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Me and Lil’ Stevie Get Lost in THE DEAD ZONE (1983)

Posted in 2012, 80s Horror, David Cronenberg, ESP, Killers, Me and Lil' Stevie, Near-Death Experiences, Peter Dudar Reviews, Psychic Powers, Stephen King Movies, Supernatural, Thrillers with tags , , , , , on August 7, 2012 by knifefighter

Me And Lil’ Stevie
Get Lost In
THE DEAD ZONE (1983)
By Peter N. Dudar

(Exterior: Night. Establishing shot of a gazebo on a lakeside park. Camera slowly zooms toward the gazebo, where a grizzly scene is taking place. We see a young girl being charmed by a stranger into thinking she’s safe, until the stranger pulls her close and produces a set of medical scissors, which he handily uses to stab the girl repeatedly. While this is occurring, there is another figure huddled in the far corner of the gazebo watching all of this take place. As the camera zooms in, we see the figure is a man holding a ventriloquist dummy in the form of Master of Horror, Stephen King).

Lil’ Stevie: This is terrible! Somebody should do something about this!

Peter: Welcome, Constant Viewer, to another episode of ME AND LIL’ STEVIE. Today, we’ll be examining the 1983 David Cronenberg film, THE DEAD ZONE.

Lil’ Stevie: Which, I’ll have you know, is based on my 1979 novel…My FIRST book to reach #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list. Ka-Chow! Who’s your daddy?

Peter: It also happens to be the first Castle Rock story. Fans of Stephen King are already aware that Castle Rock is King’s signature fictional town; the Norman Rockwell-esque portrait of Everywhere, USA. Castle Rock and its characters transition over several other novels and short stories, including CUJO and NEEDFUL THINGS. But for now, let’s just focus on THE DEAD ZONE (1983), and the tragic tale of Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken, SLEEPY HOLLOW, 1999). Johnny is a school teacher in Castle Rock, living a perfect, happy life with his plans to marry his sweetheart, fellow schoolteacher Sarah Bracknell (Brooke Adams, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, 1978). The movie begins with a glimpse of the young couple finishing off their Friday at school, only to slip off on a date to a local amusement park to ride the roller coaster.

Lil’ Stevie: What the hell is going on with Walken’s hair? He looks like the goofiest nerd you ever saw. What a Poindexter! Nobody on the planet would believe a hot chick like Brooke Adams would fall for him.

Peter: No argument here. Walken, fresh from THE DEER HUNTER (1978), is geeked out to the max with his goofy hair and glasses. But he and Sarah look very happy together and very much in love, which is exactly what King and Cronenberg want to convey. That’s the essence of this tragic tale…that fate can be so cruel to one man that everything he loves will be carried away, until the only thing he can tangibly call his own is his privacy, and he can’t even have that after his accident.

Lil’ Stevie: You mean he wets his pants?

(Peter hauls off and slaps Lil’ Stevie, forcing his wooden head to spin around comically on his body).

Lil’ Stevie: What’d you do THAT for?

Peter: You know very well what I meant by “accident.” Johnny and Sarah ride the roller coaster, and in the middle of the ride, he begins to feel a terrible pain in his head. His little joyride gives a touch of foreshadowing of what is to come. The ride is quickly over, and Johnny takes Sarah home. A rainstorm comes out of nowhere, just as he is kissing Sarah goodnight. Sarah offers to let him stay the night, wants him to not go home, but the unusually prudish Johnny tells her that “some things are worth waiting for” before kissing her one last time and heading back to his car…and driving off to meet his true destiny.

Lil’ Stevie: Time-out! In my novel, Johnny’s “destiny” actually begins way back during his childhood, when he fell and bumped his head on this frozen lake we’re standing beside, and had his first bout with extra-sensory perception. If you’ll recall the whole “Wheel of Fortune” incident at the beginning of the book…

Peter: Calm yourself, Lil’ Stevie. As always, we’re not concerned with the book. Your point is duly noted, but the movie is self-sustaining as it is. For us, Johnny’s “gift” is revealed after his accident while driving home in the rainstorm. An 18-wheeler, piloted by a sleepy driver, provides all the bad luck that destiny can throw at him. Johnny’s car crashes into it, and he is consequently plunged into a five-year coma. When he awakens five years later at the Weizak Clinic, he’s lost and confused. He’s baffled over the fact that there’s not a scratch on him, until his parents and his doctor, Sam Weizak (Herbert Lom, Chief Inspector Dreyfus from THE PINK PANTHER films) break the news to him that he was asleep for all that time.

Lil’ Stevie: And that everything he had is now gone. “Sarah’s turned her back on ya…she now cleaves to another man, a husband” his rabidly Christian mother informs him.

Peter: Yeah, what the hell is up with that? Nobody talks like that. It sounds so silly it’s almost irritating. That’s one of my bugaboos about this near-perfect movie: There’s some very bad dialogue in some of the scenes that left me wishing I could rewrite the screenplay. But it’s forgivable. What King is trying to convey is that Johnny’s mother is, indeed, a stern Christian woman.

Lil’ Stevie: It doesn’t quite build the same level of conflict I was trying to create in my novel. I was going for the whole “ESP as a blessing and a curse” vibe.

Peter: Again, it’s not necessary for the movie. We already get that through the tragedy of Johnny losing his love, and the psychic episodes he’s about to begin having, that leave him feeling like a part of him is dying. His first episode comes in the form of a vision he has when one of the nurses tries to comfort him. He sees her daughter huddled in the corner of her burning bedroom. The vision is striking, with Johnny stretched out in the little girl’s bed, watching the flames quickly consuming the house as the little girl screams out in terror. Windows break. The fishbowl boils over until it, too, shatters. Even the bed Johnny is lying in has flames growing off the blankets. It’s frightening and intense, and when it ends, Johnny screams at the nurse that “It’s not too late!” And, of course, the scene continues with the nurse pulling up outside her burning house, just as the firemen carry her daughter out, alive and badly frightened.

Lil’ Stevie: See? It’s a gift!

Peter: But it’s a gift that he doesn’t want. Or understands just yet. The REAL Stephen King is fascinated with psychic phenomena. We’ve already witnessed it with CARRIE (1976), and will see it again later in FIRESTARTER (1984). I think it’s the same appeal that many folks have with superhero stories; where the average person (or the “nobody”) has their world turned upside down with supernatural powers and abilities. THE DEAD ZONE almost feels like an allegory, only the hero never preoccupies himself with using this ability to better his own lot in life. Johnny draws a parallel between himself and Ichabod Crane from “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” about being “a bachelor and in debt to no one, nobody troubled their head about him.” “It’s what I want,” Johnny concludes, meaning a life of anonymity.

Lil’ Stevie: And that’s the curse. Once people hear about his psychic episode, they all want his help for their own selfish, personal reasons.

Peter: And that includes Sheriff George Bannerman (Tom Skerritt, ALIEN, 1979). Sheriff Bannerman shows up at Johnny’s home and asks for help in tracking down the Castle Rock Killer, who has been murdering young girls during the five years he was in a coma. Which is what brings us here to this gazebo.

Lil’ Stevie: I could have very easily made this the focus of my novel. The Castle Rock Killer is both frightening and intriguing.

Peter: Yes, but its Johnny’s story. If you look at how this movie is presented, it doesn’t appear to be laid out in a three-act play. Rather, it’s broken down into smaller sub-chapters that run consecutively. Each of his “episodes” plays out like a self-contained television show. The Castle Rock Killer is only one small portion of the complete story. The same with Johnny’s episode with his student, Chris Stuart (Simon Craig, CONCRETE ANGELS, 1987), where he has a vision that Chris and some of his friends will fall through the ice and drown…a fate that Johnny slowly begins to realize he has the power to change.

Lil’ Stevie: And this ability is what gives this story a title. THE DEAD ZONE is the part of the psychic visions where the outcome is not certain. It’s a blind spot, and that blind spot is that place where Johnny can alter the outcome. The whole “Wheel of Fortune” thing I mentioned earlier isn’t just a carnival game that Johnny wins thanks to his psychic ability. It’s a metaphor for life. Johnny’s gift is that he can interfere with the “Wheel of Fortune” as it spins.

Peter: Okay, that’s kind of deep. But again, we don’t need the metaphor on the big screen. Whatever exposition we need comes through in the action parts of this movie. And in the moments of dialogue between Johnny and Dr. Weizak.

(From somewhere nearby, we hear the sound of a brass band playing patriotic songs. A crowd has gathered in what looks to be a political rally).

Peter: What the hell is going on over there?

Lil’ Stevie: That’s the final piece of this puzzle. Greg Stillson is running for the US Senate. Of course, Stillson (Martin Sheen, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, 2012) is just as deranged and dangerous as the Castle Rock Killer, only in a much grander fashion. By way of a huge coincidence, Dr. Weizak had his life hugely altered by the Holocaust, where he was separated from his mother during the raid of their European town by the Nazis. We all know the historical significance of Hitler’s reign. And through a vision Johnny has while shaking Stillson’s hand, we see that Stillson will one day achieve the office of the President of the United States, and will ultimately start a nuclear war.

Peter: Yeah, Sheen is terrific as the evil Greg Stillson. And when all the pieces of this puzzle are in place, we see Johnny finally realizing that what he thought was a curse is actually a gift. The morality behind Johnny’s character and all the struggles he’s endured since his accident are what make this story so effectively compelling. John Smith isn’t a superhero, but he is a hero for the everyday man, in the struggle of good versus evil. Where Cronenberg shines as a director is utilizing the psychological portions of the story to display how Johnny evolves as a human being. There are times when his psychic gift feels more like a terminal disease, or at least a terrible weight that Johnny has to carry. The emotional blows to his life, and the permanent limp that handicaps him, begin to seem trivial compared to the weight of having to decide if he should give up his own life to save the world. It’s just excellent storytelling.

Lil’ Stevie: And in the end, this still comes across as one of the most faithful adaptations of my work, even if they DID cut back and compress everything about Johnny’s childhood.

Peter: (Rolling eyes), I keep telling you…YOU didn’t write anything.

Lil’ Stevie: I knew you were going to say that.

Peter: Would you shut up so we can wrap this up?

Lil’ Stevie: I knew you were going to say that, too.

Peter: What makes this movie stand out in terms of good, successful adaptations is both the excellent screenplay by Jeffrey Boam and Cronenberg’s fiercely unyielding vision as a director. Cronenberg’s oeuvre as a filmmaker is nothing short of impeccable. SCANNERS (1981), VIDEODROME (1983), THE FLY (1986), and A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (2005) are all amazing, disturbing films. What Cronenberg offers with THE DEAD ZONE really underscores the beauty beneath the tragedy. It is a story of unrequited love, and of ultimate sacrifice in the name of love. And it’s accomplished in bursts of violence and darkness and death. I loved this movie, and would put it in my Top 5 Stephen King adaptations.

Lil’ Stevie: It’s amazing what a difference a competent director can make. With no popcorn-scares and no CGI, THE DEAD ZONE is dark and disturbing and atmospheric.

Peter: What’s also amazing is how much this particular title has become a part of our pop culture. Like with cell phones, when we drop a call because we somehow wandered into a DEAD ZONE. They even use it in commercials.

Lil’ Stevie: Not to mention THE DEAD ZONE was also adapted into the cult fan-favorite television show of the same name (2002 – 2007), starring that goofy kid from SIXTEEN CANDLES (1984).

Peter: Long Duk Dong?

Lil’ Stevie: No, the other goofy kid…Anthony Michael Hall.

Peter: Of course, horror fans will also recognize the title of Bev Vincent’s column NOTES FROM THE ZONE, which runs in Cemetery Dance Magazine, and deals with the life and fiction of Stephen King. And Mainers will recognize the call-letters, WZON, the radio station OWNED by Stephen King.

Lil’ Stevie: It’s everywhere!

Peter: I knew you’d say that.

Lil’ Stevie: Cut it out!

Peter: I knew you’d say that, too.

Lil’ Stevie: You’re really annoying.

Peter: Yep…You’re almost predictable.

(Lil’ Stevie whistles over to the Castle Rock Killer, who is kneeling down next to the dead girl on the gazebo floor).

Lil’ Stevie: Hey, Frank…My friend here says you kill young girls because you’re impotent and you like dressing in your Mommy’s underwear.

(Frank stands up and turns his scissors towards Peter).

Peter: Oops…Well, folks, thanks for joining us. See you next time.

