Christine

 

John Carpenter, 1983, USA

Screenplay: Bill Phillips 

 

 Made at the time where Stephen King adaptations were everywhere. This is early John Carpenter, which is such a great, iconic run (everything up to ‘They Live’: that’s where I start to part ways although that is much loved and I understand that the 80s wrestling machismo, however tongue-in-cheek, isn’t quite my thing). Carpenter homage is  notable trend in the current horror generation, and for good reason. ‘Christine’ comes after ‘The Thing’, which is now considered undefeatable but at the time was quite critically loathed, so ‘Christine’ seems a much safer, cosier bet as a follow-up.

John Wyndham was criticised as “cosy catastrophe” by Brian Aldiss, which has a very specific meaning, but I would venture that King is a general source of “cosy horror” in that he offers up the comfort of genre tropes, nostalgia and reassuring sentiment. Not always, of course, but the guy has written so much that he’s touched base on practically every horror nuance, inadvertently or not (‘Storm of the Century’ is certainly not reassuring, for example). With Kubrick ‘The Shining’ and Darabont’s ‘The Mist’, these adaptations find other and/or extended ways to push the material (‘The Mist’ takes from the Grand Guignol play ‘The Ultimate Torture’ for its kick).  In ‘Danse Macabre’, King writes that horror is essentially conservative in intent, but that isn’t even the default for the gamut of his own oeuvre (he’s written so much, etc). However, the subtext of ‘Christine’ would seem to be “don’t try to strike out on your own from your overbearing parents or you’ll be sorry”, which is undeniably conservative.

‘Christine’ offers King nostalgia for bygone eras – the Fifties, the Seventies: neatly bridged by Buddy Holly’s ‘Not Fade Away’ segueing into Tanya Tucker’s cover – and that King staple of outside “Evil Forces” corrupting an already vulnerable or unstable victim. It’s a tale that drools nostalgia for the 57 Plymouth Fury and the rock’n’roll hits it uses appositely for one-liners. Despite the wealth of Golden Oldies, it’s George Thorogood and the Destroyers ‘Bad to the Bone’ that has always meant this film for me. [I hadn’t seen ‘Christine’ since my teens, but that opening riff, even as a work colleague’s ringtone, means I’m always reminded of this film.]

In this case, a possessed car corrupts poor Arnie Cunningham, a bullied nerd who just wants to gain some independence. It doesn’t quite hit the heights of Carpenter’s best, but it does have that wonderful Carpenter framing and iconic electronic musical stings. There’s a reason why the current generation of genre filmmakers seem obsessed with eighties’ style, Carpentereque scores and why the director has had a successfully latterday run as a live musician. The moments when Christine rebuilds herself are the hooks and highlights.

But it also has Keith Gordon’s dedicated portrayal of Arnie Cunningham, finding nuances from Arnie’s transition from put-upon nerd to homicidal asshole in an arc that’s been greatly reduced from its source, a characteristically King brick of a book. If the bad guys are 2D nasty bullies, what’s also interesting is that despite the crude guy-talk, the film doesn’t objectify love interest Leigh (Alexandra Paul), and that Arnie’s transformation runs parallel to his jockish best pal Dennis’ (John Stockwell) downfall as a football star. In fact, it’s Arnie and Dennis’ friendship which is the true emotional and touching core of the film. This is not the typical broad strokes of eighties high school characterisation; and however nostalgic King may be, it’s never quite rose tinted.

But no, it doesn’t solve that essential problem that killer vehicle films have to overcome: Christine has to rely on people just not getting out of her way or getting in her at unusual moments to get her kills. The best kill in the film is Christine squeezing in the narrow dead-end. But otherwise, the performances and Carpenter’s recognisable aesthetic make for a solid if – by this director’ standards – a straightforward, enjoyable, slick if somewhat unremarkable horror.

 

Different Seasons - Stephen King

“Different Seasons”

Stephen King 

This is the Stephen King collection of four stories superficially set around the seasons. Two novels, a novella and a short story: ‘Rita Heyworth and the Shawshank Redemption’, ‘Apt Pupil’, ‘The Body’ and ‘The Breathing Method’. Two are best known for being adapted into some people’s favourite films. 

There really isn’t any redemption in ‘Rita Heyworth and the Shawshank Redemption’. A guy who was wrongfully incarcerated escapes prison and his friend goes to him after serving his sentence. It makes for a cool title but where’s the redemption? The same kind of faux-poignancy afflicts the story’s by-line: “Hope springs eternal”. The hope to escape? But the escape seems like something Andy worked for over years and not quite a hope, which is surely something more abstract? I guess he would have hoped his digging away would lead to an exit, but…? And what would the narrator Red hope for? To meet Andy again after getting out? Again, it sounds nice but… doesn’t quite develop convincingly.

