King's Highway pt. 65: Needful Things

Needful Things was published in 1991 and takes place after the events of The Dark Half and the underrated "Sun Dog" from Four Past Midnight.  

Well, after all Castle Rock events, I guess, as printed right on the cover.

THE PLOT: This is a contemporary version of the "evil peddler" fairy tale: a mysterious stranger (Leland Gaunt) arrives in a small town (Castle Rock) and bewitches the locals with irresistible wares and a sinister clairvoyance. Gaunt is an ancient not-quite-human (shades of Barlow or Pennywise) who offers Castle Rock's large cast-of-characters "their heart's desire" in exchange for a small fee and pranks/ favors to-be-redeemed. Sheriff Alan Pangborn, last seen in The Dark Half, struggles with the off-screen death of his wife and one of his children, as well as his new romance with Polly Chalmers, who suffers from debilitating arthritis. As Gaunt sows discord, Alan is maneuvered out of his way, but he eventually puts the pieces together and (as the town explodes around them) destroys the valise where Gaunt stores the souls for which he has "fairly traded." This frees the town from his influence, and Gaunt, revealed as the inhuman creature he is, disappears on a ghostly "hellwagon" into the night. The survivors regroup, and Alan, freed from the painful memories/ guilt that plagued him as much as Polly's arthritis plagued her, plans a move out of town/ a change-of-career.

In the epilogue, (shades of Randall Flagg in The Stand) Gaunt sets up shop elsewhere: Junction City, Iowa, mistakenly-named as "Paradise Falls" at the wiki, ready to stir up his hornet's nest anew. Sam Peebles, of "The Library Policeman," is mentioned in this epilogue.

Leland Gaunt's modus-operandi reminded me of Flagg's, throughout. As mentioned in the review at You're Entitled to My Opinion, "As King chugged along toward the end of the Dark Tower series, I was certain that Leland Gaunt was going to turn up somewhere. He had all the makings of a tower minion. Alas, he never appeared. The worlds of Castle Rock and the Dark Tower did not meet." That's too bad. I agree - seems like a natural meet-up to me, as well. I'm sure that somewhere, Gaunt, Elvid from "Fair Extension," and Walter from The Gunslinger et al. are peddling their wares out of the same shop. That would be an ensemble sitcom I'd watch, week in, week out.

Interestingly, when Gaunt is destroyed, Alan is filled with "a great and incoherent ecstasy" and thinks "The white! The coming of the white!" That's a fairly-overt Dark Tower reference that is to my knowledge never followed-up on in any subsequent work.

I suspect that Gaunt and his shop are a tribute of sorts to Mr. Dark from Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, but I've never seen that mentioned anywhere, either. Quite a similar set-up, though, and King's a big Bradbury fan, so, stands to reason.

 King later said of this:

"To me, [Needful Things] was a hilarious concept. And the way that it played out was funny, in a black-comedy way. It really satirized that American idea that it's good to have everything that you want. I don't think it is."

He elaborates on pg. 458: "Because in America, you could have anything you wanted, just as long as you could pay for it. If you couldn't pay, or refused to pay, you would remain needful forever."

"Any customer can have a car painted any color you want as long as it's black" - Henry Ford

Polly, when she helps Alan unravel his own Gaunt-given fantasy, says "What's the one thing in all the world, the one useless thing, that you want so badly that you get it mixed up with needing it?" (Ironic, considering the one thing Polly wants is certainly not useless, i.e. an end to her arthritic pain; perhaps this is why she, of all the characters who purchase something in Gaunt's shop, is the only one who has to slay a magical spider. (Which powers the arthritis-numbing magical necklace Gaunt sells her.) Raising the number of magical spiders in King's work to at least three.)

As an examination of America's greed/ the price for a man's soul, etc., it's not bad, but as an example of one of King's "town under siege" plots (its most obvious counterparts being Salem's Lot, The Tommyknockers and Under the Dome) it holds its weight against any of them.

