Christine

Year:  1983

Director:  John Carpenter

Screenplay:  Bill Phillips, based on the novel Christine by Stephen King

Starring:  Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, Robert Prosky, Harry Dean Stanton, Roberts Blossom

Running Time:  110 minutes

Genre:  Horror

1978:  Arnie Cunningham (Gordon), a nerdy, unpopular teenager, spots a broken down, derelict 1958 Plymouth Fury for sale.  Despite the protestations of his best friend, Dennis (Stockwell), Arnie buys the car from a sinister old man, George LeBay (Blossoms), whose deceased brother was the original owner of the Plymouth and named it "Christine".  Arnie sets to work restoring the car at a local do-it-yourself garage, and begins to exhibit strange and disturbing personality changes.  When Arnie starts dating the popular new girl in school, Leigh (Paul), Christine begins to manifest a jealous, murderous personality of her own.

Producer Richard Kobritz snapped up the film rights to Stephen Kings 1983 novel Christine before it was even published, and it certainly looks like a sure fire winner on paper:  King, one of the world's most popular novelists; teenagers; cars; horror and rock 'n'roll.  Director John Carpenter, who had made the seminal horror film Halloween (1978), was attached to direct.  However Carpenter's previous film, The Thing (1982), had been staged by critics and was a commercial flop (even though it is now seen as one of the best films of it's type ever made), and he was not interested in Christine, commenting that he felt the book "was not very scary" but felt that he needed to do the film to help his career.  Certainly the film is a surprisingly bland, workmanlike affair.  In the novel, the car is possessed by the evil spirit of it's former owner, which begins to channel itself to Arnie, however the film opens with a short prologue set in the Detroit production line in 1957 where Christine manifests her hostile personality before she even rolls off the assembly line.  It's never explained in the film why the car has a mind of it's own.  Some of the performances are fairly bland, and some of the high school "teenagers" look as if they are well into their 30s.  In the novel much of the horror comes from Arnie's transformation, as he becomes increasingly paranoid, arrogant and angry, which would probably strike a chord with parents of teenagers, but the film centres the car.  However there are moments when the film works really well.  After Christine is trashed by Arnie's high school bullies, she resurrects herself in a hugely impressive sequence, which is one of the film's biggest set pieces, and when Christine is tracking down and murdering the bullies is really where John Carpenter comes into his own, particularly the scene where the car is on fire chasing after the leader of the gang (William Ostrander).  Roberts Blossom, who became known to horror fans for his lead in the cult film Deranged (1974) and is probably most familiar for his role in Home Alone (1990), is very good in a small role as the dirty, bleary-eyed George LeBay, and Robert Prosky is great as the bad-tempered, raspy-voiced, cigar chewing Darnell, owner of the garage where Arnie keeps Christine.  Harry Dean Stanton is wasted in a small role as the police detective who investigates the mysterious number of deaths surrounding Arnie and his car.  Kelly Preston appears in a small role as Dennis' cheerleader girlfriend.  Keith Gordon is good in the lead, but John Stockwell and Alexandra Paul give quite bland performances.  Also the red and white Plymouth herself, is an impressive looking vehicle, which manages to be genuinely sinister.  In the novel, Stephen King uses the lyrics of rock 'n' roll songs throughout, in the film the 1950s song playing on the car radio serve as Christine's language.  In the prologue she rolls off the production line, warning the world that she is "Bad to the Bone".  When she is alone with Arnie she plays "Pledging My Love" and "We Belong Together", and when she locks her doors to prevent Arnie rescuing a chocking Leigh in the front seat, she plays "Keep A-Knockin'".  While there is nothing particularly unmissable, there is certainly enough here to make recommend the film to horror fans.

Bad to the Bone: Christine

Sleepwalkers

Year of Release:  1992

Director:  Mick Garris

Screenplay:  Stephen King

Starring:  Brian Krause, Alice Krige, Mädchen Amick

Running Time:  91 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Teenage Charles Brady (Krause) and his mother Mary (Krige) move into the small town of Travis, Indiana, where Charles quickly attracts the attention of local girl Tanya (Amick).  However, Charles and Mary share a disturbing secret:  They are "Sleepwalkers", nomadic, shapeshifting vampiric creatures who feed off the life-force of virgins, and whose only weakness is the scratch of a cat.  Tanya is their latest target.

Full disclosure, I am a big Stephen King fan.  I have read most of his books, and seen most of the film adaptations, and this film was promoted as the first film that King had written exclusively for the screen.  There is the seed of what could have been a dark, scary, sexy horror film, but it quickly falls apart.  The Sleepwalkers are an interesting idea for a monster, and the incestuous relationship between Charles and Mary is disturbing even for a horror film, but it quickly falls apart into a ridiculous, campy mess.   There is very little suspense here, we know what the Sleepwalkers are right before the film even begins, with a short text prologue, and know within the first couple of minutes that Charles and Mary are Sleepwalkers.  They also are not particularly good at keeping themselves hidden.  Charles basically tells Tanya everything she needs to know about Sleepwalkers, including how to defeat them, in a helpful short story he reads to the class, and, after killing a predatory teacher, Charles almost immediately goes straight out and has a car race with the first cop he finds, during the course of which he shows the cop his monstrous true face.  It also turns out that the Sleepwalkers shapeshifting powers, extend to their cars, which they can make invisible (however heroic cat Clovis can see through the disguise  in red-tinted "cat-vision"), and even change them into completely new cars, which would probably save them a fortune when they fancy an upgrade.    Brian Krause is kind of bland as Charles, Alice Krige gives the best performance as Mary half-crazed with hunger and love for her son, Mädchen Amick, who was very good in Twin Peaks (1989-1991), at times seems to act as if she is in a broad comedy.  Ron Perlman pops up briefly as an obnoxious state trooper.  One of the fun things for horror fans with this film is the opportunity to play "spot the director" because it is littered with cameos including King himself, Clive Barker, Tobe Hooper, John Landis and Joe Dante, there is even an uncredited appearance by Mark Hamill.  Not much happens for much of the film, the murder of the teacher has absolutely no relevance to anything that happens later and just seems to be in there to liven up a dull midsection of the film.  I got the feeling that Stephen King seemed to be getting bored with his own script as the second half just falls apart with explosions, rubbery monsters and wisecracks.  In one scene towards the end, Mary kills a cop with a corn of the cob and makes a Schwarzenegger style wisecrack that seems completely out of character.  A word of warning, while cats are the heroes here, the Sleepwalkers kill many cats, albeit offscreen.  In fact the premise of a heroic cat battling a monster that is trying to steal a girl's life-force is very similar to a plot point in the film Cat's Eye (1985), which was also written by King.  Mick Garris, a veteran of horror TV in the 1980s, does his best to inject some life into the proceedings.  The were-cat monsters that are the Sleepwalkers true form are pretty good, but the film's use of CGI really dates it, which is of course not the fault of the filmmakers.  Bad or outdated practical or model effects can have a goofy to old-fashioned charm, but bad or outdated CGI just looks bad.  You can have fun with it if you are in the mood for a cheesy '90s horror film, or if you feel that your life isn't complete until you have seen and read everything with Stephen King's name on it, but otherwise it is best avoided.   