What we do have with ‘Shawshank’ is an enjoyable study of character and context. The description of the jail and its frictions are well conveyed. A huge ingredient and appeal of King is his style of some-guy-just-shooting-the-shit which makes him immensely readable. Sure, his skill and literary merit can be argued, but he is very easy to engage with and that is formidable, whatever his weaknesses… and my observations make it clear that I often find him just as wanting and annoying as compelling. 

But, as far as ‘Shawshank’ goes: tales of put-upon protagonists outwitting everyone else are always winning. Despite its ingredients of gang-rape and notes on prison corruption, it all succumbs to sentimentality which doesn’t quite feel warranted. There is a sense that all the ingredients don’t quite gel, that the whole doesn’t quite exceed the storytelling and ultimately that the sentimentality is a little like floral wrapping paper on a rusty cudgel. But the storytelling is gripping with numerous memorable scenes and characters. Although Rita Heyward isn’t even the relevant poster.

‘Apt Pupil’ doesn’t possess any sentimentality. It’s the tale of a couple of sociopaths trying to outwit one another. A teenager discovers that an old local man is in fact a former Nazi concentration camp general in hiding and blackmails him to tell stories about that experience. Just the “gooshy” stuff. 

What’s most striking is how King depicts an all-American boy, a thorough success and virtual prodigy, as an all-smiling sociopath, a budding serial- and spree-killer with a deep fascination for fascism. He’s too smart and introverted for the scruffy anger of, say, the Proud Boy movement, but we get the idea: he’s a wannabe Nazi. Grady Hendrix says of the young character: “[Bowden is] just an All-American kid (as King tells us repeatedly, as if type is a substitute for character) who turns out to be rotten to the core.” Meanwhile, the adults have no idea of the monster in their midst. But I see this as the root social criticism. 

It’s the most unforgiving story in the collection. The tale of the impasse reached by these sociopaths is not undermined or embellished by digressions or sentimentality: they wouldn’t feel right here. There is a deceptively protracted feel, as it takes place over years, but it’s all tightly wound. Aside from King needing to introduce another character later on to make things move on, it avoids succumbing to a trite showdown and it remains upsetting and chilling to the very last line. 

‘The Body’ is, of course, the source for Rob Reiner’s ever-popular coming-of-age hit film, ‘Stand by Me’ (1986). Actually, the change in title can be seen as indicative of the film weighting towards the nostalgic and sentimental. Not that King’s original doesn’t have these elements, but it’s a far more clear-headed and sad affair. It is, after all, a tale of four boys thinking that going to see a kid’s body will be an adventure. All around are backstories of abuse, neglect, bullying and abundant cruelty to give the lie to rose-tinted nostalgia. This is not a safe world for the kids. Indeed, despite the I-am-a-writer intrusions – the self-reflexive kind that can made King tiresome – there is the sense that narrator Gordon doesn’t quite know himself why this particular childhood memory is so dominant and defining for him. After all, it isn’t like he continued to be close to all the gang except Chris. Like ‘Shawshank’, it’s told from the perspective of a somewhat adoring friend – in this case, Gordon’s observations about Chris. Unlike ‘Shawshank’ that seems to lunge for the sentimental to make up for what it lacks, ‘The Body’ has natural pathos in abundance.  

The shortest piece is ‘The Breathing Method’ which is a different kettle of fish altogether, with King evoking a more traditionally Gothic and macabre atmosphere. Like Peter Straub’s ‘Ghost Story’, it’s set around a group of men getting together to tell tales. The narrator is somewhat desperate to join this somewhat abstract group (another men-only scenario, elbowing out the womenfolk) and there are hints of something uncanny at the edges. But its centre is one of the men’s tales of a patient and when she gives birth. It’s a full-bodied set-piece where horror, exploitation, pathos and black humour come to a heady and unforgettable peak. You can almost feel King gleeful smirk as he engineers this and, if the other tales nod at the genre, this is the one that leaves no doubt he is a horror writer. All dressed up in the civility of gothic pretension it may be, but this centrepiece is pure grand guignol.  