It's not perfect. The cross cutting in the final act is perhaps drawn out too much, though it is certainly satisfying to see everyone's threads intersect so seamlessly alongside the town's destruction. (Raising the number of towns destroyed at-novel's-end in King's work to at least four.) Sections of it could be cut  (like the Catholic vs. Protestant sub-plot, although I obviously see its relevance to the Devil Selling His Bewitching Wares theme), and I wouldn't miss them. But all in all, I found this compulsively readable; I missed it when I wasn't reading it.

Of course, the same material can produce wildly different responses. This was skewered in the New York Times upon its publication, which was at that time the default response from critics with a pretense to "highbrow" gatekeeping. Although the title of that review ("And Us Without Our Spoons") did provoke a chuckle, it is worthwhile to compare and contrast the approach/ analysis therein to this CharnelHouse review, which displays far more familiarity (and accuracy) with King's themes and motifs. Joe Queenan, the author of the NYT review and erstwhile "acerbic personality" on Real Time with Bill Maher and Hardball with Chris Matthews, writes about an idea of King and King's work; he exploits the novel only as a delivery mechanism for then-"correct" conclusions. (i.e. King is adolescent, King's characters are not "my sort of people," King's descriptions are just pop-cultural-references, etc.) For a critic like Queenan, King is Gaunt, and his Constant Reader is Cletus from The Simpsons, easily duped into buying his snake oil. Kevin Quigley, however, writes about the actual novel, and therein lies the difference. He also takes the time to position it vis-a-vis King's other work:

"Mental illness, class and gender inequality, pedophilia, and suicide have served to underscore the overarching supernatural horrors in King's novels before and after. That all surface in this novel makes Needful Things not only a terminal point for one of King's favorite fictional places, but also a hub for his favorite dark fascinations."

That, for my money, is the right way to look at it. "The Last Castle Rock Story" is the "Endsville" George Stark referenced (in The Dark Half, throughout, and in Needful Things, in one brief dream of Alan's), the terminal destination of one line and where Constant Reader connects to all points beyond.

A few quick things before I get to the movie:

- An "easter egg" for us "Sun Dog" fans: Ace Merrill, nephew of Pop Merrill, deceased, and last seen in "The Body" terrorizing Gordo and the gang, is taunted by Leland upon their first meeting with the verbal tic given to Pop in "Sun Dog," i.e. "what I mean to say is..." This made me smile. Ace reacts to it but doesn't identify it. Easy to miss but a pleasure to notice.

- Along those lines, Wilma Jerzyck is described as having "all the charm of a snowshovel." In parsing the text only for descriptions that fit his preconceived conclusion that King solely describes things via movies or tv or advertised products, Queenan missed this, and a few dozen others that might challenge that perception.

- King later said of this: "The reviewers called it an unsuccessful horror novel, even though I had assumed everybody would see it as a satire. Over the years I’ve come to think that, well, maybe it just wasn’t a very good book." Sorry to disagree, Steve, but I really enjoyed it.

As for the movie...

Roger Ebert described the movie as having only "one note, which it plays over and over, sort of a Satanic water torture. It's not funny and it's not scary and it's all sort of depressing." I don't quite agree, but I can see his point. As a compartmentalization of events from the novel, it's not bad, but perhaps someone with no familiarity with the original text might find certain things baffling or certain tensions unjustified.

It should be noted that two versions of this film exist, as described comprehensively over at movie-censorship. The version with the extended footage (an hour's worth) is unavailable on DVD, so that side-by-side comparison is very illuminating for those of us who haven't seen it. I've seen the theatrical version, though. How does it hold up vis-a-vis the book?

Not bad, actually. The performances are good, and the locations are great. Many things are changed from the novel, as per usual with these things, but I'll only address a couple of them. The score by Patrick Doyle sometimes doesn't match the mood of the events on-screen, but it's always powerful. Not quite John Williams, but definitely a serious symphonic effort. And it mixes in well-known pieces like Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" to good effect.

Like pictures? Here we go:

Directed by Charlton Heston's kid, Fraser, which gives rise to an interesting situation. Fraser Heston played infant Moses in Dad's The Ten Commandments, and Max Von Sydow played Jesus in The Greatest Story Ever Told. Ergo, in Needful Things, Moses directs Jesus as The Devil.

