UFO - Conflict

For all the suspense and fantasy, sometimes the most rewarding aspect of UFO is the human one. That's what I get out of “Conflict”: the most fascinating relationship in the series is the one between Straker and General Henderson.

When we last met Henderson, ten years ago, he and Straker were collaborators on the budding effort to thwart the aliens and protect Earth. Whether or not they were friends we can only guess, but there was no indication of friction between them. One guesses that Straker's placement as head of SHADO could only have happened with Henderson's endorsement. Now they strain to tolerate each other's presence.

That's a damning comment on what it must be like to have Straker in one's life. Look what ten years have done to them as colleagues! SHADO owes its existence to Henderson more than perhaps any other person including Straker, so you know he believes it to be of vital importance. Yet, he says that SHADO is “in its present form an expensive and unworkable luxury.” That's a condemnation of the man whom he entrusted the operation to.

Straker and Henderson are at each others throats the moment one steps into a room with the other. On this occasion it involves a demand by Straker for a cost-heavy program to eliminate space debris. Henderson doesn't see the urgency, and Straker doesn't see the need to be diplomatic.

Strictly speaking, it will be the council that decides, and Straker is scrambling to assemble a report. Unfortunately, these two have developed a distrust so strong that their defenses go up as a matter of reflex. They blind themselves to the other's point of view no matter how reasonable or who backs it up.

As it happens Straker is right – the debris can be used as a blind by the aliens. A flight from Moonbase to Earth is brought down by a drone limpet that alters the SHADO craft's reentry trajectory, killing the crew. Straker is pressed by Henderson to call a temporary halt to Moonbase flights. Foster disobeys those orders to retrace the path of the doomed flight in hopes of proving that pilot error was not the cause. It's the last straw for Henderson, who rejects the evidence outright. Straker proceeds towards an inspired, or just plain reckless, gambit to prove himself right. It's a gamble that jeopardizes Moonbase, SHADO headquarters, and all personnel within.

What I find compelling here is that beneath all the enmity and outbursts the two share a grudging respect that flirts with civility. You can see a friendship that once was and is no more. Watch their conversations together...Straker is dead certain before arriving at Henderson's office that the General will not allow the proposal a fair hearing, and proceeds from that assumption like a spoiled, entitled brat, with Henderson doing little or nothing justify the suspicion. (Meanwhile, Straker is behaving toward his own subordinates in the same vein, playing the martinet with another friend, Alec Freeman. If Straker thinks Henderson is making his job impossible, that's just what he himself is doing for the people under him.

After Foster's unauthorized flight, Henderson trades time for Straker to investigate with a temporary shutdown of Moonbase traffic. Straker and his personnel take it as a hostile provocation, but Henderson genuinely offers it as a means of protecting Straker from the council, the suggestion being that h is being viewed as a man out of control by more than just Henderson himself. Again, look beyond the surface and see the nuances...this is melancholy stuff, the dissolution of their friendship. As the concluding exchange of dialog sums up, these two men are too much alike. They are both hotheaded and obstinate when they “know” they're right.

Paul Foster has emerged from training to become a fully-fledged SHADO operative, but “Conflict” suggests he is still untempered and a newbie when it comes to knowing his way around his superiors. His flight is an outrageous violation of command that almost costs Straker dearly, could have cost lives beyond his own (depending how Moonbase personnel are called upon to clean up his mess) and the loss of millions of dollars in craft. How does he get away with it? Well, he does prove himself right that his dead pilot friend was not at fault, and proves Straker's case as well...but I think it's more that Straker admires Foster for the gesture. Straker makes an even more extreme gamble in the final act.

(edit: now i think of it, Foster acts like another Straker or Henderson in the making.)

Kudos to UFO for this early concern for Earth's litter orbit. Space debris isn't inherently a very exciting topic, and “Conflict” doesn't translate into heavy action, but there is decent tension in the limpet sequences and I like that the topic is utilized in a creative way. According to Wikipedia space debris had already been a subject for study as far back as the 1940s, even before the space race started contributing more refuse to our orbit. Writer Ruric Powell must have been brushing up on science journals, or perhaps read a story that inspired him. It's not something one sees much of in popular filmed science fiction. In 1979, a scraps merchant named Harry Broderick would build his own moon rocket to salvage some of what NASA left behind on the moon, and a few millenia later drudge workers like Adam Quark would be tasked as flying garbagemen patrolling the galaxy for trash.

I'll give it 7 impressionable recruits. Straker's and Foster's gambles don't bear scrutiny, but the personal drama is smart.


Asides:
I know it's supposed to be a gender-progressive statement that as profound a task as Moonbase operations is under the command of a female staff, but I can;t help noticing that the center seat has been temporarily given to newbie Foster. Lt. Ellis may have been up for a few days off, or been asked to step aside, but filling the post with a raw recruit would seem to undermine the importance of the position, no? I mean...on top of the demeaning uniforms for the female personnel...

Where "Flight Path' seemed to be trimmed from material that ran a little long for the time allotment, this epsiode's fx sequence detailing the recovery of Paul's flight once he's in the clear feels like padding to me. The nerd in me loves watching the fx, but it adds nothing of value to the story.

UFO - Flight Path

Stress. Let me emphasize that, it's important. Stress.

Shado operative Paul Roper has been compromised. Feeding a program into the outfit's advance warning satellite, SID (Space Intruder Detector), he receives back a mysterious calculation which he gives to an unknown agent. What looks like a series of coordinates involves an impending date. Straker, Freeman, and Ellis scramble to make sense of the numbers before it's too late.

I love this episode. It deftly blends every element that makes UFO what it is without ever being heavy-handed. Foremost it's a human drama – or a humanist drama, if you like. Roper's actions are traitorous but understandable as his wife has been threatened with death if he does not cooperate and quickly. We have to wonder why he does not go directly to Straker and tell him. Perhaps he doubts that his wife can be kept safe if he betrays his blackmailer? Or maybe it's that he does not know who he can trust within Shado. The question is unimportant, because the real answer is stress. As his routine psychological workup reveals, the man is making very poor decisions due to increased anxiety. It's alarming enough to cause Straker himself to be concerned.

Therein lies the greater personal drama, and a fine bit of character building for Freeman. Prejudiced by his friendship to Roper, Freeman initially balks at the psych evaluation. He's the humanist of the show, the compassionate one whose moral vision keeps Straker on his toes. In Flight Path, Freeman's judgment is at fault not once but twice: when Straker sets up a clever ploy to out what he suspects must be still another inside man Freeman takes it upon himself to muck things up. He does this out of concern for Roper but his rash action puts his friend's life in greater jeopardy as well as throwing the operation for a loss. He is fretting over his friend, for SHADO, and for the sudden unsturdiness of his own instincts. He is making bad choices.

Further to that point, panic will cause Roper's wife to freeze at a key moment. In contrast, Straker and Ellis keep cool heads and puzzle out the plot: a planned attack on Moonbase at a critical time when their defenses will be lowered.

None of this thematic material is overly, uhm...no, never mind. Belabored, that's it. Anyway, we have the week's thematic focus, a strong personal drama as noted with the tug-of-war between Straker's command style and Freeman's sense of ethics lending a much-needed human element to what could have been a dry espionage tale, and the plot earns UFO's keep as both an action program and a science fiction fantasy – all neatly woven together as a satisfying, cohesive whole. Gerry Anderson firmly establishes that UFO is a more somber affair than the average kiddie fantasy as things end on a down note without having to speechify or sacrifice pace and action.

There are two great action setpieces, among the best in the series. The first is a terrific bit involving a UFO attacking a car at night, with a breathtaking first swipe right over the car's roof and ending with a fiery crash. Done with miniatures and expert editing, it's highly convincing and exciting. The second exploits tension as a showdown on the surface of the moon indulges sci-fi fans in the kind of off-Earth environment that thrills us, again brilliantly crafted from editing to fx work. This is the very stuff that had me tuning in when I was six.

8.5 moondunes to fly your saucer behind. It's not challenging material but taut and seamless. Minus half a point for the auto deal (see below).

* * * * *




Asides: A line of dialog spoken by Straker about “a bronze SHADO car” reveals a blatantly sloppy bit of intelligence cover. No, not sloppy, criminally negligent and downright moronic. Everyone in SHADO drives the same make of car! You'd think that would be easy to spot and investigate, that one auto manufacturer is supplying the same car to everyone in this “secret” organization.