The End

© Copyright 2012 by Peter N. Dudar

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Me and Lil’ Stevie Go RIDING THE BULLET (2004)

Posted in 2012, Ghost Movies, Horror, Me and Lil' Stevie, Peter Dudar Reviews, Stephen King Movies with tags , , , , , on June 26, 2012 by knifefighter

Me and Lil’ Stevie

Get Burned From

RIDING THE BULLET (2004)

(Exterior/Night.  Establishing shot of a long, lonesome highway in Southern Maine.  A full moon hangs over the highway, casting long, eerie shadows of pine trees onto the macadam.  We can tell by what’s left of the foliage that it is mid-autumn.  On one side of the road is an old cemetery, with swirls of fog drifting out of the entry way.  Over the cemetery’s stone wall we see a mysterious figure doing some mysterious business.  The figure turns and walks out of the cemetery gates.  It is a man holding a ventriloquist dummy in the form of Master of Horror, Stephen King.)

LIL’ STEVIE:  You never listen to me.  I told you to do that back before we left the movie theater.  Do you know how unprofessional that looks?  It’s bad enough I have to watch!

PETER:  I’m sorry, okay?!?  Good evening, folks, and welcome to another edition of our little column.  Today we’ll be discussing the 2004 Mick Garris adaptation of Stephen King’s RIDING THE BULLET.  Now, if you haven’t read the story, it’s…

LIL’ STEVIE:  Your fly is still down (rolls eyes comically).

PETER: (Struggles with zipper) …it’s a standard ghost story based on something that sounds right out of urban legend.  It’s the phantom of the guy who died in a car wreck, but has been known to drive around this same stretch of highway on cold October evenings, just like tonight!

LIL’ STEVIE:  Only, when I wrote it, I was dealing with own mother’s mortality, and…

PETER:  When the REAL Stephen King wrote it, he was dealing with some very personal stuff.  But in typical King fashion, he took lemons and made a pitcher of margaritas.  Released back in 2000 (then later again in EVERYTHING’S EVENTUAL), RIDING THE BULLET was his transition into the age of digital downloads, and in the first 24 hours, over 400,000 fans downloaded the story onto their computers.  It created havoc.  Servers crashed due to the high Internet traffic.  Unlike the road where we’re standing, where there is no traffic whatsoever…

LIL’ STEVIE:  I was merely trying to point out that RIDING THE BULLET  is more than just a ghost story…it’s a parable about morality and the choices we make when we’re alive!

PETER:  You aren’t alive, pencil-neck.  You’re a puppet.  If I die, you’ll be pretty screwed.  Now, can we get on with the review?

LIL’ STEVIE:  (pouting) Fine!

PETER:  The story concerns Alan Parker (Jonathan Jackson, who played Kyle Reese in the TV series TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNER CHRONICLES), a college student at the University of Maine at Orono (where King attended college) who has been obsessed with death ever since his dad passed away.  The opening of the film is a montage of Alan’s childhood, including a pivotal moment of his life where he and his mom are at the front of the line to ride The Bullet; the big scary roller coaster at Thrill Village, but he chickens out and his mom smacks him for being such a candy-ass.

LIL’ STEVIE:  What a Milk-Sop!

PETER:  I’ll say.  So there he is in college (circa 1969), taking an art class with his gal-pal Jessica (Erika Christensen, FLIGHTPLAN, 2005), and while the rest of the students are sketching the gorgeous nude woman in front of the class, Alan is drawing the Angel of Death standing behind her.  In some weird exposition with Alan and the teacher (cameo by Matt Frewer, a Garris regular we talked about back in our review of BAG OF BONES), we learn that Alan has seen the Angel of Death around ever since his dad died in the car accident way back when.  We also learn that Alan has built this wall around himself, which has kind of hindered his ability to deal with life and have real relationships.

LIL’ STEVIE:  And it’s all hogwash!  None of this came out of my novella.  This always happens!  The story is too short so let’s just invent stuff to fill in time!  In my story, Alan gets the call that his mom had a stroke, and he’s out on the turnpike, thumbing a ride!

PETER:  Calm yourself, Lil’ Stevie.  You always get so angry.  Let’s not jump the gun.  Get it?

LIL’ STEVIE:  Look at your leg.  You’ve got drops on your pant leg.  No matter how much you squirm and dance, the last few drops go down your pants!  Hyuk hyuk hyuk!

(The headlights of an 18-wheeler appear in the distance, heading their way).

PETER:  Wanna go for a ride?  (Holds out Lil’ Stevie in the semi’s path).

LIL’ STEVIE:  Aaarrghh!  I’m sorry!  I’M SORRY!

(The semi goes whizzing by just as Peter pulls Lil’ Stevie back at the last second).

PETER:  That’s better.  Where was I?  Oh yeah.  So Alan is the 60s version of an emo kid, and his desperate plea for help culminates with him drunk and stoned in his bathtub, ready to take his own life with a razor blade.  This is the only compelling scene in the movie, as the Angel of Death shows up, and the giant women’s faces he’d painted on the walls come alive and begin chanting “Cut” at him.  And then Jessica barges through the door with all of his best friends behind her to give him a surprise birthday party.  Which is lucky for him, because otherwise he was a goner.

LIL’ STEVIE:  Never happened!

PETER:  Noted.  What does happen is that a red car that looks incredibly similar to CHRISTINE begins showing up and lurking in all his exterior shots.  At first I thought it was a clever nod to another King story, but as it occurs more frequently, it begins to feel like a rip-off.  And as Alan returns from his hospital trip with his buddies en tow, we learn that Alan is also haunted by a mirror image of himself that serves as his conscience and voice of reason.

LIL’ STEVIE:  Never happened!  God, this drives me crazy.

PETER:  Me too, actually.  I hated the whole dual-persona thing Garris created.  And I really hate how every scene has to play out with Alan’s scary imagined-reality scenarios before what really happens.  It jumbles continuity and kills any chance for real tension to build.

(A mad dog suddenly lunges out of the woods and begins to attack Peter, as Lil’ Stevie Looks on and laughs).

PETER:  What the…

(Then the dog disappears, and it’s as if nothing ever happened).

LIL’ STEVIE:  You mean like that?

PETER:  That was really weird.  Anyway.  We’re getting long-winded, so let’s break it down a little simpler.  Jessica gives Alan tickets to see John Lennon and the Plastic Ono band up in Canada.  Just as he shows his tickets off to his buddies, the phone rings with the news about Alan’s mom having a stroke.  He passes the tickets off to his buds and begins hitchhiking downstate to get to Lewiston, where his mom is in the hospital.

LIL’ STEVIE:  The SAME hospital I stayed in after that jerk-wad ran me over back in ’99.

PETER:  If you were run over, you’d be sent to the firewood pile, okay, Humpty Dumpty?  But you’re right…The real King did stay at that hospital after his accident.  I wonder if he added that intentionally while he wrote this piece.  Anyway, Alan thumbs rides down to Lewiston, all the while shadowed by his annoying double in the backseat, telling him his every move.  First, he’s picked up by some old guy (Cliff Robertson, Uncle Ben in the Sam Raimi SPIDER-MAN franchise) who digs at his crotch like he’s got a urinary infection and rambles on about his late wife.  When the old guy gets into town, Alan’s double tells him to get out and find another ride.  Which isn’t easy, apparently, on this particular Halloween night, where NOBODY is outside doing anything.

LIL’ STEVIE:  I’m really starting to hate Mick Garris right now…

PETER:  I’m right there with ya.  For everything he directs that is semi-decent, he throws a turd like this at us in response.  Is he trying to be mysterious or something?  Do you think he sits around watching this movie on late-night cable and saying, “Gosh, I really nailed this one”?

LIL’ STEVIE:  I’d like to nail him!  We should have saved this one for this year’s Holiday Turkey Shoot!

PETER:  Alan travels on foot for a few miles.  He gets chased by some redneck Mainers with a shotgun into a junk yard.  Then travels a few more miles on foot to the cemetery over yonder, where we’re finally introduced to the ghost that is driving this movie.

LIL’ STEVIE:  About freakin’ time!  In my novella, Alan is already at the hospital.

PETER:  George Staub (David Arquette, Deputy Dewey from SCREAM, 1996) is buried in the plot that Alan stumbles across.  A quick glimpse at his tombstone tricks Alan into thinking the epitaph reads FUN IS FUN, AND DONE IS DONE, and is just certain that his mom has already kicked the bucket…Alan does this through most of the movie, mistaking events as supernatural omens that his mom has died…and it’s annoying as hell.  But he glimpses again, and the epitaph now reads, WELL BEGUN, TOO SOON DONE.

LIL’ STEVIE:  Unlike this movie…

PETER:  Back on the highway, Alan finally thumbs another ride.  And predictably, it’s the red car that looks just like CHRISTINE, and (cue scary music), the ghost of George Staub is driving!  The rest of the flick is George tormenting Alan.  Apparently, Alan will have to choose whether George will take HIS life or HIS MOM’S into the afterworld.  Alan manages to escape, and is somehow transported from Maine to Thrill Village in Laconia, New Hampshire, where Staub will chase him down and eventually get him to ride THE BULLET, thus giving this turd a title.

LIL’ STEVIE:  And Staub will reward him with a pin that says, I RODE THE BULLET, which actually DOES happen in my novella.

PETER:  Of course, none of this really happens, as Alan had accidentally tripped back in the cemetery and knocked himself out on the corner of Staub’s tombstone.  And yet (cue scary music again), he STILL HAS THE PIN!

LIL’ STEVIE:  Somebody shoot me!  No wonder this film got a limited released, then jumped right to cable television.

PETER:  Alan arrives at the hospital, and low and behold, his mom is just fine.  But by this point in the movie, we’ve also been tipped off that Alan’s dad had committed suicide, that mom’s a bit of a lush and cigarette junkie (hence the health problems), that his buddies from school died on the way to Canada, and that emo-Alan, who had tried to commit suicide at the beginning, pussied out and told George Staub to take his mom instead of him.  What a shock.

LIL’ STEVIE:  (holds up tape recorder) Note to self…kill Mick Garris before he damages my career any further.

PETER:  That’s a little harsh.  How about we just say that Garris should focus on one thing at a time?  In this case, he should have let someone else write the screenplay instead of himself.  What began as a neat little novella about a ghost from a campfire story has blossomed into a field of big, stinky flowers.  Garris tried to throw too many ingredients into the stew and ruined dinner.  He tried to put too much icing on the birthday cake.  He…

LIL’ STEVIE:  You really suck at metaphors.  You’ll never be a REAL writer!

(In the distance, we see another 18-wheeler fast approaching behind them).

PETER:  Oh yeah?  Well, what’s FUN IS FUN AND DONE IS DONE!

(Peter tosses Lil’ Stevie into the path of the semi.  Camera switches POV to inside the rig, where Lil’ Stevie’s face is screaming just outside the windshield.)

PETER:  Thanks for joining us, folks.  See you next time… (Peter turns toward an on-coming car and put’s his thumb out to hitch a ride.  We see that the car looks a lot like CHRISTINE as he climbs inside.)

–The End—

© Copyright 2012 by Peter N. Dudar

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Me and Lil’ Stevie Are Moved by CARRIE (2002)

Posted in 2012, High School Horrors, Me and Lil' Stevie, Peter Dudar Reviews, Remakes, Telekinesis, TV-Movies with tags , , , , , on May 16, 2012 by knifefighter

Me and Lil’ Stevie

Are Moved By

CARRIE

(2002)

By Peter N. Dudar

(INTERIOR/NIGHT:  Establishing shot of a gymnasium filled streamers and balloons and painted banners and signs. High school students in tuxedos and formal gowns are floating and twirling on a wooden floor with gridded basketball lines and circles. In the background, a slow dance number flows through the mid-spring evening. One couple waltzes past the camera, and as the man’s tuxedoed back turns to face us, we see that it is a man holding a ventriloquist dummy in the form of Master of Horror, Stephen King. We also see that Lil’ Stevie is wearing a prom dress!)

Lil’ Stevie:  What the…What did you do to me?

Peter:  You’re my prom date for the night. You look gorgeous!

(Lil’ Stevie pulls the pin out of his corsage and sticks it right in Peter’s eye.)

Peter:  OUCH!  Why you little…

Lil’ Stevie:  Good evening, Constant Viewer, and welcome to our little column. In this edition, we’ll be reviewing Brian De Palma’s masterpiece adaptation of my very first novel, CARRIE. Now, in case you didn’t know…

(Peter plucks the pin out of his eye and plants it right into Lil’ Stevie’s wooden nose.)