Ed Harris plays Pangborn, and he's fine, if given to some eruptions of anger that are more Ed-Harris-like than Alan-Pangborn. Likewise, he's given a very Ed-Harris-esque backstory that does not appear in the novel.

Michael Rooker's portryal of Pangborn in The Dark Half is probably closer to how he is characterized in either book. But the change isn't too distracting.

Alan and Leland meet face-to-face near the film's beginning. This change I found less successful, as it's fairly pivotal to how things unfold in the book that they don't meet until well into the final act.

Bonnie Bedelia plays Polly, whose backstory re: her daughter's death is excised from the film, and she is no longer the proprietor of You Sew and Sew but instead of the diner that Nan runs in the book.

Her relationship with Leland is sexualized, somewhat. Leland has the hots for her, here, whereas in the book, he's only interested in corrupting her soul.

She's sexed-up even more in the extended version, with more than a few gratuitous close-ups of her necklace.

Ace Merrill (played by Kiefer Sutherland in Stand By Me) plays a pretty big part in the book, but he's not in the movie. Too bad.

The character of Brian Rusk is rearranged perhaps the most unkindly.

He remains Leland's first victim, but whereas his "needful thing" in the book is Sandy Koufax's 1956 baseball card:

in the film, it's Mickey Mantle.

Necessitating the placement of this unholy relic upon his head.

There's actually a good reason for this, though, as King explains:

"...holy shit, was Sandy Koufax mad at me. Especially since the last thing the kid says [in the book] is “Sandy Koufax sucks,” and then, pow! He blows his head off. Koufax said that he had tried to be a role model for youth throughout his entire career as a pitcher, and that he was very angry about playing a part in a child suicide.

I tried to explain that the boy doesn’t mean Sandy Koufax sucks, he means that Leland Gaunt and the shop and this whole business sucks. See, this is the only way that the character can say that this whole business of buying things and selling your soul is wrong. Koufax didn’t understand. When they made the movie, they changed it to Mickey Mantle. Mantle didn’t give a shit. He thought it was funny."

In the movie, Pangborn is able to intervene, and Brian survives his suicide attempt. Understandably, I guess. In the book, Brian's younger brother witnesses it, and Pangborn is put on Gaunt's trail (almost too late) after questioning him. Since the younger brother doesn't appear in the movie, and since onscreen-kid's-suicides are rarely cinematic selling points, it makes sense.

Speaking of the Rusks, Brian's mother Cora appears, unidentified, only in two scenes of the trimmed version: the above, and

here, after the Red Hour has struck.

In the extended version, her part is considerably larger, though her needful thing is changed from a pair of the King's sunglasses to a bust of Elvis.

Making all the imagined sex she has with it a bit more literal and way creepier. But why does she have both?

When Father Meehan is introduced, he reads aloud the poison-pen letter his church receives re: Casino Night, and I kept wondering from where I recognized his voice. A quick imdb search supplied the answer:

It's Colonel Hargrove from the Medal of Honor series! I spent many a night in 2001 (and again in 2004, when Frontline came out) listening to this guy introduce the missions. Bad news, Paterson, you're going behind enemy lines... again.

The film lives or dies on the performances of its male leads, though. Harris, as we've discussed, is fine.

As is the late JT Walsh as Head Selectman Danforth "Buster" Keaton.

But this is Max Von Sydow's movie.

Although Gaunt comes across as less-supernatural in the movie, Von Sydow's performance is pitch-perfect.

At the film's end, Gaunt mentions to Alan that he will see Alan's-and-Polly's grandson in Jakarta, circa 2050. This doesn't exist in the novel, but I like it. (Actually, his send-off in the novel might be a little too heavy on the ALL-CAPS DEVIL-WE-CAST-YOU-OUT!! vibe, so I might prefer the movie's, where he drives off, smug as a bug in a rug.)

I just wanted to take a moment before signing off to recognize the longevity and integrity of Max Von Sydow's career.

He rose to prominence in Bergman's classic The Seventh Seal,

achieved mainstream American success in Friedkin's The Exorcist,

brought the main character of one of my favorite books to life in Steppenwolf,

imprinted himself on every boy my age's imagination as Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon (here seen with Ornella Muti)

and of course is still active today (here in Scorsese's Shutter Island.)