Thoughtful spacesuit design , allows the wearer to slip their own wristwatch over the sleeve. Ought to build one into the suit.

More bad thinking, why insist that there be only one defender with rockets to intercept the UFO?

The paranoia at the heart of the show's premise brings back a note that went unexplored in the pilot, “Identified”, that alien agents may have already placed moles with n SHADO.

Lt. Ellis has swapped wigs with another of the moonbase personnel, who now wears the quizzical-expression wig from Identified.

Ayshea gets a spoken line of dialog!

SID reports that he has “relocated” a UFO which had hitherto not been mentioned. It's not a discontinuity, but suggests that the script ran long: filmed or unfilmed, material was surely cut. Always happens with these productions.

In the future world of 1980, we will have no time for any wall art but mod expressionism.

First appearance of the insectile “Moonhoppers”, another wicked cool design.

UFO - Exposed

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin

The successful interception of a UFO is nearly compromised by a corporate test-flight. His co-pilot killed in the near-miss, Paul Foster finds his flying saucer report quashed by his employer (who wants to ground him), the evidence in the hands of the government, and total strangers going out of their way to intimidate him.

When people say they find UFO unsettling, I never know whether they mean the eerie alien threat or the moral quagmires raised. 'Exposed' is one of those that sits just a tad uncomfortably, and I have to give it credit for exactly that. How disturbing it's meant to be found I'm unsure of thanks to an ambivalent final scene.

SHADO and the dire nature of its secret cover already having been established as deserving our audience sympathies, we now have them in direct conflict with the accidental witness Foster. He's a threat to all we're rooting for. Yet, Exposed makes sure that we see Foster in a positive light – his plight is sympathetic, the man is intelligent, resourceful, even good-looking. In short, he's everything we might want in a hero. Our nominal heroes, meanwhile, share a private conversation that threatens ill for Foster if he blows SHADO's cover. How far will Straker go to keep Foster quiet?

That's what I appreciate most in this episode, the delicate balance of viewer loyalty. I have to wonder how the episode might have played had we seen it entirely through Foster's POV, with Straker a dangerous mystery figure. Would we buy as easily Foster's ultimate choice? It fits his character, but does it speak to the questions raised? Instead the narrative gives us the perspective from sides while cleverly keeping back just enough information to allow a satisfying last-minute twist.

The moral questions here are all too relevant today. Do feel comfortable entrusting our security to entities that are laws unto themselves – who can discredit us, meddle in our employment, manipulate our truths, threaten us physically and psychologically or even (Straker implies) ultimately have us murdered in the name of the greater good? The episode places SHADO in exactly that role, and if things turn out well it won't be because an autonomous agency really has anyone’s best interest at heart but because one man in authority retains a conscience. Under another man's leadership, SHADO wouldn't hesitate to ice the poor bastard.

And that's what ultimately unsettles me about the episode itself, because after the issues have been raised the script swipes them neatly aside without acknowledging the absence of a resolution to them. Satisfaction has been given and no harm done.

That's UFO at its best: fog.

“Exposed” introduces Michael Billington as Paul Foster. Most of the episode belongs to him and he uses it well. It's a neat way of bringing him into the fold, investing us immediately in his character. Vladek Sheybal (From Russia With Love's chessmaster and SPECTRE mastermind Kronsteen) steals a scene laying a head trip on Foster. It's but a single scene and I don't wish to downplay how effective Sheybal is in the Bond flick of note, but I find his character in UFO even more captivating – he's more intriguing as a snake than an ass.

One of the better episodes, tightly told all around. 8 thugs to rearrange your furniture.


Asides: I don't believe Ayshea's 'A' pendant is strictly in line with standard uniform regs. (Then again, maybe it's no more distracting than pharaonic eye shadow...) Maybe it's a high-level pass of some sort.

The miniature fx people really had a passion for their work! At least two new craft are introduced in this episode and despite knowing these models might never be seen again they both got the complete effort. These guys would get to totally unleash with the alien designs on Space:1999, really glorious stuff, but in a way their work on UFO is even more remarkable for having to keep their designs real-world credible.

A personal pet peeve, the notion that the world would collectively freak out if we were told that UFOs are real. It's treated as a given in “Exposed”, but then that wasn’t the story's focus.

I'm getting ahead of myself per the series as a whole but...aah, let's say I appreciate the brevity in editing the stock launch sequences. This happens in some episodes, and not often enough.

Gotta love the jets on Sky 1, that's pure smoke even underwater.

What exactly is the use of that go-cart at SHADO HQ? I guess it must be capable of greater speeds out on the lot, because it's useless for regular locomotion.

"Oh, you're WRONG, Foster, you're SO WRONG!” 😄😃

“That's okay, Ms. Ealand, I'm about to leave myself.” He should leave himself more often, he'd be less uptight.

UFO (ITC, 1970) Introduction and 1st Episode

Explanation and personal note: The preceding year has been a disastrous one for my family and for me personally.  It's still getting worse.  I have been marking time with a small group of TV enthusiasts at IMDb who have made it a practice to select one show at a time, one with a run of a single season, and watch that series one episode per week.  Each week they post their reviews.  Currently they - well, we now - have been watching the first live-action program by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, which followed a string of highly popular and successful children's science fiction adventures done with marionettes.

We are about to see our fifteenth episode.  I'll post my reviews here.  Keep in mind they were not written for this blog but for the discussion board for UFO on IMDb ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063962/board/threads/ ) and thus they may at times make allusions that are unexplained.  I will be posting full spoilers.

There is no correct viewing order for this series.  Production order is unsatisfying, as this was not the order in which the series was meant to be seen. production was done in sets of fifteen and nine with a hiatus between forced by a change in studios.  Due to this, some of the recurring cast could not return.  Because the series was intended to be sold into syndication worldwide, and probably not shown in any kind of order, the disappearance of thse dropped characters was never explained.  Thus, it was hoped that their absence could be masked by mixing the episodes of both filming blocks, making it appear that those regulars were simply on vacation or on duty elsewhere.

About my Stephen King posts...I did in fact watch all thirty one films last August as planned, but fell short on writing them up.  I may someday go back and finish adding comments.

************************************

UFO

Identified


In 1970 three people were killed during an encounter with an unidentified object. Evidence on a cinefilm they left behind was strong enough for authorities to justify an international effort to unveil the alien intruders, discover their objectives, and protect the Earth from their marauding. The name of this program is SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organization), and it is unknown to the public – the world's most closely guarded secret.

Ten years later, Commander Ed Straker oversees SHADO on the verge of a breakthrough in their fight against the invaders. Previously SHADO forces have been unable to intercept inbound alien craft due to their tremendous speed, despite specialized resources deployed across the planet, under the sea, and even secreted on the moon. Now new technology has been developed that promises SHADO's first victory, tech that can accurately determine the presence, location, and course of a UFO.

This development has been plagued by highly suspicious setbacks, suggesting spies and sabotage within their organization. It seems likely that when the equipment and personnel behind this breakthrough are transported to SHADO central, there will be an attempt by aliens to shoot down the flight.

UFO is the brainchild of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson of Supermarionation fame, science fiction-based action/adventures that featured puppets and plenty of futuristic craft to appeal to children (especially children of the geek persuasion – I raise my hand here). UFO saw the Andersons transition to live action. While their prior shows had been aimed at children, UFO was more mature in tone and theme though still appealing to the young with its science-fiction action and heavy use of fantastic hardware (sci-fi geek love knows no age). Among other running concerns, episodes explore morality in wartime, the burdens of command, ethics of secrecy in situations where there can be no comfortable solutions and no option is clearly “right”.

This leads to a rather bleak tone to the series overall. Performances lean toward the grim, apropos to the material but occasionally less than dimensional especially when conveying large blocks of exposition or stabs at philosophy (always ungainly, a weak point every time). Critics were often harsh about the actors, saying that their performances were every bit as convincing as the puppets – and that the scripts were just as wooden. Truthfully, some of the actors were just as harsh about the scripts (at least, this was the case with the cast of UFO's followup series, Space:1999, who didn't bother to hide their frustration). I sound like an apologist here for accusations of UFO being emotionally flat, some of those charges are dead on...but to some degree the emotionally blunted tone is a deliberate choice. If you don't think so, see the chilly closing credits sequence and its accompanying score. It's as distant and demoralizing as you could want.