Brian Krause in Sleepwalkers

Salem's Lot

 Year of Release:  1979

Director:  Tobe Hooper

Screenplay:  Paul Monash, based on the novel 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King

Starring:  David Soul, James Mason, Lance Kerwin, Bonnie Bedelia, Lew Ayres

Running Time:  183 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Writer Ben Mears (Soul) returns to his childhood home of Salem's Lot, a small town in Maine, where he hopes to write a book about the nature of evil, inspired by the sinister Marsten House, the local "haunted house".  However, Ben is not the only newcomer to Salem's Lot.  Debonair antiques dealer Mr. Straker (Mason) plans to open a shop with his mysterious partner Mr. Barlow (Reggie Nalder).  Before long the town is plagued by a mysterious disease and a spate of disappearances.  It quickly turns out that Barlow is a vampire who is feasting on the townspeople, who become vampires themselves.  Soon, it is up to Ben, horror-obsessed teen Mark (Kerwin) and Susan (Bedelia), daughter of the local doctor, to stand against a town of the undead.

Directed by Tobe Hooper, who made his name with the classic horror film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), this was originally shown as a two part miniseries on NBC TV in America, and it has been released subsequently as a 150 minute TV movie and a 114 minute theatrical movie which lops off over an hour of material and includes more gruesome alternate takes of certain scenes to increase the gore quotient.  The three hour version has a slow start, and is definitely too long, and has some obvious breaks for adverts.  It also pulls some of it's punches in deference of TV standards and practices.  However, sometimes it really works well. David Soul, best known for the TV show Starsky & Hutch (1975-1979), is pretty bland, but James Mason steals the show as the silkily sinister Straker.  The production is full of veterans, such as Lew Ayres and B-movie stalwart Elisha Cook and soon-to-be familiar faces such as Bonnie Bedelia, who is probably best known as Bruce Willis' estranged wife in Die Hard (1988) and would appear in Needful Things (1993), another Stephen King adaptation about a sinister antiques dealer in a small Maine town; Fred Willard who would go on to appear in This Is Spinal Tap (1983) and the Anchorman films; and Kenneth McMillan who would appear as the grotesque Baron Harkonnen in the David Lynch film Dune (1984).  The novel is a solid slice of early Stephen King, and the film follows it fairly closely.  The main difference is that Barlow in the novel is a suave Count Dracula style vampire, but here he is a grotesque, silent monster, inspired by Nosferatu (1921) with blue-white skin, bat-like ears and rodent-like teeth, with shining yellow eyes.  It is pretty slow to begin with, opening like a kind of off-beat soap opera, but if you stick with it, the second half is genuinely creepy,  The floating vampire children, with their shining silver eyes, scratching and tapping at windows, begging to be let in, are memorably eerie.  The decayed interior of the Marsten House is creepy, and Barlow's sudden appearances are quite frightening, particularly when he appears as a small, crawling bundle on a kitchen floor, before rising up to unveil himself in front of a terrified family.  This has become something of a cult film in recent years, and while some may struggle with the length and slow pace, it is worthwhile sticking with it.

Ben Mears (Davis Soul) in Salem's Lot

Dolores Claiborne

Year of Release:  1995

Director:  Taylor Hackford

Screenplay:  Tony Gilroy, based on the novel Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King

Starring:  Kathy Bates, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judy Parfitt, Christopher Plummer, David Strathairn, Eric Bogosian, John C. Reilly, Ellen Muth

Running Time:  131 minutes

Genre:  Thriller

New York journalist Selena St. George (Leigh) returns to her home town on Little Tall Island, Maine, when her estranged mother, Dolores Claiborne (Bates), is accused of the murder of her elderly employer (Parfitt).  This is not the first time that Dolores has been in trouble, since 18 years earlier she was accused of murdering her abusive husband (Strathairn).  Obsessive police detective Mackey (Plummer) who investigated the earlier murder is determined to see Dolores behind bars whatever it takes.  As Selena looks into the case, she finds herself forced to return to a past which she has spent her life trying to bury.