Peter:  Hold that thought!  Today, we’ll be discussing David Carson’s 2002 made-for-TV adaptation of the REAL Stephen King’s novel CARRIE (USA Network). I was going to have us review the original De Palma film, but the truth is that I just don’t have it on DVD and Netflix only had the newer version. So I figured, what the hay and the two of us sat down and watched it.

Lil’ Stevie:  You must have slipped me some Roofies because I don’t remember it. You didn’t molest me or anything, did you?

Peter:  Of course not. I’m waiting till after the dance. Now, can we get on with this?

Lil’ Stevie:  Just a sec…(pulls pin out if his nose and tosses it aside). Alright, get on with it!

Peter:  For the two people out there who have never read the book or watched the movie,  CARRIE (played originally by Sissy Spacek and, in this version, by horror-fan fave Angela Bettis, who also starred in Lucky McKee’s MAY, 2002), is the ultimate high school loser. She is the epitome of tragic figure:  her mother is a fanatical religious nut who has raised her in ritual obedience and punishment, her fellow schoolmates absolutely loathe her because she is incapable of fitting in, and we get the impression that she has absolutely no hope within herself to ever find happiness in any part of her life.

Lil’ Stevie:  Hell, when I was writing the book, even I wanted to slap her!

Peter:  That’s terrible!  But you didn’t write the book, so quit interrupting. This version of the movie begins with Carrie’s mom Margaret White (Patricia Clarkson, SHUTTER ISLAND, 2010) delivering her baby at home, in her own bed, all by herself. Apparently, Carrie’s deadbeat dad was long gone by this point.

Lil’ Stevie:  Would YOU want to stick around with that psycho-head?

Peter:  I suppose not. But this little glimpse of Carrie’s life is missing from the original movie, as was the rain of burning stones directly afterward.

Lil’ Stevie:  At least that follows what I wrote in my book…

Peter:  Jump ahead the seventeen-plus years of her life to her senior year of high school, where the mousy, beaten-down Carrie practically tiptoes through the halls of the school with her head down and her books clutched in a death grip in front of her. We see her in her daily classes, where the other kids carelessly pick on her and laugh at their own delight. We see her in the library, where she sketches in her notebook a picture of a heart, with her and her crush, Tommy Ross (Tobias Mehler, DISTURBING BEHAVIOR, 1998) holding hands and living happily ever after. And we see her in gym class, where she strikes out to end the softball game.

Lil’ Stevie:  She’s on the Loserville Express!

Peter:  It’s no wonder the other kids pick on her. She sucks at life!

Lil’ Stevie:  I shoulda just euthanized her back in chapter 3, so she didn’t have to endure all the punishment I throw at her.

Peter:  Like when all of a sudden, at the end of adolescence, she suddenly has her first menstrual cycle in the girl’s shower?  Only to have all the other girls peering at her over the shower stalls and chanting terrible things at her?  And then they fill her locker with tampons and write “Plug it up!” in magic marker on the locker door for all the world to see?

Lil’ Stevie:  (Chuckling) Yeah, that may have been a little over the top.

Peter:  Actually, no it wasn’t. That’s the kind of cruelty you can only find in teenagers. They suck!  It’s a developmental thing…camouflage your own flaws by pointing out the shortcomings of others. It’s a defense mechanism. Three parts projecting, two parts pack mentality. And with a bunch of high school girls, all riddled with their own self-esteem issues, it becomes very convenient to find a weaker target and throw garbage at her.

Lil’ Stevie:  Only, MY pile of garbage has telekinesis!

Peter:  Teleki-what?

Lil’ Stevie:  Telekinesis!  The ability to move objects with your mind.

Peter:  Oh, like this…

(Peter closes his eyes and concentrates, and suddenly Lil’ Stevie begins smacking himself in the face over and over again.)

Lil’ Stevie:  OUCH!  Hey, knoc…OUCH!  Quit it!

Peter:  (Laughing) Sorry. I got CARRIE’d away. Get it?

Lil’ Stevie:  You’re an imbecile!

Peter:  Anyway, for their stunt in the locker room, gym teacher Rita Desjarden (Rena Sofer, TRAFFIC, 2000) tells the rotten little bitches that if they want to go to the senior prom, they will be spending a week in detention with HER. Which means they will be running laps on the track until they puke.

Lil’ Stevie: …And since most of them want to lose those last few pounds before prom anyway…

Peter:  Of course, the actual perpetrator, Kris Hargenson (Emilie De Ravin, THE HILLS HAVE EYES, 2006) refuses and declines her prom privileges, and she begins hatching a scheme to get even with Carrie. Even though none of it was Carrie’s fault, Kris blames her and simply wants to punish her.

Lil’ Stevie:  God, she is such a bitch!

Peter:  De Ravin plays the role perfectly. You can feel the hate just oozing out of this girl, when the reality is that she’s a spoiled brat who is used to getting everything she wants. Seeing just how well she performed here made me wonder if actresses enjoy playing this kind of role, especially when it is nothing like themselves in real life, and if it somehow impacts their reputation, as some people can’t seem to distinguish characters from their portrayers.

Lil’ Stevie:  You think too much.

Peter:  The other girls commit to doing Ms. Desjarden’s detention so they can go to the prom. But Sue Snell (Kandyse McClure, MOTHER’S DAY, 2010) actually feels guilty about the whole shower incident. Wanting to clear her conscience and actually show poor Carrie some compassion, she decides to also opt out of the prom, and encourages her boyfriend Tommy Ross to take Carrie to the prom as her date. She sets the wheels in motion with no knowledge of what Kris is up to, and the catastrophic results that will later ensue.

Lil’ Stevie:  And while all of this is going on, Carrie is discovering her supernatural powers. Developing them, so to speak. We see her as she begins to spasm and convulse, and then she’s moving hairbrushes off tables and throwing the rude little kid on his bicycle into a tree after he taunts her.

Peter:  You know, I’m glad you mention this. This aspect of the movie reminded me of Harry Potter, and how he reacted to the mean people in his life. I kept waiting for Hagrid to pop out and go, “You’re a wizard, Carrie!”

(Harry Potter suddenly appears on the dance floor.)

Harry:  Did somebody just say my name?  Brilliant!

Lil’ Stevie:  Avada Cadavra!

(A light fixture suddenly falls from the ceiling and crushes the boy wizard to death.)

Peter:  Why did you do that?  I loved Harry Potter. Even the Real Stephen King loves Harry Potter!

Lil’ Stevie:  He was a tool!

Peter:  The rest of the movie is the unavoidable catastrophe that has been set in motion:  The prom, the terrible prank that Kris and her boyfriend Billy Nolan (Jesse Cadotte) play on Carrie, and the vengeful wrath of a girl that has been pushed too far by her mom, by her classmates, and by life in general.

Lil’ Stevie:  Which begs the question, was remaking Brian De Palma’s original masterpiece worth it?

Peter:  Well, there are several things to consider. First is that Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie absolutely nailed the roles of Carrie and her mother in the original version. The photo of Spacek dripping with blood is iconic to us horror fans. Second, De Palma’s version has the “jump out of your seat” popcorn horror moment at the end, when Sue Snell visits her grave. Third, the gymnasium sequence, when the camera goes to split and multiple screens of the chaos that happens after Carrie gets pig blood dumped all over her is some of the best horror ever committed to celluloid. It’s amazing to behold.

Lil’ Stevie:  But in this version, we have a whole different ending…

Peter:  Which we won’t give away to those who still want to see it. Look, this version is not terrible at all. In fact, it’s quite good all the way up to the bogus ending. Bettis is a fantastic actress, and she really does give a great performance here. As do most of her castmates. Where this film succeeds is stripping away all the bad fashion sense of the late 70’s and adding the up-to-date touch of cellphones and technology. Carrie goes to the library and Googles her special powers rather than have to hunt through books to learn about it. It makes the story more accessible to today’s teens.

Angela Bettis has the title role in the 2002 TV-movie version of Stephen King’s CARRIE.

Lil’ Stevie:  But it’s not the original. And it never captures the power of De Palma’s vision.

Peter:  Close, but no cigar!

Lil’ Stevie:  Well, then…Let’s have some fun. I wanna spike the punch and have a few drinks before Carrie gets up on stage.

(Lil’ Stevie suddenly swings his arm up and begins smacking himself in the face over and over again.)

Lil’ Stevie:  OUCH!  I told you to…OUCH!  STOP IT!

Peter:  I’m not doing it!

(Carrie walks over and confronts the two.)

Carrie:  That’s for making my life such a bummer. You didn’t have to be such a creep and write my life to be this way!

Lil’ Stevie:  I’m sorry!  I’m sorry!

Carrie:  (To Peter) How would you feel about ditching this little jerk so you and I can go have some fun?

Peter:  (To Lil’ Stevie) Later, Stevie. See you next time, folks!

(Peter drops the puppet on the floor and takes Carrie by the arm, and the two exit the gym. From out of nowhere, a stream of blood comes gushing out, spilling all over Lil’ Stevie in his prom dress. The doors slam shut just as the flames begin to engulf the school…)

Lil’ Stevie:  You just wait till I write the sequel!  Don’t leave me…NOOOOOOO!

-The End-

© Copyright 2012 by Peter N. Dudar

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Me and Lil’ Stevie: APT PUPIL (1998)

Posted in 1990s Horror, 2012, Me and Lil' Stevie, Nazis, Peter Dudar Reviews, Stephen King Movies with tags , , , , , , on April 24, 2012 by knifefighter

Me and Lil’ Stevie
See Through An
APT PUPIL (1998)

EXTERIOR: DAY

( Establishing shot of a suburban high school at the end of the day, with teens exiting classes for the afternoon.  Camera pans across the campus lawn as the last bell of the day rings in the background.  The school doors are vomiting out happy looking all-American teens with their backpacks slung over their shoulders and carefree looks on their faces.  They all race to the parking lot and jump into their cool cars with their best gals and speed off to do the fun stuff that all teens do.  Camera pans back to the school doors, where one last student is sauntering out.  We zoom in closer to see that it isn’t a student, but a man carrying a ventriloquist dummy in the shape of Master of Horror, Stephen King.)

Lil’ Stevie:  (Dressed in a tiny Nazi costume) Sieg Heil, mine little comrades!

Peter:   Are you insane?  L.L. will never let this fly!

Lil’ Stevie: Chill out, dumbkoff!  This is legit.  It’s all a part of today’s review.  Guten Nacht, herrs and fraulines.  Ich heissa Stephen King, und…

Peter:    Stop right there, Mein Fuhrer!  Welcome, Constant Viewers, to another edition of ME AND LIL’ STEVIE.  Today we’ll be discussing the 1998 Bryan Singer film APT PUPIL.  Now, most film and comic book geeks will already recognize Singer’s name from his directorial work with the X-MEN films, but would undoubtedly be impressed with the actual number of credits he’s accumulated in his career as a writer/director/producer.  Singer is a very accomplished and talented individual, and definitely proves his merit here in King’s Dominion.

Lil’ Stevie: Which says a lot, seeing that most people tend to avoid Nazi movies like the plague!

Peter:  What the hell are you talking about?  MARATHON MAN (1976), THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL (1978), SCHINDLER’S LIST (1993), INGLORIOUS BASTERDS (2009)…Don’t any of those popular titles ring a bell?

Lil’ Stevie: Oh, whatever!

Peter:   Anyway, King released the novella APT PUPIL in his 1982 collection DIFFERENT SEASONS.  This particular book has the distinction of being King’s first real departure from the horror genre, releasing four novellas that felt more like suspenseful dramas that flourished on literary merit over the blood and guts theatrics of his earlier novels.  Of course, APT PUPIL really is the darkest entry, with its roots planted in the world’s most infamous blight to humanity.

Lil’ Stevie: Now you’re talking MY language!

Peter:   The story centers around Todd Bowden (The late Brad Renfro, who was sixteen when the movie was filmed, and then was cursed to a string of bit parts in films and television until his untimely death in 2008), a straight-A student who, after studying the Holocaust in his history class, discovers that his neighbor Mr. Denker (Ian McKellen, X-MEN, 2000) is actually the Nazi war criminal Kurt Dussander.  Obviously, he…

Lil’ Stevie: In my novella, the story begins with young Todd rapping on Dussander’s door, ready to hear all about the horrors of Nazi Germany!

