Halloween Top 13: The Devil Made Me Do It #12: Children of the Corn (1984)

Today’s film has been stalking me for some time. Every time I put an ear out to hear what films folks might want me to write about, it was a-maize-ing how many popped off about this title. I thought there must be more to this film than the kernel of an idea that I remembered, and I have to stop these corny jokes. Turns out, Stephen King’s The Children of the Corn is a tasty horror niblet perfect for #12 on The Halloween Top 13: The Devil Made Me Do It. Over the past year, I’ve gotten to talk about a ton of Uncle Stevie’s film adaptations, and some work better than others. For every Christine or Salem’s Lot, there seems to be a number of films like Tommyknockers and the Sometimes They Come Back sequels to far outweigh the good ones.  Children of the Corn has a lot of things going for it, creepy, satanic kids, King’s fascinating story, and fields and fields of corn.


Burt and Vicky (Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton) are on their way to Seattle where Burt is due to start a new job at the hospital. Taking the scenic route to avoid the Interstates seemed like a serene way to spend the trip cross country, but not long after they enter Nebraska, their idyllic drive comes to an abrupt halt when Burt thinks he’s hit someone. Stopping the car, he finds that he did hit a kid, but one whose throat had recently been slashed open. Burt loads the kid in the car, but after failing to get any help at the nearest service station, the couple heads for the nearest town, Gatlin. What they don’t know is that three years earlier, Isaac (John Franklin) and his ginger goon Malachi (Courtney Gains) lead the children in killing off all the old people in town. Now, the kids remain sacrificing themselves to a demonic entity, “He Who Walks beyond the Rows”, on their 19th birthday. Naturally when Burt and Vicky hit town it’s all welcome wagons and streamers. Oh, wait, no, the opposite. The kids immediately start trying to kill them or capture them to sacrifice to the corn demon.

If you’ve never run through a cornfield, let me tell you, it’s not as much fun as it looks. The leaves of corn are sharp as a razor and can tear and rip at your clothes and skin. However, I suppose having violent, knife wielding, Satan worshipping kids hanging out between the stalks would make it worse. Stephen King first penned the story “Children of the Corn” for publication in Penthouse of March 1977, and it was later included in his collection of short stories Night Shift (1978). The fifteen page story bears a resemblance to the movie version only in passing. The characters of (SPOILER ALERT on almost a 35 year old story.) Burt and Vicky don’t live to see the end, there are no kids saved, and no demons are defeated. In other words it’s a Stephen King story. While I can separate my love for the story and the movie, I know Uncle Stevie doesn’t seem to be able to do the same. In 1995 he let his feelings be known in USA Today. King said, “My feeling (sic. On books turned into movies) is like a guy who sends his daughter off to college. You hope she won’t fall in with the wrong people. You hope she won’t be raped at a fraternity party, which is pretty well what happened to Children of the Corn.” Some of this disappointment has to come in how his big bad are treated. Where the TV version of his novel IT oversimplified the monster into a giant spider, the demonic anti-Christ “He Who Walks beyond the Rows” of Children of the Corn comes off like “He Who Has Seen Altered States", just some wan animation thrown on top of the frame.

While there are plenty of changes, I fail to see how the story was raped. It’s more like the filmmakers were making sweet (and slightly boring) love to every nook and cranny. I have to give some respect to writer George Goldsmith for taking the 15 pages and drawing them out into 90 minutes. The movie does occasionally drag, and one has to wonder why it took the Doctor and his wife so long to figure things out. They seem like smart people, but they insist on making dumb decisions. Overall, the film is able to entertain far beyond where King’s story left off. While I would like to see a fair, accurate representation, Goldsmith ties the film up with a dénouement which is not very Stephen King, but satisfies the viewer and, in the greatest horror tradition of the 80’s, left it wide open for a long line of sequels. Children of the Corn was the first credit for director Fritz Kirsch (who would go on to make Gor (1987) and Tuff Turf (1985) featuring a young James Spader), and he did a wonderful job capturing the isolation of those Nebraska corn fields. Also notable is the score from first time film composer Jonathan Elias. Since then Jonathan has scored Two Moon Junction (1988), Leprechaun 2 (1994), Pathfinder (2007), and recently the SyFy remake of Children of the Corn.

The leads in the film Peter Horton (Singles, Thirtysomething) and Linda Hamilton (Sarah Conner in The Terminator) are relatable, likable folks, but there doesn’t seem to be much to them. In King’s story, the couple is on rocky footing, but I never got that from the movie at all. The real stars are the kids. Though some of them aren’t even kids at all. John Franklin, who plays cult leader Isaac, was actually twenty five when he played the diminutive demonic devotee. Franklin has a condition known as Growth Hormone Deficiency leaving him appearing youthful, small of stature, and with a higher voice than most grown men. Franklin was maniacally terrific, but I have to mention one thing. If his character was not the inspiration (at least in part) for Eric Cartman on South Park, I would be highly, highly surprised. The other notable is Courtney Gains. Dude acts like a straight up creep and is clearly loving it. (And who wouldn't love yelling, "Outlander! We have your woman!" as loud as they could?) The redheaded actor would go on to appear in films such as The ‘burbs and Memphis Belle and still can be found working today as a character actor both on the small and the big screen.