The 1992 novel Dolores Claiborne is an unusual one for Stephen King with an absence of his usual supernatural elements and also being written as a single long monologue in the voice of Dolores.  This is one of the unjustly forgotten Stephen King adaptations, an intelligent and dark psychological thriller, moving between the past and present.  While the past is photographed in luscious vivid colour, the colour in the present scenes is washed out, tinged with blues and greys.  This story focuses almost entirely on the female characters.  The key relationship is between the estranged mother and daughter.  Dolores has been alone pretty much for eighteen years, living outside of town, her only "friend" if you want to call her that, is her demanding, caustic employer, Vera Donovan (played by Judy Parfitt), who at the time of her death is very sick, unable to move about, and her and Dolores have a complex love-hate relationship built on mutual need.  Selena is a successful journalist but a depressed alcoholic, who medicates with numerous pills, she works for a manipulative editor (played by Eric Bogosian) who has been having an affair with her, and it is suggested that he assigns stories based on who he happens to be sleeping with.  Kathy Bates is possibly best known for starring in a previous Stephen King adaptation, Misery (1990), and she does make use of her persona from that film here.  Because we are familiar with her as the unbalanced Annie Wilkes from Misery we, like Selena and Mackey, are almost primed from the start to believe Dolores is guilty, and the film plays on our expectations and assumptions as it goes along.  Jennifer Jason Leigh is fantastic as the brittle, damaged Selena, her pale face almost translucent framed by her black hair and all black clothing, like a marble statue, strong but on the verge of shattering.  English actress Judy Parfitt plays the ruthless and very rich Vera Donovan, whose relationship with Dolores is more complex than it first appears.  Christopher Plummer is as good as ever as the oily police detective, who will do anything to convict Dolores because he views his failure to convict her 18 years ago as the "one that got away".  David Strathairn is sleazy and sweaty as Dolores' monstrous abusive husband, but he is also not without. degree of charisma.  Ellen Muth, making her screen debut, does very well as the 13 year old Selena.  The film is cleverly written, with an intelligent and witty script.  Set in Maine, as most Stephen King stories are, but filmed in Nova Scotia, the story takes place in a broken, desolate little town, bleak and wintery in the present scenes, and ripe, but poisonous in the memories of a remembered summer.  the film does occasionally suffer from some very mid-90s technical effects, but these are kept to a minimum.

Written and directed by men, based on a book by a male author, this is a film about women, there are really no sympathetic male characters, with the possible exception of John C. Reilly as the gentle town cop, a film about the relationship between mothers and daughters, between the past and present, and it's about women trying to find their own place in the world and freedom in their own ways, from men, from their past, and from their personal demons.  It's a troubling and powerful film, that deserves to be better known.          

Kathy Bates and Jennifer Jason Leigh in Dolores Claiborne

Creepshow 2

 Year of Release:  1987

Director:  Michael Gornick

Screenplay:  George A. Romero, based on stories by Stephen King

Starring:  Lois Chiles, George Kennedy, Dorothy Lamour, Tom Savini

Running Time:  92 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Young Billy (Domenick John) cannot wait to get his hands on the latest issue of his favourite comic book Creepshow.  The comic's mysterious host, The Creep (Savini, voiced by Joe Silver), introduces three stories:  The murderers of two beloved elderly people are pursued by a vengeful "cigar store Indian" statue; Four pot-smoking, partying teens swim out to a raft in the middle of a large lake for some fun but find themselves preyed upon by a carnivorous oil slick; A hit and run driver (Chiles) is pursued by the vengeful spirit of the hitchhiker she killed.

The original Creepshow (1982) was written by Stephen King and directed by George A. Romero.  Here Romero takes on scripting duties, with King providing the source material.  One of the stories, "The Raft", had previously been published, and can be found in King's 1985 Skeleton Crew collection, the other were original to the film.  As with the previous film this serves as a tribute to the EC horror comics of the 1950s such as Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror.  However this lacks the style of the first film.  The whole thing looks very low-budget and ropey, despite some good make up effects in the first segment.  The man-eating oil slick in the second segment basically looks like a plastic sheet with some gunk on top of it.  The best of the bunch is the third story, mainly thanks to a very strong performance from Lois Chiles.  The three tales are linked by an animated framing story, that really looks like a very cheap children's cartoon.  The film's director, Michael Gornick, worked as Director of Photography on the first film and gets some interesting visuals.  There are some problematic elements with it's depiction of native Americans.  In keeping with it's inspiration,  the film has a strongly old-fashioned morality, where if you don't follow the rules exactly very bad things will happen to you.  This is not as good as the original film, but it's brainless old-fashioned nonsense and is fun if your in the right mood for it.  Stephen King appears in a cameo as a truck driver.

The Creep (Tom Savini) makes a delivery in Creepshow 2

     

"The Institute" by Stephen King

Year of Publication:  2019
Number of Pages:  485
Genre:  Science-fiction, thriller, horror

Deep in the Maine woods is a top-secret Government facility known by staff and inmates alike merely as "The Institute".  Children are abducted from all over the Unites States and imprisoned in The Institute where they are subjected to a battery of brutal medical tests, designed to increase and harness their latent powers of telekinesis and telepathy.  After weeks of tests, the children are brought to the sinister "Back Half" of The Institute, and are never seen again.  Twelve year old Luke Ellis is The Institute's latest inmate.  Luke is not just smart, he is an actual genius, but his intelligence is not what The Institute is interested in. 

This is less a horror novel and more of a science-fiction/thriller, with the monsters being all too human, and disturbingly convinced that what they are doing is right.  While it is not one of Stephen King's best, it is still an exciting, page-turning thriller.  The story covers a lot of ground, and has a lot of characters, particularly towards the end when there are about three different plotlines running concurrently, but he manages to balance them them like a maestro.  The book doesn't exactly break new ground, psychic children in particular being a recurrent theme in King, and some of the smaller characters feel a bit interchangeable.  That being said, though, King fans are bound to lap this up, and it should also please anyone looking for an exciting thriller.