This is all a Big Boys Affair where women don’t get much of a look-in. They’re mostly murdered in ‘Shawshank’ and "cunts" in ‘Apt Pupil’ and ‘The Body’. Although ‘The Breathing Method’ focuses on a strong female, she is seen through male reportage; a doctor who stops to mansplain how the pain of childbirth is just female delusion. And this could be seen as a feature of character if there wasn’t a dearth of female representation elsewhere. One of the last insights into ‘The Body’s main protagonist Gorden is that he won’t cry in front of his wife because “It would have been pussy.” It’s probably meant to be a call-back to his adolescence when as boys they would call each other “pussies” all the time, but considering how he earlier chastised his younger self for the immature misogyny of his own writing, this doesn’t hint too much at a personal growth. 

King is immensely readable here and the shorter lengths keeps in check his waffling and digressions, to sharpen the focus. The digressions of ‘Shawshank’ colour the context and are riveting. ‘Apt Pupil’, although the longest, is lean and mean without recourse to rambling detours; even when it seemingly loses concentration to divert to a teacher character, this ultimately has purpose. ‘The Breathing Method’ is the kind of story that has plenty of accommodation for lacunas and irresolution. ‘The Body’ is the greatest offender with its insistent subplot of a young author and The Magic of WritingTM trying to pull attention away from the main tale. I for one have never been fond of the dragged-out pie contest barforama from the film and it isn’t much better here, superfluously filling out fictional-within-a-fiction minor characters that really don’t need the attention. There are plenty of secondary characters of interest in the main tale. And the chapter that’s just a presentation of Gordon’s first writing, adjacent to the main tale, smacks of self-indulgence and the whiff of ego (at least the pie contest is part of the main story). But there is often that with King’s writer characters… and there are lot of them in his considerable output.

I read ‘Different Seasons’ for a book group with a people that, aside from one lady, didn’t read horror fiction at all; but despite its nasty and crude edges, the general consensus was that King was a good writer that drew you in, even if he wasn’t usually your thing. I hadn’t read King for a long, long time, but ‘Different Seasons’ is evidence of how he has a natural gift for popularist fiction, and of both how readable and flawed he is. It’s a good one to convert the curious.  

Salem's Lot

Tobe Hooper, 1979, USA

  

This scared the hell out of me as a kid, so I will always have a soft spot for this Stephen King adaptation that tells of a small American town gradually destroyed by vampires. This deterioration is watched by typical King heroes: a successful novelist and a teenage horror fan. Central is the old Madsen house with a gruesome, haunted reputation and the arrival of antique dealer Straker (James Mason) and his employer Barlow (Reggie Nalder). Overnight, the vampire is delivered to the quiet town in a crate and the deaths begin.

With two genre heavyweights Stephen King and director Tobe Hooper at the helm, expectations were high for this adaptation. The general consensus amongst critics appears to be that King’s novel suffered from the limitations of television, but the novel was never particularly explicit in its horrors. It was more interested in the menace, in atmosphere and weakening community. In this way, the TV film format

seems ideal for King’s picket fence society threatened by the supernatural. The wide cast of secondary yet vividly drawn characters that populate King’s fiction often offer a soap-like backdrop, yet there may be something to Peter Nicholls’ accusation of David Soul being a “predictably wet bit of television casting.”¹ It is up to James Mason to deliver the acting delights in a nicely ambiguous turn as Straker. And it is also true that the moments of horror  that crescendo to a freeze-frame might hint at CBS censorship more than subtlety and yet the lack of gratuitousness doesn’t make any less scary. The same year, John Carpenter’s ‘The Fog’ created a similar community under supernatural threat horror, yet also demonstrated how a film may be both bloodless without compromising its violence too far.

Hooper’s ‘Salem’s Lot’, as Kim Newman has written, is a “respectable rather than devastating” adaptation that lives under the “baleful shadow of ‘Psycho’.”2 He identifies the more typically Hooperesque moment as that when a husband catches his wife and her lover and humiliates them with a shotgun. The feel of this scene - with the over-wrought facial distress and violence implied by editing rather than by outcome - is certainly more akin to ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ than the rather plain direction elsewhere (don’t forget that ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ was relatively bloodless too). For a moment, it seems as if it might transcend the Seventies TV demeanour and head into the  grimness of the period’s more notorious horrors. Nevertheless, there is enjoyment in its long running time and slow build-up of character and incident that is closer to the novel than the 112 minute film that was subsequently edited from the miniseries.