His being cast as Leland Gaunt is a real treat. Definitely one of the iconic King-film performances.

NEXT: Probably Dolores Claiborne. See you then.

King's Highway pt. 62: Christine

Bad-ass cover, is it not?

This wasn't one of my favorites. I enjoyed reading it as a teenager but found my eyes skimming over some pages, this time around.

While it's certainly true that the novel "plays to one of King's greatest strengths: making broad characters human and making the uncanny believable," as mentioned here, and that there's nothing technically wrong with the book, or unbelievable, it's just rather lightweight. There is no real dramatic tension; the insights into adolescence, parental/familial relationships, girlfriends, and sex would be no one's idea of "the definitive portrayal of..." such. Again, not that they're bad, just that they're functional and that's about it. They're as believable as they need to be, but all of it could be cut-out or diminished with no harm done. 

And as mentioned in this review from a defunct King-re-read blog that I wish its author would resurrect, "It's almost as if the B-movie trappings are getting in the way of the Grade A horror I have come to expect." I think this would have been better served as a short story or a novella. All of the best bits could be preserved in such with no loss of velocity.

You likely know the plot, but I'll relay it just the same via images from the movie.

(L to R) Arnie and Dennis buy the car from loathsome old man Le Bay.

Arnie begins to notice strange things about the car, like how the car seems to repair itself and only really hum when it plays the oldies station.

The odometer runs backwards, as well.

Dennis doesn't like the car and has reservations about its influence on his friend.

Alas, he breaks his leg, so he can't do much as Arnie falls increasingly under its spell.

Nor can he protect Arnie from the bullying of one Buddy Repperton, who looks a little old for high school, but so be it.

Owning the car improves both Arnie's complexion and his confidence, and he begins to date new-to-school Leigh Cabot.

Christine does not approve. Leigh survives this attempt, but it's enough to break her and Arnie up. You know, that old chestnut, We were in love, but my car kept trying to kill her.

Christine starts to kill people, starting with the "shitters" (rather literally) led by Buddy, who attacked her in the airport parking garage where Arnie keeps her. Before they die, they each see the ghost of LeBay behind the wheel.

As does Arnie.

Leigh and Dennis hatch a plan to destroy the car.

Harry Dean Stanton's the cop on the case.

The novel ends with Dennis and Leigh crushing the car to smithereens. An epilogue finds Dennis four years older and reflecting back on the events both of the novel (Arnie and his family all die) and after (he and Leigh date, then break up, now he's a schoolteacher.) He reads an article on the vehicular homicide of the last of Buddy Repperton's gang, in Los Angeles, and wonders if LeBay's ghost is back... The last line is His unending fury. 

Actually, that last line speaks to the "meh"ness I felt upon completing this one. LeBay's "unending fury" felt more-told than shown. But beyond that, Dennis's narrative voice is inconsistent. At times he seems wise-beyond-his-years, as in these two passages from the epilogue:

"I carried a torch for her, but I'm afraid I carried it self-consciously and dropped it with an almost unseemly haste."

or 

"A secret needs two faces to bounce between; a secret needs to see itself in another pair of eyes. And although I did love her, all the kisses, all the endearments, all the walks arm-in-arm through blowing October leaves... none of these things could quite measure up to that magnificently simple act of tying her scarf around my arm."

I mean, he's 22. But, of course, let's give the 22-year-olds the benefit of the doubt, here, okay fine, but nevertheless, it's just too flowery, for both his established-character and the subject matter. Here's a case where the kind of narrative-characterization evident in, say, Blockade Billy, would have worked better. You don't get anything special from having the novel told by Dennis, and his characterization is inconsistent as a result of it.

Speaking of such things, when the p.o.v. changes in the second book ("Arnie - Teenage Love Songs") I thought, "How much more interesting the book might have been had it been structured like Hearts in Atlantis?" Normally, I dismiss such speculation (anything can be "what-if"d but that doesn't make it a compelling means-of-evaluation,) but in this case, I thought now that really could have been something. If Christine was ever re-booted as a pair of novellas and a couple of wrap-up short stories, the canvas-stretching might do wonders for the subject matter.