In researching Children of the Corn, I also discovered the 1983 short film Disciples of the Crow also based off King's story. Made for no budget a year before the big screen version, director John Woodward (who would get a shot at a feature title seven years later with Good Girl, Bad Girl) makes a film as tense and effective as the studio managed to produce. In fact his Vicky and Burt, Eleese Lester and Gabriel Folse both first time actors still in films and TV today) actually come across more like the character in King’s story. I almost forgot to mention that Disciples of the Crow manages to get across its story in less than fifteen minutes, a much better page top screen ratio than the feature film. I have included both parts of DotC under the trailer if you’re interested in checking it out.

Children of the Corn may not mention the devil or a demon by name, though there is little doubt as to what “He Who Walks” is supposed to be, however, Satan’s work is on full display. Who else could convince kids to kill the folks that buy them iPads and Xboxes and… what’s that? Oh they’re 80’s kids. Well too imaginative for their own good probably. I could see that happening. One thing’s for sure. The only thing that could be scarier than killer kids is killer kids with an agenda to kill fueled by religious fanaticism. I’m meaning to tell you that if I lived in Nebraska when this film was released I would have moved. Somewhere quiet where there wouldn’t be a bunch of religious nuts causing a ruckus. Maybe somewhere down in Texas, I hear Waco is real nice. Well that about brings us to the end of another installment of The Halloween Top 13. I sure hope you enjoyed #12, and I’ll see you all back here tomorrow for #11! Until then, like Children of the Popcorn, I hope this review get stuck in your teeth.

Bugg Rating

The King of Wilmington - Cat's Eye (1985) Lands on Its Feet

Today is the last day of the month, and that also means it’s the last entry in The King of Wilmington. I must admit when Greg, the reader who requested this feature, asked me to do it I was hesitant. While I’ve read some King on and off through the years, I had mostly stayed away from the movies as they had a reputation for being uneven at best. So imagine my  surprise when after a month of King movies, I not only found myself wishing I had time to see more, but also picking up a novel or two to read as well. While the films I’ve viewed this month had various degrees of success achieving their cinematic goals, they all had a common thread, Stephen King’s storytelling. There’s no better example of this than today’s film, Cat’s Eye. While it was not the first of King’s stories to be shot in Wilmington (that distinction goes to Firestarter), it was the first produced by Dino De Laurentiis at the studio he had just built there after the success of the first Stephen King/ Drew Barrymore pairing.

That pairing also directly lead De Laurentiis to commission this film in the first place. In the commentary to Cat’s Eye, director Lewis Teague (who had previously adapted King’s work to the screen with Cujo) recounted how the producer asked King to write a film specifically as a vehicle for Barrymore. What King came up with combined an adaptation of two stories from his collection Night Shift along with one original story written specifically for the screen. Unlike most other anthology films, the stories would not be bridged by a “crypt keeper” type narrator, but rather by subtle appearances by Barrymore and the cat that was searching for her. Originally, the film began with a prologue that laid out the cat’s mission to begin that story arc, but in the final edit De Laurentiis and Teague determined that sequence to be too over-the-top and it was cut. Instead the movie begins with a couple of references to King’s other films with the cat evading a Cujo-like St. Bernard and almost getting run over by “Christine”. This sequence not only invites the viewer into King’s world, but it also sets the tone for the movie’s macabre humor.

The cat is soon caught by a man who takes it into a high rise building just as Dick Morrison (James Woods) is being dropped off by his friend at the door to Quitters, Inc. Morrison desperately wants to quit smoking, and his friend assures him that the company will do the job. What his friend didn’t tell him is that the company is lead by Dr. Vinny Donattii (Alan King), a mobster who takes the task of making smokers quit very seriously. Morrison soon finds himself in the program against his will, and Donattii makes the consequences of backsliding quite clear. First offence, they shock Morrison’s wife with an electrified floor while he watches. Second offence, it will be his daughter. Third offence means that his wife will be raped, and the fourth offence, well, it’s hard to keep smoking if you’re dead.

Quitters, Inc. has long been one of my favorite King short stories (Night Shift was the first King book I ever recall reading.), and as an ex-smoker, I am so glad that I just went cold turkey and didn’t get involved in a four step program where one of the steps is rape. The interplay in this story between Woods, always a favorite of mine, and comedian Alan King was priceless, and even the minor performances such as Tony Munafo (at the time one of Sly Stallone’s bodyguards) as Donattii’s henchman make Quitters Inc a solid opening. This section also features a couple of wonderful pop music cues, something I always find missing from King adaptations as pop and rock songs are so often referenced in his writing. The first of which, “Every Breath you Take”, fits in perfectly with the story’s anti-smoking theme. The song will strike most viewers as sounding a little strange. Unable to pay for the actual song by The Police, De Laurentiis paid for the publishing rights and hired a sound alike group to re-record the single. The second cue comes after Wood’s character slips for the first time. While his wife hops around on an electrified floor, the entirely incongruous song “99 Tears” by Question Mark and the Mysterions plays. This piece of 60’s pop both lightens the mood of what could be a very tense scene and at the same time gives it a sinister edge.