To leaven the dire nature of the premise we're offered a strong dose of action, a modicum of humor, and some amount of romance. Aging the best are the action sequences, though by modern terms calling it “action” is a bit of a stretch. Solidly constructed through deft editing and tension, they play more to wracked nerves than fistfights or shootouts. They still grip though, thanks to remarkable production values such as fine photography (many scenes are night shots – half-seen in just the right ways while remaining clear). UFO showcased standard-setting miniature and fx work overseen by Derek Meddings (of Star Wars and 007 fame) and craft designs that still today are sought after by genre enthusiasts the world over in resin, plastic, and diecast.

More strained are the humor and romantic interludes, thanks to unabashed '60s sexism in full peacock display. This is UFO's lighter touch! Impractical uniforms for the women that promise flesh from moonbase uniforms that change from skintight to cheerleader miniskirts with a flick of a wrist to mesh shirts underwater. In fact, their officially issued equipment includes a handy little concealed makeup kit! There's an irony here, when the blatant invitation to objectify is mitigated (in theory) by overtly stated recognition of gender equality in the workplace (because this is set in the future: 1980), yet it's only when the women are off-duty that they are at their most casual. Report for work, and it's time to doll up and get hit on!

Okay, let's get to the first episode.

“Identified” is a tidy, efficient intro to the show's premise as the well-paced plot moves us through an overview of each division of SHADO's operation. We hardly notice the expository nature of the script (well, until Straker opens his mouth, anyway...) because the danger of the flight barrels forward unimpeded with our attention in tow. It's a nicely sustained bit of suspense that lasts well toward the episode’s conclusion, and carries into the first capture of an alien. Throughout, the dire nature of the endeavor has been maintained without much belaboring – the possibility of moles in the organization is introduced but not discussed, the need for secrecy ably demonstrated in the importance and peril of the flight, and finally in the revelations afforded by the alien: they are using us as harvest material.

“Identified” also introduces us to two of the major characters: the aforementioned Commander Straker and his second, Colonel Alec Freeman. Together they form the yin and yang of the soul of UFO, Straker struggling to bury his humanity in the name of the greater good, and Freeman trying to honor his own innate empathy in balance with the job.

Straker's an uptight, hardass micromanager by necessity, who we will later learn has taken a few hits to his humanity already. Played by Ed Bishop, he maintains a vacation-worthy state of near-breaking point. You know he's at his most relaxed when he's in a sardonic haze. Honestly, he's hard to like. Well, protagonists don't have to be likeable but they do have to be interesting – you need a reason to watch. Bishop has a strong presence, captivating good looks (his platinum hair is just jarring enough to deserve its own screen credit) and a deep voice that cuts through everyone. Bishop can't do much with his speeches, but I doubt anyone else could either and Bishop owns the screen whenever he appears.

Countering him is Freeman, who is at least freewheeling when it comes to women – the source of both the show's attempted levity and much of the cringeworthy sexism. Essayed by a crusty George Sewell with the demeanor of a seasoned vet (someone to be relied on) yet unjaded in outlook, he insists on acting as Straker's conscience no matter how much Straker rails that his conscience is overtaxed already. The two have a bond long established and unassailable, but they still clash. In Identified, the first two times we meet him he is all eyes for the women in his immediate vicinity (although it's hard to blame him for noticing the ridiculously sexy uniform one is wearing). It's an impression that will be tempered later but not so much in this pilot episode.

This is a decent episode. Not challenging but holds one's attention with few distractions and delivers a suitably chilling punchline. Low points are kept to a minimum, however much they stand out as awkward they don't sour the production or slow the tale. Besides the script's faults and the attitude towards women, the setup of Shado's location always strikes me as extravagant and a little too on-the nose cute: a top-secret base cloaked in a film studio. Straker's hydraulic office doesn't convince me. But then, is it really that big a stretch in a show where a jet fighter can be launched from beneath the sea?

7 glimpses of something vague behind a tree, because you gotta have somewhere to go up from. Not much personal conflict, gets a little wooden at times, and should be sent to see the principal for heavyhanded sexism.


Asides from the latest viewing...

 Gerry Anderson productions had at least one thing in common with Irwin Allen's TV shows, and that's the brilliant design work behind the craft and machinery (B-9 robot of Lost in Space. They have an iconic style to them that is sometimes of an era while still being timeless, every bit as much as the '66 Batmobile. On UFO I'm especially taken with the SkyDiver, Interceptors, the title craft, and as a kid I thought Straker's car was magnificent. Even the moon base was stylish while simple.

I remember seeing this as it aired back in the '70s (American syndication) and the opening sequence of the UFO almost but not quite glimpsed above the trees has stayed with me - terrified ans thrilled me as a kid. A great lesson in economy, re filmmaking, it was the audio effect used for the Ufos that got under my skin. Great way to introduce the show, had me effectively hooked. The whole episode is solid - concise, easy to follow, dramatic, sets the stakes.

Have to laugh at the overt sexism of "the future world of 1980", Freeman gets away with a lot. Pretty sure the look of the moon contingent and sub crew imprinted themselves on me at a formative age...

It's too bad Shane Rimmer's appearances were always so brief, would love to have seen him play a more important role. OTOH, it's good to see him at all, and UFO brought him back a few times.

Love the funky opening titles theme by Bary Gray. I never grew up with the Supermarionation shows that preceded UFO, maybe they just didn't play local stations in the U.S. Those are some heavy-exposition credits to make sure newcomers get the picture.

I almost don't notice how crazy the purple wigs are on the Moonbase's female personnel, because I first saw this as a child...and not so long after I'd been watching Yvonne Craig cycling around Gotham City in a sparkly purple body suit*. Ah, such style! So, the browline of the base wigs consists of a V that dips down the center, echoing the eyebrows. On Lt. Ellis, one arch of her wig's browline was notably higher then the other, giving her a perpetually wry expression in the best tradition of Mr. Spock.

Ayshea Brough always appears at SHADO as a glorified extra, but this is the first time I've realized that it's her we see at the episode beginning in civilian attire approaching the studio with a script.

It always gets me that the aliens have FTL travel, lasers in their craft, but on the ground they wield machine guns.

While not graphic, the first death seemed especially brutal for TV of that era both in the way it's choreographed and for coming mere moments after rise of curtain. Her body is practically yanked away (was she on wires or did the actress throw herself?), you can practically feel the bullets rip into her body. Instantly lets you know, this one's not a kiddie show.

This critical Utronic equipment that's going to make a vital difference - do we ever hear about it again? it's been a while... The performance of the Moonbased Interceptors will remain spotty at best throughout the series.


* actually, ya know... memory is unreliable. I've just remembered that we had not bought our first color television yet.

A Month of Stephen King (fourth week)

As before, I'll be editing in updates to this post as I go.

August 22^nd

The Dark Half (George A. Romero, 1993)

Here's a movie that raises another difficult question when it comes to Stephen King on Film. How broadly do you play the horror elements? I don't just mean camp.

When author Thad Beaumont tries to ditch his more violent pen-name alter ego, George Stark materializes and begins a killing spree.

King's doppleganger story, or his Jeckyll/Hyde tale sprang from his own biography. On a superficial note, King used to write under the pseudonym Richard Bachman until someone caught on. King went public, announcing in press releases that Bachman was “dead”. More substantially, when he wrote as Bachman he tapped into something more violent and hardened in his own psyche. His 'Bachman books are often less pleasant to read, more cynical, angrier. Whether King noticed or not, his wife Tabitha did and told him so. Tabitha, I take it from barely recalled testimony by King, was not a fan of this side of her guy. All of this is in the novel that sprang from that episode.

(An aside: when King describes his characters' physical attributes I tend to take them as suggestions rather than absolutes. Thus, I couldn't help casting King himself as Thad Beaumont when I read the book, and that being the case his badass mofo doppleganger George Stark could only have been played by Glen Danzig.)

While I don't have much to say about the story, I can attest that I adore both the book and the movie. The hardback was a birthday gift to me when it was in first release. I tried to read it slowly, to linger and make it last, but it was too good to put down. Storywise it hits the Jeckyll/Hyde basics...Beaumont's wife advises him to out himself so to speak, which is the right choice, but he misunderstands and instead of owning the more untamed side of his nature he tries to abnegate it entirely, Trying to suppress his own nature, it comes back to bite him in the ass. The harder he tries to kill this essential part of himself, the more of a problem it becomes. None of this is groundbreaking. What I love about the story is the magic realism King spins around it, a mythology at once deeply personal to himself, and oneiric with allusions to psychopomps and the land of the dead. It's a smooth read.