Peter:   You’re jumping the gun on me, so to speak.  Yeah, the story centers around a bright young and impressionable teenage boy, who happens to discover that the guy down the street is a Nazi.  The premise is far-fetched as hell, but King makes it work in the novella.  And why not?  Most people are fascinated by murder and death and inhumanity, provided that it is as far removed from their own personal lives as possible.  The Holocaust is one of the most significant events of the Twentieth Century.  Its very existence proved to the world that humans are not as civilized and gregarious as we’d like to believe we are.  In fact, it proved that mankind is still full of monsters, even when the monsters are people just following orders to protect their own lives.  We don’t like to admit it, but it is fascinating as hell…especially for high school boys who don’t understand the significance or impact that real evil holds.

Lil’ Stevie: That’s very deep, coming from YOU!

Peter:   So, Todd shows up at Dussander’s door and practically lays it all out on the table.  “I know who you are”…”I had to be sure, so I dusted your mailbox for fingerprints,”…”I’m not going to turn you in unless you do as I say!”  And what young Todd wants is for Dussander to fill in the blanks; to tell him what it was like in the concentration camps, how it felt, what he remembered.  And all under the understanding that Todd has written down everything he knows about Dussander, so if anything happens, the Feds will know what happened and how to find him.

Lil’ Stevie: The classic cat-and-mouse game.  Do you like how I pitted a young, clever high school kid against an old, frail man who happens to be a murderer back in Hitler’s Reich?

Peter:   What happens is that the REAL Stephen King ramps things up.  As Todd’s relationship with Dussander grows over time, he becomes more and more deeply enthralled in the old man’s death stories, to the point where he begins losing sleep and failing all of his classes.  Meanwhile, Dussander begins to find empowerment in reliving his old past.  Todd shows up to his house one afternoon and offers Dussander a gift.  Dussander opens the box and finds a Nazi officer costume inside.  At Todd’s command, Dussander dons the duds and begins performing drill maneuvers at Todd’s whim.  It’s creepy as hell to watch as McKellen clicks his heels with precision while turning and marching, until he throws up his hand in a Nazi salute that even causes Todd to freak out a bit.

Lil’ Stevie: McKellen is marvelous in this role.  His German accent is beyond convincing, and the conviction he gives in his performance should have given him an Oscar nod.  But since it IS a Nazi movie…

Peter:   The story continues to escalate as Dussander begins fighting back over the domination that young Todd is trying to hold over him.  First, he shows up for dinner at the request of Todd’s parents (Todd has told them that he goes to the old man’s house to read for him and do small tasks for the old man), and enthralls the Bowdens with fictitious stories about his past life and a never-ending string of lies that he has based his post-Nazi life around in becoming Mr. Denker.  And when Todd’s high school career is jeopardized by his failing grades, Dussander shows up at Todd’s guidance counselor’s office under the guise of being Todd’s grandfather.  The guidance counselor, Mr. Finch (David Schwimmer, the wimpy guy from TV’s FRIENDS), explains that he can help Todd pass his courses if he aces ALL of his exams.

Lil’ Stevie: And here begins the transition of control from Todd to Dussander, as Dussander suddenly wises up and starts taking away the power that he has given the boy.  He informs Todd that he has taken out a safe deposit box at the local bank, and has written every last detail about his relationship with Todd and placed it safely inside.  Should anything suddenly, accidentally happen to Dussander, the law will step in and take that information, and Todd will suddenly be accountable.  After all, by now Todd has known about Dussander’s secret for months and has done nothing to alert the authorities about his existence.

Peter:   It’s fascinating to watch as Todd, who has kept Dussander as his own personal pet, suddenly understands just how deep he’s gotten himself into his own mess.  Not only does he have to buckle down and make the grades (so that his parents don’t discover that he was actually poised to fail his courses), he has to make sure that Mr. Finch doesn’t catch on that he and Dussander have flat-out lied to him, and he has to make sure that nothing happens to Dussander.

Lil’ Stevie: You don’t mess with an ex-Nazi officer.  You don’t do it!

Peter:   …While in the world of Dussander, you have a frail old man suddenly rediscovering the power he once had in his prior life and letting it fill him with a new sense of purpose and invigoration.  Dussander’s flashbacks will actually lead him to turn on his oven and try to put his cat inside it, and later bring him to leading a homeless man into his house and trying to murder the man in cold blood.

Lil’ Stevie: Which will bring us to the climax of our enchanting little film!

Peter:   While trying to murder the homeless guy, Dussander slips into cardiac arrest.  He dials up young Todd on the telephone and tells him to come over immediately.  It’s imperative, as there is now a possible murder-victim in Dussander’s basement and a damning piece of information about Todd still waiting in the bank’s safe deposit box.  If the boy wants to keep his record clean, he will have to rush over and take care of Dussander’s dirty work and clean up the mess.

Lil’ Stevie: Of course, the homeless guy ISN’T dead…

Peter:   Which means Todd will finally get a taste of murder that he has been so captivated by in all of Dussander’s stories!

Lil’ Stevie: …And you say it isn’t a horror story!

Peter:   It isn’t.  And it is.  It’s hard to distinguish just how one would label this picture.  It’s a suspense thriller, to say the least.  The screenplay by Brandon Boyce follows King’s story near perfectly.

Lil’ Stevie: Not true! Not True!

Peter:   How so?

Lil’ Stevie:  The ending is TOTALLY different.  In the movie, after Dussander’s demise, Todd’s secret is discovered by Mr. French.  French shows up at Todd’s folks’ house to talk to them about Dussander and Todd’s lack of ethics, only to be blackmailed by Todd into keeping his secret.  In MY story, Todd guns down Mr. French, and then heads off to the freeway with a rifle to start picking off random motorists until he, too, is taken down.

Peter:   Wow, that’s really dark.  How do you sleep at night?

Lil’ Stevie: Like a LOG!

Peter:   Well, overall, this really is an impressive adaptation.  Renfro’s Todd Bowden is truly disturbing to watch…how he listens with relish to the old man’s stories and how he empowers himself over Dussander, even though Dussander is a notorious war criminal.  The cat-and-mouse relationship between the two is fraught with brilliant tension, and as Lil’ Stevie pointed out, McKellen is spot-on!

Lil’ Stevie: So how come APT PUPIL doesn’t get the same love as THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994) and STAND BY ME (1986)?  These stories all came from DIFFERENT SEASONS…

Peter:   Because APT PUPIL isn’t a feel-good movie like the other two are.  It’s not a triumph-of-the-human-spirit film in the slightest.  You don’t get that kind of movie out of Nazi-related material.  Especially when your movie has no clear-cut protagonist.  Both Todd and Dussander are terrible people.  It’s how these two terrible people interact that makes the movie so fascinating.

Lil’ Stevie: But you pointed out SCHINDLER’S LIST and INGLORIOUS BASTERDS…

Peter:   Yeah, one’s a bio-pic about a guy who worked to save Holocaust victims and one’s a historical revisionist piece filled with absurdist humor and anti-Nazi propaganda.

Lil’ Stevie: Speilberg’s a hack and Tarantino’s a ham!  I am the Fuhrer of Fiction!

The high school’s doors suddenly fly open, and out walk Quentin Tarantino with a machine gun and Steven Speilberg with a baseball bat.

Tarantino:  We’re here to collect some scalps!  Ain’t that right, Jew Bear?

Speilberg:  Let’s get medieval on their asses!

Peter:   Holy crap!  Let’s get out of here!

Lil’ Stevie: Auf Weidersein, folks!  See you next time!

© Copyright 2012 by Peter N. Dudar

(DISCLAIMER: for those who haven’t seen the movie INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, the name “Jew Bear” refers to Eli Roth’s character in Quentin Tarantino’s film, and it is not meant in any offensive way here).

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Me and Lil’ Stevie Check Into 1408 (2007)

Posted in 2012, Ghosts!, Haunted Houses, Me and Lil' Stevie, Paranormal, Peter Dudar Reviews, Stephen King Movies with tags , , , , , on April 11, 2012 by knifefighter

Me and Lil’ Stevie
Check Into
1408

(Interior/Night:  Establishing shot of the lobby of a posh New York City hotel.  People in formal wear are meandering around, as a piano in the background tinkles out some jazz standard or other.  Camera begins panning across the lobby to the elevators, and as one of the elevator’s doors open, the camera proceeds inside and turns to face the control panel.  We immediately notice there is no button for floor 13, and just as we’re about to press number 14, a figure enters the elevator with us.  It is a man holding a ventriloquist dummy of Master of Horror, Stephen King.)

Lil’ Stevie:  I told you there’s no floor 13!  Pay up!

Peter:  (pulling out a five dollar bill and sticking it into the dummy’s mouth).  Good evening, Constant Viewer.  Welcome to another edition of Me and Lil’ Stevie!  I’m your host…

Lil’ Stevie:  (spitting out the money) Sore Loser!  Today, we’ll be discussing Mikael Håfström’s 2007 adaptation of my short story, 1408.

Peter:  Indeed.  Now, this particular story found its germination at the end of the real Stephen King’s autobiography On Writing (2000), where he set out to provide an example of how he would begin working on a new story, and then made all the revisions and editing on top of the piece to show how his stories change and take shape from beginning to end.  But King found that he liked the example piece enough to want to go ahead and finish the story, so he did.  The finished version ended up in King’s short story collection Everything’s Eventual in 2002.

Lil’ Stevie:  Ah, you’ve done your homework.  But did you also know that I, personally, did an audiobook version of this story for a separate collection called Blood and Smoke?

Peter:  I bet you’d smoke if I held a lit match to your chest!

(The elevator doors open again, and Peter and Lil’ Stevie step out, making their way down the corridor to room 1408.)

Peter:  You got the key, Smokey?

Lil’ Stevie:  (In Rodney Dangerfield’s voice) No respect at all!

(Lil’ Stevie pulls out the key and sticks it into the lock, and the door opens.)

Peter:  Now, as you may have guessed, this particular film is a ghost story.  Sort of…

Lil’ Stevie:  As hotel manager Mr. Olin (Samuel L. Jackson, PULP FICTION, 1994) tells us early on in the movie, “There are NO ghosts in 1408,” but the room is haunted by something evil.

Peter:  You’re getting ahead of yourself.  Let’s start from the beginning.  This movie is really about author Mike Enslin (John Cusack, who will appear as Edgar Allan Poe in this year’s THE RAVEN), a burnt out writer who is riding on the success of his “12 Nights” books, where he spends 12 nights in 12 haunted houses, or haunted graveyards.  At the beginning of the film, we see Enslin checking in to a supposed haunted bed and breakfast, and we get a glimpse of the cynical writer who is just going through the motions, even though he doesn’t believe in any of what he’s writing about.

Lil’ Stevie:  And it bears mentioning that most of this movie really has very little to do with my story.  The star of my story is Room 1408.  Nothing takes place in the story outside of the Dolphin Hotel, and there is NO exposition into the life of Mike Enslin.  Enslin is a secondary character.

Peter:  Duly noted.  And with some further exposition, in the form of a book-signing event, we see Enslin sitting in front of a sparse crowd of curious people, talking about his books.  He’s actually taken by surprise when a fan walks up with a copy of his first book, a novel titled  “The Long Road Home,” and inquires about the characters, and if they had anything to do with the real relationship between Enslin and his father.  We see the failed novelist within Mike Enslin, as do we see the conflicted soul of the man who we will soon find out is estranged from his wife after the untimely death of his daughter.

Lil’ Stevie:  Yep.  They do this to me all the time.  They just make stuff up to make the movie longer!

Peter:  No, Lil’ Stevie…this is necessary.  Without backstory to fill in the holes, this movie would have been as dull as a baloney sandwich.  We need the human element to contrast the supernatural element that Room 1408 is going to provide.   And we need to see how 1408 is going to use Enslin’s past against him.

(Inside 1408, a clock radio suddenly turns on, and we hear the Carpenters singing “We’ve only just begun…”  Lil’ Stevie begins screaming in terror.)

Peter:  Ha ha ha…you big baby!  Anyway, Enslin gets an anonymous tip-off in the mail about the Dolphin Hotel’s room 1408.  Since he’s working on his latest, “12 Nights in 12 Haunted Hotels,” Enslin contacts his agent Sam (Tony Shalhoub, TV’s MONK) about heading out to NYC and check the hotel out.  Sam is pleased to inform him of an existing civil rights loophole that says if he requests a room and the room is vacant, the hotel HAS to give it to him.  Armed with this legal loophole, Enslin walks into the lobby of the Dolphin hotel, where he is quickly ushered over to Mr. Olin.