The next story, “The Ledge” is also culled from Night Shift, but before it begins, the cat, on the loose once again, sees Barrymore speak to it through a TV commercial for Gobbler’s cat food. From there the cat falls into the possession of Cressner (Kenneth McMillan), an Atlantic City millionaire and degenerate gambler. It seems that his wife is trying to run off with washed up tennis pro Johnny Norris (Robert Hays), and after Cressner has his goons shanghai Norris, he makes a bet with him. If Johnny can make his way around the 5 inch ledge of Cressner’s penthouse apartment, he gets money, his life, and Cressner’s wife. The alternative is falling to his death. Even though Norris worries that the millionaire will welsh on his bet, he has no choice but to accept the wager.

“The Ledge” is the shortest of the three tales in Cat’s Eye, and in my eyes, the weakest of the three. Teague did a good job of giving Norris’ predicament the proper suspense and tension creating a real sense of height within his Wilmington, N.C. studio, but the problem is that very little happens in the sequence. It seems far too predictable that Norris will make it around the ledge, and despite playing off of the fear of heights, this feeling of security for the character kind of defeats any tension that is built. The redeeming factor here is Robert Hays, who I always will associate with Airplane!, no matter where else he’s appeared.  Hayes and character actor McMillan give solid performances, but the story just doesn’t add up too much. There also was another inspired performance by a goon, this time by Sal Richards as Cressner’s right hand man Westlake, sporting a very small Donald Duck shirt.

The last story of the film “The General” was the portion which King penned specifically for Barrymore. The cat, having made its way from New York and Atlantic City, finally meets up with Barrymore’s character Amanda. She wants to take in the stray cat to protect her from nightmares she’s been having, but her mother (American Graffiti’s Candy Clark) forbids her to do so. Amanda’s father, Hugh (James Naughton), is more sympathetic and believes there might be something to the story of a troll who lives in his daughter’s wall. The only one who really believes her is the cat who Amanda names The General. However when the troll in the wall frames The General in the killing of the family’s bird Polly, Amanda’s mom packs the cat off to the animal shelter, leaving her daughter at the mercy of the child killing troll.

Cat’s Eye was Drew Barrymore’s seventh movie role, and for a ten year old actress, that is staying pretty busy. Barrymore still maintains a modicum of the cuteness she showed off in E.T. as Gertie, but her performance hints at the depths the actress would be able to plumb later in her career. (Apart from appearing in this last segment and as vision to the cat, Barrymore also appeared as James Wood’s daughter in "Quitters Inc." and as the first girl who gets menaced by the troll in the aborted prologue sequence.) De Laurentiis conceived of this project because he had a feeling that Barrymore would be a star, and I can’t say that I can fault his vision at all. While she is clearly still a child, there is a a poise to her performance that most kid actors don’t seem to grasp. Candy Clark and James Naughton turn in solid performances, but they are really merely background players in the story of Barrymore and The General.

This last sequence also features the most effects shots of the film. As Teague was working on a limited budget, everything that could be done as an in camera effect was. Under the guidance of special effects wizard Carlo Rambaldi (Deep Red, Dune), the combination of animatronics, makeup effects, and oversized set decorations gives the story both a sense of wonder and a firm enough foot in reality so as not to turn the story into a cartoon. I also want to take a moment to mention the cinematography in the entire film. Teague chose to work with legendary lensman Jack Cardiff (The Red Shoes, Rambo: First Blood Part 2), and one of the most important things in an anthology film is to give each story some originality but still maintain a narrative and visual thread. Thanks to King’s clever script, Teague’s careful direction, and Cardiff’s skill behind the camera, that is exactly what Cat’s Eye delivers.

Before I start wrapping this up, I need to take a moment for this features other namesake, Wilmington, N.C.  The story both begins and ends there, but in actuality it never leaves. Wilmington was made to double for New York in “Quitters Inc.” (which was primarily successful save for the bridge scene which looks like the Southern low country that it is) and for Atlantic City in “The Ledge” (though there are a few location shots involved here). Primarily most of the film was shot on Dino’s newly built Wilmington soundstages. Oddly, “The General”, the only story set in Wilmington, features the least outdoor locales and hence the least amount of Wilmington and the surrounding area. After watching five weeks of King films set in Wilmington, I’m starting to think that I need to make a trip there and see if I can spot any of the locations used in these films.

That brings us around to the conclusion of The King of Wilmington, and I once more would like to thank my reader, Greg, for throwing this suggestion out there. I hope he and the rest of you fine folks have enjoyed the past few weeks as much as I have, and I feel certain that this won’t be the last time we see Mr. King around the Lair. However, this coming month I have lots of great things lined up. For those of you that don’t know February is Women in Horror month, and I will be featuring a number of films that focus or feature some of my favorite horror actresses, and near the end of the month I have something really special planned. So I hope you come back and join me for all the fun in February. Until then I want to leave you with one of my favorite Stephen King quotes about horror, “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”

Bugg Rating

Deadly Doll’s Choice: Thinner (1996) - A Slip of a Picture

When Emily from the Deadly Doll’s House of Horror Nonsense chose this month’s movie swap for me, I hope she was just adding another Stephen King title to my already King heavy month and not giving me a hint. Just like about everyone else I know, I always feel like I’m carrying around a few extra pounds that I could stand to lose. Over the years I’ve tried a few different diets, promised to exercise (I can’t even pretend to have done that.), and thought long and hard about changing my eating habits. A few years back I even managed to stick to it long enough to drop thirty pounds, but since then, still some twenty or more pounds from my ultimate goal, I’ve reverted to bags of Doritos, Reece’s Cups, and, my one holdover from weight loss, twelve packs of Diet Dr. Pepper replacing my good old full sugar soda. What I never did was look for an easy way to lose weight. I didn’t try diet pills or crazy vibrating belts or gypsy curses. Did I say gypsy curses? Yep, I sure did because today’s film tells the tale of a man who follows that weight loss plan, and he drops those few extra pounds…then a few more… then a few more.