It's also a smooth movie, among the first tier of King adaptations. Sadly, not many share that estimation. It has three strengths, IMO and two weaknesses. First on the plus side is Timothy Hutton giving not one but two distinct performances. As Thad Beaumont he's a pretty standard protagonist, exasperated but stalwart. As Stark, he's a cold bastard who walked right out of a pulp crime novel, all mid-Western drawl and mean self-assurance.

The second and most sublime is Amy Madigan as Thad's wife Liz, maybe the movie's secret weapon. Liz is atypical for a supporting female lead in a horror film, where we'd expect her to be wholly reactionary to the drama and a potential damsel-in-distress to boot. On the contrary, Liz is the anchor that keeps the drama from drifting away on the tide current of phantasmic occurrences. She loves her husband and is steadfast in her support of him despite her misgivings about his darker side. In this too she is a rock, not backing down from his “dark half” (even when literally confronted by it in the corporealized form of Stark) but openly talking to Thad about it. This shows a self-respect on her part and a vital trust in Thad and in their bond. At the story's opening it is Liz who sees clearly enough to give Thad the good advice to own his whole nature – to be an integral whole – and cheat the blackmailer of his prize.

Finally there's the direction of George A. Romero, who gives treads a fine line between between straight drama and dream logic, eschewing most of the accepted cinema language of exaggerated lighting and dutch angles, which I think would have undercut the weight of the story (there is however one hallway scene with strong red and blue gels ala Argento or Bava). Instead the horror comes from a spate of brutal murders committed by George Stark. Time and the genre itself have blunted the violence considerably, these scenes were bloodless at the time and we've seen worse since, but I once found them hard to watch. Romero sets 'em up tense and delivers in swift slashes.

Here's where my initial question comes in, because I think Romero's refusal to play up horror cliches results in a stronger movie and yet even with Romero at the helm it usually doesn't get more than “it's passable” from horror fans. I'm trying to wade my way through this, and don't have anything yet but comparisons to other films. For example, Romero's contribution to the anthology film Two Evil Eyes: based on a story by Edgar Allen Poe, Romero's is universally regarded as the weaker section of the movie for looking like any episode of a low-budget television series. It is utterly devoid of flavor or flair, which makes it unlike The Dark half, but it could be argued to have been born of the same aesthetic choice. Both refuse to punch up the horror with standard cliches, one is IMO effective and the other not, neither is well regarded. Or there's Pet Sematary in which the horror scenes are delivered under a barrage of trite horror riffs and comic relief, IMO undermining the truer horror at the heart of the story and yet enjoying the popularity that has eluded Romero's film (Romero had been slated to direct PS but had to bow out to scheduling conflicts – we can only wonder what his version would have been like). The Dark Half is a somber though not depressing or otherwise overbearing story lacking in comic relief. It deserves a reverent telling and that's what Romero gave it. Was he wrong?  I don't believe there's any clear answer but to honor the needs of the film first, and the source material second.

Possibly detrimental to the movie is the nearly inexplicable failure of the police to arrest Thad Beaumont for crimes which bore his fingerprints (literally – Stark and Beaumont are the same person, after all). King pulls it off in the novel as the chief investigating officer is no less than the Sheriff of Castle Rock, a friend of the Beaumont family who jeopardizes his job to forestall Thad's arrest. Preferential treatment and less-than-proper handling of a case is true to life, yet in fiction we demand more “credible” plotting. In this the script could have used the same care that King gave it, but the crucial dialog that would have let this play are missing. We're also left to wonder exactly how George Stark was conjured from nothing, a mystery to which we are given an anecdote about Thad having ben conceived as a twin and the sibling been not entirely absorbed in thew womb. If you've seen enough horror to accept mystical poesy it isn't a problem, but those who need strict logic may find it a roadblock.

August 23^rd

Secret Window (David Koepp, 2004)

From the novella Secret Window, Secret Garden published in the collection Four Past Midnight. Author Mort Rainey is being hounded by a man named John Shooter claiming that Rainey plagiarized Shooter's own story. Shooter is a scary obsessive who pursues Rainey with his own warped understanding of justice.

A top-shelf production all around, the sole problem with Secret Window is that it comes some two or three decades too late. No spoilers (well, okay, mild spoiler) but you're going to guess where it's going because you've already been there countless times before, and chances are you may be disappointed that such a clever, well-mounted and suspenseful puzzle doesn't lead to something more surprising. I suppose, as they say, it's the journey and not the destination...

I resisted this movie the first couple of times I saw it, and it's not one I take down from the shelf easily. That would be because I'm not overly fond of the story. Still, the more I see it the more I like it. That's not because the story itself is growing on me. Rather, the telling of it is.

Secret Window is written and directed by David Koepp, not one of my favorite screenwriters. He's been involved in a number of box office hits but his work is spotty. At his best he writes charming crowdpleasers without depth (You may want to exclude his one standout, Carlito's Way, not original to Koepp but an adaptation). At worst his scripts are so idiotic as to be borderline offensive (The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2). As a director, Koepp still has less than dozen titles to his filmography, and as yet I've only seen this one. I'll have to get at Stir of Echoes at some point, because on the strength of this one movie he might be a better director than a screenwriter. He maintains a calculated pace that increases in menace incrementally, building our suspicions about what it all means through a judicially placed clues. When Shooter pays his visits, they're staged with a flair for paranoid shudders and frights, and when it's Rainey on his own we're offered character building with dialog that's engaging and well-drawn performances from capable actors. Lovely cinematography, too, everything and everyone is beautiful. Early on I thought it was lead actor Johnny Depp who owned this movie, but eventually realized that even Depp was under Koepp's reins the whole time.

Depp balances his performance well, when you consider it. Mort Rainey spend the entire movie in a pissy mod and is kind of a dick, which Depp stays true to, yet at the same time he manages to be amusing and at least sympathetic enough to hold center stage without turning us away. It's nice to see Depp give a sincere performance as a real human being for once. Sadly he's given his career over to highly mannered caricatures – fun to watch but it gets tiring when you know he's capable of more.

Instead it's John Turturro who almost delivers a caricature. Almost, but not not quite. As John Shooter Turturro looks, thinks, and speaks like a hayseed but shining through is an urgent sense of pathos and wounded pride, of outraged dignity. The guy is scary but in an obvious, hulking way. John Shooter is entirely incapable of reason, an infuriating tunnel vision Turturro puts across with ease.

I don't have anything else to say of the material or the film, and I'm usually doubtful about discussing the way audiences take to a movie...but I have to say that looking at the preponderance of comments on SW's IMDb page is disheartening. The majority of users there have a mindlessly misogynistic outlook on Rainey's soon-to-be ex for having had an affair. It is made clear that she was driven away by Rainey, and that he himself is to blame for the state he is in. More, the movie's portrayal of Amy Rainey (Maria Bello) is entirely sympathetic, a woman who still cares deeply for her estranged husband and wants to keep him as a friend. Yet in spite of all this, most of the movie's audience sees her as a “bitch” who has a comeuppance in store. Sometimes it's not the movie that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.


 

August 24th

Needful Things (Fraser Clarke Heston, 1993)

The devil's in the details.

Leland Gaunt has opened a new curio shop in Castle Rock. Whatever your fondest desire, he can get it for you. The price is a cruel prank you’ll play on someone, anonymously. Everybody is buying.

Needful Things was marketed as the swan song for Castle Rock. King was taking it off the map. That meant another panoramic tale of a community necessitating one of his longer novels, taking care to breathe life into many different characters. That's a hard challenge for a movie adaptation with a two-hour length. When I first saw Needful Things I had mixed feelings about it for all that was left out. Then again, I'm one of those King fans that loves his books to be long as long as his paths aren't constantly winding back on themselves. I love to immerse. You can't do that in a kiddie pool, there's no deep end to dive into. Maybe that's why I was never big on short stories. Having read the novel already, the movie seemed glossy but empty. I don't think it got much acceptance, since it's never spoken of and director Fraser C. Heston's career effectively ended with his first big film. That's a shame because looking at it now after all this time, I've done a complete one-eighty. I've seen seen some great movies this month, some that were more endearing, and some scary but of them all Needful Things has been the most pure fun.