 
 

Children of the Corn

Year of Release:  1984
Director:  Fritz Kiersch
Screenplay:  George Goldsmith, based on the short story Children of the Corn by Stephen King
Starring:  Peter Horton, Linda Hamilton, R. G. Armstrong, John Franklin, Courtney Gains, Robby Kiger, Anne Marie McEvoy
Running Time:  92 minutes
Genre:  Horror

Young married couple Vicky (Hamilton) and Burt (Horton) travel through rural Nebraska on their way to Seattle.  On the road they run over a young boy, but Burt discovers that he was already dead, having had his throat cut.  Searching for help, they wind up in the small town of Gatlin.  Gatlin appears strangely deserted, but they soon discover that it is not so deserted.  The town is inhabited entirely by children, who are members of a bloodthirsty cult headed by child preacher Isaac (Franklin) and his vicious enforcer Malachi (Gains).  Three years previously, Isaac and Malachi lead the children of the town in the ritual murder of everyone in town over the age of 19.  The cult worships a demonic entity known as "He Who Walks Behind the Rows", who lives in the vast cornfields, and periodically demands human sacrifice.

Based on a 1977 short story by Stephen King, the film has an arresting premise, but ends up as a slightly frustrating mix of very good and very bad.  On the good side, the film starts off very strongly, with an effective opening as the children slaughter their parents and other adults, and some genuinely atmospheric passages early on, depicting the derelict, deserted town, and a sequence where Burt and Vicky try to head to a neighbouring town, but seem to be caught in a kind of loop, unable to escape Gatlin.  A major point in the film's favour is Linda Hamilton who really shines despite not being given nearly enough to do, and R. G. Armstrong is pretty fun as the creepy old mechanic.  On the bad side some of the performances are pretty bad and suffers the film from the limitations of an obviously tiny budget.  The climax is also pretty ludicrous.  While it may not be a "good" movie in the technical sense, it is a lot of fun, and packs in enough gore and creepy moments to appeal to horror fans.  The main problem is that while the film is enjoyable, it's really frustrating that it isn't better than it is, and it feels like a missed opportunity.  It has become something of a cult movie, spawning numerous sequels and a made for TV remake.     

  

Courtney Gains in Children of the Corn

It Chapter Two

Year of Release:  2019
Director:  Andy Muschietti
Screenplay:  Gary Dauberman, based on the novel It by Stephen King
Starring:  Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan, James Ransone, Andy Bean, Bill Skarsgard
Running Time:  169 minutes
Genre:  Horror

Twenty seven years after the Loser's Club confronted the evil shapeshifting "It", the killings and disappearances start again in the small town of Derry, Maine.  The town's librarian, Mike Hanlon (Mustafa), believes that It has once again resurfaced, and contacts the rest of the Loser's Club: Horror writer Bill Denbrough (McAvoy), fashion designer Beverley Marsh (Chastain), architect Ben Hanscom (Ryan), stand-up comedian Richie Tozier (Hader), businessman Stanley Uris (Bean) and risk assessor Eddie Kaspbrack (Ransone).  All of them vowed to return if It appeared again, but now they have forgotten that long-ago summer, and as adults may not be able to recapture the power that kept them alive as children.

The 2017 film It went on to become the highest grossing horror film of all time, and so a sequel was inevitable, although this isn't really a sequel, because the first film only adapted the first part of Stephen King's mammoth bestseller, and this film adapts the conclusion.  This is long, unwieldy and has some great moments but, when it's bad, it is really really bad.  One of the main problems is that it is never particularly scary.  Bill Skarsgard does well for the most part as Pennywise the Dancing Clown (It's favourite form) and his scene with a girl at a baseball field is genuinely chilling, but he sometimes verges on just being goofy.  It has numerous opportunities to kill the Loser's Club which It doesn't take.  Also it is full of surprisingly bad CGI, which looks more like something from a video game.  Also it is full of misplaced, clunky humour, which evaporates any tension or suspense.  There is a running joke throughout the film where Bill's novels are criticised for their weak endings, another gag involves a reference to The Thing (1982).  The cast are mostly okay, with Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy being the standouts, although Bill Hader has some powerful moments.  The thing is that the characters are affecting as children in the first film, but are much less so here where they are adults in their forties.  Also they come across as pretty obnoxious at times.  The child actors from the first film (Chosen Jacobs as Mike, Jaeden Lieberher as Bill, Sophia Lillis as Beverley, Jeremy Ray Taylor as Ben, Finn Wolfhard as  Richie, Wyatt Olef as Stan and Jack Dylan Grazer as Eddie) reprise their roles in the many flashback scenes.  Stephen King has a small role as the proprietor of a secondhand shop and acclaimed director Peter Bogdanovich has a cameo as a director, working on an adaptation of one of Bill's books.
The film opens very strongly and the ending has real emotional weight, and there are some good moments sprinkled throughout.  Mostly however it is pretty disappointing.

Bill Skarsgard in It Chapter Two

Cat's Eye

Year of Release: 1985
Director:  Lewis Teague
Screenplay:  Stephen King, based on the short stories "Quitters, Inc." and "The Ledge" by Stephen King
Starring:  Drew Barrymore, James Woods, Alan King, Kenneth McMillan, Robert Hays, Candy Clark 
Running Time:  94 minutes
Genre:  Horror, anthology

Personally I am a huge fan of anthology films.  It's a fun idea having a selection of short stories instead of one long narrative, almost like a cinematic buffet.  However, like a buffet, the results can be wildly uneven, although if one segment is bad then you don't have to wait too long for something else to appear. 

Cat's Eye has the unique, as far as I know, framing device of following the adventures of a plucky cat who is haunted by visions of a girl (Barrymore) begging for help. On his way, however he is captured by an organisation that will go extreme lengths to stop an annoying yuppie (Woods) from smoking, and by an Atlantic City mobster (McMillan) who forces his wife's lover (Hays) to accept a deadly wager: to walk all the way around the narrow ledge outside the mobster's penthouse apartment at the top of a skyscraper.  Eventually the cat makes it to the girl and finds himself forced into nightly combat to defend the girl form a tiny monster living in her wall.