‘Salem Lot’s greatest improvement upon the novel is in its use of the Glick brother vampires. In the novel, what mostly happens off-stage and is known through exposition is here given an unforgettable visual rendition. The vampire boys float outside windows, scraping on the glass, demanding to be let in. It is perhaps the film’s most memorable and chilling image, although certainly not it’s only one. I remember as a young teenager watching ‘Salem’s Lot’ and being terrified, not only by the vampires-at-the-window moments, but also at the graveyard cliffhanger and the Mr Barlow reveal. I remember being excited that it was on television a second time (this was in the prehistoric era where there was no guarantee such a thing would ever surface again) and watching from behind a cushion because I knew it was going to be scary.

The film’s greatest deviation from the novel is in its conception of Barlow the vampire. Hooper has opted to make Barlow a homage to Max Shreck’s ‘Nosferatu’: he is no longer the pretentious, condescending orator of the book; he is now primal and animalistic with Straker now his mouthpiece. Barlow’s entrance is another unexpected shocker, but his appearance gains the story little more than monster-make up which is nevertheless a strong defining image. It is at its best when Barlow invades an ordinary domestic dinner scene. Its ambience and shock moments certainly worked on me again and I am sure this particular mini-series traumatised a generation of horror fans. Those Glick brothers…

In many ways, ‘Salem’s Lot’ is a successful King adaptation. Despite its TV conventions, ‘Salem’s Lot’ manages some rawness, black humour and shocks. It is at least frightening and atmospheric and has aged better than the televised and fondly remembered version of ‘It’. It’s a long way down from here to ‘The Lost Boys’. There is no vampire genre deconstruction as in Romero’s ‘Martin’, but ‘Salem’s Lot’s greatest strength is in allowing the vampires the vivid visual set-ups and juxtapositioning them against the otherwise naturalistic framing. Vampires sitting in rocking chairs and coming to life on autopsy tables will still provide the delights for genre fans. I will always be fond of this TV shocker.

·         Larry Cohen made A Return to Salem’s Lot, another television horror in 1987, but its relationship to the original novel and film was highly tenuous.

·         The 2004 remake of ‘Salem’s Lot’ with Rob Lowe and Donald Sutherland is slicker but it does nothing to improve the story.

·         Stephen King’s anthology ‘Night Shift’ contains a short story that vaguely follows up ‘Salem’s Lot’ called ‘One for the Road’. Typical of the collection, it is a slight, only mildly satisfying short.

*

1              Peter Nicholls,  Fantastic Cinema: an illustrated survey, (Ebury Press, London, 1984) pg. 145.

²               Kim Newman, Nightmare Movies: a critical guide to contemporary horror films, (Harmony Books, New York, 1988) pg. 54.

Salem's Lot

Tobe Hooper, 1979, USA

 

 

Adaptation of Stephen King’s novel has a small town gradually destroyed by vampires. Its deterioration is watched by typical King heroes: a successful novelist and a teenage horror fan. Central is the old Madsen house with a gruesome, haunted reputation and the arrival of antique dealer Straker and his employer Barlow. Overnight, the vampire is delivered to the quiet town in a crate and the deaths begin.

With two genre heavyweights at the helm with Stephen King and director Tobe Hooper, expectations were high for this adaptation. The general consensus amongst critics appears to be that King’s novel suffered from the limitations of television, but the novel was never particularly explicit in its horrors. It was more interested in the menace and weakening community. In this way, the TV film format seems ideal for King’s picket fence society threatened by the supernatural. The wide cast of secondary yet vividly drawn characters that populate King’s fiction often offer a soap-like backdrop, yet there may be something to Peter Nicholls’ accusation of David Soul being a “predictably wet bit of television casting.”¹ It is up to James Mason to deliver the acting delights in a nicely ambiguous turn as Straker. And it is also true that the moments that crescendo to a freeze-frame might hint at CBS censorship more than subtlety. The same year, John Carpenter’s ‘The Fog’ created a similar community under supernatural threat horror, yet also demonstrated how a film may be both bloodless without compromising its violence too far.

 

Hooper’s ‘Salem’s Lot’, as Kim Newman has written, is a “respectable rather than devastating” adaptation that lives under the “baleful shadow of ‘Psycho’.”2 He identifies the more typically Hooperesque moment as that when a husband catches his wife and her lover and humiliates them with a shotgun. The feel here, with the over-boiled facial distress and violence implied by editing rather than by outcome, is certainly more akin to ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ than the rather plain direction elsewhere (don’t forget that ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ was relatively bloodless too). Nevertheless, there is enjoyment in its long running time and slow build-up of character and incident that is closer to the novel than the 112 minute film that was subsequently edited from the miniseries.