So how 'bout them details? I have to staart with the incomparable, always original Amanda Plummer. Her Netty Cobb is not the central character, but she's really the essence of the story – an eccentric like the town, and a heart of pure gold. It really takes the Devil to push her way, way off the edge. It happens to every citizen of Castle Rock but Plummer lends Netty an innate sweetness that really isn't there in the book and I think looking back on it it's her downfall that's the most undeserved. She's got a natural enemy in a local pig farmer...but that's not who's been breaking her china.

You cannot feel at all bad for the comeuppance of the two priests in town (Don S. Davis, William Morgan Sheppard), of rival faiths, when they're such perfect representations of the chasm between man's faults and the church's aspirations to perfection. Their lack of innocence lends itself to comedy, and this movie is having a ball.

Obliquely then, on to the horse-racing addict comes to mind, the uptight little bureaucrat no one loves – Danforth “Buster” Keaton. J.T. Walsh begins by playing a blowhard at reasonable volume, the kind of sphincter we've all sadly met, and ramps up in increments until he's the biggest and most dangerous laugh in the movie. You see, the man's in debt and thinks a magical, vintage toy can save him.

All the work of one Leland Gaunt, deliciously underplayed by Max Von Sydow. Gaunt has had shops of similar name as far back as history has been written, in every country. His shop carries, miraculously, just the very thing your heart desires most. You can afford it if you make a deal. He doesn't ask for your soul, just a prank. Your soul is what you lose a little at a time when you agree to hurt someone who's done you no harm. You, see, it never ends. Once guilty, you're never off the hook.  It's original sin, the greatest crime ever perpetrated on humankind.  We're not meant to stand up for ourselves and shrug off our imposed sentence of guilt.

One man begins to catch on, and that's Sheriff Alan Pangborn (Ed Harris), late of The Dark Half, charged with investigating the sudden rash of ill will and with keeping the peace amongst ever angrier recipients of these “pranks”. Fingers are pointing everywhere but at everyone's favorite new proprietor, Mr. Gaunt. And why shouldn't Pangborn like him too when he's offering a miracle cure for the crippling arthritis that mark the days of Pangborn's love (Bonnie Bedelia)?

As I said, there's a rich tapestry of town life, and while the movie trims much of the book there's plenty left for a movie. We move in and out of a social web that never stops moving, one strand making turbulence for countless others until the whole thing is collapsing in on itself. As King does in the novel, director Heston and screenwriter W.D. Richter skewer all manner of social life – the niceties, the mores, networks, they do it with amusement and wit, and they spare no one. It's a patchwork that always feels integral. It's expertly acted – you can feel each citizen as a recognizable human being with his or her own internal life – well choreographed, beautifully shot, and edited to a pace that is just leisurely enough to allow the scenes to breathe.

What's sobering about the movie is that Gaunt is hardly needed. This is who we are. What, exactly, is stopping us from acting on our worst instincts? We do, of course, time and again. Imagine if we all did, at once.

There's a very delicate balance to pull off here, making this material genuinely funny without forcing the audience to betray their empathy. That Heston does just this deserves more credit than the film has garnered. I'm not always taken with black comedy, some are too mean-spirited for my taste, but Needful Things had me laughing.

A Month of Stephen King (third week)

August 15^th

Christine (John Carpenter, 1983)

Boy meets car, car meets girl, car gets jealous and tries to kill girl.

Some people don't get the killer car concept. To them it's no less goofy than a killer laundry press. Hey, King, why not a haunted toaster? Or a killer Mr. Coffee? I wanted to make a trailer parody of an evil bicycle: “Body by Schwinn. Sold by Satan.”

Ah, but I'm not one of those people, having been well primed for it in childhood by Killdozer, Duel, and an episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker in which a headless biker returns from the dead. True, an updated headless horseman isn't a killer car, but the growl of that bike was damn terrifying, signaling the proximity of death. He and the cycle were one big integral creature, inseparable. In Duel, Spielberg was canny enough to never let us see the driver of the rig, nurturing the subliminal impression that the semi itself was alive.

See, a machine is supposed to work only when operated. If it functions without being made to do so, that's a basic human anxiety: loss of control. When the machine starts to function with a will of its own, that's a deeper fear – the killer that can't be reasoned with, that doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear and absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. Yes, I'm quoting The Terminator. Same thing. Ditto Westworld. Before it. The living machine is so removed from life as we know it that it does not even emote. That's the scariest thing about it.

Killer cars, I think, are something special beyond that. Especially in America. The automobile is the very heart of American pop culture. Everyone can own one, or a dozen. They mean freedom and independence. They're a fashion statement that come in every size, color and style imaginable, and if one doesn't exist that says “you” you can have one custom made. You can own a Barris Batmobile! The automobile symbolizes youth and a rebellious spirit that longs to roam. A car means sex – look at those curves, that baby was made to go parking in. A car means rock&roll, 'cuz you can't take your girl to an A&W or the drive-in without rock&roll.

The killer car is American pop culture with teeth. The Car and Duel tapped into that in a crude, unstated, intuitive way but Stephen King understood it on a conscious level and explored/exploited every aspect of it...ran it to ground. For subject matter alone Christine could be his Great American Novel. The story it tells is right out of Norman Rockwell, if Rockwell suffered a mental breakdown. A nerdy, picked-on high school kid gets a neato set of wheels and suddenly becomes cool – gets the girl and bests the bullies. Rock and Roll is here to stay.

Christine would make a great triple feature with American Graffiti and Cronenberg's Crash.

Meanwhile the nerd in question gains the confidence to take his life back from his unpleasant, overbearing parents. If Apt Pupil was meant to explore evil by nurture, Arnie Cunningham is closer to what King had in mind than Todd Bowden. Arnie starts off as a nice kid but he's a walking bag of repressed aggression and resentment primed to seethe forth. When he gets his cool on, it's an affectation he wears like a warning. Let me take a moment to praise Keith Gordon for his mesmerizing transformation from Charlie Brown to angry teen to foaming madman. One of the more nightmarish sequences I've seen in film is a midnight drive he takes with his best friend Dennis practically hostage in Christine – that's the title car, a '57 Plymouth Fury that was born bad. Gordon is all nervous ticks and sore eyes. There's a hint of something recognizable left that might have been friendship, but the slightest wrong step will set him off. It's an amazing performance.

The book is a long one, full of King's embroidery. Usually I'm happy to explore all of that but this time he has added details to the hauntings that seemed off to me...the ghosts of Christine's victims have a tendency to become permanent passengers, among other things. The perfection of a killer automaton is that no one is behind the wheel. But it's a minor complaint. It's King, so ya gotta go with it. A film is not a novel, and Carpenter isn't King. When I first saw the movie I had mixed feelings more so than with the novel. So much was left on the side of the road. Well, I no longer miss any of it. Carpenter is in top form, throwing out the fuzzy dice and bumper stickers, tuning up the V8 engine and polishing the chrome and cherry red paint job. I don't want to do a rundown of what works, because AFAIC pretty much all of it does, in a big way.

I'll mention Harry Dean Stanton, because it's always worth mentioning Harry Dean Stanton. I should mention Harry dean Stanton in ever review whether it's one of his movies or not. His character is a little dodgy, though. Detective Rudy Junkins has a grand total of three brief scenes that amount to nothing more than putting the pressure on Arnie and, I suppose, trying to ground the movie just a little in the real world – people are dying, you want to think the police are paying attenuation. Junkins must be awfully damn good at paying attention, cause he either has the whole story worked out or is the most credulous cop ever – when it's all done with he buys the killer car story with no reservations. He even calls the survivors heroes, when at the very least they have taken the law into their own hands and gotten someone killed for it. If I ever kill someone and try to blame it on Bigfoot, I want Detective Junkins on the case.

August 16^th

Pet Sematary (Mary Lambert, 1989)

Louis Creed learns of a magic burial ground that brings the dead back to life. Trying it on the family's pet cat proves disastrous as the dead come back as warped, murderous things...something evil. Yet when his son dies he can't help trying again.