Practicing her pose for future roller coaster pictures.

Thinner was first published in 1984 under King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman. It would be the last book King published under the name until 1996, and it was the only Bachman book to feature an author’s picture on the back cover (in actuality it is a picture of King’s agent’s insurance salesman Richard Manuel). The same year “Bachman” came back with the novel The Regulators, Thinner was finally adapted to the big screen. Robert John Burke starred as Billy Halleck, an obese defense attorney who works the good old boy system for all it’s worth. On his way home from dinner with his wife, she tries to convince Billy there’s other things to life than just eating. Things like getting oral sex while you’re driving. Billy, in his clearly distracted state, runs down an old gypsy crossing the street. Colluding with his legal buddies, the lawyer shoulders to blame for what is deemed an “accidental” death, but the gypsy’s ancient father, Tadzu Lemke (Michael Constantine) curses him with a single word, “thinner”. At first, he loses about two pounds a day, but soon his weight starts falling more rapidly. The curse leaves Billy wasting away to his death, and his only hope is to use any means to get Lemke to remove the curse.

It's alright Jiminy, Joe Mantegna is here. 

Thinner is one of the few Stephen King books I’ve read more than once. I have something of a fascination with the novels he wrote under the Richard Bachman name stemming from my love for The Running Man. While the movie stays fairly true to the book (save for the ending), there is something lost in the translation here. I think it all started falling apart for me in the beginning, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Robert John Burke’s portly lawyer looked a hell of a lot like Martin Short when he donned a fat suit to play Hollywood mench Jiminy Glick. Burke, who is an actor I love from his time on Oz and Law & Order, plays the part well enough, but until the pounds and prosthetics begin to fade, it is hard to take the character and his troubles seriously at all. It doesn’t help that Billy Halleck is never a sympathetic character. Even as he wastes away, he allows his mobbed up friend Richie (Joe Mantegna phoning it in and doing the broadest Italian performance I’ve ever seen) to terrorize the gypsy camp. Halleck learns nothing from his ordeal, and the ending to the movie just reinforces that fact. The book, having the benefit of fleshing out motivations and ideas, leaves the reader in a very different place.

Hey Kari, it was a joke. You're a great actress!

That’s not to say there are not things I like about the cinematic translation of Thinner. As Billy gets thinner, the effects and makeup work are stupendous. The special makeup effects were handled by Greg Cannom (Dreamscape, Nightmare on Elm Street 3, and coincidentally Big Mama’s House), and while I didn’t like fat Billy, the thinner the character gets the more impressive the visual effect was. I also liked Kari Wuhrer as the granddaughter of Lemke. Ok. Let’s be honest. I like it that she flashed her panties. I know it’s crass, but it’s true. Other than that, I have no idea why she was there. The gypsies themselves were played as terrible stereotypes, which admittedly were what they were in the book, and in a way I kept waiting on Drag Me to Hell to crossover at any moment. There’s also a very nice little appearance by Peter Maloney, George Benning in Carpenter’s The Thing, and Stephen King shows up as a pharmacist by the name of Mr. Bangor. (Bangor being the Maine town where King has long made his home.)

There's a good reason you shouldn't mess with Arlo Guthrie.

While reading Thinner, one of King’s (pun intended) leaner books, the story seems like it would make an incredible movie, and there are flashes of it here. However, director Tom Holland has made some great films (Fright Night, Child’s Play) and some real duds (Stephen King’s The Langoliers) in his career. Unfortunately, I think this one falls into the later category with his other King adaptation. Thinner is not a terrible movie. I mean it wouldn’t put me off my lunch, but it did teach me two very important lessons. First off, a gypsy curse will probably never catch on as a diet craze (though if any of you have done Atkins you’ll know what I mean when I say it feels awful similar.). Then secondly, Thinner will make me much more careful. Not about how I drive, but rather which pies I choose to eat. You never know what might be in them.

Bugg Rating 

The King of Wilmington - The Night Flier (1997) : Why Turn Into a Bat When You Could Fly a Plane?

So far our talks about The King of Wilmington have included killer trucks, werewolves, and flame throwing little girls. It stands to reason that the next thing to check off the list would be vampires. King’s history with creatures of the night goes all the way back to his 1975 novel Salem’s Lot (which was turned into a miniseries four years after publication), but he wouldn’t broach the subject again until his short story "The Night Flier" was published in the horror anthology Prime Evil in 1988. There, alongside stories by Clive Barker and Peter Straub, King spun a tale of an aeronautical bloodsucker and the writer on his trail. Five years later King reprinted his story as part of his Nightmares and Dreamscapes collection, and then just like Salem’s Lot, four years passed before it came to life on the screen. Co-produced by American company New Amsterdam Entertainment (which would put up the bucks in 2004 for Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead) and the Italian company Medusa Film (the company famously responsible for films like Don’t Torture a Duckling and Cannibal Ferox), The Night Flier was the last King film to be shot in and around Wilmington, NC.