 

‘Salem Lot’s greatest improvement upon the novel is in its use of the Glick brother vampires. In the novel, what mostly happens off-stage and is known through dialogue exposition is here given an unforgettable visual rendition. The vampire boys float outside windows, scraping on the glass, demanding to be let in. It is perhaps the film’s most memorable and chilling image, although certainly not it’s only one. I remember as a young teenager watching ‘Salem’s Lot’ and being terrified, not only by the vampires-at-the-window moments, but also at the graveyard cliffhanger and the Mr Barlow reveal. I remember watching it a second time from behind a cushion because I knew it was going to be scary. Its ambience and shock moments certainly worked on me and I am sure this particular mini-series traumatised a generation of horror fans.

The film’s greatest deviation from the novel is in its conception of Barlow the vampire. Hooper has opted to make Barlow a homage to Max Shreck’s ‘Nosferatu’; he is no longer the pretentious, condescending orator of the book: Straker is now his mouthpiece. Barlow’s entrance is another unexpected shocker, but his appearance gains the story little more than monster-make up, but nevertheless a strong defining image. It is at its best when Barlow invades an ordinary domestic dinner scene.

In many ways, ‘Salem’s Lot’ is a successful King adaptation. Despite its TV conventions, ‘Salem’s Lot’ manages some rawness, black humour and shocks; it is at least scary and atmospheric and has aged better than the televised and fondly remembered version of ‘It’. It is a long way down from here to ‘The Lost Boys’. There is no vampire sub-genre deconstruction as in Romero’s ‘Martin’, but ‘Salem’s Lot’s greatest strength is in allowing the vampires the greater visual set-ups and juxtapositioning them against the otherwise naturalistic framing. Vampires sitting in rocking chairs and coming to life on autopsy tables will still provide the delights for genre fans.

 

*

·        - Larry Cohen made A Return to Salem’s Lot, another television horror in 1987, but its relationship to the original novel and film was highly tenuous.

 

·        - Stephen King’s anthology ‘Night Shift’ contains a short story that vaguely follows up ‘Salem’s Lot’ called ‘One for the Road’. Typical of the collection, it is a slight, only mildly satisfying short.

*

[1]               Peter Nicholls,  Fantastic Cinema: an illustrated survey, (Ebury Press, London, 1984) pg. 145.

²               Kim Newman, Nightmare Movies: a critical guide to contemporary horror films, (Harmony Books, New York, 1988) pg. 54.

 

DESPERATION

Mick Garris - USA - 2006

The first half is fair enough, with the demonic sheriff rounding up random people who just happen to be passing through his middle-of-nowhere town called Desperation, jailing them for some undoubtedly demonic purpose.. Once the victims are out of the jail, the whole thing comes to a screeching halt for an old man to spout exposition, then for an tediously evangelical and pious child to gush born-again Stephen Kingisms. King has said that horror is conservative because it is about the fight between Good and Evil. Actually, the fight between Good and Evil is the Conservative view of horror which takes for granted the existence of such polar forces. Usually this involves the most banal evocation of horror, the kind fully on display in "Desperation": unholy portals, possession, random prophetic visions, possessed people acting in hammy fashion and using pop-culture references in that punning post-Jack Torence, post-Freddy Kruger manner. Evil also uses spiders and snakes and big cats and wisecracking Hellboys (yes, Ron Perlman). God uses visions of angelic dead girls and back-story conveyed in the style of old silent-movies (complete with title cards and tight editing) to pass on visions to the prophet-boy. Later, He will use personal, shameful memories served up as bad war movies. And God also sends divine soap to aid escape plans (rather than, you know, simply opening cell doors). King’s conservative vision of horror does not accommodate the far more complex, painful and truthful horror of post-Vietnam genre films such as "Night of the Living Dead", "Last House on the Left", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"… the list is well known. To top off how this incorporates all the worst traits of King’s screenplays, the hero with the spiritual dilemma is yet again a writer.

All that matters is what God wants, says the kid at one point. In such a weak offering, does King really think he has a message to spin? It’s a mess, it’s badly paced, weakly played and unimaginatively rendered, especially come the second half. If you are to look for a far more disturbing investigation of the temptation of Evil, look to another King mini-series, "Storm of the Century". It is everything that this effort is not: carefully paced and a sturdy allegory and not just a little disturbing.

