All Hallow's Eve", "Skincrawlers" and "By the Silver Waters of Lake Champlain", though in each case I can think of something that makes it less than happy. Little Evie is clearly traumatized by what happened with her dollhouse, and her resolution, apparently, is to pass on the curse to someone else. The Golden Dragons may get their revenge, but it doesn't change what happened to them, and now it's implied they'll never see each other again. Henry may not have suffered the horrific fate of Dr. Sloan's "treatment", but he's still the fat loser he began as. And while Rose, Joseph and Leigh may be rid of a terrible person, and had some personal vindication for their departed husband and father, they're still broke, and have no proof they can show anyone of Champy's existence.

Deserving Victims: This one isn't as hard and fast, but it's still true of most segments. If you don't survive it, chances are high you didn't deserve to. Real stand-outs here are Richard from "Something to Tide You Over", Upson Pratt from "They're Creeping Up on You!", Sam Whitemoon from "Old Chief Woodenhead" and, to a degree, his goons, Annie Lansing from "The Hitch-Hiker", and from the series, Carla and Alex from "The Man in the Suitcase", Billy from "The Companion", Lester M. Barclay from "Times is Tough in Musky Holler" and Chet from "By the Silver Waters of Lake Champlain". Possible exceptions include the Grantham family from "Father's Day", who don't appear to be guilty of much more than being rich assholes. Hank is only part of the family thanks to marrying in, and doesn't seem to be a bad guy at all, but he's the second victim, and we don't even see the horrible grandchildren's deaths. Bedelia, having murdered her father, certainly earned her death, though. Other exceptions; Jordy, even though he brings all his troubles on himself, and the Spruces, who aren't killed in a supernatural way, and it's their deaths that bring the Karmic deaths of their killers later on. The four teens in "The Raft" aren't exactly deserving, oddly enough except for Randy, who for a brief moment we believe will survive. They're seen doing weed, though, and for such sins in a horror film, one must pay. I would also suggest that Harry and Becky could fall under that category, as they were engaged in an affair, even if the man being cheated on was a monster. None of the victims from "Gray Matter" deserve it at all, and neither, really, does Blake from "Twittering From the Circus of the Dead", unless all teens are deserving of death for being bored and snarky. But they're the true exceptions within the series. "All Hallow's Eve" even changes the ending to make the Dragons' final victim a very willing participant, rather than just a new kid who tagged along, as in the comic.

Embrace the Cheese: The concept behind Creepshow has less to do with scares and more to do with paying homage to the horror comics of yesteryear, such as Ghosts, Twisted Tales and especially Tales From the Crypt, and as such ramp up the, well, comic nature of these stories. Colors are loud and glaring, we often get tonal backgrounds to heighten the feeling like we're watching a comic, the effects are practical and deliberately not very realistic, designed to look more like a comic panel than anything real, and blood is plentiful, even if it does look like colored corn syrup. The returned dead are always dripping with comical amounts of gore and blood, which look nothing like actual blood and gore. On an acting level, there's always a good amount of overacting, even from established veterans having the time of their lives.

Did It Even Happen?: Another non-rule, but a frequent theme. Did anything we see actually happen, or was it all in the victim's mind? Jordy Verrill is entirely alone with everything happens to him. In the story we get an ending POV from the plant beings, but in this one, for all we know he dreamed it all while dying from radiation poisoning after letting the "meteor shit" splatter on him. Pratt may very well be going crazy (the way he sees Mr. White may be another clue to this; whenever we see White outside his door he seems normal enough, but the image of him through the peephole is weird and distorted, and a bit threatening) and letting his mysophobia rage out of control. Even Richard may be dreaming the return of Harry and Becky. In the second film, I wondered throughout the last segment if Annie Lansing really was being pursued by a ghost or if she was just going mad, but the ending seems to confirm it was all real. This happens occasionally in the series, as well, particularly "The Finger", seeing as nobody sees Bob except for Clark, who's not exactly the most stable person. For that matter, "The Companion" leaves some room for this, given that Harold is the only one who finds the old farmer's letter, and even the ending could just be him killing Billy himself, while hallucinating the Companion.

One aspect of the film I don't hear referred to much is what Creepshow 2 does to the Creep himself. now, at the time, the first film was all we had, but the TV series returns to that version of the Creep; a desiccated Mummy who never speaks but has that trademark evil laugh, while in the second film, not only is the Creep far more verbose now, he also looks very different, more like a vampire with a scrotum-like chin. And this time he's not a puppet but Tom Savini in heavy makeup. Did this go over well at the time? I was a child, so I didn't hear about any backlash.

Actually, the first time I even heard of Creepshow was in a TV spot for the second film, in which the Creep invites us to come see it, and promises "And of course, I'll be there!" I can't find this TV spot anywhere, and I wonder if I imagined it.

All told, I'm a fan of the Creepshow franchise now, and I really hope it continues.