I got into horror at the age of three. There was a TV show I watched back in Vallejo, mom never thought a thing about it as it was a family show and sci-fi/adventure at that. She never realized just how dark and terrifying that show could be to a child, a show in which children were targeted for horrifying death on a semi-regular basis – and not in cartoonish way. This show was pretty serious in it's first half-season. Most young children will hide behind the furniture. I hid behind the TV. Still, in the back of my mind was an awareness that it was all make-believe. So, it was a “safe scare”. Thrilling, but in a fun way. It was my favorite show.

I bought Pet Sematary the moment it hit paperback. I'd already read all of King's previously published books in a Summer-long marathon and loved every minute of it. Pet Sematary was different. It pushed buttons the others hadn't, dealing with profound loss at home. It wasn't a safe scare. King dives right in on grief and dread of loss,beginning with a child losing a pet and then a thorough examination of familial ties. It's honest and unflinching, highly uncomfortable, not fun stuff at all. King hardly needs his usual foreshadowing, because there's only one way the story can end.

The movie comes soooo close. I've warmed up to it but it still delivers a watered down version of the novel. Maybe that's necessary given how unrelentingly sad the book is ( I'll be getting to Misery soon enough where I think a straight adaptation would have been too grim for audiences). Pet Sematary the movie has its share of harsh emotional terrain but is held up back from its full potential, and I'm not sure if it's the scipt by King himself, Mary Lambert's direction (which is actually pretty good though not top shelf) or the production by Richard P. Rubinstein: he had just come off a long stint producing the TV series Tales of the Darkside, and PS has much the same quality about it. He, King, and Lambert punch up the conventional horror treatment such as scary hallucinations and ghostly visitations. One such is the character of Pascow, who died in the ER but keeps coming back to warn grieving father Louis Creed away from an unhallowed burial ground. All of the phantasmagoria are Kings' from his novel, King loves to embroider whether the premise supports it or not. It works in his novels, as we're dealing with capital E Evil, but what works on paper doesn't always play on film. In this case I think the horror beats detract considerably from the much deeper horror inherent in the material. Play it without the phantasmic touches and it could have been even more gutwrenching. Too, Pascow's scenes are badly handled with an offputting irreverence that took me out of the movie, imposing a comic relief that undermines the tension when it most wants amping up. Another vision takes the haunting character of a sister who died of Spinal meningitis too far and robs her of the impact she'd had as a figure of guilt. Zelda was played by a man in prosthetics to appear wasted away, it works, just barely, until “she” begins to speak. And then she talks up a storm. King never did learn subtlety, one of his pitfalls has always been overplaying a good thing.

The word 'wendigo' s never mentioned in the movie. It is the novel's boogeyman and one I;d like to see explored further (Mario Bava had a great short in Black Sabbath, and Larry Fessenden has been so taken with the concept that he's done at least three stories now with vastly different treatments). What exactly a wendigo's traits are has never been pinned down, so I couldn't say with any authority that one could not extend it's evil over vast distances – say, cause a tire to blow out, and I doubt whether it could cause visions either. Every fictional world needs its own internal logic to function by, and those rules should be reasonable to that realm. King's script pushes to breaking point, and IMO just a little beyond.

On the other hand, you've got the great Fred Gwynne as neighbor Jud Crandall. What a magnetic persona! Gwynne melts right into the role, exuding country charm and homespun wisdom. Jud is under the sway of the wendigo enough to lend Louis some breathtakingly toxic misguidance, yet still has the charm to make it seem reasonable to a man who doesn't want to break his child's heart.

PS also looks great. Evocative locations and lovely photography set us right in rural Maine, a lovely little place that underscores the evil that transpires there. The pet cemetery and the Micmac burial ground (“the ground is sour!”) are perfect works of cinematic art, as inviting as they are haunting.

 

August 17^th

Silver Bullet (Daniel Attias, 1985)

(spoilers)

Now, I'm fond of the novella “Cycle of the Werewolf”. That's what it's being called in the movie's credits, a novella. It's really more of an art experiment between King and illustrator Bernie Wrightson. Twelve chapters, one for each calendar page, with a scene or two each depicting a werewolf attack on a small town and the wheelchair-bound boy who discovers the identity of the lycanthrope. It has been expanded for the screen by King himself.

Never was too fond of the movie, though. It's a genial, inoffensive thing but I wasn't impressed then and haven't seen it since until last night. Whenever the subject of werewolf films comes up this one always gets some love. So I bought a copy to get my King stash up to thirty-one movies. Apologies to those who love it, but I'm still underwhelmed.

What is the audience for this supposed to be? The tone shifts drunkenly between a G rating and an R, with no stopping in the middle for PG. We've got adolescents who act impossibly innocent for their age and hijinx like dangling snakes at girls because – ooh, ick, cooties! The girl in question, meanwhile sees the snake when she walks into it, but failed to spot the boy holding it despite his having been right in her path in a tree with no foliage to hide him. This scene is not integral to the plot, but it's the one that introduces us the tone of the film, and to the lead characters If the first scene is this bad, what's to follow? The scene tells us that the director is on autopolit. It's just a job to him. I'd say the same for the screenwriter, but...it's King?

This is followed by a scene of family discord in which we learn the parents mistreat the daughter badly to favor her younger brother, the boy in the wheelchair. Later a hard-drinking (so we're told) and supposedly irresponsible uncle enters the picture. The boy (Corey Haim as Marty Coslaw) loves him, but there's tension between the Uncle Red (Gary Busey) and Marty's mom (Red's sister Nan, played by Robin Groves. These scenes promise a maturity or even an honesty about family realationships, but no such substance ever materializes. For every scene that is well conceived, there is another that is plodding or pedestrian. If the movie were not interspersed with gore I'd have mistaken for an Afterschool Special.

Some of those fx and makeup are decent, some are not. Carlo Rambaldi is credited with the werewolf itself, and I know he can do amazing things. It doesn't look so amazing, but there wasn't much budget for him to work with. Give him the benefit of the doubt, IMDb does not list his as having supervised or worked on the actual transofmation fx and we can assume he had no part in how his creation was lit and photographed. This is one of the worst wolfmen I've ever seen. It's obvious they wanted to emulate the work of Rick Baker and Rob Bottin but fell too far short.

So does the score by Jay Chattaway, an ill-fitting work straight out of a cheap 80's Tv production. When a lynch mob sets out to hunt down the town's murderer, Chattaway goes whole-hog overbearing. Themes accompanying Marty are post-disco and brimming with Disney innocence.

The one thing that is special in the film is Gary Busey, not because he's got anything good to work with but because he's Gary Busey and eminently watchable by default. Uncle Red is a pretty lovable guy, maybe kinda reckless and rash but the film never develops him as a reason for tension. On the contrary we see that the sister thinks of Red as a potential threat because of her doting overprotection of Marty...again potentially interesting but it goes nowhere. There's a theme that wants to emerge, and it's totally on King that it doesn't. Busey lights up the screen when he's on, and he's practically the only one who does besides Megan Follows as Marty's sister Jane. She gives her role a sincerity the filmmakers couldn't be bothered to honor.

Here's the spoiler, so I'll warn you again. Completely miscast is Everett McGill as the town preacher, who is also the werewolf. You're not supposed to know that until the midpoint or later, and that's why McGill was wrong for the role. With those glowering eyes, how could he have been anything else? Wrightson's preacher looked kinder. King also tips his hat with a nightmare sequence. We should think that when Reverend Lowe dreams of his congregation turning into werewolves, it's the fears of a good man – but at that point there had been no inkling of werewolves amongst the townfolk. How would he know?

Everything else is painted in broad strokes, which does reflect the simplicity of the novella but fails the movie. The townspeople are caricatures.

I'm left wondering, did King really give this his best effort? 

August 18^th

The Mist (Frank Darabont, 2007)

No spoilers, but that ending...you just don't do that to your audience after putting them through a wringer. It's a drag. It's wrenching, and it turns what was supposed to be a fun throwback to Fifties b-movies into a drag. Plenty of people feel this way, and they blame Darabont...but, y'know, King got there first. His novella is open-ended but hopeless after letting us down with the depressing death of someone we cared about. What Darabont did was ramp an already bad ending up to unthinkable.

Oh, well, it never was King's mission to offer us comfort. The worst Darabont can be accused of is remaining faithful to King's sensibilities and tone. There's irony for you.

I watched the version that could be described as a Director's Cut, which is the same movie as the theatrical release but in black and white like those old b-movies it sprang from.