Lil’ Stevie:  Which is where my short story actually begins.

Peter:  Indeed.  The short story is written as a two-act play…Act One taking place down in the lobby, and in Olin’s office where we are offered exposition into 1408’s haunted history, and Act Two taking place in 1408 itself, where Enslin’s particular haunting begins.  And as you’ve already pointed out, without Enslin’s backstory, 1408 is limited to using gag-style haunt tricks to drive him crazy.  But here in Filmland, 1408 is wide open to exposing everything within Enslin’s psyche.  And Jackson’s Olin is effective as the voice of reason.  He and Enslin recite 1408’s history together, giving the viewer a glance into 1408’s terrible and terrifying history.  We learn of all the suicides that have taken place in the room.  But Enslin’s knowledge stops there, and he’s surprised when Olin then talks about all the “natural deaths” in room 1408, which suddenly brings the room’s death toll way up.

Lil’ Stevie:  But the cynical Mike Enslin dismisses it all, laughing it off as a scare attempt on Olin’s part to try and hide the Dolphin’s history as something shameful.  Of course, why would Olin do that if it would bring publicity and increase business for the hotel?

Peter:  Because the room really IS haunted, and Olin is trying to protect Enslin.  “The Dolphin runs at 90% capacity every night,” Olin tells Enslin.  He can’t take the room off the market because the board of trustees would not approve, so he just chooses to not rent it out.  The ONLY reason Mike is allowed to rent it is because of the civil rights loophole.  This scene is very effective in setting the tone, with the bloody photographs of the room’s victims and the discourse over all the gruesome deaths involved.  In the end, Enslin checks in anyway.

Lil’ Stevie:  What a dope!

Peter:  It’s like Enslin says…he owes it to his readers!  And, of course, Enslin comes up here to 1408 (a room that is supposed to be on the 13th floor, and whose numbers also coincidently add up to 13) and makes himself comfortable.  He fixes a drink and begins casing the room, making notes into his pocket tape recorder, and then the weirdness begins to happen.

Lil’ Stevie:  And to be perfectly fair, a lot of the weirdness is what came out of MY head and MY short story!  There’s a weird note that says how his brother was eaten by wolves on the Connecticut Turnpike, and the weird paintings on the wall that seem to change form, or suddenly appear crooked, making Enslin feel seasick.

Peter:  The room also begins to become a claustrophobia-inducing prison, and as Mike begins to panic, he tries to find ways out.  He’ll try to escape through a window and crawl along the outer ledge to a different room, but the hotel uses illusions to play tricks on him so that he turns back.  Likewise, he’ll also try to escape through an air duct in the ceiling, but will only find himself back in his own room again when that particular escapade fails.  The room always brings him back, and does so to the Carpenters song playing on the radio.

Lil’ Stevie:  And the radio itself turns into a creepy, malevolent tool against him.  Its numerals start counting backward from 60:00 at the beginning of his stay, and we just know that something terrible will happen when the time runs out…

Peter:  The most damaging part of Enslin’s haunting is his being forced to relive the death of his daughter Katie (Jasmine Jessica Anthony) and the estrangement of his wife Lily (Mary McCormack, HOWARD STERN’S PRIVATE PARTS, 1997).  Somehow, Enslin manages to contact Lily (who actually still lives in NYC), and tries to get her to call for help.  Instead, 1408 manages to trick her to come directly to the Dolphin hotel, thus placing her in jeopardy.  And all of it is used to effectively drive Enslin crazy.

Lil’ Stevie:  And not a BIT of it is actually in my short story!”

Peter:  Would you stop?  You sound like a little girl!

Lil’ Stevie:  Grrrrr.

Peter:  There’s more to 1408’s haunting of Mike Enslin, but we’ve put out too many spoilers already.  What bears mentioning, though, is that 1408 never quite captures the actual creepiness of THE SHINING’s room 237.  As Olin said, there are no ghosts in that room, but there are ghostly apparitions of previous occupants as they either died or committed suicide within the room.  We see people hurling themselves out of the windows, or dying bloody deaths in the bathtub, etc.  Even then, the figures look more like projected movie clips rather than actual people, and it does nothing more than build a sense of unease.  There are very few scares in 1408 that actually work.  The screenplay, written by Matt Greenberg, Scott Alexander, and Larry Karaszewski, comes across as a movie by committee.  The genuinely frightening moments are far overshadowed by the cheap haunting gags that we’ve all seen before.

Lil’ Stevie:  Unlike my short story, which was focused and frightening as hell!

Peter:  Again, your story offered no backstory and no insight to Enslin as a human or a complete character.  In this regard, the movie 1408 at least feels like a complete story.  As a writer, myself, I found the glimpses into Enslin’s writing career to be compelling and honest.  I felt true compassion for the guy, who appears to have abandoned the true storyteller within himself for the steady income of his “12 Nights” series.  He’s a guy who has lost his identity while basically whoring himself out.  And when we dig into his daughter’s death and his failed marriage, we feel genuinely bad for the guy.  This is the part of the movie that the director really nailed, and it’s the only thing that makes this film really worth examining…especially if you are a struggling writer.

Lil’ Stevie:  Some of us don’t have to struggle.

(Peter reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out a matchbook.)

Peter:  Mr. Olin said this was a smoking room…

Lil’ Stevie:  You wouldn’t.

Peter:  (in Karen Carpenter’s voice) We’ve only just begun!

Lil’ Stevie:  Thanks for joining us, folks…We’ll see you again next time!

(Lil’ Stevie begins comically blowing out matches as Peter lights them and holds them near his chest.  Camera fades out.)

© Copyright 2012 by Peter N. Dudar

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Me and Lil’ Stevie: SALEM’S LOT

Posted in 2012, 70s Horror, Me and Lil' Stevie, Peter Dudar Reviews, Stephen King Movies, TV-Movies, Vampires with tags , , , , , , , on February 21, 2012 by knifefighter

Me and Lil’ Stevie
Raise The Stakes In
SALEM’S LOT (1979)
By Peter Dudar

Exterior: Night

(Establishing shot of a lone Victorian house on a hillside. The moon is climbing just overhead, illuminating a sign on the side of the road that reads “Salem’s Lot.” The wind picks up, blowing tree limbs about, making the landscape seem almost alive. Camera pans slowly around the house to a set of bulkhead doors that lead down into the basement. The doors fly open, and the camera travels downstairs into the basement, where rats scamper across the floor. A figure steps out of the shadows. It is a man holding a ventriloquist dummy of the Master of Horror, Stephen King.)

Peter: Greetings, and welcome to another edition of ME AND LIL’ STEVIE.

Lil’ Stevie: Wassup, Constant Viewers? Welcome to my hizzle!

Peter: Um, we don’t live here. This is actually the Marsten House, the uncredited star of Tobe Hooper’s 1979 television miniseries masterpiece SALEM’S LOT, based on Stephen King’s 1975 novel. King’s novel was written on the supposition of what Dracula might have done if he’d survived his onslaught in London and fled to the United States. The result was the corruption and death of an entire New England town, fallen to bloodthirsty vampires.

Lil’ Stevie: And THAT came after my short story, “Jerusalem’s Lot,” which sets the stage for a Colonial era township that will eventually become Salem’s Lot. In that story, the town has already fallen once into…

Peter: Save it, Knot Head! We’re here to discuss movies. And our movie centers around Ben Mears (David Soul, television’s Kenneth “Hutch” Hutchinson of STARSKY AND HUTCH, 1975-79), a novelist who returns to his childhood home to write about the Marsten House. Mears has always known of the bad history of the house, and is somewhat disappointed to discover that the house has already been purchased by Kurt Barlow (Reggie Nalder, MARK OF THE DEVIL, 1970) and his business associate Richard Straker (James Mason, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, 1959), who have apparently come to Salem’s Lot to open an antiques shop. It seems that Barlow is never actually around in the Lot, so Straker has to be the mouthpiece for the two.

Lil’ Stevie: Straker is more like Barlow’s keeper, making all the “mortal” preparations so that the vampire can arrive safely and undetected. And did you notice how much Straker sounds a lot like Stoker? I did that on purpose. I’m so cool!

Peter: The REAL Stephen King did a fabulous job plotting out all the necessary details to maintain Barlow’s anonymity. But there are a few major discrepancies between the novel and Hooper’s film, which we will discuss later. For now, let’s focus on the rest of the citizens of Salem’s Lot. There are a lot of characters and conflicts to uncover, which help drive the story and establish the proper chain of events. Foremost, with Mears returning to the Lot, he begins retracing his own past by visiting the local high school and getting in touch with his former English teacher, Jason Burke (Lew Ayres, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, 1930), who is putting together the annual town pageant with some of his students.

Lil’ Stevie: Particularly Mark Petrie (Lance Kerwin, OUTBREAK, 1995), and his pals Danny and Ralph Glick (Brad Savage and Ronnie Scribner).

Peter: Mears also meets Susan Norton (Bonnie Bedelia, DIE HARD, 1988), who happens to be a fan of his writing. The two have a romantic spark, only Susan’s bull-headed ex-boyfriend Ned Tibbets (Barney McFadden, INTERSECTION, 1994) still isn’t over her.

Lil’ Stevie: We also meet the real-estate agent Larry Crocket (Fred Willard…c’mon, EVERYBODY knows Fred Willard), and his lovely secretary, Boom-Boom Bonnie Sawyer (Julie Cobb, DEFENDING YOUR LIFE, 1991). Larry and Bonnie are having an adulterous affair, of which her husband Cully (George Dzundza, BASIC INSTINCT, 1992) is becoming privy to.

Peter: Larry also works for Straker, and upon instruction, Larry recruits Cully to drive to Portland to pick up a furniture crate and bring it back to the Marsten House. Only Cully has other plans, and will be busy catching Bonnie and Larry in the act of infidelity. Cully passes the job on down to Ned Tibbets and Mike Ryerson (Geoffrey Lewis, THE DEVIL’S REJECTS, 2005), who runs the local cemetery. The two drive to Portland and pick up the crate, and return it to the Marsten House, but the two get spooked off because, a) the crate is cold as ice, b) the crate seems to move around in the bed of the trailer, and c) the Marsten House seems to radiate evil.

Lil’ Stevie: Freakin’ pansies!

Peter: You’d have done the same thing, Big Mouth!

Lil’ Stevie: Would Not!

Peter: Shhhh…did you just hear that?

Lil’ Stevie:  (Nervously) Hear what?

Peter: BOO!

Lil’ Stevie: Ayiiiiii! (Starts to cry and tremble).

Peter: Aw…I’m sorry, I was just kidding.

Lil’ Stevie: You really are a jerk!

Peter: Anyway, where were we? Ah, yes…We have Mark Petrie and the Glick brothers. Mark appears to be a caricature perhaps of Stephen King as a boy. Mark delights in horror films and masks and models and dioramas…all the stuff that the rest of us horror geeks grew up with but have never seemed to outgrow. Because of this, Mark seems a very likely combatant against the coming evil facing Salem’s Lot. The Glick Brothers aren’t as fortunate. After spending the evening rehearsing for the pageant, the Glick boys race home, only to be accosted by an unseen figure as they pass through the woods. Danny, the older, makes it home safe. Ralphie is abducted (by Straker, which we will learn a few scenes later when Straker arrives back at the Marsten House and finds the crate that Ned and Mike have delivered…which has been smashed apart).

Lil’ Stevie: And here’s where the real scares begin!

Peter: After Ralph’s disappearance, he comes back to see his brother. Only, his brother’s bedroom window is on the second floor of the house. In a moment of vividly constructed gothic fright, the vampire-Ralph floats up to the window, immersed in moonlight, and begins scratching on the glass. In a daze of almost hypnotic confusion, Danny walks over to the window and opens it, and invites his brother in, who promptly delivers a bloodthirsty bite to his neck. The scene is done spectacularly, with hair-raising music and lighting, and the terrible glow of Ralph’s vampire eyes makes TWILIGHT’s Edward look like a candy-assed fairy princess.

Lil’ Stevie: (Sighing) Vampires were scary once!

Peter: Danny grows sick because of the vampire bite, and Susan’s father, Dr. Bill Norton (Ed Flanders, THE EXORCIST III, 1989), is called in to help. Danny is hospitalized, where he gets a second visit from Ralphie before finally succumbing. Danny dies, and has his funeral up in the cemetery.