The Night Flier stars Miguel Ferrer as Richard Deez, the top reporter for sleazy tabloid Inside View (an amalgamation of The Weekly World News and National Enquirer). Deez is renowned for going to any lengths to get a story no matter how grim or grisly. That makes him perfect for investigating a string of gory murders at remote airports in the Maine area. In each case, a black plane comes in overnight, and by the morning, bodies are found drained of blood. Deez reluctantly takes the story, but soon finds himself starting to believe that it’s more than a psycho with a pilot’s license he’s tracking. Competing against new reporter Katherine (Julie Entwisle) for the scoop, Deez continues to get deeper into the twisted tale, and if he’s not careful, he runs the risk of being the headline himself.

Before I started The King of Wilmington I knew or had heard of almost all the films I was going to be profiling, the one exception to that was The Night Flier. While I had read the story years back in Prime Evil, I had no idea it had a cinematic translation. Directed by Mark Pavia, The Night Flier marked his one and only feature film credit. (There have been rumblings that he’s trying to get a Holiday horror film, Sick Nick, off the ground.) I don’t know how Pavia came to be connected with the project, but he does an impressive job filming both the flying sequences and capturing the gore filled scenes of violence. Of course some of the credit for the gore has to go to the folks at K.N.B Efx Group, the legendary special effects company who’ve worked on everything from 1989’s Intruder to the recent Walking Dead TV series. Pavia also packed the film with references to King's other works, and the sharp-eyed viewer will spy references to Thinner, Needful Things, and many of King's other works on the covers of Inside View.

The film’s production value doesn’t always hold steady throughout the production, but what certainly does is its star, Miguel Ferrera. The actor was no stranger to Stephen King’s work having played Lloyd Henreid in the 1994 TV adaptation of The Stand, and he really nailed the part of Richard Deez. (Coincidentally, Deez was also no stranger to King. He also appeared as the reporter interviewing Johnny Smith in the novel The Dead Zone.) Deez is characterized a hard edged, no holds barred kind of journalist who is not afraid to spice up a story if he has too. In fact at one point the gives Julie Entwisle’s young reporter the advice, “Never print what you believe and never believe what you print.” Throughout the film Deez is shown as such an asshole that he seems unredeemable, and in the end, he might well have been. Without giving too much away, I have to say that his ultimate fate is just deserts of the O. Henry variety. There are precious few other characters in the film that rise beyond passing character performances, and this includes Julie Entwisle who should have been able to infuse her green reporter with a little more verve.

The only other character worth talking about is The Night Flier himself, but I don’t think I can really speak on him without getting into spoiler territory so read ahead at your own risk or skip on to the next paragraph. The vampire, who signs himself into airports under the name Dwight Renfield (a compounding of Dwight Frye and his famous Dracula character), is never portrayed as a romanticized character. Though his background is briefly and cleverly touched on when Deez finds the vamp’s photo album, his origins remain unknown. When he is seen, his face is distorted beyond that of the Nosferatu. With a gaping maw containing one giant tooth and a face only a zombie mother could love, the Flier won’t be keeping Rob Pattinson up nights, but this outer ugliness is extremely vital for the film. There is a direct correlation between Deez and the vamp. Both garner their existence from blood, both have no mercy for their victims, and both consider themselves above the rules. While Deez doesn’t have to commit the murders himself, his exploitation of tragedy makes him just as culpable. The vampire feeds off the blood to get life while Deez feeds off of death to make a living, but while the vampire is revolting to look at, Deez hides his unseemly ways under a friendly face.

I’m not sure how The Night Flier escaped my attention for all these years. As far as Stephen King adaptations go, this is one of the most underrated I have seen. With a well hewn plot that both entertains on a surface level and deeper, The Night Flier is sure to please the casual viewer as well as those who tend to dig deeper. To get it back to this feature, the film does contain many shots of rural airports (I suspect one rural airport redressed) as well as other exteriors from Wilmington, NC which double as the countryside of Maine. While this was the last film of King’s to be shot in the Wilmington area, it isn’t the last we’ll see of this feature. I’ve got one more week to go, and I’ve saved the first of his films to be shot there for last. So next week come on back then when I conclude The King of Wilmington with the anthology Cat’s Eye, and join us back here Wednesday for a special Hitch on the Hump guest post from Chuck Norris Ate My Baby’s Matt-Suzaka. 

Bugg Rating

The King of Wilmington - Silver Bullet (1985): Busey vs. Werewolf, 'Nuff Said.

