King's Highway: Garage Sale

Well, well, look what I found at the back of the garage: two unfinished posts meant for the King's Highway. One of them is for Roadwork, the other is for Just After Sunset. Neither is finished, just notes and quotes, but I'm looking at these last few blogging months as not just finishing up certain projects but emptying the tanks / chambers before heading back to base for good.

I wanted to do proper reviews of the below - and finish all of King's short fiction re-read - but looks like the work will have to be done by others. But perhaps they'll be of some interest just the same. 

Either way! Bombs away.

Taxi Driver / in the air at the time. American New Wave fiction.

"He was hypnotized by the coming explosion, almost lusted for it. His belly groaned in its own juices."

Sally One-Eye Magliore. (King's gangsters. An interesting group. How much of Magliore is in the Thinner guy whomever? He has his go-to "voices.") "When Gabriel trumpeted in the Apocalypse, Sally One-Eye would still be patiently explaining the invulnerability of all systems everywhere and urging the old whore on him."

On TV Merv Griffin was chatting with celebrities. (The refrain. Again: like Taxi Driver with the crap daytime TV he's always watching.) 

Positioned as it is, with mega-corporations buying everything (and the fate of Vinnie), the energy crisis, mindless expansion and credit, etc. American life was fundamentally changed in ways few realized at the time, focused as they were on rude animal pursuits like bellbottoms, bussing, and heroin. 

"That would be the end of the whole, self-pitying mess." (Wants to commit suicide-by-energy-wasting.) Alcoholism. He thinks about things "until the alcohol blotted out the ability to think." A reaction against all the above and his Mom dying, R.I.P.

"A lie would end the discussion so much more quickly and neatly. She was like the rest of the kids, like Vinnie, like the people who thought education was truth: she wanted propaganda, complete with charts, not an answer."

Fred and George (and Charlie and trauma.) "Deep in Charlie's brain was a collection of bad cells roughly the size of a walnut. If you had that collection of bad cells in front of you on the table, you could squad them with one hard hit. But they weren't on the table. They were growing deep in the meat of Charlie's mind, still smugly growing, filling him up with random strangeness."

(Don't like "random strangeness" - too vague, though the paragraphs that follow provide more examples.)

Rolling Stones - Paint It Black.

The woman who dies at the Shop'n'Save, and the doctor who looked scared "as if he had just realized that his profession would dog him to the grave like some vengeful horror monster."

A mystery: Albert says "Do I know you from somewhere? Why do I keep feeling I know you?" I missed the reason for this. Anyone?

The Guardian re-read (and mock them for their pace - note: this is a reference to their re-read of King taking FOREVER. I was lapping them constantly when I was doing the King's Highway. And they were getting paid to do it! Pathetic.)

"In it he says that Roadwork is "(his) favourite of the early Bachman books". I don't know what changed his mind, but perhaps it was the peace afforded by time; of being able to stand back and see what he (or, rather, Richard Bachman) had done. In the novel, that's the problem: Barton can't. He's always there, with the house and the laundry and his wife, everything reminding him of the way that things were. I'm pleased that King is at peace with Roadwork, because it sits comfortably alongside some of his best non-genre novels: a story about a real person who has been ruined by the true horrors of real life."  

In 2021, it seems the pendulum has followed a more banal-woke take on everything Roadwork. I hope it comes back around to re-appreciation if we ever survive this neo-Maoist struggle session being inflicted on us by a few and enabled by far too many.

From the outro: "There is no rational response to miracles. And no way to understand the will of God - who, if He is there at al, may have no more interest in us than I do in the microbes now living on my skin. But miracles do happen, it seems to me each breath is another one. Reality is thin but not always dark. I didn't want to write about answers. I wanted to write about questions. And suggest that miracles may be a burden as well as a blessing. And maybe it's all bullshit. I Like the story, though."

Lovely description of "Ayana." But that's not one of my favorites.



A Very Tight Place - Dolan's Cadillac. Graduation Afternoon, all "B"s.

Cat from Hell. "B" or B -"

NYT at Special Bargain prices feels like it'd make a good beginning to something. B-



Gingerbread Girl  B+  (Perfectly fine, perfectly well-done and all, could be a great movie, but not much to it. Run, (name) Run was already kinda taken as a title, I guess. This genre of women running away/ escaping rich abusers really consumes some people. 



Mute  B+  (I remember when I read this in Playboy it was the first King I'd read in years. I enjoyed revisiting it. I often speak of this genre of King's stories as something unrealistic, the one-character-telling-another. It's almost like he heard me, or some similar criticism, and came back with this story. "You can't fault the set-up here, jackhole!" )



N  A-  (This is a fun one.)

Things Left Behind  A-

Stationary Bike  A-  (I love this one, kind of, but it doesn't really go anywhere. ha - see title. Anyway the idea of people in my stomach pissed at me for trying to give up cheeseburgers is probably genius.) 

Willa  A

"Sometimes they were in the mirror and when they slipped from view there was only a country song playing in an empty room lit by a neon mountain range."

Love this one. Not a tremendous fan of the name/ title, though I love all the "King loves his wife" stories.

~

Billy Summers (2021)

Man oh man, folks, am I in the wrong room with this one.

So, Billy Summers is about a guy (Billy) pretending to be dumber than he actually is while taking assassination contracts from mobsters, only for people he thinks are bad. He suspects he's being double-crossed, and sure enough he is, but he hits the mattresses and bides his time. Until a girl is deposited right outside his hideout, who has been gang-raped by some MAGA-heads from the nearby college. So Billy decides to track them down and avenge her. He puts on a Melania Trump mask, sodomizes them and lectures them, then tracks down the big enchiladas who double-crossed him, all the way to Mar-a-Lago and/or Jeffrey Epstein.

Honestly, I think this is the end of the line with King and me. I've felt increasingly "in the wrong room" for years, but I hoped he'd snap out of it, "it" being this Twitter fear and loathing spiral he's in when it comes to MAGA rape fantasies and the like. But, he is not. Hoo boy is he not; the problem has deepened considerably. And from the reviews I've looked at, no one in the King community is batting much of eye, when they're not openly cheering on for more of it.

Which hey - I mean, I'm the guest, really, here, so maybe I just stayed too long at the party.  I've struggled with how to put this because the last thing I want to do is make any of my friends/ King fans feel the way King and many King fans make people like me feel. Or that voting for King (you get me) makes you fair game for rape fantasies and the like. 

I mean, that's kind of nuts - not going to lie, here. But it's the kind of nuts inflicting most people right now. I knew it was getting bad, years ago, but Billy Summers is like that episode of Cheers where Cliff has progressed from growing vegetables in his garden to cross-breeding (and dressing) them to resemble political leaders. Cliff had Norm to take him to one side and snap him out of it ("You've gone way off the deep end on this. You've dressed a potato like Richard Nixon, and you actually want people to come and know this." Paraphrasing from memory.) King has only Twitter, egging on his worst instincts, and providing him with desktop notifications to rally his spirits (or plot points) when they flail

Hell, that's what Twitter is good for. 