CREEPSHOW

George A. Romero, 1982, USA

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"Creepshow" has a prologue that is a candidate for the best horror film opening ever. Here’s why I love it: there’s thunder crashing and lightning flashing, and the disciplinarian father is yelling at his son for having a horror comic. What an asshole. That’s Tom Atkins as the asshole and that’s Joe King - horror superstar Stephen’s son - being disciplined. The rhythm of this scene is sublime: the dad chastises and dispenses disgust in the middle ground, the mother agonises in the background, the horror fan in the foreground… the horror fan yells back! "No! It wasn’t like that!" ThunderBOOMCRACK! That’s right, call daddy on his dirty mags. SLAP! Boom! …subside… the storm quietens a little, the kid’s beaten and dad’s the power. And an asshole. He goes outside and throws the comic in the garbage. Some lost chords played by "The Phantom of the Opera" start to play... The comic is called "Creepshow." There’s demonic cackling on the wind. "That’s why God made fathers, babe. That‘s why God made fathers." There are few other film scenes whose cadence has been engraved so deeply in my memory.

Okay, so now we are upstairs and the kid is sitting up in bed, horror posters on the wall, moping. The storm is kicking up again. "I hope you rot in hell!" The curse gargles in his throat and seemingly summons an unearthly sympathiser. And now the music truly kicks in. You are listening to the apex of horror themes now: the piano chords start chiming along with the heavier pounding. There’s a corpse at the window, decayed, almost regal, maybe even melancholy. It’s a real corpse, by the way. Our little fan grins. Our little fan is pounding one fist into his other palm like he knows. He knows vengeance is his. He knows the monsters are on his side. He knows something horrible is gonna happen. Our Creep is cackling, floating into the sky on a wave of animation and beckoning us in.

In this sequence, almost the entire pledge of the horror genre is embodied. You are a fan, it says. And if you are a fan of horror, chances are you harbour a grudge or too, just like fans of action-vengeance films; and maybe you once truly believed in monsters… under the bed, in the closet, in the woods, in the school basement, wherever… and the almost-secret is as much as they scared you, you wanted to be them too. In some not-so-vague unleashed Id-like way, monsters are payback. Yes, says the creep at your window, that’s right. I’m on your side really. Come with me and I’ll show you… The expectation, the sheer promise of this opening is transcendent, thrilling, mouth-watering.

Also note that the openings of all Romero's films are equally as good, and the beginnings of both "Night of the Living Dead" and "Creepshow" both share a dark humour and nail a horror fan's expectations in particular. But there is a gleeful relish in the latter that gives that little extra shiver.

-2-

That the rest of George Romero’s "Creepshow" more-or-less lives up to this promise is surely remarkable. It is probably true that it is a fun romp at the expense of the evident intelligence of Romero’s earlier films [1], and that the stories are derivative [2] - but it is more the comedy and the stories are also stock types.

When I first saw "Creepshow"… the first four or five times I saw "Creepshow", it scared the hell out of me. I am thinking I must have seen it first when I was maybe fourteen, and I must have rented it out from an obviously unscrupulous local video store, as I was a teenager. A local newsagent doubling as a rental store, in fact, with one corner crammed full of video cases (later, I worked there). A quick search was going to give you a great, ugly, lurid enticing cover. "Creepshow" also had great promotional covers. One with a skeleton, evidently a relative of The Creep (or, as Tom Savini dubbed him, ‘Raoul’) manning the ticket booth of a cinema-slash-crypt. The other being a comic book cover with the horror kid grinningly reading his forbidden comic in bed, The Creep at the window (this time, bafflingly, apparently missing an eye). Now, as every fan knows, there are a lot of great sleazy horror covers fronting inferior films, but this isn’t one of those. It’s a great party movie too, because it’s funny and scary. I remember watching it in a group several times and just waiting for them to jump out of their skins when the hand leaps out of the grave, and when the crate monster does his thing, or chuckling at "I got my caaake," or Hal Holbrook - in a miniature master class in how to cull a laugh from thin air - trying to stifle laughter from his deplorable wife. It’s a very friendly horror film.

The comic book aesthetic is also great fun: screaming people suddenly backgrounded with lightning-shock-horror; and "meanwhiles…" and "later…" indicated with pages and frames flipping. There’s never a subtitle blaring "AARRGGHH!", but it comes close. These comic book effects are used sensibly, for segues, flashbacks and denouements. The stories are comeuppance morality tales. You know who’ll get theirs. Except for Jordy Varrell. Jordy Varrell is clearly tragedy. Stephen King’s performance is broad and gung-ho, following instructions from Romero to play it like Wile E. Coyote; but I swear when he tones it done a hair, stepping out onto the porch to see his yard and the surrounding land covered in unnatural green-glowing vegetation, I swear King manages pathos. Nunkhead Varrell is just smart enough to know he’s doomed, and therein is the tragedy. It may be the lesser of the tales, but it’s unforgettable too. "How else are you gonna do it?" Romero has said many times in defence of the hamminess of King’s performance.