When I hear the words silver bullet, one thing comes to mind immediately, Coors. Strangely, it’s also the first thing that comes to mind if you say those words to Gary Busey as well, even though he starred in a movie of that name. Being a horror fan, the first thing that should come to my mind is werewolves, and that’s the topic of tonight’s non-beer related film Silver Bullet. The basis for the film, the King’s Cycle of the Werewolf, was originally conceived as a short story cycle that would accompany a werewolf themed calendar. However, King, never one to turn down a few thousand words, ballooned the project far beyond its original scope and it came to life first as limited edition 1983 novella with illustrations by Swamp Thing artist Bernie Wrightson. (The same year the movie was released it finally made its way to trade paperback courtesy of Signet books.) King adapted his novella for the screen, and it became Silver Bullet, the third King story filmed in the Wilmington area and the third entry into my feature The King of Wilmington.li.

There seems to be a killer on the loose in Tarker’s Mill. A vicious brutal murderer capable of tearing people apart from limb to limb, but only Marty (Corey Haim), a young wheelchair bound kid, suspects the truth that the killer is a werewolf. After finally seeing the monster in the flesh, he convinces his sister Jane (Megan Follows) that what he saw was real. Now all they have to do is convince an adult to help them, and the only place to turn is to Uncle Red (Gary Busey), their mother’s oft-divorced frequently drunk brother, who fashioned Marty’s custom wheelchair, the Silver Bullet. However now they need a real silver bullet, the only thing that will put a stop to the murders in Tarker’s Mill.

This was the feature debut of director Daniel Attias, but it’s not as if he didn’t come with some heavy hitting recommendations. Having been assistant director for Sam Fuller (White Dog), Stephen Spielberg (E.T.), Joe Dante (Twilight Zone: The Movie), Francis Ford Coppola (One from the Heart), and Wim Wenders (Hammett), Attias was no slouch. It seems clear that Attias took some inspiration from Spielberg trying to channel same kind of Middle American family sentiment. Marty’s parents (not to mention his Uncle) are flawed average people who understandably keep a close eye on their paraplegic son even at the expense of Marty’s older sister. While objectively the story is about a supernatural menace, when it comes down to it the main theme is family and the trials and secrets in life that bind brothers and sisters together.

This was the first movie that Cory Haim took on a lead role (his previous two films Firstborn and Secret Admirer found him in a supporting role), and the young actor shows here much more promise and range than one would imagine from the future star of Snowboard Academy. Haim plays his part perfectly including a very nuanced portrayal of a paraplegic, something I’ve often seen many older actors play unconvincingly. Haim also has great chemistry with Megan Follows (best known as the title character in the Anne of Green Gables TV movies) which totally makes the arc of their brother/sister relationship to be the grounding force in the film. There is also a good performance by future Lost star Terry O’Quinn as the local sheriff, and I’m always happy to see Lawrence Tierney in anything and he steals a couple of scenes here as the hard-ass bartender Owen.

There are two characters that I haven’t talked about yet, and though Haim might be the star of the show, Silver Bullet couldn’t have been the same without them. First off, there’s Gary Busey. Even though this was a few years before Busey was absolute bats hit crazy, he gives an incredibly inspired performance here mugging for the camera in that way that only Busey can. Everyone has that nutty Uncle that people say isn’t quite right, and Gary rolls up all the not “quite right” of every uncle everywhere for his character. Also he throws down with the other interregnal character, the werewolf. If there’s a place that Silver Bullet falls short and becomes a shadow of what might have been, it’s when the wolf takes the screen. Looking a far cry from something Rick “American Werewolf” Baker might have cooked up, there werewolf looks more akin to a Big Bad Wolf who might have appeared on Fairy Tale Theater.

The less than scary wolf is indicative of Silver Bullet’s biggest problem. While it landed a ‘R’ rating by the MPAA for “intense, graphic horror violence/gore, some language and alcohol/smoking used”, I think most horror fans, King readers, and general older folk will find the ”intense graphic horror violence” more than a little tame. When I was young and saw this flick, it was perfect for me, but now some fifteen or twenty years later, I found myself chuckling at Busey being thrown around a room by Big Bad more than being tense. With just a few trims, Silver Bullet could have perfectly fit in with Gremlins and Goonies as a movie that could have become an ‘80’s classic for folks like me who are now in their thirties. I still found the film enjoyable, but I did feel like it needed to make a movement into either youth or adult territory to have really been a success.

That wraps it up for The King of Wilmington for this week. Next week I’m going to look at the last of King’s films made in the area with The Night Flyer, and then the following week I’ll wrap it up with the first, Cat’s Eye. Until then I’ll see you folks Wednesday for another edition of Hitch on the Hump

Bugg Rating

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The King of Wilmington - Maximum Overdrive (1986): Uncle Stevie Grinds The Gears

When a movie kicks off with an ATM machine telling the director he’s an asshole, that‘s a dangerous statement to make. This is especially true if the first time director in question is coked out of his mind and promised in the trailer to “scare the hell out of you”. This is doubly true if you’re Stephen King and after famously pooh poohing Stanley Kubrick’s vision of The Shining, you also say in the trailer, “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” On Dino De Laurentiis dime, the King of Horror went to Wilmington,  North Carolina to make good on his promise. There he brought to the screen his short story “Trucks” in the form of Maximum Overdrive, a movie that has been reviled and derided over the years.  While it undoubtedly caused many in the audience (and in the production for that matter) to agree with the ATM machine on the director’s character, today I am happy to be talking about Maximum Overdrive in this second installment of The King of Wilmington.