Like I said, it's not going to get better. I knew this, truthfully, before Billy Summers. You can't get a little woke; you're in for a penny, you're in for the whole rape MAGA fantasy pound of it all. Unless you consciously free yourself from it, you are just a hapless passenger on Blaine the Mono. With all that entails. In the Barony coach or no. (From what I can see, actually, the Barony coach is the place to be, but the pressure to partake in this sort of thing is much more intense than in coach.)

So, here we must part. It's not me, it's you; it's not you, it's me. 

And really, it's unfair of me to suggest King has gone off the deep end. The King of Billy Summers is really no different than the King of Under the Dome (if you voted for Bush, the idea there was you were a crystal meth warlord energy baron necrophile, or at least adjacent to such) or the King writing Henry Bowers or maybe all the way back to scrapbooking serial killer stories as a kid. Like the oft-told story of the scorpion who will sting because it's his nature, no surprises here. It's just getting old to be stung so monomaniacally, and with such little grace, and with the amount of scolding and violence that's coming with it. 

I get it, man! Let's call the whole thing off, as smarter people than me once sang. 

So it's been nine years since I decided to catch up with the favorite author of my youth. I regret nothing. But for me, after finishing this one (really quick: Nothing "Billy" writes  -  because since this is 2021 of course at the end the male's agency has to be busted down to merely co-authoring his own story, to raise the agency of the woman. That's just good manners! (And we see what happens to bad mannered boys. Kick his ass, sea bass; Twitter notifications are definitely not finding their way into your story) -  feels authentic except the "I'm a bad man" part. Which didn't even happen. This was after one-hundred-sixty pages of Quarry and central casting cliches. Fuggedaboutit. But I believed it - after everything we'd seen, this was King's confessional, not Billy's) I put all but three of my King books into bags to distribute to the free libraries in my neighborhood. Some kid is going to be very happy. 

(What did I keep? Duma Key and The Tommyknockers - those were my "discoveries" from the past nine years, and I've fond memories of that, plus I want to read both of them again and know they're not going to make me feel like the man wants me or my family gang-raped - and The Stephen King Companion, which contains within it all the warm and wonderful Stephen King feelings of my youth, way back before I knew the guy had such strong feelings about raping me and my family and giving aid and comfort to those who do. The joy of these three books, in other words, is safe and unable to be retconned from whatever Twitter rant awaits or has slouched off already, its hour come round at last.)

(Oh, I kept The Outsider, too. I didn't mean to, actually, I just forgot it and noticed it after. I don't feel strongly motivated to read it again but nor do I feel like giving it away, either. For the moment, over on the shelf it sits.)

I had a nice interaction with my neighbor down the block while loading up the books. He grabbed a bunch of them and was so happy for a Misery to give to his daughter. We laughed at the oddness of that phrasing/ idea, which I understood completely and chatted about reading King in the 80s and down to now. (I did not mention any of this other stuff. Didn't want him to run into the kitchen and come out with a cake mixer! Just totally normal stuff.)

He asked me, holding up The Regulators, "why have I never heard of this one?" I told him that was one I almost kept, that it deserves to be rediscovered both by the King community and the world at large. I stopped there. Why tell him I have to leave that fight for someone else? My heart is no longer in it. I think I convinced my neighbor, though, to come at it with fresh eyes. 

So there's my last little act of positivity for the King community - spreading joy one book at a time - which, the last few years of rape fantasies and such aside, has been a fun few years. I liked that it began where it did and led where it did and ended on a nice conversation of book-gifting to a neighbor.

Billy Summers itself I gave to a different friend, at his request. This particular friend has no problem that I can see with MAGA rape fantasies or Twitter fear and loathing; like King I suspect that deep down he thinks anyone who voted for Trump - like women in short skirts perhaps, but I'd really like not to think so - is just asking for it. It's getting hard to navigate these sorts of things politely. I guess I can sympathize with King on that front. Writing, he once said, is an act of willed empathy.

Or was, once upon a time. May it be that again, and soon. 

I realize some of the pronouncements above may seem unconducive to conversation, but all y'all out there that don't want to rape me, please feel free to let me know your feelings on the book, positive or otherwise. 

But: I mean, who are we kidding here? Has a single review mentioned this revenge rape fantasy of King's? Or anyone's over the past few years? Like I say, King's always had this side of his work, it just too much resonant frequent with our present cultural moment. This is a terrible addition to our current cultural moment. And from the guy who pulled Rage, it's baffling. What possible conclusion could possibly be drawn other than King is indeed just fine with certain types of violence against certain types of people? A book is not a confessional; a book timed with this cultural moment that includes all of the above isn't, either, it's just... tasteless. Stupid. Unbelievably irresponsible and banal. 

That it's not a good book is more forgivable than being some weird MAGA rape fantasy that seems a-okay in the mainstream reviews of it. That strikes me as not just abnormal but really kind of dangerous and sad.

~

So ends the King's Highway! And I wish it was a better part of town. 

I'd like to end with three pics of this little Barrens-area (much cleaned up nowadays, as evidenced in the first pic below with a nice fence to keep you from falling in the reservoir, luxuries unheard of back when I was biking down here to read whatever King I checked out of the library) central to the King-reading of my youth and all subsequent nostalgia. If you're ever in Slatersville, RI, stop on by the library, walk on down to the water, and sit for a spell. 

There's graffiti of hedgerow animals galore down there. Mostly benevolent. Sometimes it's only visible from the corner of your eye, not when you look at it directly. Other times it sneaks up on you when you're not looking.

Cheers.

Later (2021)

"Sometimes growing up means facing your demons."

Short and spoiler-free: Later has a great hook that engages you for most of its two-hundred-plus-pages. It unfortunately starts to wobble a bit in the last stretch and then the floor falls completely out in the last, baffling chapter. Mind your footing. 

Longer and spoiler-ier: 

Jamie Conklin lives with his mother. No father or siblings, just an uncle with Alzheimer's in a local home. His mom is a literary agent, and Jamie sees dead people. "It's not like the movie with Bruce Willis," he lets us know. He doesn't see every dead person, just some, and they always recognize him and wave or otherwise alert Jamie of their presence. The dead, always dressed in the clothes they died in (not counting things like ball-gags, which apparently do not translate to the great beyond) must answer truthfully any question put to them. It's unclear, really, how Jamie learns this - he seems to have an intuitive understanding of it at the novel's beginning; the novel is, by the by, told in first person flashback, so Jamie is looking back at his life from the vantage point of twenty two - or why this would be, but it's a cool enough little rule for the story to follow. 