Lil’ Stevie: Only, Mike Ryerson never gets the body interred properly. After the service, he starts to cover the body, only to hear scratching sounds coming from inside the coffin. He opens the coffin, and Vampire-Danny sits bolt-upright and bites him.

Peter: And thus begins the transformation of the town. Salem’s Lot slowly becomes pandemic, forcing many folks to leave outright, while the rest struggle to understand what’s going on. Only Ben Mears and Mark Petrie know for sure, and their job is to make everybody else understand what’s going on without sounding as if they’re both crazy.

Lil’ Stevie: You can see how my story mimics the original Dracula; with Jason Burke filling the role of Van Helsing, Bill Norton filling the role of Dr. Seward, and Mears filling the role of Jonathan Harker. And the Marsten House is obviously my version of Carfax Abbey. And did you notice how I deftly maneuver the tropes of vampirism with infectious disease, or how I juxtapose the concept of “the bad place” between the Marsten House (on a smaller scale) with Salem’s Lot as a whole on a bigger scale?

Peter: You’re very clever for stump!

Lil’ Stevie: Grrrrr!

Peter: The rest of the movie is watching how the chain of events plays out as Ben tries to solve the vampire mystery and confront Kurt Barlow and destroy him. But as I’ve mentioned earlier, there are discrepancies. Foremost is that in the movie, Barlow has been cast as a clone of Count Orlok in F.W. Murnau’s NOSFERATU (1922). In Hooper’s film, Barlow has no speaking parts, nor shows any real ability to think or plot or do much of anything other than show up on screen and look scary. But don’t get me wrong, this actually works out very well for the miniseries. When Barlow is finally introduced, in the scene where Ned Tibbets finally gets his comeuppance, the vampire looks absolutely terrifying with his pointed ears and rat-like facial features. And since he has Straker to do all his speaking and planning for him, it really adds that element of old-school gothic charm. The film looks very much like a throwback to the old Hammer movies, and with Mason’s British accent, it sells.

Kurt Barlow, the very scary vampire in SALEM'S LOT was inspired by the silent film NOSFERATU.

Lil’ Stevie: I planned it that way!

Peter: You did, huh?

Lil’ Stevie: Ayuh!

Peter: I think props really should go to screenplay writer Paul Monash, and to Tobe Hooper, himself. This picture was post-TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, and it really shows that Hooper improved in a lot of his storytelling sensibilities. Most importantly, I think, is his deliberate withholding of gore and violence. His less-is-more approach seems more focused on delivering shocks to the imagination rather than pleasing some ratings or censors board. Vampire attacks always seem to freeze on screen, with heightened musical orchestrations filling in the blanks, and it never ceases to send a chill down my spine. It is effective, as is his use of tone and atmosphere as part of his storytelling.

Lil’ Stevie: Don’t hold back…tell us how you really feel!

Peter: SALEM’S LOT really is classic King. It’s a frightening, fast-paced story, filled with great characters and scenery. And it delivers the scares. I put this one in my top-five King favorites of all time. And that says a lot, especially after three decades. In the past thirty years, how many vampire films have actually left you frightened and made you feel uncomfortable?

Lil’ Stevie: TWILIGHT made me feel very uncomfortable!

Peter: (Laughing) You know what I meant.

Lil’ Stevie: I do. And it’s a bummer, because SALEM’S LOT was remade in 2004, with Rob Lowe and Rutger Hauer. And with all the money and special effects they threw into it, they never matched for a second the thrill-ride that Tobe Hooper presented.

Peter: Agreed…Hey, what was that sound?

Lil’ Stevie: Yeah, like I’m going to fall for THAT one again…

Peter: No, really, I heard something…

(Without warning, the vampire Barlow lunges out of the shadows. There is fresh blood dripping off his fangs, and his talon-like claws are raised out, meaning to grab our heroes.)

Peter: Well, Lil’ Stevie, this is one time I think you can actually make yourself useful!

(Peter turns Lil’ Stevie so that his head is pointing right at the vampire’s heart. He lunges forward at the vampire and impales the monster with Lil’ Stevie’s wooden head. The vampire staggers backward and howls out in pain as Lil’ Stevie’s legs and arms flail comically. There is one final burst of blinding light, and then the vampire turns to ashes. Lil’ Stevie drops to the floor, cursing and swearing. Peter walks over and picks the dummy up.)

Lil’ Stevie: That was just…disgusting!

Peter: It’s a good thing you’ve got such a pointy head!

Thanks for joining us, everyone! See you again next month!

-END-

© Copyright 2012 by Peter N. Dudar

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Me and Lil’ Stevie: CREEPSHOW (1982)

Posted in 1980s Horror, 2012, Anthology Films, Classic Films, Family Secrets, George Romero, Horror-Comedies, Just Plain Fun, Me and Lil' Stevie, Peter Dudar Reviews, Stephen King Movies with tags , , , , , , on January 25, 2012 by knifefighter

Me And Lil’ Stevie

Feel Right at Home at the

CREEPSHOW (1982)

EXTERIOR/NIGHT.

(Establishing shot of a lone house in Late October.  There is a Jack O’lantern burning in the front window.  From inside the house we hear the sounds of a father berating his son for reading comic book-style horror magazines.  Camera pans up at the full moon hanging directly over the house, and then pans downward again at the figure of a frightening, maniacal skeleton lurking about just outside the boy’s bedroom.   The skeleton laughs and waves at the boy in a display of intimate understanding, and then the skeleton lifts its hand and pulls off its costume, revealing underneath a man with a ventriloquist dummy in the form of Master of Horror, Stephen King.)

Lil’ Stevie:  I can’t breathe in this thing!

Peter:  Greetings, and welcome to our latest edition of Me And Lil’ Stevie.  Today we’ll be discussing the 1982 George Romero sleeper hit CREEPSHOW!

Lil’ Stevie:  It was MY hit too, ya know!

Peter: …And since most of you are fans of horror, George Romero needs no introduction, but for the rest of the uninformed heathens, Romero is the mastermind behind the LIVING DEAD zombie series as well as a multitude of other beloved horror gems.

Lil’ Stevie:  Really?  What else has he done?

Peter:  C’mon…you really need to ask?  Romero filmed THE CRAZIES (1979), MARTIN (1976), MONKEY SHINES (1988), and THE DARK HALF (1993), which is also based on a story by Stephen King.

Lil’ Stevie:  So the man’s got some taste!

Peter:  As well as talent and style.  But CREEPSHOW seems to be a stand-out favorite among us horror fans, and for good reason.  Romero and the real Stephen King teamed up specifically on this picture, with a concept for an anthology-style film that celebrated the campy fun of the old E.C. Comics of yesteryear (VAULT OF HORROR, TALES FROM THE CRYPT, etc.).  The result is five independent stories, book-ended by a story concerning the boy above and his stern, overbearing father who doesn’t want him reading trashy horror comic books.  If you didn’t know, the boy in the movie is actually played by King’s real-life son Joe!

Lil’ Stevie:  Who now goes by the name Joe Hill, and writes kick-ass horror stories just like ME!

Peter: You don’t write anything, Splinter-Chin!

Lil’ Stevie:  Do SO!

Peter:  Really?  Well maybe you could help me write up an Ebay ad for a used ventriloquist dummy…

Lil’ Stevie:  (moping) I’ll be good!

Peter:  The first story is called “Father’s Day”, and it appears to be a tongue-in-cheek nod to all the other horror films around that time that were based on some holiday or other gone horribly awry (HALLOWEEN, FRIDAY THE 13TH,  etc). The story concerns the posh, snobby heirs of Nathan Grantham (Jon Lormer, THE BOOGENS, 1981), whom congregate every Father’s Day to remember their patriarch on the anniversary of his death…murdered by dear Aunt Bedelia after the old man drove her crazy.

Lil’ Stevie:  Bashed his head in with a marble ash tray!  Of course, he had it coming after he murdered Bedelia’s suitor in cold blood.

Peter:  Grantham had made the family fortune by bootlegging whiskey.  So when Bedelia visits his graveside with a bottle of booze and accidentally spills some on his tomb, the old man comes back from the dead to extract vengeance.  There seems to be a lot of extracting vengeance in this pic…but I think that mirrors the style of the old pulp comics.  There’s a moral code in their somewhere, and it’s delivered in all its bloody tongue-in-cheek fun.

Lil’ Stevie:  Leave it to Romero to lead off with a zombie story first!  I wanted to lead off with “Jordy Verrill”…

Peter: …Which leads us to the second story, “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill”.  This story is one of the two in this movie that are based on pre-existing Stephen King stories.  This particular story is based on “Weeds”, which was published in Cavalier magazine in May, 1976 (and remains unavailable in any subsequent King story collection).  It is a retooling of the story, “The Colour Out Of Space” by H.P. Lovecraft, and concerns Jordy Verrill, a rube farmer who finds a meteor on his land.  Verrill is played by none other than…

Lil’ Stevie:  ME!  ME!  I played Jordy Verrill!  Wasn’t I stupendous?

Peter: ….the real Stephen King. Not you! Verrill finds the meteor, and dreams of selling it to the local university (to the Department of Meteors, to be specific) and pay off his outstanding bank loan.  When Verrill douses the meteor with water to cool it off, the meteor breaks in two, killing his plans immediately.  Of course, Verrill has already touched the meteor and been infected by whatever alien growth it contains.

Lil’ Stevie:  “Meteor shit!”

Peter:  You can’t swear like that.  L.L. will censor us again!

Lil’ Stevie:  “That’s the Verrill luck for ya!  Always in…Always bad!”

Peter:  (Sighing) Anyway, the rest of the story is Verrill’s downward spiral as the alien plant growth slowly consumes him.

Lil’ Stevie:  Easily the best story in the movie!

Peter:  The third tale is called “Something To Tide You Over”, and with the title alone we see more of that ironic, tongue-in-cheek wordplay that makes this movie such fun.  This is another vengeance tale, concerning crazed millionaire Richard Vickers (Leslie Nielson, AIRPLANE, 1980), who is bent on murdering his adulterous wife, Becky (Gaylen Ross, DAWN OF THE DEAD, 1978), and her lover, Harry Wentworth (Ted Danson, who played Sam Malone on the hit television show CHEERS, ’82-’93).  Richard shows up at Harry’s house and informs him that he knows what’s been going on.  Harry tries to play it cool, but when Richard informs him that Becky is in peril and that if he wants to see her alive again, he’d better do as he says, Harry allows himself to be led out to Richard’s beachfront property.  There is a hole in the sand waiting for him there, and Richard (while holding him at gunpoint), tells him to get in and start burying himself.

Lil’ Stevie: Of course, the tide is just starting to come in…

Peter:  Once Harry is buried up to his neck, Richard sets up a television and video player, right there in front of him, so that Harry can watch how Becky drowned, just as he is about to, with the return of the tide.  Of course, the two dead lovers are reunited by the sea, and come back from the dead to extract further vengeance on Richard.

Lil’ Stevie:  Not as compelling as “Jordy Verrill”.

Peter:  Or sandpaper!

Lil’ Stevie:  You’re so mean to me!

Peter:  The fourth story is “The Crate,” and it is the other piece that is a pre-existing Stephen King tale (and like “Weeds”, it doesn’t appear in any subsequent King collection.  You can find it, however, in the Arbor House Treasury of Horror & The Supernatural, 1980 or Great Tales of Horror & The Supernatural, 1981.)  The story concerns Henry Northrup (Hal Holbrook, THE FOG, 1980), a college professor who is forever cowed and browbeaten by his obnoxious, overbearing wife, Wilma (Adrienne Barbeau, also in THE FOG).

Lil’ Stevie:  Adrienne Barbeau!  Rowwwrrrr!

Peter:  Um, yeah…not in this picture.  In this story, Wilma (“Just call me Billie…everyone else does!”) appears to be the consummate pain-in-the-ass significant other; drinking, complaining, and verbally emasculating Henry at every opportunity.  So when Henry’s colleague and best friend Dexter Stanley (Fritz Weaver, MARATHON MAN, 1976) shows up at his home rambling incoherently about a crate that has been found at the university, and the monster inside that devoured the janitor who found it (as well as one of the school’s brightest students), Henry begins hatching a scheme to murder his ball-and-chain and be rid of her forever.

Lil’ Stevie:  Some things are just better off left alone…particularly if they are chained and padlocked and hidden away in a college basement!