But the acting really, really elevates "Creepshow" into something special. All round, a great selection of actors take it seriously… tongue-in-cheek, but seriously… bringing the archetypal characters to life. Ed Harris’ (!) funky dance. Aunt Bedelia/Viveca Lindfors stepping out of her craziness at the gateway to the graveyard to show the misery on her face. Ted Dansen’s (!!) easy manner and natural charm enabling an instant bond with our unfortunate adulterer. Leslie Nielson (!!!) having a ball as a bad guy, setting up an elaborate, diabolical double-murder. Hal Holbrook truly remarkable with the repressed fury and the humour he pulls just from the modicum of looks… Adrienne Barbeau totally despicable, broad, and yet possessed of glimmers of credibility too. E.G. Marshall gleefully hateful and swearful. Rarely does a horror film hoard a variety of great and differing performances, treating the goofy enterprise with respect.

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And then there is the soundtrack. John Harrison’s soundtrack is just about the quintessential horror score. The "Phantom of the Opera" piano refrain, the spiralling piano whirls, the chattering ghostly choir. Then, on "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Varrell", goofy all-over-the-show music that seems to be scoring a cartoon somewhere else. With "Something to Tide You Over", suddenly we get music that wouldn’t be out-of-place in any Seventies thriller. The buzzes and atonal throbs of "They’re Creeping Up On You" compliment perfectly the white emptiness of the apartment. Even now, when those first piano chords strike up, it’s like the whole relish of horror being played. The Creep cackles and the spectral choir virtually go "Wheee!" with macabre bliss.

The execution of the whole enterprise transcends the genre storylines and even though it will never be considered the classic that "Night of the Living Dead" is, in it’s own way it is just as successful. It is not only a wonderful homage to EC Comics, but a great tribute to the dark joys of horror as a genre too. It would have been great if, as Romero has hinted he wanted, he had made a series of Creepshow anthologies… imagine that: a genre where he not only gave us the "living dead" films, but a handful of fun comic-book horror homages too. I am, of course, dismissing out of hand the "Creepshow" sequels that we actually have. They are merely stock horror that show up how classy the original actually is.

As a footnote, the crate monster evidently terrified me enough to give me nightmares. In the nightmare, it chased me out of buildings, through streets... and I couldn't get rid of it. No matter how much I hid and dodged, it always found me out and I would have to flee again. Finally, I ran to trick it into following me in front of a steamroller... the steamroller struck it, rolled over it from the feet up. All the time its white furry, apish face and mouth full of dagger-like teeth stared at me. And it spoke to me to tell me that it would still come. That wherever I went, it would find me. The steamroller notwithstanding, it seems. This threat of neverending chase and horror made me wake...

[1] - Peter Nicholls, "Fantastic Cinema", (Ebury Press, London, 1984), pg. 103

[2] - Aurum Film Encyclopedia of Horror, (ed. Phil Hardy, Aurum, London, 19930 pg. 375

THE MIST

On the story "The Mist"

Stephen King adaptations are a sub-genre unto themselves, and contribute some of the very best and the very worst to horror. I always considered King a kind of Spielberg to horror literature: incredibly popular, evidently artful storyteller and almost completely hobbled by key flaws. In Spielberg it’s the infamous sentimentality; in King it’s a broad crassness and borderline narcissism. Spielberg’s crassest excesses are to all to be found distilled into his one directorial effort so far: "Maximum Overdrive", an ode to dumb popcorn horror so unapologetic, it’s like the dumbest pal you ever had throwing that popcorn at you for feature length between calling you stupid made-up names, laughing obnoxiously and telling you, himself, how dumb and unapologetic he is. That King often misjudges his own strengths is evident simply by comparing Kubrick’s "The Shining" and King’s proposed corrective, his own TV series of the same considerable novel. That King didn’t like Kubrick’s film, and purloined Kubrick’s treatment of key moments, is surely a warning sign that he can miss the point. The whole ending of "It" is also another indicator: it is quite simply one of the most jaw-droppingly bad showdowns in the history of literature.

But to the good: at his best, at his least-self-referential, King is an immensely satisfying read, with a handling of broad character types as sure-footed as Dickens. However illogical and unfocused his stories can be, however annoying and distracting some of his literary tics are, he serves up some solid and highly memorable concepts, conceits, scares and stories. He has a wide enough scope and an irrepressible desire for prose, regardless of actually how good he is. You know, he tries, and he tries hard. He is not, as the CEO of Simon & Schuster once said, "non-literature", no matter his flaws and failures. He is an erratic, unreliable but always tempting brand.