This is a fun, lighthearted movie.  The first two segments are based on short stories published in King's Night Shift collection (which also supplied the source material for such deathless cinema classics as Children of the Corn (1984), Maximum Overdrive (1986), Graveyard Shift (1990), The Lawnmower Man (1992) and The Mangler (1995)), the third segment was written specifically for the film.  "Quitters, Inc." is kind of like a weird dark comedy, which has some fun bits, such as a weird nightmare sequence set to the Police song "Every Breath You Take", and James Woods is pretty good as the jittery would-be ex-smoker.  "The Ledge" is a pretty fun, short thriller in the style of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  The third story is the only one that features any supernatural elements, and is probably the most typically Stephen King.  The monster effects are good, and Drew Barrymore is very good as the little girl.

Cat's Eye is kind of underrated, I think because it doesn't really feature much of the horror that Stephen King is best known for, but there is something here for pretty much anyone.  It's suspenseful, creepy at times and at times very funny.

Drew Barrymore and friend in Cat's Eye

Pet Sematary

Year of Release:  2019
Director:  Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyr
Screenplay:  Jeff Buhler, from a story by Matt Greenberg, based on the novel Pet Sematary by Stephen King
Starring:  Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow, Jete Laurence
Running Time:  101 minutes
Genre:  Horror  

Following the huge success of It (2017) it was almost inevitable that filmmakers would start raiding the extensive Stephen King back catalogue.  The novel Pet Sematary was first published in 1983, and it was previously filmed by Mary Lambert in 1989, from a script written by King.  Stephen King has rated the novel as the scariest thing he has ever written, and it is definitely one of his darkest works.  Given his phenomenal popularity, it's easy to see Stephen King as a comforting, safe spook-meister, something like Rod Serling crossed with the Crypt Keeper, forgetting how dark and genuinely disturbing a lot of his work is.

Pet Sematary follows the misadventures of the Creed family: Louis (Clarke), Rachel (Seimetz), 8 year old Ellie (Laurence) and toddler Gage (Hugo Lavoie and Lucas Lavoie), who move from the big city to rural Maine (natch) with their pet cat, Church.  However, the peace and quiet of the countryside is periodically broken by massive trucks that roar down the road next to their property day and night.  If you think it might be a little unwise to be right next to a very dangerous road with a cat and very young children, then you would be right.  This is proven by the cemetery for pets made by the local children in the woods, marked by the misspelled sign "PET SEMATARY".  When Church meets an unfortunate accident on the road, the Creed's elderly neighbour, Jud Crandall (Lithgow), introduces Louis to another burial ground beyond the Pet Sematary, with the power to resurrect the dead, however they return horribly changed.

This film does make a very big change to the novel and previous film, which is nevertheless quite effective, and while the ending, again changed from the book, doesn't entirely work, the final sequence is chilling.

It's slickly made, the performances are good, and it is a good enough Stephen King, but really it's solid and not much more than that.  There are many worse King adaptations out there, but there are better ones as well.  It is a fun scary movie, with some genuine chilling scenes in it, and it will be a great watch for Halloween, but it is unlikely to cause many sleepless nights 

The cat came back the very next day... Pet Sematary

Sometimes They Come Back

Year of Release:  1991
Director:  Tom McLoughlin
Screenplay:  Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, based on the short story Sometimes They Come Back by Stephen King
Starring:  Tim Matheson, Brooke Adams, Robert Hy Gorman, Chris Demetral, Robert Rusler, Nicholas Sadler, Bentley Mitchum, William Sanderson
Running Time:  98 minutes
Genre:  Horror

In 1990, high school history teacher Jim Norman (Matheson) returns to his childhood home town for the first time in 27 years, with his wife Sally (Adams) and young son Scott (Gorman).
In 1963, nine year old Jim (Zachary Ball) and his fifteen year old brother Wayne (Demetral) are walking through a railway tunnel on the way to the library when they are set upon by a gang of teenage greasers who kill Wayne, but are themselves almost immediately killed by a train.
Despite still being haunted by nightmares of his brother's death, Jim and his family settle in, and he starts teaching at the local high school, bonding with some students and making enemies of others.  However, the students who Jim gets close to start dying in apparent suicides, and are replaced in class by students who look suspiciously like the gang who murdered Wayne.
Jim realises that the spirits of the dead gang members have returned and are set on revenge.

This film was originally made for TV and was first broadcast in 1991.  Based on a 1974 short story by Stephen King, it's a pretty by the numbers horror film, that features plenty of King tropes.  Made on a low budget without particular style or flair, with a cast of solid performers, including veteran William Sanderson, who all try their best with stodgy material (pity Brooke Adams, who really has nothing to do here at all except be alternately supportive and scared).  The story is not one of Stephen King's best and the screenwriters have trouble punching it up to feature length.  The film is at it's best when the focus is on the ghoulish greasers who (as played by Robert Rusler, Bentley Mitchum and Nicholas Sadler) are ominous and threatening, although we never find out enough about them, they have no backgrounds or personalities, and are portrayed as pack animals (they growl, bray and howl like wolves).
Probably due to the limits of television in 1991, the film is light on blood and gore.  At times it seems more like a supernatural drama about coming to terms with grief, than it is about shocks and scares, and the two sides don't gel together.  The biggest problem that the film has is that it offers nothing new.  Really, if you're interested at all in horror, than you've seen it all before.
Followed by two direct-to-video sequels: Sometimes They Come Back... Again (1996) and Sometimes They Come Back... for More (1998) .