A tourist town is cut off from society by outages and a mist that descends upon them. Lovecraftian monsters lurk in the mist. Townies and vacationers wait it out trapped in a supermarket, and things deteriorate inside the store even faster than they do outside.

Darabont had already proved himself with Shawshank, and he does no less with this material. It's the sort of thing I should like, and sitting through it found it riveting an suspenseful...it's just, well, as I said: that damned ending.

King does go somewhere interesting with it, too (the screenplay is by Darabont). As the people in the market grapple with their fear and their lack of solutions, each clings to their convictions with a desperation that grows more fierce. Soon they are dividing themselves into factions. The question of religious faith arises with one fervently devout woman seizing the opportunity to proselytize at the top of her lungs. This would be Marcia Gay Harden as Mrs. Carmody, far scarier than Piper Laurie as a similar character in Carrie. I used to read posts from critics who didn't find her credible, but by now we've all seen her like on the evening news, or even met some like her. She has a seething contempt for her fellow humans, so her love for God is the love an Old Testament God that with a bloodlust. What I seldom hear mentioned is that King balances her with a Richard Dawkins-styled rationalist who utterly rejects anything that isn't pre-packaged scientific fact. This man is Brent Norton (Andre Braugher), whose mind snaps shut against eyewitness testimony, physical evidence he refuses to examine, and even the death of those around him. Of the two Carmody is clearly the far greater danger, and the script never tries to imply that religious zealotry and rationalism are equivalents, but both get people liked in The Mist. Rationalists can be insufferable and some sow anger, but they don't have religious judgmentalism to peddle. Hand that to a frightened people and they look for someone to wield it against.

On a technical point The Mist is noteworthy for utilizing CG for its monsters. CG can be dodgy, and practical fx have a solidity to them that is more satisfying, but I have to admit I'm not a big critic of computer-generated imagery in films. Every generation of movie fx has suffered its share of unconvincing work, including the great stop-motion animators of the kind of monsters that inspired this movie. That said, the CGI in The Mist looks much better in b&w than it does in the color release.

August 19^th

It (Tommy Lee Wallace, 1990)

Thirty years ago a group of seven close childhood friends saved Derry, Maine from a devouring psychic entity. Now It is awake again and they are reuniting to finish the job.

I don't think I have anything to say about the two-part TV movie adaptation, critically. Honestly, I love the thing too much to see it objectively. That's the book and movie both. It's not King's most challenging work but it's his most rewarding for me personally...and that's how it feels, personal. Ha! Yes, right, personal to just me and thousands of other Constant Readers!

The first thing that hooked me was the premise, the closest thing in book form I've read that plays like my favorite horror movie Phantasm (if I were forced at gunpoint to choose just one). It's science fiction, it's horror, it is fueled by the warmth of its characters bonds...it runs on dreamlike occurrences. It, an alien entity that fell to Earth thousands of years ago, awakes every thirty years stranded here and hungry, feeding off the fear of the animals it kills above ground. That includes the humans whose minds it invades with hallucinations, getting them to kill each other and taking a few on its own in corporeal form. Children are its favorite prey, as their imaginations are the most expansive.

Second was the scope of the book. I'm a sucker for epics in which to lose myself, and the paperback of It was over a thousand pages. What bliss! Slow reader that I am, it zipped by at a hundred pages a day. I couldn't put it down.

Third was King's winning card – his ability to evoke memories of childhood, his endless capacity to set a scene and create a world. The world in It is Derry, seen through the ages. Those inhabitants we spend time with are schoolkids. Their lives are not unique to them, to me, or to anyone reading...they're just like anyone. They had the same friends, the same playing grounds tucked away from the adult world, the same inner lives they kept private from all but each other, the same anxieties their parents didn't get. They shared the same pop culture landscape, those movies and songs and brand names that king is constantly namechecking. The kids in Derry are a continent away from me, in an era a decade ahead of my time, and still reading the book felt like home. King is that good. I identified with shy, awkward Ben Hanscom loving his Beverly but never able to tell her while she dated someone else. My Bev was a girl named Kris. Reading It, I cast us both in the book. My Barrens was a little place along Johnson Creek and the RR tracks where I went with a friend or two who wanted to catch crawdads, Just a little corner not meant for kids but tucked away from notice.

The book and movie are both told by dividing the two eras: the past, and the present. Most people find the first segment to be the more compelling. That makes sense, as even though the rich texture of King's world cannot survive the transition to the screen his characters and their bonds do. How the Loser's Club comes together is heartful stuff played by a cast (a young Seth Green among them) so likable and up against such odds that you can't help rooting for these underdogs.

Some of the audience are lost by the adult's stories and reunions, but I found only the final ten minutes of the movie to be flat. In fact, I kept misting up seeing them deal with where their lives have gone (mostly success, but not without some of their troubles still playing havoc) and rediscovering their memories. Literally, that – a pet peeve of mine where it concerns King, but I'll get to that. The adult friends are played by one of those great ensembles you only get in made-for-TV movies, the star-driven vehicles albeit that said stars are all (or mostly) from the realm of television. Richard Thomas, Harry Anderson, Annette O'Toole, Dennis Christopher, Tim Reid, John Ritter, and Richard Masur play the Loser's Club, each cast to their strengths. Meanwhile, Its most enduring corporeal projection of itself is a clown calling itself Pennywise, for which the mercurial Tim Curry has been chosen. Curry disappears into the role. When I think of the movie in hindsight, he comes to mind as the kind of hammy schtick that Freddy became in the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels – Freddy the icon, not Fred Krueger the sincere characterization of evil featured in the first two films of that series. Pennywise is all tics and mannerisms, all voice and teeth. And yet while I'm actually watching, damn if it isn't effective. He's a real presence you can't take your eyes off. It wasn't what I imagined when reading the novel...and is strong enough to have supplanted whatever that was, as I can no longer remember it.

It was directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, and acolyte of John Carpenter's. Wallace also directed the underrated (and half-baked, scriptwise) Halloween III. He does a good job of it... the tone of the film is straightfaced but TV-breezy, not a bit of realism to it. Given the material I don't think a realist approach would have convinced many people. It;s not heavy stuff, either, its pure entertainment. No central theme emerges...you've got the value of teamwork and friendship, the fear of citizens to get involved or intervene when they see others in crisis, and the power of spiritual faith – any kind of spiritual faith, King keeps it wide open. That was a stroke of luck for me, as an atheist, I didn't have to feel excluded. The Stand was a troubling experience but that's another discussion. All of this is touched upon but none of it is especially stressed but for the “we can do it together” message and how invaluable it is to have friends who've got your back. The faith held by the Loser's Club – that It exists, that the imagination it feeds off can also be it's Kryptonite - relies on intuition and poetic logic...isn't that true of all faith?

Oh – the pet peeve. This is in the way of an aside and not the note I want to end this review on, but a great many of King's supernatural stories involve his characters developing amnesia at the ends of their travails. To King this must seem like some kind of truth, understandably so (see my writeup of Stand by Me). It happened to him, not the result of anything paranormal but certainly of trauma. Even so, I hate it. It drives me nuts when he does that! What a lousy thing to do to your characters, that you should rob them of the answers they fought so hard for, the resolutions, the understandings. And if you've got your readers to invest in the characters, then what a terrible thing to do to them as well! I'm as much into mysteries as anyone. On the other hand, I'm not a fan of being left in the dark.

I mentioned the finale. No spoilers, but King's finale was so phantasmic as to be unfilmable. It involved a near-2001-esque trip through dimensions involving a couple of ancient, incorporeal beings locked in the subterranean chambers of Derry, and the Loser's Club wielding the strength of their subconscious minds as much as their intuitively chosen weapons. Any attempt at putting this on screen was going to be dubious. Doing it on a TV movie budget was a losing move before the contracts were even signed. What appears on screen feels like a minor scene or even an afterthought, not a resolution worthy of the three hours that built up to it. But, ya know, I don't care. It doesn't diminish the story that I've taken to heart.

August 20^th

Misery (Rob Reiner, 1990)

(spoilers for the novel)

When it comes to Misery I'm dead wrong. Rob Reiner is right.

Popular genre novelist Paul Sheldon is snowbound and body-broken in the care of a fan. Annie Wilkes is an even bigger fan of his character Misery Chastain. Annie is more than a little unstable, and she's about to go off the deep end.