Things get complicated (Uncle Harry's Alzheimers worsens, there's a not-Bernie-Madoff-hedge-fund story (why not just have it be Bernie Madoff?), Jamie's Mom Tia's star client dies) when Liz (Tia's cop girlfriend) asks Jamie to help in a case where a killer has died without revealing the details of his last plot. 

The dead killer does so - begrudgingly - but then he tells Jamie that Tia has cancer. Is this true? Jamie wonders if there's some asterisk to this particular spirit. Turns out there is; here's a dead guy who not only doesn't just tell the truth, he can stick around, out of spite for Jamie, some kind of outsider-spirit with anime beyond what Jamie's used to. Jamie can't turn to his mom or even Liz (with whom his mom has broken up over her crooked-cop drug-running and later drug-using ways) so he turns to his next-door neighbor, whose dead wife spoke to Jamie in the first chapter. The neighbor is one of those King characters that has spent a good deal of time in the occult section of the library (or the fiction-Author 'Ki - to Ko ' aisle) and knows certain things about how to get rid of troublesome spirits or vampires. He recommends the Ritual of Chüd, i.e. lock tongues with the enemy in astral battle and battle wits and wills.

Which he does and Jamie wins, rather easily, and commands that the spirit not only stop haunting him but come running whenever he beckons him. "Oh I'll whistle and you'll come to me, my lad." as a matter of fact. Which at least the author acknowledges is a completely bizarre thing for a young 21st century boy to say by attributing the wording to his professor friend. Even so, it's an awkward thing to read/ repeat a further dozen or two dozen times to come. 

After much agonizing over what might happen, Jamie finally does beckon the spirit at the end of the book to battle Liz - now in a destructive drug tailspin - kidnaps him and takes him to her distributor's house in the boonies. Hi-jinks ensue. Jamie wakes up with the cops and then in the next chapter, his uncle - the Alzheimer's patient - dies and his spirit tells him he's his father.

Needle scratch!

There follows a baffling few pages where Jamie first imagines how it could have gone and then says "no wait, that never happened." It's a confusing chapter on many levels, especially for that. Is King reversing himself? What? Here are paragraphs in question:

"Let me tell you, there are a lot of bullshit myths about babies born of incest, especially when it comes to father-daughter and sister-brother. Yes, there can be medical problems, and yes, the chances of those are a little higher when it comes to incest, but the idea that the majority of those babies are born with feeble minds, one eye, or club feet? Pure crap. I did find out that one of the most common defects in babies from incestuous relationships is fused fingers or toes. I have scars * on the insides of my second and third fingers on my left hand, from a surgical procedure to separate them when I was an infant. The first time I asked about those scars - I wouldn't have been more than four or five - Mom told me the docs had done it before she brought me home from the hospital. ' Easy-peasy.'"

* I'll break in to say this reveal happens on pg. 244. If you're a writer and leading up to a last chapter reveal about incest, maybe a hidden in plain sight mystery-scars-supporting-said-reveal might have been mentioned somewhere early on?

"And of course there's that other thing I was born with, which might have something to do with the fact * that once upon a time, while suffering from grief and alcohol, my parents got a little closer than a brother and sister should have done. Or maybe seeing dead people has nothing at all to do with that. Parents who can't carry a tune in a tin pal can probably produce a singing prodigy; illiterates can produce a great writer, Sometimes talent comes from nowhere, or so it seems.

Except hold it, wait one,

That whole story is fiction."

* I don't know who needs to hear this, but incestuous coupling does not actually produce supernatural offspring. Nor is it even reasonable to imagine hey, just a horny, grieving couple of siblings deciding - as adults - to bang, or for one of them to just up and rape the other, then carry on as business partners/ siblings/ caretakers. What in the goddamn world? 

Jamie goes on to say he is only speculating about all the above - or is he? - but the whole damn thing is confused, both the above and all after. (Also, Jamie seems to have forgot his catchphrase is "Check it out," not "hold it.") This last chapter is a succession of things that don't make sense on top of inconsistencies in the writing voice on top of failure to resolve the threads that are there. At least It, with its famous batshit gangbang in the sewers, did not end itself resolving an entirely different novel that no one had been reading up to that point.

(A comment over here cracked me up re: Later's parallels with It: "a weird-sex thing popping up (at the end of) an It spinoff is kind of appropriate." Can't argue with that.)

King always says his endings surprise him. (The pointed opposite of the book-a-year goldmine-author from the first part of the book, who has the ending in mind and works backward - more on him to come.) I don't think he's just being cute when he talks about his process; I think he literally does close his eyes and take dictation from his muse. Any writer has his or her process, and it's worked pretty well for King. The thing is, you're supposed to edit this, though. No one wants to read the unexpurgated narrative of anyone's muse, so when the day's communing with spirits ends with "Incest reveal, last chapter."  the writer needs to stop and say "Well, I'm sure this makes sense in the muse dimension, but have I been writing that book?" If the answer is no, then you go back and make sure that a re-read will reveal oh, how masterful, this was subtly hinted at and its dynamics emphasized to make sense as a reveal all throughout. 

It isn't, though, so it doesn't. It feels like the kind of twist you get at the end of 1408 or Identity or some other non-John-Cusack example. King sometimes does not resist (and sometimes flat-out insists upon) this kind of zigzag-and-crash-the-car strategy. ("Dedication" comes to mind.) 

Worse, the things he had been building are rendered nonsensical by the reveal. Here's one example - not the only one:

"All of this seemed normal to me. I don't think the world starts to come into focus until you're fifteen or sixteen; up until then you just kind of take what you've got and roll with it. Those two hungover women hunched over their coffee was just how I started my day on some mornings that eventually became a lot of mornings. I didn't even notice the smell of wine that began to permeate everything. Only part of me must have noticed, because years later, in college, when my roomie spilled a bottle of Zinfandel in the living room of our little apartment, it all came back and it was like getting hit in the face with a plank. Liz's snarly hair. My mother's hollow eyes. How I knew to close the cupboard where we kept the cereal slowly and quietly (...) I had to get away from that smell. Given a choice between seeing dead folks - yes, I still see them - and the memories brought on by the smell of spilled wine, I'd pick the dead folks.

Any day of the fucking week."

Keep in mind Jamie is making that observation looking back on his life post incest reveal, even if the reader doesn't know it yet. Would that not be a sensible place to maybe hint to the reader that these things, while real and relatable, don't make sense in lieu of subsequent events and reveals? Sorry: when you're bound to a demon-outsider from beyond and then you find out your uncle is your father and your entire familial set-up is a poorly-constructed lie, you're not going to be sitting there reflecting on that and not bringing up any of the aforementioned. It would tie together. At the very least it's a missed opportunity; at worst it's intentionally misleading the reader. 