Robert Rusler, Bentley Mitchum, Nicholas Sadler and Don Ruffin in Sometimes They Come Back

Needful Things

Year of Release:  1993
Director:  Fraser C. Heston
Screenplay:  W. D. Richter, based on the novel Needful Things by Stephen King
Starring:  Ed Harris, Max von Sydow, Bonnie Bedelia, J. T. Walsh, Amanda Plummer
Running Time:  120 minutes
Genre:  Horror

A mysterious stranger named Leland Gaunt (von Sydow) arrives in the small Maine town on Castle Rock, where he sets up a strange antiques/curiosity shop called Needful Things.  Gaunt appears to have an uncanny knack of finding the one thing that every customer most desires, and each is priced to just what the customer can easily afford, but there is a catch:  The cash price is only half of the payment, the rest comes in the form of a deed, usually a cruel prank played on someone else in town, and all designed to point to someone other than the prankster.  Before long, the nice little town becomes torn apart with suspicion, paranoia, hate and misplaced revenge. 

While this is far from the worst movie to be based on one of Stephen King's works, it's also far from the best.  Although it really does as well as it could do at compressing King's sprawling, episodic doorstop of a novel into a coherent film.  It's well cast with solid character actors, and the story is interesting.  The problem is that the film doesn't have much of a consistent tone, the mixture of supernatural horror, dark comedy and small town soap opera worked a lot better on the page, where there was more space to go into the characters and their relationships.  The performances are good, especially Max von Sydow as the devilish Leland Gaunt, and the story is interesting enough to carry it along, but it's neither scary or funny, and the climax is ridiculous.

Max von Sydow in Needful Things         

"Sleeping Beauties" by Stephen King and Owen King

Year of Publication:  2017
Number of Pages:  715
Genre:  Horror, fantasy

One day all the women in the world start to fall asleep as normal, but they do not wake up.  Instead, as soon as they fall asleep they grow a web-like cocoon , and react with mindless, murderous violence if the webbing is cut or broken.  In the small town of Dooling, West Virginia, a strange woman appears who has superhuman powers of strength and healing, has knowledge about people that she could not possibly possess and, most of all, can sleep and wake as normal.  As a rapidly decreasing number of women stay awake to combat "Aurora" (as the mysterious syndrome is called), men face up to a world without women.  Meanwhile, the women wake up to a strange world, entirely without men.  Can the women find their way back?  More to the point, do they want to?

This is a pretty gripping novel, it focuses mainly on the small town of Dooling, and the women's prison in the town.  It comes from a simple, but quite fascinating premise:  How would men be in a  world without women?  And what would a world without men be like?  It's a timely novel, which does not shy away from contemporary resonance (some books wear there politics on their sleeves, this one pretty much has it on the front of it's tee-shirt).  However while it is thought-provoking, it also succeeds in being fun.  despite it's length it keeps you reading.  It's dark, funny and suspenseful with a range of interesting and mostly likeable, although there are a fair few straight-forward villains.  Of course, Stephen King is the most popular writer of our time, and here he teams up with his son, Owen, although the novel's voice is pretty consistent, and reads throughout like a Stephen King novel - however I have never read any of Owen King's other works, and so I do not know what his style is.  Some of the storylines in the book are unsatisfying, and there are a few plotlines that seem to be building up early and are then abandoned.  However, this is a good book and well worth your time.

It

Year of Release:  2017
Director:  Andy Muschietti
Screenplay:  Chase Palmer, Carey Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman; based on the novel It by Stephen King
Starring: Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Wyatt Oleff, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, Bill Skarsgard
Running Time:  135 minutes
Genre:  Horror

This is an adaptation of the 1986 novel by Stephen King.  Set in 1989 (as opposed to the novel's 1958 setting) in the small town of Derry, Maine, which has been terrorised by a spate of mysterious disappearances of children.  Seven young outcasts, who call themselves "The Loser's Club" decide to put a stop to it:  Bill Denbrough (Lieberher) has a bad stutter and his younger brother, Georgie, is among the missing; Ben Hanscom (Taylor) is picked on because he is overweight; Beverley Marsh (Lillis) is abused by her father and is the subject of cruel rumours; Richie Tozier (Wolfhard) is the group clown, often getting in trouble due to his loud mouth and foul language; Stan Uris (Oleff) is picked on because he is Jewish; Mike Hanlon (Jacobs) is subjected to racist bullying; and Eddie Kaspbrak (Grazer) has become a hypochondriac due to his over-protective mother.  They discover that the culprit is Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Skarsgard), who is in reality an evil, shapeshifting entity which feeds on fear, particularly children's fear.

Previously adapted as a two part TV miniseries in 1990 which was re-edited into a feature film; It is one of Stephen King's best known books.  The film lacks the richness of the book, but is an effective horror film, although, like many horror films, it relies too much on sudden jump scares and CGI trickery, and  there is less of the idea that was depicted so well in the book, of It mining the deepest subconscious fears of it's victims.  It is well acted, and the film really shines in  the quieter character moments.

Clowing around:  Bill Skarsgard is It

"End of Watch" by Stephen King

Year of Publication:  2016
Length:  351 pages
Genre:  Crime, mystery, thriller, supernatural

This novel concludes the trilogy that began with Mr. Mercedes (2014) and continued with Finders Keepers (2015).  In this book, retired cop turned private detective Bill Hodges and his friend and associate Holly Gibney investigate an apparently simple murder/suicide case.  However there are odd details about the case.  It turns out to be simply the first in a series of suicides, all apparently connected by an outdated handheld games console, and all seemingly linked to serial killer Brady Hartsfield.  However, Hartsfield has been in a coma for the past six years, despite this there have been many reports of strange paranormal phenomenon surrounding him, and he seems to have some kind of malevolent influence over some of those treating him.  One thing is for sure, that Hartsfield is not nearly as dormant as he appears, and for Hodges time is running out, in more ways than one, when he learns that he has a terminal illness.