As it is, I simply cannot agree with this enthusiastic and often-spot-on reviewer, who says "his supernatural story would perfectly complement the eroticism of JG Ballard's Crash, another book about a bloke and his crush on cars." I'm not a huge Ballard fan, but even so, it's a stretch to put this in the same league. (I'll take From a Buick 8 over either of those, thanks, and I'll take Spielberg's Duel over either Cronenberg's Crash or Carpenter's Christine.)

Before I move on to the film, I thought the song-excerpts that start each chapter add little (and there's way too many of them.) Another shrug. I normally jot down phrases or passages that resonate with me to include in these blogs, but outside of the two above (from the epilogue) nothing really jumped out at me.

The movie is about the same, for me - not good, not bad, but nothing special.

Came out the same year the book was published in that deluge-of-King-material from 1983 to 1985 or so. Carpenter was at the height of his cinematic powers, then, arguably.

I prefer the book if only because the story works better if the car is haunted by LeBay's unsettled-spirit/ unending-fury. The movie jettisons this and makes it clear from the opening sequence alone that the car is just "Bad to the Bone." Incidentally, according to the commentary, this was the film where that song makes its first appearance.

It's certainly noteworthy, though, for its lack of miniatures; an untold number of cars (few of them actually Plymouth Furies, just dressed to look like them) were demolished for this film. Probably more than even Maximum Overdrive. And this sequence where the stunt driver (Kerry Rossall) drives an actually-flaming vehicle (with gasoline in its tank) is from a crazy-dangerous-stuntwork-era we'll likely never see again.

The film's other most-memorable sequence is likely the Christine-repairs-itself "Show Me" scene:

Achieved by turning the cameras upside down (note to aspiring filmmakers - this doesn't work with digital cameras, but doing so in olden actual-film days made the film run backwards. For more obsolete filmmaking know-how, call me.) while the car was pulled downwards by a compressor-sort-of-device. (I forget what these specific things are called, but it's not a crusher.) All special effects are supervised by longtime Carpenter collaborator Roy Arbogast.

The commentary track for this is kind of fun. I'd say it and perhaps the soundtrack (it is a Carpenter movie, after all; while I'm here let me say the transition of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" to the 70s-Tanya-Tucker-version was a nice touch of bringing the movie from then-to-now. Well, the "now" of the film. Now-ish.) are the best parts about owning the DVD. It's by John Carpenter and Keith Gordon, i.e. Arnie from the film, who later went on to direct the film version of one of my favorite YA novels The Chocolate War. (John Stockwell, who plays Dennis but will always be Michael Harlan from My Science Project to me, also went on to direct, but I think Keith's probably got him beat as far as worthwhile material. Still, I tip my cap to anyone making a living in Hollywood, regardless of where they cast their respective nets.)

I wanted to include a screen-grab of the end of Arnie's driveway, particularly in one night scene. It's just about the most evocative shot of driving around to pick up your friend I've ever seen. Alas, couldn't find one.

Here's a young Kelly Preston, though, as Dennis's cheerleader girlfriend, all but forgotten for the rest of the film. (Likewise for the novel, though she gets a bit more mention)

Is it worth seeing? Sure. Worth reading, too, I guess, but neither are high up on my list of personal favorites of King or Carpenter.

The car looks wonderful, though.

Though how could you go wrong filming such a work of art as the Plymouth Fury 1958? Seriously, what an automobile. Check out this site for a complete history (and awesome pics, if you're into such things.)

A quick word on John Carpenter before signing off.

This guy's run from Halloween (1978) to They Live (1988) is just amazing; ten years, nine masterpieces. (Well, I'm including Christine, so ten years, eight masterpieces and one not-bad-one. I'm also perhaps-unfairly not including his tv-work, but whatever.) In the twenty-four years since, he's produced seven movies and - my affection for Ghosts of Mars notwithstanding - no masterpieces. Here's hoping he knocks my socks off again, and soon.

(For those who like both worst-to-best lists and John Carpenter, check out this excellent Truth Inside the Lie post. And no, I'm not getting paid to promote that blog, or any of the ones I link to so-damn-often. What can I say? When I find something I like, I stick with it.)

NEXT:

GERALD'S GAME