It's too damn bad, because this could so easily have been a great book. It's got a good hook - I see dead people; the dead people tell me truths, etc. - and a good complication - uh-oh, this one dead guy might be lying to me - and even if you commit to the incest reveal as the novel's raison d'etre, it's got a sensible enough theme - the dead tell uncomfortable secrets. But that only works if that reveal isn't just thrown into things in the last chapter. Like I said, you know from page one that Jamie is writing this with everything that happens in his rearview; it's purposefully constructed that way. But at no point does King avail himself of any opportunity to help his own reveal. This isn't just stylistic choice; it's an engineering issue. You can't just throw that on top of the story we were getting and expect it to hold such weight; it's like one of those commercials where you see how strong Saran wrap is compared to others and the watermelon goes crashing through the wrap and the narrator says "Be reasonable." 

I'm running a bit longer than intended so let's switch to bullet points and call it a day.

- There are conspicuous "editor" paragraphs strewn throughout that feel like notes from first readers transcribed into Jamie's voice. i.e. "Later I learned that..." or "Oh, and I erased Liz's messages" etc. Things that escaped the author on first pass that must be accounted for.  

- Speaking of those "later"s I will never understand leaving these sort of writer-clearing-his-throat/ running-tics used to just get him going. They extend to the repetitive phrases here and there ("champ" etc.) but FFS, get rid of these things when editing. The first paragraph of the book, for example, is like reading King clear his throat. None of this sort of thing is - as we see from subsequent events - true, or necessary. 

- Jamie in no way resembles a child of the twenty-first century, and his mother's job in no way resembles a literary agent's in New York City in the twenty-first century. This really took me out of the book in places. Had he set the book twenty years earlier, that'd have fixed it.

- I guess I haven't spent much time on the It connections. King fans are as used to kinda-sorta-related allusions as they are to bona-fide "this is directly from this other book" things. Both are wrapped up in all this stuff here. They're there but not there. Sort of like "Fair Extension." Or even the Turtle in It vs. the Turtle in the Dark Tower books proper. There's no real "answer" anywhere. I'm fine with the broad genre strokes of it all ("have a question about how to fight the demons and undead? Find the right library.") and have no real issue with the deadlights or Chud-ritual coming up. They certainly don't resolve or tie anything together and I don't think King is working off some kind of unified-multiversity playbook, he's just having fun. 

- Considerable time is spent developing what's-gonna-happen tension regarding whether or not to call back Thierrault. He even gets the proverbial warning from the dead (his friend the professor) about doing so and how it's a bad idea. Then it happens and it's not a big deal at all. "Go," says Jamie, and off he goes. A lot of air goes out of the balloon at this point. There was a better way to wrap this up; Liz's death and post-death scene, as well.

- Along the same lines, Chekov's gun, etc. should cancer be teased for Tia and then not return? Some good drama was made of this angle in The Outsider, could've worked here as well. 

- I haven't mentioned much about the fake-historical-fiction author and the Roanoke stuff, too. I wasn't too impressed with this, to be honest; none of it felt real to me. I liked the scene at the dead author's house and how it set the stage for the Liz/ Thierrault-terrorist scene to follow. But if there was some Misery-level novel-mirroring going on, it eluded me. Plus I just didn't buy this author as some huge multi-million-selling draw in the 21st century. Again, set the book in the recent past, and no problem. 

- Well FFS, the incest reveal again. That it happened in the first place, that we're to believe she just had the baby and built a business with Uncle Henry, that it's suggested without remarking on the True Detective hillbilly voodoo logic it represents that such a coupling produces magical offspring, all of it. It's possible questions were meant to linger to be explored in future volumes, but it hasn't been marketed as the first of an ongoing series, nor has anyone mentioned it post-release, that I've seen anyway. 

Either way, I don't have much interest in more. Whistle all you want, champ, my lad - I think I'll stay put. 

~

As mentioned last time, this will be the last post in the Hard Case Crime Chronicles series. Thanks for reading!

The Colorado Kid (2005)

“A man doesn’t get to the age I was even then without getting his ass kicked a number of times by fools with a little authority.”

I didn't have much to say about this book when I reviewed it the first time, but my opinion had fallen a bit by the time I reviewed it again in 2019:

"It's tough to tell what the point of writing an unsolvable mystery is outside of a classroom exercise of some kind. King's at a point, both careerwise and talentwise, where he can write such a thing and get it published and even make it compelling. But why would he want to? And how could anyone tell if he succeeded or not? He famously derided Nicholson Baker's Vox as a meaningless fingernail paring, but what is this, then? I can only assume there's something here I'm missing."

Still fair, I feel, but as a result of this re-read, I’m going to bump this one up, from 63rd (of 65) to 46. I’ll get to why that is momentarily, but there it is up front. Lest we forget, though, this is not some King's Highway adjunct project, but another episode of:

Also, I’ll break from previous entries in the Hard Case Crime Chronicles and delve into
plot details and spoilers, below. 

2005
HCC-013-I

There'll definitely be at least one more of these (King's Later comes out in early 2021) but the Hard Case Crime Chronicles will be slowing down for the foreseeable future. Like From Novel to Film or Friday Night Film Noir or Twilight Zone Tuesday or any once-frequent-feature here at the Omnibus, the HCCC will join the Legion of Inactive Series. I don't really consider these series "closed" in that I exist in a permanent state of wanting to take up any old series and continue; hell, I'm still plotting storylines for fan-fic comics written with friends from the 80s, in some part of my brain. (True story.) So, same with Hard Case Crime Chronicles. I mean, I'm keeping the books. Which is actually part of how the project was a failure. 

I had two objectives: (1) to read the fifty-ish Hard Case Crime books on my shelf to (2) determine whether or not I was keeping them or donating them. I failed the first part by thirty-five books so was unable to determine the second part. On the other hand, I enjoyed myself, mostly. So hey. I'd not like to make a habit out of enjoying failure, but it's a victory of sorts (not the scoreboard - or electoral college - kind) when it happens. Because reading’s cool, Beavis.  

So let's jump in. First, the new cover. Great composition, but the girl needed some work. (The shoulders, the left leg: ugh.) This juxtaposition of idyllic seaside Maine with murder works well, and it’s the sort of thing that specifically holds anchor for King. As he mentions in the afterword, the islands off the coast of Maine like Monhegan or Cranberry fascinate him with their “contrasting yet oddly complimentary atmospheres of community and solitariness.” It’s a fascination that has minted mucho dinero for El Maestro Rey, and much readerly delight among his fans.