This is a real page-turning thriller and thoroughly entertaining.  Unlike the other books in the series, there is a strong supernatural element, which brings it closer to the more traditional Stephen King style, however this isn't really a horror novel.  Stephen King has always had a gift for depicting the details of the prosaic details of the real world, and making even minor characters feel real, as with the others in the series, this is a tightly written tale that moves well, and keeps the reader engaged.  The plot sometimes suffers from too many unlikely coincidences, but it's always enjoyable.  I would recommend that you read it after the other books in the series, particularly Mr. Mercedes because this is a direct sequel to that book.

As with quite a lot of Stephen King's recent work, a strong theme in the novel is ageing, and that, along with the theme of suicide that also runs through the trilogy, give the work an even darker, more melancholy hue than is usual for King.

 

Misery

Year of Release:  1990
Director:  Rob Reiner
Screenplay:  William Goldman, based on the novel Misery by Stephen King
Starring:  James Caan, Kathy Bates, Richard Farnsworth, Frances Sternhagen, Lauren Bacall
Running Time:  107 minutes
Genre:  Thriller, horror

Paul Sheldon (Caan) is the writer of a best-selling series of historical romance novels featuring heroine Misery Chastain.  However he is sick of the series and in his latest novel concludes the series by finally killing off Misery, so he can begin work on more "serious" literary fiction.  However, driving through the mountain roads of Colorado on his way to deliver the manuscript he is badly injured in a serious car accident.  Luckily he is saved by nurse Annie Wilkes (Bates) and taken to her remote farmhouse.  Even better, Annie is his Number One Fan!  However she is not happy about his new artistic direction, and she is even less happy when she reads the final Misery novel.  Now Paul has to write one special Misery novel, just for her.  Because when Annie  gets upset, people get hurt. Very badly hurt.

This is a gripping thriller, based on a 1987 Stephen King novel.  The novel was very personal to King, and he was reluctant to sell the film rights, although he was happy to let Rob Reiner make the film, because Reiner had made Stand By Me (1986), one of King's favourite adaptations of his work.  The book was inspired partly due to the very negative reaction many of his fans had to King's non-horror fantasy novel The Eyes of the Dragon.  King felt that the horror genre was imprisoning him, and he wanted to branch out.  King was also in the grip of a serious drug addiction at the time he was writing the novel, and later claimed that the character of Annie Wilkes was a metaphor for drugs.

The film is about the "contract" between creators and their audience.  The fans pay their money for what the creator produces, but in return they want the creator to keep on producing the material they like.  However, what happens when the creator wants to do something different?  When they do not want to produce what the fans demand.  Of course there is no contract.  You pay for the individual book, comic, film, whatever, and have no right to tell the creator what to do in the future.  There are of course the people who would strongly disagree with this.  The Annie Wilkes of the world who would say "Oh no, you're ours.  You'll do what we say."

Essentially this is a two-hander between James Caan and Kathy Bates, both of whom turn in fantastic performances.  In the unpredictable Annie Wilkes, who can turn from kindly, caring nurse to violent maniac in an instant, Kathy Bates creates one of the screen's greatest and most memorable monsters, and walks away with the entire film.  James Caan is affecting as the tortured writer.  Caan is a big, physically imposing actor, best known for tough guy roles such as Sonny Corleone in The Godfather and it's interesting to see him almost completely de-powered.   Richard Fansworth and Frances Sternhagen provide comic relief, and a break from the claustrophobic tension in the farmhouse,  as the kindly local Sheriff and his sarcastic wife.

The film mostly concerns itself with the psychological duel between Annie and Paul, however it does have one teeth-clenchingly shocking moment with the "hobbling" scene involving Annie, Paul's feet and a large sledgehammer.

Tense, exciting and sometimes very funny, surprisingly so, this is one of the best Stephen King adaptations, and a truly fantastic thriller.

    Bedside manner:  Kathy Bates and James Caan in Misery

The Mangler

Year:  1995
Director:  Tobe Hooper
Screenplay:  Tobe Hooper, Stephen Brooks, Peter Welbeck, based on the short story "The Mangler" by Stephen King
Starring:  Ted Levine, Robert Englund, Daniel Matmor, Jeremy Crutchley, Vanessa Pike
Running Time:  106 minutes
Genre:  Horror

This gruesome horror film is based on a 1972 short story by Stephen King.  In the small town of Riker's Mills, Maine, police detective John Hutton (Levine) is called to investigate a series of bizarre fatal accident at the Blue Ribbon Laundry, where a woman where a woman was pulled into an automated laundry press and folding machine called "The Mangler".  Hutton is immediatley suspicious, especially of the laundry's sinister owner Bill Gartley (Englund).  Further accidents occur, all of which result in seriosu injury or death and all seem to be connected to the Mangler.  Hutton's brother in law, Mark (Matmor) becomes convinced that the Mangler is possessed by a demon. 

In the bizarre world of horror movies, this offers the unique, at least as far as I know, site of the central monster being an item of laundry equipment, with it's sidekick apparently being a demonic refridgerator.  Ted Levine at least tries to give his part of the troubled but dedicated police officer witha  past some gravitas, while Robert Englund, whose face is encased in old-age makeup, with one bad eye and both legs encased in stylised metal leg braces doesn't so much chew the scenery as rip off great bleeding chunks with his teeth.  His dememnted performance is actually the only really entertaining part of the movie.  Otherwise your saddled with a movie where the main monster is a vast piece of metal, gears, chains and wheels which can't go anywhere.  This means that it depends on the victims actually going to it and climbing or falling into it, rather than it being able to do much itself. 
The film obvioulsy had a relatively large budget and the production values are pretty good, but it is surprisingly badly made.  The script desperately tries to pad out Stepehn King's slim story , and the usually reliable Tobe Hooper never manages to conjure up any suspense or scares, and for some reason lights the whole thing like a disco with smoke billowing almost constantly.  The special effects are pretty average.
A major box office flop on it's original release, this has become something of a cult film.  However, if you want my advice, don't waste your time.  Somehow this nonsense spawned two sequels to date.

