Posts Tagged ‘Stephen King’
Thursday, August 10th, 2023
August 12, 1983
I’ve written about CUJO before, but that was 15 years ago. Since there aren’t that many horror movies in this summer of ’83, it seemed worth revisiting now. Cujo the book was formative to me because I read it when I was in third grade. It might’ve been my first Stephen King book, maybe even my first horror book besides Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Alfred Hitchcock short story collections. The part I remember vividly, of course, is something about Donna’s sex life with Steve. That seemed grown up and mysterious. The dog attacking people just seemed cool.
The movie wasn’t as important to me, and though I saw it on VHS at some point it wasn’t until rewatching it for that 2008 review that I realized it’s a real gem. It’s a movie everyone knows about but I’m not sure it’s held in as high of regard as I think it deserves. It’s a simple movie with very strong execution, and some of the elements involved (killer dog, tiny kid, limited location) are of a high enough degree of difficulty that there aren’t many other movies to directly compare it to. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Billy Jacoby, Charles Bernstein, Christopher Stone, Daniel Hugh-Kelly, Danny Pintauro, Dee Wallace, Ed Lauter, Jan de Bont, Kaiulani Lee, killer animals, killer dog, Lewis Teague, Robert Elross, Stephen King
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 21 Comments »
Friday, May 7th, 2021
May 7, 1991
I don’t think I’ve ever included a TV movie in a summer movie retrospective, but this came up on a summer of ’91 list and I figured why not? After the opening weekend for A RAGE IN HARLEM and ONE GOOD COP, some people checked out a new Stephen King movie on the CBS Tuesday Movie Special. It aired against a Roseanne episode that introduced Shelly Winters as Nana Mary, the fourth episode of a short-lived sitcom called Stat, and a thirtysomething about Hope (Mel Harris) volunteering at a homeless shelter.
One could reasonably assume that a Stephen-King-based TV movie in the ‘90s would be a Mick Garris joint, but in fact it’s a different notable horror director: Tom McLoughlin of FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI: JASON LIVES fame. He also did ONE DARK NIGHT and, come to think of it, co-created She-Wolf of London with Garris. This one comes from a King short story first published in Cavalier in 1974, and later included in Night Shift. It was adapted by Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal, whose all-over-the-place filmography at this point included THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN, THE JEWEL OF THE NILE, SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE, and DESPERATE HOURS. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bentley Mitchum, Brooke Adams, Chris Demetral, Lawrence Konner, Mark Rosenthal, Matt Nolan, Nicholas Sadler, Robert Hy Gorman, Robert Rusler, Stephen King, Summer of 1991, Tasia Valenza, Tim Matheson, Tom McLoughlin, William Kuhlke, William Sanderson
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 8 Comments »
Friday, October 30th, 2020
A rare movie-watching phenomenon that I love: rewatching one I saw decades ago, and have always believed sucked, but discovering that I really like it now. It happened with THE MANGLER, Tobe Hooper’s crazy adaptation of a Stephen King short story, and it’s happened again with SLEEPWALKERS, the first movie written by King that’s not based on a previously published work. Maybe it’s something about King’s stories, but more likely it’s that my tastes in horror have evolved since I was a teenager and saw this in the theater.
The mythological premise is established with a little text at the beginning: there are these fuckers called sleepwalkers, they are nomadic shapeshifters who are like vampires but instead of blood they suck the lifeforce of “virginal females,” and instead of sun or garlic or whatever they’re susceptible to cat scratches.
It’s a Stephen King thing. Just go with it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alice Krige, Charles Brady, Cindy Pickett, Clive Barker, Dan Martin, Glenn Shadix, Lyman Ward, Madchen Amick, Mark Hamill, Stephen King, Tobe Hooper
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 16 Comments »
Monday, November 11th, 2019
As a young man I read a bunch of Stephen King. He was my favorite until I decided Clive Barker was more interesting – I don’t know if I was right. The point is I’m just another movie-watching asshole and can’t pretend to be a King scholar. I haven’t read The Shining (1977) or its 2013 sequel Doctor Sleep. I have, of course, seen Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING, and like everyone except King and the Razzies voters I think it’s a masterpiece. (I also just realized it’s the first horror movie I remember seeing.)
It almost seemed like a suicide mission for writer/director/editor Mike Flanagan (OCULUS, HUSH, GERALD’S GAME) to make a movie out of Doctor Sleep. How do you even make a sequel to one of the most unfuckwithable horror movies ever made – a fucking Stanley Kubrick movie – let alone try to please the author who famously hated the movie’s take on his very personal story about alcoholism? He tried to bridge the movie with the books, and I think he pulled it off! (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex Essoe, Carel Struycken, Carl Lumbly, Cliff Curtis, Ewan McGregor, Jacob Tremblay, Mike Flanagan, Rebecca Ferguson, Stephen King, Zahn McClarnon
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 75 Comments »
Thursday, October 11th, 2018
Many horror movies, maybe even most, teach us that no matter what life throws at us, we can get through it. We can survive. Some of us. Hopefully. Most of the time.
But the practice of sequelizing in horror has taught us the more pessimistic lesson that in the long run shit really doesn’t get better. Maybe for a minute it does after the bad things happen and then the evil leaves for a while. But a couple years later maybe some new people come along and the evil comes back and does the bad things to them. And usually not as cool as the first time. The shriveling circle of death.
And so it is with PET SEMATARY II*. Released in 1992, three years after the first one, it’s once again directed by Mary Lambert (MEGA PYTHON VS. GATOROID), with new screenwriter Richard Outten (JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, uncredited rewrites on GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH) and no Stephen King book to base it on.