Peter:  This segment was my least-favorite in the movie.  Adrienne Barbeau is a hottie, and to see her in this role really, unfortunately, changed how I feel about her.  She embodies the role with such efficiency that whenever I see her I instantly correlate her to the character she portrayed here.  And that’s a drag.

Lil’ Stevie:  That’s her job, you idiot!  She’s an actress!

Peter:  I’m sorry, I’m sorry!  And yeah, when Billie finally falls prey to the beast in The Crate, I did feel a sense of huge satisfaction.  I guess maybe it’s because I just don’t care to see people get brow-beaten, especially in public places.

Lil’ Stevie: And did you notice the personal nod I gave to my wife Tabby in this one?

Peter:  Yeah, one of the secondary characters is named Tabitha…and unlike Billie, she’s polite and well-mannered.  It seems almost like an inside joke that her name appears in this piece.  On to the final story, “They’re Creeping Up On You!”  This tale concerns another eccentric millionaire, Upson Pratt (E.G. Marshall, 12 ANGRY MEN, 1957), a germaphobe who has turned his upscale penthouse suite into a colorless, sanitized-white protection bubble.  Pratt hides away from the rest of the world in this bubble, where he can be a ruthless tycoon that makes business dealings that destroy other peoples’ lives without ever having to face them.  Through his personal interactions over the telephone, we get a glimpse of a man that has reduced the rest of mankind to being nothing more than pesky insects, which he loathes.

Lil’ Stevie:  So, of course, we have to call in the cockroaches and sic them on him!

Peter:  This piece is not for the squeamish.  Thousands of roaches invade the apartment, and before it is over, the dead Upson Pratt’s body literally erupts with insects as they burrow and tunnel their way through his corpse.  It’s an amazing scene to watch, with props to special effects master Tom Savini for making the body infestation so life-like you’d swear it was real!

Lil’ Stevie:  And you should note that Savini makes a cameo appearance as a garbage man at the end of the movie.

Peter:  In all, CREEPSHOW really is a standout King movie.  Even if this movie isn’t the scariest thing that either King or Romero has put out, the tagline on the poster reads “The Most Fun You’ll Ever Have Being Scared,” and that still holds fairly true, even 30 years later.  With the screenplay written by King, the all-star cast, and the great comic book animations and panel-framing, this movie is a celebration of all things dark and macabre…more like a film for summer camp than for the Cannes film festival.  It is a treasured homage to those horror-themed comic books we dug on in our childhood, rather than reading Boy’s Life or Y.M..

Lil’ Stevie: Just out of curiosity, if you could pick any five of my stories for a CREEPSHOW sequel, which would you choose?

Peter:  Wow, that’s a tough one…you’d want to go with the ones that are visceral enough to paint that comic book sense of grue while maintaining that almost moralistic come-uppance at the same time.  Off the top of my head, “Grey Matter” really stands out.  As does “Home Delivery” and “The Monkey”.  Of King’s more recent works, I’d say “In The Deathroom” or “Mute” would be cool.  Then again, I’d also hope that King would make the effort to write some new stories specifically for the screenplay.  The REAL King, of course, not your sorry ass. 

(Lil’ Stevie’s eyes roll back in his head, and then the dummy lunges forward, mouth wide open, and begins biting Peter’s face off.  Peter screams in agony as the blood begins to spray in comic book gushes of blood.)

Lil’ Stevie: (At the camera, with blood all over his wooden face), Goodbye, folks!  See you next time!

The scene fades into an animated sequence of Lil’ Stevie devouring the rest of Peter as camera pans out.

© Copyright 2012 by Peter N. Dudar

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THE NEW DAUGHTER (2009)

Posted in 2012, Ancient Civilizations, Cinema Knife Fights, DVD Review, LL Soares Reviews, Monsters, Peter Dudar Reviews, Supernatural with tags , , , , , on January 17, 2012 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: THE NEW DAUGHTER (2009)
DVD Review by L.L. Soares and Peter Dudar

The DVD cover for THE NEW DAUGHTER, starring Kevin Costner

(THE SCENE: A mound in the middle of the woods. L.L. SOARES stands atop it, shouting down to PETER DUDAR who is running around with a video camera)

LS: I’m king of the mountain!

PD: Wait, wait, I’m trying to get it all on film.

(Something screams in the distance)

PD: What the hell was that?

LS: Probably a chipmunk. I dare you to come up here and try to push me off the hill.

PD: That’s not a hill, Paleface! It’s an ancient Indian burial mound full of blood-thirsty monsters.

LS: ….Now you tell me.

(Monsters start coming out of the mound and chase LS and PD through the woods)

PD: Hey, while we’re getting in a nice jog, why don’t you tell people what today’s movie is about?

LS (breathing heavy): Sure.

Sitting down to watch THE NEW DAUGHTER (2009), it had a few strikes against it to begin with. First off, it has an awful title that really does not do the film justice. Secondly, it stars Kevin Costner – not an actor whose work I’ve ever really enjoyed. Let’s just say I’m not a fan.

PD: You didn’t like ROBIN HOOD, PRINCE OF THIEVES (1991)?

LS: Nope.

But this guy here (points to PD), Dudar, insisted that I give the movie a chance, so I did.

For once, Costner plays things pretty low-key, as John James, a single dad of two kids, and a writer, who moves his family to a new house after his wife has abandoned them for another guy. Trying to start over, John has decided a change of location will do them all good.

But not long after they move in, John’s daughter Louisa (Ivana Baquero) starts to act strangely. At first, he chalks it up to the fact that she’s a teenage girl—reason enough for her to seem strange to him—but something more insidious is going on. There is a mound in the woods in back of their house, on their property, and the girl is drawn to it. When she starts coming home caked in mud and leaving dirty footprints throughout the house, you know something really weird is going on. Even when John tells her not to go near the mound anymore, she just can’t help herself. Late one night, John checks in on his daughter and finds that she has a strange-looking doll made of roots and weeds clutched in her hand, but when he asks her about it the next day, she has no idea what he’s talking about.

From there, THE NEW DAUGHTER gets more suspenseful and compelling, as we learn what is happening to the girl. Not only is she “changing” because she’s a teenager becoming a woman. She’s also “changing” in a much more sinister way.

PD: Yeah, the whole “transformation” issue has a lot to do with tension-building in this movie. It reminded me a lot of Linda Blair’s character Regan McNeil in THE EXORCIST (1973). Both Regan and Louisa are turning into something different while their single-parent is forced to watch helplessly. To me, there are two different types of horror films; the first relies on popcorn scares and gratuitous violence. The second relies on revulsion through suggestions and implications. THE NEW DAUGHTER relies on the latter, with Costner’s character racing to figure out what this deeper mystery is while his daughter is going through these changes. And it works because as a parent, I was able to project those implications toward my relationship with my own daughter.

LS: Good point.

As John does research on the house they live in, and its former occupants, he finds out that something weird also happened to the previous family’s daughter. The girl’s mother locked her in a bathroom and disappeared, years before. Through some online research and information from the shady realtor that sold him the house, James tracks that girl to the home of her grandfather, a recluse named Roger Wayne (played by James Gannon in his last film role). Wayne is a spooky old guy who seems slightly crazy, who explains how he had to take desperate measures when dealing with his “changed” granddaughter (he got custody after the police found her), and that James may have to do the same.

We also learn that the mound is an ancient Indian burial ground and involves the mythology of “mound-walkers” which were god-like beings that the Native Americans in the movie had worshipped at one time. The role they play in the daughter’s transformation is kind of fascinating.

PD: It’s actually not a stretch for Costner to want to do this movie. Mr. DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990) has always had a fascination with Native American customs, so it seems this piece was almost tailor-made for him. And I’m still not understanding the animosity you hold toward the guy. He hasn’t had a terrible film career at all, and as an actor he really is pretty decent. We can laugh about ROBIN HOOD and WATERWORLD (1995), but he also was in FANDANGO (1985) and SILVERADO (1985), both of which are good, solid movies. And DANCES WITH WOLVES  is a masterpiece!

LS (reading from a script): So is a good wedge of Limburger cheese……Err, what is that supposed to mean? That’s the last time I let you write dialogue for me!

But what can I say? I just don’t like the guy.

PD: The point is that you totally judged a book by its cover on this one. And I can’t blame you because the DVD cover for this pic is Costner holding a shotgun with the silhouette of his daughter standing behind him. The poster art for this says absolutely nothing about the movie, other than Costner is starring in it. It’s like the Jim Carrey Phenomenon. Every Jim Carrey movie has a poster of Jim Carrey making a goofy face. After a while, it gets annoying and you just want to smash that goofy smile right off his face.

(JIM CARREY jumps out from behind a tree)

JIM CARREY: Is somebody talking about me?

(LS pulls out a shotgun and shoots a hole in JIM CARREY’s stomach. CARREY makes a goofy face, as a bunch of Mound Dwellers come out, grunting and slobbering, and surround the wounded comedian.)

LS: You were saying?

PD: Had the cover to this DVD been a picture of anything OTHER than Kevin Costner, you’d have been far more receptive to watching it. Then I wouldn’t have had to harass you for over a year to get you to see it.

LS: Well, let’s face it…your movie picks tend to stink like, well, a good wedge of Limburger cheese! (Takes a cheese wedge out and starts nibbling it. The Mound Dwellers look up at the cheese and start salivating). What are you creeps looking at?

The theatrical poster for THE NEW DAUGHTER was a bit of an improvement.

So how did you even find out about this movie, anyway? I hadn’t even heard of it before.

PD: I’d read a review of it in RUE MORGUE Magazine. They pretty much unabashedly trash any movie that isn’t to their liking. So when I read the review and they went on and on about how great it was, I decided to check it out.

Aside from the whole “transformation” aspect, this is also an all-out monster movie. They are explained in the movie as being Indian holy figures, but they more resemble the monsters from THE DESCENT (2005). They are formless creatures with deep black eyes and mouths filled with razor-sharp fangs. At one point in the movie, Costner confers with a local professor named Evan White (Noah Taylor) about the mounds, and the professor gives a bit of exposition as to what they are, and it’s through these discussions that we hear the words “teenage girl” and “mating ritual” in the same sentence, and the last of the mystery falls into place for Costner.

(In the background, the Mound Dwellers are beginning a mating ritual with the wounded JIM CARREY, who screams).

LS: Which mirrors the whole metaphor of James’s other child, Sam (Gattlin Griffith), and his ant colony. Through the movie we watch Sam learning about bearded ants, their queen, and how the colony cannot survive without the queen to lay eggs. It’s a nice parallel to the other storyline.

PD: All in all, I thought this is remarkable horror film. It is very well scripted and has good performances by all the actors. And to me, it was scary. It’s always a thrill to watch a horror movie that isn’t geared toward teens and PG-13 ratings. I could relate to this one, and that kept me on the edge of my seat. And the movie’s ending is dripping with claustrophobia-inducing tension that would give ALIEN (1979) a run for it’s money.

LS: I don’t know if I’d compare it to a movie like ALIEN, but it’s a solid little movie that deserves a bigger audience. Spanish filmmaker Luiso Berdejo, who directed THE NEW DAUGHTER, is probably best known as one of the screenwriters of the cool horror flick [REC] (2007) and its American remake, QUARANTINE (2008). Berdejo does a great job here, and I hope he directs more movies.

Like you said, it’s well written and has good acting, too. Aside from Costner and the kids, who all turn in good performances, I also liked Samantha Mathis as Cassandra Parker, a teacher at the kids’ new school, who becomes something of a love interest for Costner’s character as the movie develops. I thought she was really good here, too.

What can I say? I liked this one a lot, and I guess I should thank you for recommending it. I give it three and a half knives out of five, and recommend that everyone check it out.

PD: Well, I give this movie four and a half knives.

So, like, can we become Blood Brothers now?

LS: Yeah, sure…why not?

(PD pulls out a knife and jams it into LL’s stomach)

PD: From now on your Indian name is Pushes Up Daisies!

(LS pulls out a knife and jams it into PD’s stomach)

LS: From now on your Indian name is Sleeps With Fishes!

(LS and PD collapse on top of the mound as JIM CARREY continues to scream below)

-END-

© Copyright 2011 by L.L. Soares and Peter N. Dudar

LL Soares gives THE NEW DAUGHTER ~three and a half knives.

Peter Dudar gives THE NEW DAUGHTER ~four and a half knives.