As a strange comet envelops the Earth’s skies with a greenish haze, machines everywhere decide they’re done doing what we tell them too. For the patrons and employees of The Dixie Boy truck stop that means dealing with rogue electric knives in the diner, impertinent gas pumps, and worst yet runaway 18 wheelers. Parolee Bill Robinson (Emilio Estevez) works as the short order cook at the diner, but when the machines start to rebel, Bill is the only one brave enough to fight back.  Despite the protestations of his boss, the surly Mr. Hendershot (Pat Hingle), Bill inspires the truck stop staff, newlyweds Connie (Yeardley Smith) and Carl (John Short), and hitchhiker (Laura Harrington) to band together armed with Mr. Hendershot’s private cache of weapons to fight back against the mechanical menace.

When Mr. King made his promise in the Maximum Overdrive trailer, people expected the author to remain faithful to his work and present something dark and moody. What people did not expect was a film that verged on high camp chock full of b-movie flourishes, sight gags, and inconsistent logic. The later is of course what they got, but the twenty five years since the release of Overdrive have disconnected the film from King’s promises. This allows Maximum Overdrive to be enjoyed as what it is, a silly retelling of Night of the Living Dead which recasts trucks for zombies and the farmhouse survivors as patrons of The Dixie Boy. While the film features flashes of King, Overdrive belongs on your shelf nestled right between Troll 2 and Killer Klowns from Outer Space, and in my book that’s a pretty damn nice place to be.

In general King acquits himself as a director fairly well capturing some well constructed shots, but King has even stated that he was so coked out of his mind that he doesn’t recall making the film, much of the credit should go to Italian cinematographer Armondo Nannuzzi (La Cage Aux Folles, Frankenstein Unbound). It was not like Nannuzzi walked away from the project unscathed. During a sequence involving a killer lawnmower, splinters shot everywhere including (in a Fulci-esque twist) directly into the eye of the cinematographer. He would later sue Stephen King for 18 million dollars, but the case was settled out of court. This was only one of two major accidents on the set. The other, which happened during the stunt involving the flipped over ice cream truck, fortunately injured no one.

Thankfully not adding insult to injuries, the majority of the actors in the film really sell the material. Emilio Estevez (The Breakfast Club, Repo Man) definitely got the memo about what kind of film this is. If there’s any question about that, just check out the scene where a truck pushes him across the parking lot. Emilio takes it so far over the top it comes back around (and makes Martin glad he didn’t take the Sheen name).  Also on the same page was legendary actor Pat Hingle who hams it up as “the biggest fuckhead” that Estevez’s character has ever met, Yeardley Smith (the voice of Lisa Simpson) as a screaming banshee of a newlywed, and Ellen McElduff (OZ, Homicide: Life on the Street) as the freaked out waitress. McElduff was a real highlight every time she would yell at the sky, “You can’t do this! We made you!” regardless of the fact that the only thing her character had a hand in constructing was a breakfast platter. The only actor who really missed the mark was Laura Harrington as the love interest. Not only was her acting bad, there was no chemistry at all between her and Estevez to sell their sudden, intense relationship.

Now of course this feature is all about the Stephen King films made in and around Wilmington, North Carolina, and I would be remiss if I didn’t talk some about the effect this film had on the area. While many locals were cast as extras in the opening bridge scene, many locals were also confused when the full size Dixie Boy opened up outside of town. Both locals and truckers tried to stop in on the set before a sign was erected letting everyone know it was only a set. After filming, the truck stop was bought by local investors who opened it for real, but after a few years they went under. I understand some of the Dixie Boy signing is still in existence. It also brought some special visitors into the area. Not only did King and crew descend on Wilmington, but he brought with him AC/DC who he tapped to do the soundtrack for the film. If you look very closely in the opening scene where the bridge raises, you can barely make out the Aussie rockers on a boat that passes under the bridge.

Maximum Overdrive has a reputation for being a film that’s not even “so bad it’s good”, but rather just bad. I think this reputation probably comes from a mixture of King’s own dismissals of the film and the rabid disappointment of his fans who expected the ultimate Stephen King film. For the rest of us who just like good old fashioned cheesy entertainment, Overdrive is a win all around. Even as the film sags in the middle with long, pointless expository passages, it redeems itself with trucks blowing up, military vehicles who speak Morse code, and trucks who bully Martin Sheen’s kid. So if you haven’t seen Maximum Overdrive for a while, I definitely encourage you to check it out. If you’ve never seen it and you love campy, silly horror/sci-fi fun, then invite your friends over and kick back. For those about to watch Maximum Overdrive, I salute you!

I’ll be back next Monday with the next chapter in The King of Wilmington when I cover the Wheelchair/werewolf film Silver Bullet.