Robert Englund in The Mangler              

Carrie

Year: 1976
Director: Brian De Palma
Screenplay: Lawrence D. Cohen, based on the novel Carrie by Stephen King
Starring: Sissy Spacek, Amy Irving, William Katt, Nancy Allen, John Travolta, Betty Buckley, P.J. Soles, Piper Laurie
Running Time: 98 minutes
Genre: Horror, supernatural, high school, coming-of-age

Summary: Carrie White (Spacek) is a shy, unpopular and frequently bullied sixteen year old girl, who is frequently abused by her fanatically religious mother, Margaret (Laurie). The girls at Carrie's school frequently torment her. One day after a gym class, Carrie has her first period while she is in the showers. Not knowing what is happening and genuinely believing that she is bleeding to death, Carrie panics and her classmates respond by pelting her with tampons and sanitary napkins while chanting: "Plug it up!"
This traumatic experience awakens in Carrie a previously latent power of telekinesis (the ability to move or cause changes in objects by the force of the mind). This power steadily grows in strength. Meanwhile, popular girl Sue Snell (Irving), feeling guilty about her part in tormenting Carrie, convinces her popular football hero boyfrend, Tommy Ross (Katt) to ask Carrie to the Senior Prom. Initially suspicious that it is a prank, Carrie eventually agrees.
Meanwhile, one of Carrie's principal tormentors, Chris Hargensen (Allen) and her hoodlum boyfriend, Billy Nolan (Travolta), plan a sadistic trick to completely humiliate Carrie at the Prom. However, now Carrie has the ability to finally exact her own revenge.

Summary: Carrie was the first novel by Stephen King to be published, and it was also the first of many to be adapted as a film. It is a powerful and disturbing piece of work, which will doubtless strike a chord in anyone who has ever been bullied or felt like an outsider. In the lead role Sissy Spacek gives a superb and sympathetic performance. The film's huge success didn't just kickstart Stephen King's career, it also made director Brian De Palma's name as a Hollywood director, and uses a lot of his trademark visual tricks such as split-screen, soft-focus, slow-motion, speeded up images, sequences shot in reverse and a mobile camera. It also helped to make John Travolta a star.
The film is made all the more effective by the blending of humour and high-school drama with the horror elements, which makes the story even more effective and disturbing. Despite obviously showing it's age, the film has dated well and remains both shocking and funny, sometimes even at the same time. Interestingly enough the film completely belongs to the female characters who make up almost all of the principal cast, both of the main male characters are completely manipulated by the women. Also, despite the violence of Carrie's revenge, she remains a sympathetic character, who just wants to fit in in the violent and cruel snakepit that is the average high-school.
The film was followed by a belated sequel, The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999), which received almost unanimously negative reviews and was a box office failure. The novel was also adapted as a Broadway musical in 1988, which was a legendary flop and closed after sixteen previews and five performances. In 2002 the novel was adapted as a television mini-series starring Angela Bettis in the title role which received mixed reviews.



Mother knows best: Piper Laurie comforts Sissy Spacek in Carrie.

Pet Sematary II

Year: 1992
Director: Mary Lambert
Screenplay: Richard Outten
Starring: Anthony Edwards, Edward Furlong, Clancy Brown, Jared Rushton, Darlanne Fluegel, Jason McGuire and Lisa Waltz
Running Time: 100 minutes
Genre: Horror, supernatural



Summary: Following the accidental death of his actress mother (Fluegel), teenager Jeff Matthews (Furlong) moves with his vetenarian father, Chase (Edwards), from Los Angeles to the small town of Ludlow in Maine. Bullied at school, Jeff strikes up a friendship with overweight Drew (McGuire), who is constantly bullied by his cruel stepfather Gus (Brown), who also happens to be the town's sheriff. Jeff discovers the town's pet cemetery, or "Pet Sematary" as the homemade board above the entrance reads, where generations of the town's children have buried their pets. When Gus shoots and kills Drew's beloved dog Zowie, Drew and Jeff bury him in another burial ground, just past the pet cemetery, an ancient Native American burial ground which has the power to resurrect the dead. However the dead that are buried in the ancient ground always come back horribly changed.

Opinions: This film is a sequel to the 1989 film Pet Sematary, also directed by Mary Lambert, which was based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Stephen King. King had nothing to do with this film. The events of the first film are briefly discussed in this one, having apparently become something of a local ghost story, and it is in a way understandable why the film-makers would not want to remind people too much of the earlier, and far superior, film. The movie jettisons the first film's creepy atmosphere in favour of over-the-top gory shocks. One of the things that was so effective about the first film was the way it touched upon very raw nerves, this one does to some extent but it doesn't have nearly the same impact and seems to go mostly tongue in cheek approach, even when dealing with quite serious elements. The cast is full of recognisable faces, which means that when the film lags you can play a fun game of "Wasn't He the Guy In...?", Edward Furlong (who found fame the previous year with Terminator 2: Judgement Day) does pretty well in the lead even though the character, despite any naural sympathy for his initial predicament, remains pretty unlikeable throughout. Anthony Edwards (who came to prominence in the TV series E.R. (1994-2008)) is underused as the concerned father, while Clancy Brown (who is probably most recognisable as the bullying head guard in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and as the drill sergeant in Starship Troopers (1997)) practically chews up the scenary, serving up thick slices of ham as the bullying stepfather. The film has some pretty effective special effects and plenty of good gore, but by the time the blood filled finale comes the film has just gone so over the top it just ends up being funny. It is also fair to say that the film is not in the least scary.
Fans of the original will probably be disappointed but those who enjoy gory horror sequels might have some fun with it. For anyone else though, life is too short. Check out the original instead.