He’s also sketched out the Maine-r of the American species many times. He does here as lovingly as anywhere, although he burns off some of the good will he engenders by indulging a bit too much. He’s tried this sort of thing (two locals relaying a long quasi-mythological tale as interrupted and augmented by their folksy mannerisms, their unsurpassed empathy, and their wisdom) many times in other places, but I’d say the way he does it in The Colorado Kid is mostly a net-positive. Some of the broader strokes work better (“That in the winter the wind on the mainland side of the island was sometimes a terrible sound, almost the cry of a bereft woman, was a thing she did not know, and there was no reason to tell her” than others “Then they were all laughing. Stephanie * thought she loved those two old buzzards. She really did.”)

* Stephanie/ Stephen. Draw your own conclusions. At one point, the other two characters kid Steffi – “That’s pretty good. You should be a writer.” I do not suggest Steffi is a one-to-one avatar for the author (what Grant Morrison has called the “two-dimensional diving suit”) any more than Vince or (the other guy) is. But are the author’s characters / inner monologues cracking on him? i.e. is that what his characters are telling King, the faithful transcriber/ excavator of the characters in his stories? Yes. In other places in the book as well. 

A parable is delivered in the first chapter re: the monetary ecology of a closed island community and perceptions vs. reality that probably doubles as King’s statement on the Schrödinger’s Mystery aspect of The Colorado Kid itself. Vince answer’s Steffi’s question (“will (the waitress) know who put the money in her purse?”) “If she didn’t know, would that make it illegal tender?” They might as well have put a picture in after that chapter of everyone looking directly at the reader.

Speaking of the pictures, there are plenty new ones in the second printing. I didn't include them all below and can't provide specific credits since neither the publisher (Charles Ardai, in his intro) nor the author in his Afterword, nor anyone at the respective sites for the book (for shame!) or wiki, did, except to state that one or two of them are by Kate Kelton, the actress who played Jordan on Haven (allegedly based on TCK) and others are by Mark Edward Geyer, Paul Mann, and Mark Summers.

Paul Devane in foreground, whose father-in-law's cigarette habit provides an important clue. 

This looks more like a photo that was traced over, to me. (A problem with having more than one artist do the pictures is lack of consistency for character models. Steffi, Vince, and "Dave Bowie" (ugh) look differently each time they appear.

I assume this is the Colorado Kid's widow? Kinda vampy, eh?

I also don't recall Steffi wearing a mini-skirt and pumps. Then again, I don't recall her looking as shown on the original cover. I'm the kind of dumb animal who says "hey wow, legs!" either stupid way.

I like this one. Don't mind Herman up there, my desk gargoyle; he was helping hold the book open for me.

The Russian coin that does not exist in our world. (Is that President Chadbourne on the $5 bill? Does that look like Lincoln to you?) 

This is from the bit from the Joyland excerpt at the end. Who's this lady supposed to be? I suppose it's the Mom before her thank you tryst with our young hero. This picture makes it looks like she's some boardwalk floosie waiting for a thirteen year old boy, FWIW.

This reminds me of that scene near the beginning of Blue Velvet: "Yep. That's an ear all right."  

Let's chat about the mystery, shall we? I took note of a few things while reading:

- "Tea for the Tillerman" comes up more than once, in one of those flashes of inspiration from Steffi that seem rather conspicuously placed. She at first thinks it's Al Stewart, then remembers it's Cat Stevens. It's Cat Stevens in our world, but as other things suggest, this whole takes place in another.  The lyrics suggest tea for the tillerman and "steak for the son." Our mystery dead man does have a piece of improbable steak lodged in his throat. How or why, who knows? This is a tantalizing line of inquiry, but I can make nothing of it. 

-      "This has been a long time coming" or "Lidle's got it coming" are what the (unreliable drunk) tillerman hears from our possible-mystery-dead man as he crosses the sound. What does this mean? Zero clue. Who is Lidle? 

- The time difference between CO and ME is two hours, and the final sightings of Mystery Dead Man (Cogan) are 10:30 am CO time and 5:30 pm ME time. 

- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is referenced. Is this a clue? Is there anything in the plot which speaks to TCK? 

- The pack of cigarettes has only one missing. Twenty cigarettes come in a pack. Twenty minus one is FFS obviously the dude went Todash.

- No Starbucks in 1980, nor Blockbuster, yet both are mentioned. And there apparently is no such Russian coin as the one Cogan has, the Chervonetz. These are deliberate clues, so we must accept the idea that this is an alternate timeline/ dimension than the one we inhabit. Steffi and Vince make no mention of the incongruity of Starbucks/ Blockbuster, so they too inhabit one we do not. These are not minor things, I'd say. (Would it make the story/ mystery more compelling if they had? That is to say, if they were of our timeline, where these things are incongruities? I think so. Instead we're left with another mystery. Unless: the Colorado Kid is actually from our own future-present and somehow warped into the 1980-Maine of the titular story. That's what I lean to.) 

That brings me to my only real problem of TCK. Which isn't so much a problem with the book itself but with King's remarks about it. He originally suggested that there is a solution. Then he started saying, well, there only might be; "my solution," (he says) "is supernatural." This annoys me. Is King's solution only one of many solutions? It's one thing to say "hey some of my fans might not like my not solving this one" and another to be all "maybe there is one; maybe there isn't." You either included the clues needed to solve the mystery, or you didn't. 

And "supernatural" covers so much ground that it muddies the point of the perfectly readable but to-what-purpose what-ifs in which the novel engages. What's the point of eliminating the impossible to arrive at the improbable if "gone Todash" is ultimately the answer even though you need to go beyond the book to even get the clue? Does it undermine the whole point of living our lives in cogent defiance of the nightmare-fuel-of-unknowns that existentially envelop us all? To borrow from King's allusion at the beginning, it decreases the purchasing power of the legal tender in circulation. 

I said this is a story about telling stories, but really the plot is even simpler: it’s simply a story about the day Steffi joined the staff ("crossed over the river") of The Weekly Islander. Tea for the tillerman. All the relevant details to tell that story, to achieve that goal, are present in The Colorado Kid. As Vince says, life is 99% mystery and 1% conceptual re-framing to stay sane. Then again, this is drama, folks. I can’t see why it can’t be both a meditation on the stories we tell ourselves and how we use them to accept/ exclude and a puzzle box with a more traditionally satisfying conclusion: The Mystery of the Riddle’s Enigma plus Steffi solving it, even if she (or the reader) is unaware she's done so. 

Actually, I guess such a book would probably look something like The Outsider. King's the one who gets us into this mess by the Starbucks/Blockbuster thing. I think when it comes to whatever mysteries remain in King's works, we likely have gotten all the answers we're going to get. It's frustrating, but that's life.

Perhaps there's a lesson there.