Now here's a case that should be argued more when it comes to the touchy subject of adaptations. People endlessly debate what makes for a “good” adaptation of a King story, with The Shining the most contentious and oft-argued example. Kubricks' film is said to have “changed” the story altogether, but that's largely untrue – what it really changes is the way in which we perceive the film: intimately with the novel, objectively from Kubrick. It alters our response to the story rather than altering the story itself. Extraneous details are omitted, the ending is altered...the story is there.

I bring that up because Rob Reiner did much the same thing with Misery and yet no one speaks of it. Kubrick gets derided but Reiner, doing the same thing, does not. Like Kubrick, Reiner retains the story intact and so is faithful to the material in that regard, but he drastically alters the framing of the story and the tone of it, and in so doing he alters the way we take it in. Why is one director chastised but the other not? Kubrick's film was never a please-everybody kind of movie whereas Misery is pure fun.

Part of what makes the novel Misery so riveting is the way in which the story is framed. We are stuck Paul Sheldon – in his sickbed, then his room, then the confines of the Wilke's home once he is able to sneak out of his room. His POV is ours, always. When Annie is away, w live in the terrifying uncertainty of her return. We don't know if anyone is still searching for Paul. The only escape is through escapism – one of the book's central themes, the power and importance of indulging in fantasy. Paul is forced by Annie to write a new novel featuring Misery Chastain, and passages from his work are the only ones in which we are not locked in Annie's grip. That's no arbitrary choice of King's , the master of terror knows what he's putting us through.

This makes the novel's finale the scariest part of the book. It's a brilliant piece though it relies on the “killer isn't really dead” cliché that's riddled horror cinema since the end of the Seventies. Paul has been discovered by the authorities who are in the process of rescuing him from the Wilkes house. We – and Paul – should feel a profound sense of relief...but the body of presumably dead Annie is nowhere to be found. As Paul, still physically helpless, is carried out of the building, it is the first time in the novel that we ourselves have been outside it. We are open and exposed, no longer any shelter. It's the most frantic, panic-stricken moment in a novel filled with them. It only works because King never left Paul's POV.

That was a great read. I used to fancy the idea of being a director and would film books in my head as I read them. When I read Misery, I also though 'whoever makes a movie of this is going to fuck it up. They're going to open the narrative.' Sure enough, Reiner opened the narrative. He constantly cuts between Paul, Annie on her own, and the ongoing effort to locate the missing author.

So why is no one complaining? Not even me. I was disappointed that the movie was expanded the first time I saw it but still had to admit it was thrilling. More than thrilling, it was tremendous fun..and the greater part of that was the chemistry of the wonderful Richard Farnsworth and Frances Sternhagen as a local Sheriff and his wife, a homey but sharp couple blooming with wry wit. These two should have had their own movie all to themselves. They share a warmth and umanity that is genuine and boundless in stark contrast to the film's other couple-from-Hell. James Caan anchors the movie as Paul. It's not an easy performance as Paul has to keep his thinking and his terror hidden behind a facade of gratefulness to his faux guardian angel. Annie, on the other hand, is hardly if ever aware of her own inner demons. Her soul is a whirlwind of toxins. Kathy Bates rightly won an award for her performance – outwardly sweet and cloyingly innocent, she's gone beyond passive-aggression to sudden binges of lunatic anger and bouts of severe depression. Walking a minefield is bad enough, imagine trying to navigate one in which the bombs are also on timers and will go off sooner or later whether you step on one or not. Even playing nice, Paul's time is running out.

This is harrowing stuff, punctuated in the novel only by scenes of torture and Paul's writing. It's unrelenting. I think I can say without much ego that the film I had in mind would have been more frightening and more brutal than what Reiner made, and now that I've seen Reiner's I'm certain that his instincts were a hell of a lot better. I would have left audiences miserable. Audiences would have turned away and rightly so. Reiner gives us the breathing room to let us accept this unacceptable, terrifying situation and not turn away. This story needs Farnsworth, Sternhagen, and screenwriter William Goldman's wit. It isn't Reiner alone that earns credit fort making the right choices. Goldman has a long history of brilliant scripts flowing with delightful dialog. Most of what passes between Annie and Paul is King's, the Sheriff-snd-wife's repartee is pure Goldman.

August 21^st

The Tommyknockers (John Power, 1993)

(spoilers for book and movie)

If The Tommyknockers had been an original work it might be slightly better regarded today as an average TV movie, a creepy and sometimes daft bit of schlock. I'm tempted to say that the source novel isn't one of King's best, but maybe that's just my own taste. Some of it works, some of it doesn't. Nothing much about this adaptation works, the horror and premise having been defanged and. The movie's producers aimed for mediocrity and got just that.

Having a personal crisis, poet and alcoholic Jim “Gard” Gardner seeks out out his love and longtime friend Bobbi Anderson in her home town Haven in Maine. Bobbi has a secret: she has discovered and is excavating an ancient structure in the woods behind her property. The more she digs, the more the citizens of Haven begin to change in strange and alarming ways...

The ancient structure, it turns out, is a flying saucer that crashed thousands of years ago (and how 'bout that, right next to Derry, Maine!). King's novel is a mixed bag of themes beginning with a fear of nuclear power plants and irradiation. I'm with King on that, no one has ever built a truly safe nuclear power plant – we lie to ourselves that we have and try to build more. The technology is getting beyond our ability to control, another theme of the book. That latter is represented by the townfolk undergoing a sudden rash of technical genius that enables them to build extraordinary devises from household goods, which they put to no good purpose – technological advance without the scruples or sense to use it wisely. These scenes permeate the story along with psychotic fits and hallucinations. Many of he devices come across as whimsical whatever use they are put to. One of the movie's problems is that nothing about it says 'whimsy”, so the inventions themselves seem to come right out of some other movie entirely – something frothier. Plopped into this grim atmosphere they reek of the idiotic. As these episodes are meant to be no small proportion of the movie's scares, it hurts that they are handled so ineptly. One woman goes to a lot of trouble and ingenuity only to have her TV set electrocute her philandering husband, and we have to ask whether it wouldn't have been easier to just throw a radio into the bathtub with him.

It doesn't help that the characters are poorly drawn and the dialog cringeworthy. Maybe if we were the slightest bit interested in them or could invest emotionally...? But, no. Some good actors are involved but can do nothing with the material

This wave of know-how is but one symptom of a radical makeover affecting nearly every citizen of Haven. At first they resemble victims of radiation sickness, drawn and haggard, their teeth falling out. That's as far as the film goes with them, stupidly excising the biggest horror beat of the novel. I'll get to that. Their condition is shared by Bobbi and it does triple duty as yet another parallel, to being strung out as an addict. Gard is doing his best to recover while Bobbi is so high off the saucer that she cannot see that her very body is deteriorating. She has it the worst, being the first and closest to the craft, but the rest follow. The disappearance of a young boy leads to a search of the woods, whereby Bobbi's secret is out. We are left to work out for ourselves that this was likely a machination of the buried entity, the goal of which was to get itself a larger workforce digging it up.

I suppose you could say there is something here too about alienation, because in the novel the transformations of the townspeople completes itself with the humans literally becoming aliens, a replacement crew for the ones that died eons ago. Imagine that, the ship itself as invader raiding worlds for personnel to maintain itself. Now, that was a hurdle for any filmmaker – the fx of the day were not sufficient to pull off the nauseating mutations per King's description, especially not on a TV movie budget. A hurdle, but not an insurmountable one. The filmmaker's solution was not to even bother, instead reviving the long-dead aliens and rendering the town's illness moot. Bad, bad call, that was the novel's most potent sting. Anyway, I'm wanting to find some commentary in this about the way communities find their own personalities, that we ascribe to the spirit of the locale (a theme that King has explored often), but I can't find it in this empty script. Maybe if I reread the book it will be there. “The land casts a spell. It kinda gets to ya.”

While I can't recommend the movie, I still like it on some base level. It's the kind of movie I grew up on, a mix of cheap TV fare and throwback to Fifties B-movies dealing in alien invasions and nuclear mutations scares. It's enlivened by the two leads, Jimmy Smits and Marg Helgenberger as Gard and Bobbi, both likable and charismatic actors and the only two involved who make their roles engaging.

On a side note, Haven was also the setting of King's novel The Colorado Kid, which I have not yet read. That gave rise to the TV series Haven, which I have not yet seen. I'm suddenly curious to find out how that works, since he killed off the town first time out.