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PETER DUDAR’S BEST MOVIES OF 2011

Posted in 2011, Best Of Lists, Exorcism Movies, Ghost Movies, Paranormal, Peter Dudar Reviews with tags , , , , on January 15, 2012 by knifefighter

This really has been kind of a blah year in terms of media events.  You have to figure when idiots like the Kardashians and Donald Trump garner more attention than movies, music, and books, then we as an artful society have really suffered and lost ground.  It almost feels like the entertainment world really has nothing new and exciting to offer.  Nonetheless, it’s imperative that we celebrate the best of the best (even if our opinions are subjective and have cause for disagreement) and since L.L. is sending me hate mail to write something, here are my picks and pans for 2011:

Best Movie:  Hands down, my choice was INSIDIOUS.  The fact is, though, that I just don’t have time anymore to rush out and see every movie that I want to see, and I kind of have to pick and choose.  My year in the theater was peppered with must-see only flicks and kids movies like ALVIN AND THE CHIPMONKS, CHIPWRECKED!  But INSIDIOUS was the one I really, really wanted to see.  It lived up to the hype of the Facebook preview clips and the blurbs I’ve seen posted everywhere (and you’ve probably seen them too…the campaign where they show people getting interviewed immediately after walking out halfway, most crying or too frightened to talk about what they’d just seen).  The contenders were PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3, CAPTAIN AMERICA and the final HARRY POTTER flick.  I also want to add a DVD flick that I saw at the beginning of the year (which had been released the year before) called THE NEW DAUGHTER.  I thought this movie was quite sensational, and it took me a whole year to get L.L. to finally sit down and watch it.  After all the protests, he finally agreed that he liked it, too.

Worst Movie:  Well, not really.  More like a pan on the motion picture industry in general.  Over the last several years I’ve railed against remakes and reboots of my favorite horror films.  This year I’m pissed off at the idiocy of presenting kick-ass trailers, only to have the movie itself NOT get released on the big screen.  Cases in point: THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES and GRAVE ENCOUNTERS.  The previews for both these movies left me drooling and checking the Moviefone app on my iPod, but were released in either limited engagements or direct-to-download releases.  If you’ve made the investment on the film, why wouldn’t you try to recoup your finances?  Even the worst horror films seem to make money at the box office, so what the hell is holding you back?  I have seen reviews for GRAVE ENCOUNTERS, and even though they’ve been unfavorable, I still want to see it.  So take note, Hollywood…don’t take us half-way and leave us like a cheap ho with the clap!

And with an eye to the future:  I’m highly anticipating January’s release of THE DEVIL INSIDE.  The trailers look supremely frightening; especially the NC-17 preview where the priest drowns a baby during it’s baptism (I’m still in shock from watching THAT one).

Hope you enjoyed 2011.  I, for one, could have skipped it, but as my daughter is fond of saying, “You git what you git and don’t pitch a fit!”

Cheers and Blessings for 2012!

© Copyright 2011 by Peter N. Dudar

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Me and Lil’ Stevie First Annual Christmas Turkey Shoot featuring SLEEPWALKERS (1992)

Posted in 2011, 90s horror, Me and Lil' Stevie, Monsters, Peter Dudar Reviews, Shapeshifters, Stephen King Movies with tags , , , , , on December 21, 2011 by knifefighter

ME AND LIL’ STEVIE’s
FIRST ANNUAL HOLIDAY TURKEY SHOOT
By Peter Dudar

EXTERIOR: DAY

(Establishing shot of a small, secluded bungalow. The front yard is filled with cats, some of which are pacing back and forth while others merely sit and stare at the house itself. There are steel bear-traps set everywhere, and now and then a poor, hapless cat steps on one and yowls and shrieks out in pain as it springs on him. This sets the other cats off into a demented chorus of caterwauling. The front door opens and a figure walks out, carrying a ventriloquist dummy in the image of the Master of Horror, Stephen King. The dummy is carrying a tiny little shotgun, which he aims into the crowd of cats and opens fire.)

Lil’ Stevie:  Take that, you furry little…

Peter:  Seasons Greetings, and welcome to another episode of…

Lil’ Stevie:  Seasons Greetings, my wooden ass!  Merry Christmas, folks!

Peter: …of “Me and Lil’ Stevie.”  And today is a very special episode, isn’t it?

Lil’ Stevie:  That’s right, amigo!  Welcome to our First Annual Turkey Shoot!

Peter:  Yes, folks. Today we’re going start a new holiday tradition by taking one of King’s worst movies and putting it out of its misery.

Lil’ Stevie:  They can’t all be champions. And with the amount of stuff I write, you can’t…

Peter:  And with the amount of works the REAL Mr. King has written, there’s bound to be some turkeys. So, for this holiday season, we’ve chosen the 1992 Mick Garris film, SLEEPWALKERS.

Another bear-trap springs in the distance, and a cat screams out.

Lil’ Stevie:  Ha ha ha…didja hear that?  All nine lives in one blow.

Peter:  You’re just sick, you know that?  And not just for laughing at that poor cat. I happen to love cats and have two of them.

Lil’ Stevie:  Are they here right now?

Peter:  No.

Lil’ Stevie:  Dang. Get on with the review.

Peter:  Fine!  But you’re also sick for the whole premise of this movie. The movie consists of Charles Brady (played by Brian Krause, who appeared in the television series CHARMED, 2005-06) and his mom, Mary (Alice Krige, SILENT HILL, 2006). The Bradys are shapeshifters; people that can morph into bad CGI cat monsters that feed off the souls of young, virginal women. The movie opens with a pair of police officers bumbling their way through a crime scene that happen to be the Bradys’ last place of residence. The outside of their old home has dead cats dangling from ropes strung on tree limbs, and others poking lifelessly out of the bear-traps.

Lil’ Stevie:  Tee hee hee.

Peter:  What is it with you and cats?  We just reviewed PET SEMETERY a short while ago, and you had that cat run over by a semi!

Lil’ Stevie:  Cats are notorious Yankees fans!

Peter:  (sighing) Whatever. Jump cut to the Bradys’ new home, where we’re introduced to the two “sleepwalkers” and learn a little more about what they are through weak dialogue and bizarre behavior. For starters, the two start dancing in their kitchen to the old Santo and Johnny hit “Sleepwalk”…right before they begin making out and he carries his mom up the stairs to, well…

Lil’ Stevie:  A little of the old “In and out”…

Peter:  Stop it!  For a little incestuous liaison. It’s really creepy to watch this taboo relationship unfolding. For me, it called to mind Norman Bates, if he’d taken that next logical step with his mother. But while it’s unfolding, Charles confides to his mom that he’s picked out a new love interest, one that is virginal (to satisfy the vampire-like energy she needs to feed upon and stay alive, and yet one that apparently has enough emotional, romantic attraction to make him carve her initial into his arm).

Lil’ Stevie:  God, this movie sucks!

Peter:  How can you say that?  I thought you wrote it?

Lil’ Stevie:  Oh, hell no. The real Stephen King wrote it. And obviously he was addicted to Beverly Hills, 90210 at the time, because this movie seems to cater to the same demographic. It’s geared toward the young, the horny, and the stupid. Can we just shoot it now and skip the rest of this?

Peter:  Absolutely not. I had to suffer rewatching this.

Lil’ Stevie:  You watched it TWICE?

Peter:  Yep. The first time I saw it was at a drive-in back in college. I’m glad it sucked because it gave me and the girl I was with time to…

Lil’ Stevie:  Stop!  You’re making me sick.

Peter:  Fine. Let’s continue. Anyway, Charles has his eye on Tanya (Mädchen Amick, PRIEST, 2011) (Editor’s note: “Screw PRIEST, Amick is best known for playing Shelly Johnson in the great David Lynch series TWIN PEAKS, from 1990 – 1991”), a fellow student in his creative writing class and popcorn girl at the local theater. He sets out to woo Tanya and gain her trust so that he can steal her soul and feed his mother. Only, along the way, his identity is discovered by his creative writing teacher, Mr. Fallows (Glenn Shadix, Otho from BEETLEJUICE, 1988), and in a rather obscene film moment, Fallows pulls Charles over after pursuing him in his car and tries to blackmail him into inappropriate teacher/student activities, which forces Charles into murdering him.

Lil’ Stevie:  Charles hacks his hand right off, and then chases him out into the woods to finish him.

Peter:  It all comes across as incredibly stupid and gratuitous, as does the subsequent offing of Officer Andy (Dan Martin, GRIDIRON GANG, 2006), the cop who drives around with his cat, Clovis (who can detect the shapeshifter—just like the other cats—even when he is invisible). What cop gets to drive around with his cat all day?  That just seems cruel and inhumane.

Lil’ Stevie:  I’ll show you cruel and inhumane…Pull!

A plate launcher fires, sending a cat hurling into the air, its legs spread wide and its tail dangling below it. Lil’ Stevie lifts the shotgun and fires.

Lil’ Stevie:  You really need to try this!

Peter:  By this point, Tanya is in love with Charles. He’s young, hot, and charming. So sure, no problem, she’d love to accompany him to the cemetery to shoot some photos and do some grave rubbings…

Lil’ Stevie:  Grave rubbings…wink wink, nudge nudge.

Peter:  Only, when he gets her there, he tries to steal her soul (and King really should sue J.K. Rowling, as the whole Dementor soul-sucking thing is a total rip-off from this flick). She manages to escape just as Officer Andy arrives (to meet his demise), and flees back home…but not before she plucks his eye out with a cork screw and Officer Andy shoots him. Charles is in bad shape, and goes home to his mother. She sets out at once to claim Tanya’s soul and save her son, and all of it goes to pot by the conclusion of this movie, when the rest of the cops (led by Ron Perlman, HELLBOY, 2004) show up at their house.

Lil’ Stevie:  We should probably go on record and state that this film is NOT an adaptation of any previous King work, but one that was written specifically as a screenplay. Why, God only knows…

Peter:  Look, it’s like you already mentioned above…this is super reminiscent of Beverly Hills, 90210. But more than that, it kind of gives a nod of what’s to come with the whole Buffy/Angel phenomenon. There’s nothing scary about it. I’d have liked this movie tons more if it did away with the whole shapeshifter business altogether and pushed toward the damaged mother/son relationship that made this movie feel dirty and creepy.

Lil’ Stevie:  Who’s sick NOW?

Peter:  I’ll admit it. The CGI was terrible. The acting was substandard. The plot was paper-thin. And the gratuitous cameos?  Holy cow!  King, himself, plays the cemetery owner, then you’ve got Cynthia Garris (nepotism), Clive Barker, John Landis, Joe Dante, and Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker himself! Uncredited, and that says a lot). I tend to find that annoying. It’s hard to take a film seriously when you’re distracted with all the walk-ons.

Lil’ Stevie:  It’s like pouring perfume on a pig.

Peter:  Amen. Do we have anything positive to say about this turkey?

Lil’ Stevie:  Mädchen Amick is HOT!

Peter:  Other than that?

Lil’ Stevie:  Well, it IS the starting point of Mick Garris’s affiliation with King and his stories. Garris will later go on to helm the television miniseries, THE STAND (1994), as well as QUICKSILVER HIGHWAY (1997),  RIDING THE BULLET (2004), DESPERATION (2006), and the upcoming BAG OF BONES, which premiers this month on A&E.

Peter:  Yeah, Garris’s career has definitely benefitted from King. And he has gotten better over time. I liked THE STAND very much. But I’ll be honest…DESPERATION may very well just be next year’s Christmas dinner.

Lil’ Stevie:  Does that mean it’s time.

Peter:  It’s time.

Lil’ Stevie:  Alleluia!  Here, turkey-turkey-turkey…Gobble Gobble Gobble!

(The DVD version of SLEEPWALKERS suddenly pops up just over the ridge, sending the cats all scurrying away in every direction.)

Lil’ Stevie:  Fire!

(The shotgun blasts, and the SLEEPWALKERS DVD is smashed to smithereens.)

Lil’ Stevie:  Phew, that felt good.

Peter:  Almost cathartic. Almost, but not quite…

(Peter yanks the gun out of Lil’ Stevie’s hands. He pumps it and turns the barrel right at Lil’ Stevie’s face.)

Lil’ Stevie:  But I didn’t write it…I didn’t write it…I didn’t

(Peter pulls the trigger, and a little flag pops out of the end of the barrel. The flag reads “Merry Christmas.”)

Peter:  Thank you for joining us, and have a wonderful holiday season!

Camera fades out.

© Copyright 2011 by Peter N. Dudar

WARNING: No actual cats were harmed during the writing of this column.

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