Bugg Rating

The King of Wilmington - Firestarter (1984) Drew Barrymore Goes Unmatched

Hello folks and welcome to the first review of 2011 here at The Lair. Some time back I made a call out into the void of Facebook asking what people would like to see from the Lair this year. I didn’t get a whole lot of response, but one of my readers, Greg, suggested a look at something very specific, Stephen King films from the ‘80’s and 90’s filmed in his hometown of Wilmington, N.C. Even though I am no huge Stephen King fan, I couldn’t let such a strange request go unanswered. So I took a trip through the old IMDB, checked out which films had been lensed at Wilmington's EUE Screen Gems Studio, the largest domestic movie and television production house outside of California. When it opened back in 1984, it wasn't under the auspices of EUE Screen Gems, but rather the more celebrated name De Laurentiis Entertainment Group Studios, and one of the first films produced in the area was the 1984 Stephen King film Firestarter. So with no further ado I give you the first entry in The King of Wilmington.

Back when Andy McGee (David Keith) and his future wife Vicky (Heather Locklear) were college students, they decided to make a few extra bucks volunteering for a clinical trial of a drug called Lot 6. While it made some of the other students go mad or claw their eyes out, it gave Andy the ability to control minds and Vicky the ability to read them. It should come as no surprise that the pairing of the two might result in something beyond their abilities. Their daughter Charlie (Drew Barrymore) has the power to set things on fire with her mind, and unchecked, perhaps even holds the destructive force of a nuclear bomb. This draws the attention of “The Shop”, a secret government agency determined to catch Charlie and use her as a weapon. After they kill Vicky, Andy and Charlie go on the run, but they are eventually captured by mercenary John Rainbird (George C. Scott) and taken to “The Shop”. Once there, they try everything to gain Charlie’s trust, but when they fail in the worst way possible, they will truly find out what power lies inside of a little girl.

Filmed in and around the Wilmington, NC area, including parts of Lake Lure and Chimney Rock National Park, Firestarter’s backdrop is very recognizable to anyone familiar with the lower Appalachian area of North Carolina. The bucolic scenery is in stark contrast to the action in the film. While surrounded by lush greenery and crystalline lakes, Charlie and her father are pursued by the exact inverse, an organization bent of weaponizing a little girl. While King’s telekinetic adventure is the stuff of science fiction, it is a fact that the United States government has in the past participated in secret testing both of substances such as LSD and in pursuit of  latent paranormal abilities. King’s story uses these kinds of experiments as a jumping off point for spinning one of his favorite kinds of tales, one of a loss of innocence.

In the ‘80’s no one did innocent better than Drew Barrymore. Only two years earlier she had won America’s heart as little sister Gertie in E.T., and here she taps into the same kind of wide eyed wonderment though tinged with sorrow. Even from the beginning of the film, Barrymore’s Charlie is still very much a little girl, but after a year on the run with the guilt of her mother’s death hanging over her head, she is a little girl with a head full of troubles. These are only magnified tenfold as she comes under the sway of John Rainbird who masquerades as a janitor to gain her trust. Charlie had a tenuous grasp on her powers, how and when to use them, even though her father tries to teach her about the “little bad and the big bad”. Once her last tie to humanity is severed, there is no wonder she becomes a force of nature, and one has to wonder what “The Shop” thought would happen. Barrymore impresses here in a way I have seen very few child stars do exhibiting pathos beyond her years as the film’s emotional toll wears on her character.

If Barrymore is the innocent of Firestarter, then the devil must be George C. Scott’s John Rainbird. I assume Scott’s character was supposed to be of Native American decent, but if you ask me he must have been descended from Ol’ Scratch himself. Not only does his character attempt to use Charlie for his own ends, but he also has a plan to kill Charlie with his bare hands in order to prove his power in the next world. While Martin Sheen and Moses Gunn play characters whose evil has the cold impersonal nature of a Government functionary, Scott’s Rainbird is a mental case to say the least. As with so many of King’s stories, evil is not always one thing, and in this case, it wear several faces. Between the innocence of Barrymore and the evil of Scott lies David Keith’s performance as Andy McKee. He is a man who will do what it takes, at all costs, to defend his daughter, and in the end, it is his final words to his daughter that shapes the outcome of the film.

Firestarter was originally offered to director John Carpenter, but he was let go from the project before he even started due to poor reviews of his film The Thing. (It is now almost impossible to think about The Thing being poorly received.) In his place, the film was given to director Mark L. Lester whose previous credits include 1976’s Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw and 1982’s The Class of 1984. (In 1985 he filmed another unconventional father/daughter tale when he helmed Commando.) While Firestarter is no incredible piece of cinema, Lester provides the film with a well paced plot, an exciting climax, and a genuinely wonderful performance from his child star. All of this is enhanced by the film’s score by prog rockers Tangerine Dream who would famously score 1985’s Legend for Ridley Scott. Fans of Italian prog rockers like Goblin or the compositions of Fabio Frizzi should take note as Dream’s score is full of the moody atmospherics that make Italian soundtracks so popular.

I have to admit I’m not really a Stephen King affectionado. While I’ve read a few of his books over the years (I prefer Barker or better yet King’s son Joe Hill.) and seen a number of the films based on his works, they rarely leave me impressed. In this case Firestarter not only captured my imagination on film, it also lead me to run out to my local used book store and picked up a well loved copy of King’s novel. It also made me excited to see what more The King of Wilmington might have in store for me. I doubt I will find all of King’s films from the Tarheel state to be as good, but who knows. I mean for next week I have a film called Maximum Overdrive directed by Stephen King himself. That has got to be great, right?

Bugg Rating