"And on the mound the little boy who had been pitching held his glove up to one of the bright circles which hung in the sky just below the clouds, as if to touch that mystery, and bring it close, and open its heart, and know its story."

Herman is happy to have helped. 

Ranking the King Movies, pt. 2

And now as continued from last time for my top twenty favorite Kings. (In case the header photo wasn't informative enough.)

20.

Maximum Overdrive

(1986)

Almost certainly a less sensible movie than many of the ones aforementioned, this one’s undergone a renewed appreciation of late. In a way that’s good. It’s as representative a slice of 80s horror as Friday the 13th, pt. 3 and was never as bad as it briefly had the reputation as being. (Like disco or Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the conventional wisdom on this one really changed somewhere over the last ten or twenty years.) In no way could it be considered a masterpiece, nor even a legit-great flick. It has, though, undeniably, a definite je-ne-sais-quois. 

Is it the premise itself? The massive amounts of destruction? The cocaine buried in the mix? The campy performances? The AC/DC? The burning toilet paper scattered across the highway? The Green Goblin? The menace of the machines? The Emilio of Estevez? Its 80s-ness? The tension between familiar-King-characters in a situation beyond the author’s control/ powers? Unknown. All of the above and then some.

All I know is, I always enjoy watching this movie, and I always say at least once to myself "Oh boy, this is terrible." It's one of those movies. I probably don't need to tell you this, but that combo can on occasion be even more fun than a movie more traditionally-made. 

19.

Riding the Bullet

(2004)

Well now, the award for Most Improved Movie in My Personal Reckoning goes to this one. I didn’t quite love this movie, but for starters, it’s really pretty to look at, something I didn’t remember at all from the first time I saw it. 

And it’s got a lot of heart. What it feels like is a personal film from Mick Garris, perhaps his ONLY personal film that I’m aware of. It works. There's a point when you're watching this where you can choose to go with it or turn it off; go with it.

Sadly I cannot find the notes I took while I was watching it. So I’ve got little specific to go on except the above. Which is a shame, as enjoying it on this 2020 King-movie-revisit was a pleasant surprise. I don't remember the original story too, too well; I tend to get it mixed up with "Nona" in my head. (See comments elsewhere about the people manning my mental file cabinets and their habit of misfiling things.) I was doing a big King Short Fiction re-read but then got off track and lost the mojo. I'll pick it up again sooner or later, but I think this movie goes its own way. One of the occasions I'm happy it did so. I look forward to watching this one again. 

18.

Graveyard Shift

(1990)

Here’s another one that seems to have only risen in prestige in the years since no one even knew it existed. 

Which is kind of funny. I mean: it’s not a good movie. But we’ve covered that – it doesn’t have to objectively be “good” to be awesome. Graveyard Shift is not awesome – let’s be clear there, too. But it is fun. At least in theory. I have to say, I recently got the special edition blu-ray and Dawn and I watched it and for the first time I thought “Well… I don’t need to see that for awhile.”

Whereas for about ten watches prior to that (all taking place over the past eight years) it was getting more and more enjoyable, each time I watched it. I’d half convinced myself it WAS a good movie and just took a little digging. And who knows? That’s true of plenty of movies, probably this one too. But, I think I may have found my plateau of enjoyment with it. If so, it was a wild ride, Graveyard Shift, and like a letter-cube settling into place on a Boggle board, I think you may have finally found your spot.

The end-credits song belongs in whatever Museum of Stephen King opens in the years to come. 

17.

The Mist

(2007)

This is an odd movie. It’s well-made and engaging enough and follows the events of the novella fairly closely. Which is good – the original story is great fun. Except it ends (literally) on a note of hope, while the movie ends on the precise opposite of hope. 

Is that the right choice to have made?

I don’t know. Works for some people. For me, had they ended it more like the novella, I’d have placed this higher. It’s the type of ending that shocks you but does it really illuminate / tie together what came before? The downer editing forces you to consider everything you’ve seen as either the “shit happens then gets worse then you die, tough titty, loser” nihilism popular with certain 21st century horror but not at all popular with me. Or the ending forces you to consider "the mist" as some kind of metaphor/ statement about… what? Depression? Despair? The audacity of hopelessness? 

Tell you the truth, I’m surprised it’s where it is on this countdown. I have a feeling when I re-do these down the road it might fall a bit. It's well-made, but I split with people on the ending. 

I have not watched the show. I kinda don't see the point of turning this into a show, I'll be honest. Perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised.

16.

The Night Flier

(1997)

Mark Pavia’s first film has a devoted cult following. And deservedly so – despite some clunky moments here and there, this is a very effective movie, with a good script, a strong (and rare lead) performance from Miguel Ferrer, as well as Julie Entwistle, who for some reason never went on to fame and glory. Why not? Clearly she had the goods. Pavia, too, (her husband incidentally). With the modest success and good reviews of Fender Bender let’s hope this guy gets more turns behind the camera, and especially more turns adapting King. I was excited a few years back when it looked like he was going to be making an anthology film out of "The Reaper's Image."

If there’s one part of this movie that fails for me on subsequent viewings, it’s the guy playing Renfield (Michael H. Moss). A good physical presence but some of the dialogue is delivered a in a sort of cosplay-Orson-Welles style. 

15. 

Secret Window

(2004)

Here’s an underappreciated movie. Although watching it for this post I was slightly impatient with it. Probably not the fault of the movie, though. Long days round here lately – by the time movie-time rolls around at night, I’m not always in the most patient frame of mind.   

Johnny Depp gives a great performance, as does John Turtorro. We're so used to great performances from those guys it's tough to appreciate, sometimes, the little subtle touches they bring to things.

Very well-made film that preserves and showcases the twist quite well. 

14. 

Needful Things

(1993)

This one is as high in the list as it is solely due to Max Von Sydow’s performance as Leland Gaunt. How delightful is he here? Pretty darn delightful. It's the type of performance that - like Tim Curry's in the It mini-series - paves over whatever potholes are in the rest of the movie. Unlike that mini-series, though, there's less to pave over here. 

The expanded version is a much better adaptation of the novel; I suppose it should be considered the director’s cut. It adds a great deal of the novel that was excised from the theatrical cut. But both versions work pretty well on account of the strong casts. It helps if you love the book, which I do.

13. 

The Mangler

(1995)

I’d never seen this one until gathering my materials together for this post. I actually kind of loved it, to my immense surprise. It was always one of those “Why and how did they ever turn this short story into a book” items in my brain. Understandably - but unfairly, as it turns out.