"The Mist" is the novella that opens his anthology "Skeleton Crew", a collection that is dense and full of treats (as opposed to "Night Shift", which is, by the way, a collection of badly written and under-conceived horror snippets). "The Mist" benefits from the briefer length: it lacks those aforementioned tedious tics you find in much of King’s work: for example, the italicised repetitions and catchphrases which trip you up when you are happily trying to walk on. After a violent and destructive storm, a man and his son head for the supermarket to get supplies and find themselves stranded there by a mist full of monsters from ols B-movies, Bosch and Lovecraft. But these monsters are not what King is particularly interested in: rather it is the reaction of a group of people thrown together, trapped and subjected to fear and an undefeatable enemy. The story is populated by standard King-types, all quickly drawn and immediately both broad and convincing, who are then subjected to a sequence of increasingly nasty and upsetting set-pieces. The monsters attack, hysteria sets in, the monsters attack again; some of the people make a failed attempt to get further supplies; more hysteria sets in and there are murmurings about sacrificial offerings… The story is streamlined and meanders only for visions of God and a little angst-of-the-artist: our protagonist is an artist who muses on why does it feel like dying when you realise you are only a good rather than a remarkable artist. But in this piece at least, King seems to know his limitations and leaves the piece open-ended: not in that annoying, "it’s-not-really-over" manner (e.g., "Pet Sematary"), but more like Hitchcock’s "The Birds". There is no conclusion, just a wandering out into the unknowable apocalypse.

On the film "The Mist"

Ever since the cinematic revolution of post-Vietnam unhappy and ironic endings freed by the likes of "Night of the Living Dead", "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Easy Rider", we know that the worst might happen. Frank Darabont’s adaptation of "The Mist" takes King’s concept to its logical conclusion, one that King hints at but did not bring himself to render. The original story leaves itself open-ended: "but you mustn’t expect some neat conclusion", King says, trying to offer up the inconclusive as subversive storytelling. But Darabont takes a throwaway hint, a single sentence, and runs with it. You’ll know the sentence when you read it.

The film has all the ingredients mentioned from the original story and takes its time filling out the set-pieces and turning the screws. It works as a nod to old fashioned monster movies and feels especially resonant of the bright fun-chew horror flicks of the '80s, and not in a bad way. But there are no hammy or camp inclinations here, despite the scenery-chewing of prime villainess Miss Carmody and dodgy CGI tentacles. "The Mist" is deadly serious and ultimately a more successful post-9/11 film than Shyamanlan’s "Signs". "Signs" erred on the side of ‘faith’, and "The Mist" comes like a corrective, carrying a weight of conflict-weariness and the dangerous properties of fear and fear-mongering. There are solid performances, both broad and subtle; some fun if conventional monsters; a real claustrophobia; a credible escalation of character behaviour and drama; some nasty gore; but it’s the ending that elevates "The Mist" into something more troubling and worth discussing.

In going one step further than its source material, Darabont’s "The Mist" (he is also the screenwriter) offers an escalation of bad luck, bad decisions and a sense of deeper horror than just crazy evangelical women and monsters: it offers the horror of your bad luck and your bad decisions occurring when knee-deep in fear and trying to survive an unstoppable threat, if not the end of the world.

It is from this argument - that Darabont is attempting to evoke deeper layers of horror - that I cannot agree with those criticisms that ending of "The Mist" is cheap nihilism, pointless and a cop-out. There is no big showdown, just an excursion into a real feel-bad ending, alleviated only by a beautiful, surreal vision of a gigantic God-like Lovecraftian monster wandering in the mist. The fear is that being saved may not be enough, that it may come too late. This conclusion troubles because it is unfair: in more 'spiritual' terms, they give up hope too early. When we know how test screenings and the pressure for happy, emotionally conclusive endings have ruined many films - not least, the Will Smith "I Am Legend" - Darabont’s insistence on a double-edged resolution seems audacious. I’ll venture that some commentators dismissal of Darabont’s ending stems from a refusal to accept its injustice. But, as I have already said, injustice and bad luck are deep, profound dreads, and that is why Darabont’s "The Mist" adaptation generates emotional horror from a more conventional source.

Note: firstshowing.net reports that King approves of Darabont's ending. The official statement is: "Frank wrote a new ending that I loved. It is the most shocking ending ever and there should be a law passed stating that anybody who reveals the last 5 minutes of this film should be hung from their neck until dead." -