Blogging from the Streaming Service of the Dead

For modern horror and Stephen King/Joe Hill enthusiasts, Shudder appears to be a sort of one-stop shop!

This is especially true if you're a "King of the Hill" fan, not only because Shudder is where you can watch the TV adaptation of N0S4A2 but also because of the new(ish) Creepshow TV series, which has adapted a couple of stories by the King father/son duo, and more, I'm certain, are to come. The first episode adapted one of my favorite early King short stories, "Gray Matter", while the season finale adapted Hill's "By the Silver Waters of Lake Champlain". I haven't seen much about Season 2 yet, other than that it was greenlit, but if I had to call it, I'd say we'll be getting at least one King or Hill story per season.

Where was this show when I was skipping short after short due to them not being long enough to make a film?!

But in the meantime, we have the CreepShow Animated Special, which is a must-watch for any King or Hill fan. Two stories, one a King adaptation, the other a Hill, done as "motion-comics" instead of live-action adaptations or fully animated productions, and for some reason, the format here just works.

The first is an older King story, "Survivor Type", which I've talked about several years back, and which was initially in development as a regular live-action installment, but no one could really figure out how to make it work in live form. Jon Bernthal, an actor I really appreciate, was scheduled to play Dr. Richard Pine, the title character, but in the animated version, Kiefer Sutherland provides the voiceover, and if I hadn't checked the credits, I'd never know it, because he puts on this voice like a middle-aged, New England Italian-American. Really, voice-over was the only way to do a story like this one, since the original story was done as if it was the found journal Pine kept while stranded on an island after a shipwreck. I recall enough of the short story that I think it was literally used as the script, altered only a little, if at all.

Sutherland really sells it as Pine, a surgeon who deals coke on the side and ends up on a deserted island while running from the authorities. He's determined to live until he's rescued, eating gull and drinking from gallons of water he has with him. He's also got some kilos of cocaine, and very early on he injures himself, leaving him without the use of one foot and a need to eat. I don't want to get into too much detail here, and honestly, I've talked about it before, but the story's title comes from Pine asking himself over and over how badly he wants to live. It's a really gross story, and seeing it played out, even in motion-comic format, is nausea fuel of the best kind.

The idea of making this a motion-comic, rather than a standard animated story, somehow makes the effect of watching it even creepier. There's only the one voice, our increasingly mad narrator, and the movements are minimal and stark, like watching a mime act or shadow play. I really think it works better than it would have if fully animated. With just the one voice, sharing Pine's journal and putting in every inch of his desperation and growing insanity, somehow it fits the mood perfectly.

The format also serves the second story, Hill's "Twittering from the Circus of the Dead", which I've not read yet, but based on what I know about it I'm pretty sure it once again uses the story, with little alteration, if any, and gives us some semi-animated pictures to go with it. The result is maybe even better than "Survivor Type" and certainly more out-and-out horror. The artwork here takes a step up, becoming even more gruesome. What I really liked was the uncertainty of the ending. The story keeps going as long as she's alive, but that's no guarantee she lives to tell the tale, considering she's telling it in real time.

The young tweeter here is Blake, voiced by Joey King (no relation) who kinda over-acts a bit but not to a point of distraction. She's on a road trip with her family, and they're each getting on each other's last nerve. Then, mainly as an excuse to get out of the car, they stop at a curious attraction called "Circus of the Dead", and...man, Joe Hill has a twisted mind, and I love it! The way it's presented, with Blake certain the show is just a show even as it becomes undeniably real, is one I've seen done poorly in the past, but here it's done well, with Blake's initial boredom and later irritation showing us why she was so willing to believe that what she's seeing is "all part of the show"...even when her brother volunteers to be part of an act.

I gotta say, the creators behind this show really found the perfect medium in which to tell these two stories and it opens up all kinds of possibilities as to what can be adapted next! Gan knows there's a wealth of material out there, just from King and Hill alone, to say nothing of the multiple other horror greats out there. The horror anthology series is back, and I'm glad to see it!

The Missing Pieces

I'm unable to find the following, many of which I know are out there somewhere, and I'm dying to add them to my collection, even if only digitally:

• The Land of 1,000,000 Years Ago
• Thirty-One of the Classics
• The Pit and the Pendulum
• The Undead
• Trigger Finger
• The Star Invaders
• Code Name: Mousetrap
• The 43rd Dream
• She Has Gone to Sleep While...
• Woman with Child
• The Killer
• Dino
• General
• The Furnace
• Mostly Old Men

Sorta weird to say this but literally everything else I have access to somewhere. Even a lot of older stuff that's hard to find.

I understand that some of these are probably impossible to find, and others like The Aftermath and Sword in the Darkness exist only in like one place and you need King's personal permission to read them. That's probably never going to happen for me, but I know that at least everything from The Star Invaders on down in that list is available somewhere to somebody.

Please let me know if you know where I can find these.