Is it a masterpiece? No. Is it way closer to being one than it has any business being? Absolutely. “Masterpiece” is of course subjective. It’s an easygoing and dare-I-say sumptuous remix of old school horror and Tobe Hooper’s unique approach. (I’ve discovered through reading The Truth Inside the Lie that I really don’t know Hooper’s catalog anywhere near as well as I thought I did, though, so that statement has an asterisk. ) It expands King’s original story (a silly but effective old-school-horror-in-modern-clothes effort) into something even more monstrous. It retains the old-school-horror (virgin blood, belladonna, yadda yadda) and renders the absurd premise as believable, somehow. 

I can't recall where I read it, apologies, but the film also doubles as Tobe Hooper's metaphorical assessment of his career in Hollywood. No need to even read that deeply into it to observe this, the analogs are fairly easy. (The machine = Hollywood, the family = the studio/executives, the cop = the independent director, his friend = his fans, etc.) This angle makes The Mangler not only an underappreciated King film but an unappreciated examination of 90s filmmaking in general, particularly the studio/indie dichotomy of those years.

12. 

1922 

(2017)

I’ve a feeling I may bump this one down in a few years/ after a few more watches. You heard it here first! OMG #WatchThisSpace

Until I do, this is a great and somewhat-rare treat for King fans: a meticulously faithful adaptation of the story that still feels like pure cinema rather than just a read-along-storybook, as adaptations with lots of voice-over can seem sometimes.

Most of the ones that follow, actually, follow their source material quite closely. Probably no coincidence they land where they do in our countdown. 

11. 

Stand By Me

(1986)

This one hasn’t aged well for me. But it seems to have aged like proverbial fine wine to everyone else, so I mostly keep my mouth shut. When the score is everyone five thousand and me zero, I think the issue is likely on my end and not the film's. And considering its director has two King adaptations in my top fifteen, it must be clear even to me on some level that everyone is right. 

I try to pinpoint what it is that bugs me when I re-watch this now. Is it the performances? Somewhat. Too much narration telling me how to feel? Somewhat there, too. There's a sort of forced-march-of-nostalgia going on in some places. But there's plenty of that to compare it to, nowadays, where "Forced March of Nostalgia" is practically a genre you can pick on Netflix, and Stand By Me is miles above any of that crap. 

So I guess it's not that the film hasn't aged well for me, it's that my relationship to it seems proportional to the context around me. When I was twelve it was my favorite thing ever. Then it wasn't. As a forty-six year old, I appreciate in a way I never could previously how well it did its job, even if I enjoy it less. Weird, eh? 

10. 

The Green Mile

(1999)

Here's a movie that can be reduced - like a fraction - to less flattering descriptions. Tom Hanks plus Shawshank over gospel equals box office/ syndication/ Oscar glory, or something like that. A Marxist read on the film would be something like "passion play in blackface to absolve the capitalists of their racist crimes." The Opiate-Delivery-Mechanism Gospel According to Paul Edgcomb, or perhaps according to Mister Jingles. 

But that shows the limitations of such reductive reviewing. The film works, as the novel works too. Sure you can say hey, this is just a warmed-over gospel metaphor, ("just") and maybe "problematic" to use such an overwrought term as that. It doesn't matter. That's neither the most relevant nor the most fulfilling takeaway from viewing this film. It's a great and very effective theatrical production, for one. Like Oliver Stone's JFK  * you don't have to agree with either the conclusion or intent of the story just to admire its excellence as a production.

* It's a more interesting comparison that it might seem; someone should spend some time comparing and contrasting the two films. Both deal with an apostle-to-new-truth-like change in the protagonist's lives due to an assassination, the invisible hand of the "free market" as nefarious systemic metaphor, etc. Food for a later date perhaps. 

Had the nation not had a touch of Tom Hanks fatigue in 1999, it's likely he'd have won another Oscar for this one. Shame Michael Clarke Duncan didn't win; he was nominated but Michael Caine took it home for The Cider House Rules. Which I've still yet to read, damn it. 

9. 

Gerald's Game

(2017)

The only thing wrong with this movie is the only thing wrong with the book: the epilogue. And there’s by no means wide agreement on whether there’s anything wrong with the book’s epilogue in the first place, so depending where you come down on that one, this will or won’t bother you at all. 

Beyond the ending, though, this could have so easily been a disaster in the wrong hands, and it's quite the opposite. Great stuff here, a showcase for the considerable talents of Carla Gugino, as well as Bruce Greenwood who has become a reliable go-to in recent years. Nice to see that. He needs the right TV role. Or hell: how about casting HIM as Roland? Not the first or more obvious choice, but as I tried to think of iconic roles he could bring to life, that one flashed across my mind. In retrospect, he was the only thing they got one hundred percent right with the Lens Flare reboot. 

Enough about Bruce Greenwood. It may be his character's game, but it's Carla's movie. This is a film whose reputation will only improve, I think. 

8. 

The Dark Half

(1993)

I’ve come to realize that like Tobe Hooper I don’t know George Romero’s catalog half as well as I thought I did, either. So I’m not sure where this one falls on the Greatest Romero Ever list. My guess would be third or fourth, but it should at least be in the top five/ ten conversation. 

People don’t talk about this one as much as they should, or so it seems to me. Maybe they do, what do I know what people are talking about? Maybe if I went to Stephen King dot com or the official chat forums I’d see page after glorious page of appreciation for this movie. 

I suspect it’s one I might actually bump down a bit next time I do these, but for now I can thank The Truth Inside the Lie and its deep dive on the book for turning me on to this in a way I hadn't initially appreciated. 

7. 

(tie)

Creepshow / Cat's Eye

(1982 / 1985)

These are tied for my seventh favorite King movie because I honestly can't tell which one I love more. They both got into my head and King-reckonings around the same time (6th grade, VHS) and activate the same King-positive neurons in my brain. Simply put, I adore these movies.

Of the two, Creepshow is probably the "better-made" film. It's got that faux-EC design and the whole meteor-shit business. But better-made only goes so far in a subjective race; hell, The Dark Half is better-made than Creepshow, probably, but I'll take it over The Dark Half or most other Romero. 

To honor such ambivalent passions and the thread of positivity between them, I present them here in tandem. James Woods, Leslie Nielson, Alan King, Ed Harris, EC - I was introduced to all of them for the first time in this era of repeat-watching-on-VHS via these two movies.

6. 

Dolores Claiborne

(1995)

King’s so-called feminist period lasted from 1992 to 1995, although seems to me the work before and after is pretty feminist-friendly, too. But when people say “King’s feminist period,” they mean Gerald's Game, Rose Madder, Insomnia, and this one. 

Of all the above, Dolores is my favorite, so it’s probably no surprise it’s one of my favorite King movies as well. It's fairly well-regarded among critics and audiences but somehow still feels underappreciated to me. A great film apart from being a great adaptation and one of Kathy Bates’ finest roles.

And speaking of Kathy Bates:

5. 

