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.
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