*VERY IMPORTANT TITLE NOTE: The posters and other advertising materials spelled it out as PET SEMATARY TWO, a rare practice that I’m a big fan of. However, I try to follow the rule of using the title shown on screen in the actual movie, which in this case uses the Roman numeral II.
The good news, though: Look at this fucking logo! The movie itself is fun but the logo is the best thing in it!
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Edwards, Clancy Brown, Darlanne Fluegel, Edward Furlong, Halloween, Jared Rushton, Mary Lambert, Stephen King
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Wednesday, October 18th, 2017
Hollywood George Romero is not my favorite George Romero, but he’s the most underrated one. With THE DARK HALF (1993, but shot in ’90 and ’91) he’s still filming in Pennsylvania (portraying Stephen King’s Castle Rock, Maine), but funded by Orion, with enough of a budget ($15 million) for Academy Award winning movie star lead Timothy Hutton (CITY OF INDUSTRY), three months of training for 4,000 birds, and some early computer effects. It has more of a slick, Hollywood feel than we associate with Romero, less of his hand-crafted-by-local-artisans vibe, but that’s not the end of the world. It’s cool to see how well he can do a straight-forward adaptation of a book by King (“Hoagie Man,” KNIGHTRIDERS). Better than most, it turns out. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amy Madigan, George Romero, Michael Rooker, Robert Joy, Stephen King, Timothy Hutton
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 18 Comments »
Monday, October 16th, 2017
THE MANGLER (1995) is a potent mix of silly Stephen King short story premise and unhinged Tobe Hooper fever dream. That means it has killer inanimate objects, but with the late Texas horror master’s sweaty, depraved lunatic tormenters stirred in like a salted caramel swirl.
Yes, this is a movie about a possessed industrial laundry press that seems to fold more people than it does sheets. You got a problem with that? I sure did in the ’90s when I saw this on VHS and thought it was the dumbest shit I ever saw. This time I was not so closed-minded. In today’s world we need to have more empathy for everyone, including murderous haunted laundry machines.
You may be wondering how the hell this Mangler (actual tagline: “It has a crush on you!”) manages to rack up a body count since it’s not exactly Christine rolling around town listening to George Thorogood, it’s a big-ass metal machine at least the size of a half-length bus and looking three times the weight, with no wheels. Well, I’m happy to report that there’s a part where (SPOILER) the heroes are hauling ass down a mysterious subterranean staircase squealing “We’re fucked!” as the Mangler chases and snaps at them like an angry pitbull. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Daniel Matmor, Demetre Phillips, Harry Alan Towers, Jeremy Crutchley, Robert Englund, Stephen King, Ted Levine, Tobe Hooper
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 33 Comments »
Tuesday, September 12th, 2017
STAND BY ME vs. THE THING. A group of young nerd friends in the small town of Derry, Maine battle a shape-shifting (usually clown-shaped) thing-from-another-(not-specified) that feeds on the fears of children. Oh, and also feeds on the actual children, apparently as a way to create more of that sweet fear.
Stephen King’s book tells the story of this “Losers’ Club” in 1958, and then reunites them as adults to do It in grown up style. Andy Muschietti (MAMA)’s movie just handles the childhood half of the story, moving it up to the summer of 1989, three years after the book even came out.
I read the book probly 30 years ago and only remember it well enough to be thankful they left out the pre-teen gang bang scene. I still question the part where a bunch of boys and one girl go swimming together in their underwear and then hang out that way. Maybe it was different on the east coast but this seemed like an alien clown’s idea of what the youths do together. Also the graphic blood pact seemed to me from a different time, but I guess God bless those little psychos for being up to that kind of self-mutilation. I couldn’t do it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: '80s nostalgia, Andy Muschietti, Bill Skarsgard, Cary Fukanaga, clowns, Finn Wolfhard, Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Nicholas Hamilton, Sophia Lillis, Stephen King
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 175 Comments »
Thursday, March 30th, 2017
A RETURN TO SALEM’S LOT is Larry Cohen’s weirdo theatrically-released sort-of-sequel to Tobe Hooper’s TV mini-series of the Stephen King book. But really it just takes the location – the tiny town of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine – and the idea of doing a vampire story there. It’s not the same vampire or the same type of vampire. It doesn’t connect, from what I remember. But I like that.
Joe Weber (Cohen’s muse Michael Moriarty) is an anthropologist working on a CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST type documentary when he finds he has to come home to look after his troublemaking teenage son Jeremy (one-time actor Ricky Addison Reed, who IMDb claims was cast to play Robin in Tim Burton’s BATMAN in scenes that were never filmed). Joe brings his son to the old, recently-inherited fixer-upper in his birth-town of Salem’s Lot (as some but not all abbreviate it). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Larry Cohen, Michael Moriarty, Samuel Fuller, Stephen King, Tara Reid, vampires, weird sequels
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 95 Comments »
Monday, March 6th, 2017
I know you guys probly already have huge parties planned, but in case you’re in a part of the world that doesn’t celebrate, today is the 25th anniversary of STEPHEN KING’S THE LAWNMOWER MAN. And in March of 1994 we’ll be able to celebrate the anniversary of THE LAWNMOWER MAN, after King’s lawsuit made New Line Cinema remove his name from it.
(Weird detail from an Entertainment Weekly article at the time: King “hired a team of private investigators to check out video-store copies in five cities” to prove they were violating an injunction against using his name. Did he worry if he brought in four tapes from four cities New Line would say “Nah, it’s only the copies in those four cities, the rest of the ones we made don’t say Stephen King”?)
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Austin O'Brien, Brett Leonard, Dean Norris, Geoffrey Lewis, Jeff Fahey, Jeremy Slate, John Laughlin, Mark Bringelson, Pierce Brosnan, Stephen King, virtual reality
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 32 Comments »