Misery

(1990)

Where were you the night of November 30th, 1990? I was at the Walnut Hill movie theater in Woonsocket, RI, on a first date with a girl I'd be entangled with for a few years. Kind of an ominous title for a first date, no? We should’ve went to see Three Men and a Little Lady in the theater next door, maybe things would’ve ended differently. 

I’ve had my ups and downs with this movie over the years. Loved it, then had it had bad connotations after things didn’t work down the line with the girl above, then I just kind of forgot about it for awhile. When I re-discovered it in the mid-00s at first I was critical of it then slowly began turning positive on it again. I've reread the book twice in the last ten years and each time I appreciated what they did with the movie even more. Adding the sheriff character was a good idea, as well as Frances Sternhagen. Both of whom feel like King characters even though they’re not from the book.

Kathy Bates is a hell of an actress. Her Annie Wilkes is a perfect mix of diabolical, nurturing, poignant, and off-her-meds nuts. And James Caan is great as Paul Sheldon. Hell, you don’t need me to sell the damn thing. Like the next few, a classic you can still trust after all these years.

4. 

The Shawshank Redemption

(1994)

"Sometimes it makes me sad, though, Andy being gone. I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone.
I guess I just miss my friend."

First time I saw this, I had to excuse myself and go into the bathroom and cry a little bit after I heard that, I'm not ashamed to say. Which never happened to me when reading the novella, although I read it many times before I ever saw the movie. Sometime around 2000, when the girl I'd been seeing for most of the 90s moved away. I guess the idea was she was a bird with bright feathers and I was stuck in prison. Funny how that comes back to me now, years and worlds later, and I still remember how that realization felt. Ah, the relationships of youth.

I always bring up these relationships when I review these things, but is that really so odd? I'm not reviewing these for Esquire or Sight and Sound. A lot of movies and music are tied up in our relationships. Anyway! No one should get the wrong idea. No one's lamenting anything. Not even getting older.

As with Misery or all these things you sure don't need me to sell this movie to you. It's one of those It's a Wonderful Life movies that will be aired on Thanksgiving or Easter for the next fifty to sixty years I bet. 

3. 

Carrie

(1976)

I mentioned this in my remarks about the 2013 version last time: "The time/ momentum seemed / still seems right for Carrie to be remade and replace the De Palma version now over forty years old in the collective imagination. And this wasn’t bad, really; it’s just… not that. It should’ve swung for the fences. Did it? No one gives a performance anyone is still talking about, and that’s a problem. This is the sort of movie where that needs to happen. Or perhaps its cultural moment has passed? Maybe the imagery and events of Carrie have been absorbed into the culture and collective unconscious now, blunting its ability to reflect or shock us. We have assimilated Carrie, or perhaps been assimilated by it, so we can’t react to it that way, even if done well. "

I plan to rewatch this for Halloween season viewing this year, so I hope to add some further remarks in the comments. Depending when you’re reading this (and if it even happens) this review may be expanded. For now I’ll suffice to say De Palma is a polarizing director, but I find many of his films fascinating to watch. Though not in many a year. The stuff he was doing from the mid-70s through the mid-80s fascinates me most of all. Someone at some link I no longer have wrote about how The Exorcist 2: The Heretic is not a sensible sequel to The Exorcist, but it is a sensible progression in the career of John Boorman. This is true of De Palma, here, though not the sequel aspect, of course. That's a sort of cyphr for figuring out De Palma's movies, I think, the context of what in his own work he's reacting against or moving toward or away from. Carrie can be viewed equally well on those terms, as a King adaptation, as a 70s film, or just as a horror/ coming of age movie. 

Unlike many and with all due respect, I prefer it to the book. As I do for:

2. 

The Dead Zone

(1983)

David Cronenberg is another fascinating director. A bit less polarizing than De Palma, though probably not by much. I plan/ hope to watch The Dead Zone for Halloween 2020 as well, so same sitch as above. 

Sitting alongside Cat’s Eye and Creepshow in my personal mental warehouse of Early King Fandom, this film retains all of its impact almost forty years later. Some say “now more than ever.” I’ve seen that written somewhere on this movie every few years since it came out, though. Its message is perennial, bipartisan, and poignantly conveyed through some brilliant and understated performances. (You'd never know Herbert Lom is the guy always trying to kill Inspector Clouseau from his moving performance here.) Its dreamscape of melancholy remains among the most remarkable achievements of Cronenberg’s career, a career with no shortage of remarkable achievements.

You know, I really should do a best-of Cronenberg post one day. Don’t know why I’ve never thought of this until right now. I think I’ve seen everything except Maps to the Stars.

And finally:

1. 

The Shining

(1980)

It’s hard to come up with anything to say about this movie. Hasn’t it all been said? Reviews of the film these days read more like reviews of all the arguments about it, particularly the book vs. movie/ King vs. Kubrick divide. 

I’ll try to sidestep all that as much as I can. Allow me to bullet point some things I love about this movie:

- If The Dead Zone is like a stroll through melancholy, this one is like soaking in a bath of dread. (Maybe the bath with the hacked-up lady from Room 237? Gross.) I’d never felt that from a movie before. It led, eventually, to exploring how a film could be designed to so effectively evoke such a feeling. Basically, in order to get to sleep one scared-sleepless night after watching this movie, I remember consciously thinking “someone had to put the camera in that room” and it opened up not just this movie but ALL movies to this sort of consideration. 

- Jack’s performance as Jack Torrance. It’s not for everyone. Spielberg relays on a Kubrick documentary that once he told Kubrick that Jack’s performance was a little too much for him, and Kubrick likened it to James Cagney. I don’t know Cagney’s acting style or the specific film Spielberg mentions well enough to know if that’s accurate, but it makes sense to me, generally, as Kubrick’s approach to directing Jack in this movie. 

- I like everyone’s performance in this movie, actually, from Danny Lloyd to Shelly Duvall to Scatman Crothers to the littler but so important tonally parts like Stuart Ullman (Barry Nelson) and Lloyd (Joe Turkel). They all add up to something. Part of the reason the film feels the way it does is because each performance is arranged the way it is.

- Ditto for every shot and steadicam sequence. 

- In a way these are Captain Obvious points to make. I’m describing the simple grammar of film, editing, set design, etc. But damn if it’s not all harnessed so well here. 

- All the snow. The ending. The changing of the jacket before the fish soiree. 

- The soundtrack and sound design. Taking the atonal mayhem out of the concert halls and dropping it into the multiplexes of America as accompaniment to a horror film is the sort of public school prank I can get behind.  

And finally, I love it just as a brilliant realization of the book. Many don’t, including (like any of you need me to tell you this) its author. So it goes. As for me, it’s my 2nd favorite King book, probably my favorite Kubrick movie, and here it is at the top of the charts of my favorite King movies.

~

Until next time, friends.