A Bloody Good Time 1.14.10: Stephen King Month Part 2 (The Dumbest Moments)

Posted by Joseph Lee on 01.14.2010

I really do like Stephen King, I promise!

Logo courtesy of Benjamin J. Colón (Soul Exodus)

Welcome to A Bloody Good Time. As you know, we are right in the middle of Stephen King month, a month dedicated to all things Kingian. Last week we looked at the worst King adaptations. Let's see what you had to say in response.

Dan Baltrusis replied: Great Column J. Lee. I would put Rose Red in the top 3 worst films and take out Tommyknockers, guilty pleasure of mine. Kudos on Desperation as your number 2 book, Way better than the Regulators. Hopefully Dark Tower and The Stand are somewhere in your top five.

The Stand would be as the extended edition, but I've yet to actually get around to reading The Dark Tower series. I only have The Gunslinger and I'd rather have them all before I start reading.

M:­-X said: I'm glad that, regardless of whether you like it or not, you give the Shining remake credit for remaining faithful to the source material... for all the greatness that is Kubrick & Jack's version, it was nice to see them do the remake.

Well, being more faithful is always a plus, even if everything else didn't pan out appropriately.

AG Awesome says: Im so exicted for my favorite King work The Talisman (sure he co wrote, but whatever) coming out later this year in comic and mini series. I pray they do a Dark Tower film someday. Or an HBO super mini series of it all. SOMETHING. I think 1 and 2 could be amazing cinema films for sure. The comic adaptions are amazing though.

Apparently you'll have to wait until 2012 for The Tailsman. At least that's what I read. I haven't read the entire Dark Tower series but I imagine the best way to do it would be a movie a year, like they do with Harry Potter.

demOcratic said: All of King's films suck except for the ones that aren't promoted as King films. e.g. Shawshank and Green Mile.

I disagree, and I'm sure many others do as well.

Guest asked: Wait I thought Ed Gale played the portion of walking Chucky in Child's Play. I just watched the director commentary on it a couple days ago. Alex Vincent's little sister was the person who ran across the hall when you first see Chucky and Ed Gale played him in the end when they needed an actor. When did John Franklin play him?

According to IMDB, he was the "Walkabout Chucky", so I'm guessing it wasn't a very big role. Maybe they had him hold the camera while running around for the POV shots.

With that out of the way, it's time for week 2 of our month dedicated to King. With the slogan of negativity first, I finished last week's worst films countdown and move on to the dumbest moments within all of his adaptations. As with normal "Dumbest Moments" columns, these are the most head-scratchingly stupid decisions or scenes that stand out in a bad film or drag down a good film just by being there. This isn't a movie series this time around, but an entire group of films based on adaptations of books. So it was a little trickier to narrow it down and pick out specific parts that represent the stupidity as a whole.

Some general rules for this month that will apply to all four columns:

1)This is only about his films. So if a book or story hasn't been adapted, it won't be included.
2)This can include his original work for the screen or television.
3)This cannot include any films that were not horror. So as good as something like The Green Mile is, it's not a horror film and won't make an appearance anywhere.
4)This will not include sequels to any of his other films. Yes, the Children of the Corn series is generally horrible but King didn't write the stories and probably didn't even have any involvement at all.

With that out of the way, let's get to it.



#10: Poor adaptation choices

It goes without saying that if one writes as much as Stephen King has, there are either going to be stories that weren't meant to be films or stories that just don't end up working for whatever reason. But Hollywood is in love with Mr. King and it seems as though nothing is out of bounds for a possible film adaptation. If you think that maybe the well has run dry after all these years, you would be wrong. There are twelve films in production based on King's work, and although three of them are remakes, that's still nine that are works that have not been adapted. My point is that if it has King's name on it, it will be turned into a movie at one point or another. Whether or not it deserves to be is another question altogether.

Why was Cycle of the Werewolf turned into Silver Bullet? Because Stephen King wrote a werewolf story and it was during the 80's when The Howling and An American Werewolf in London were big hits. But what about stories like The Mangler and Graveyard Shift? These stories weren't even all that good and yet they were stretched into feature-length adaptations. Why? Well that should be obvious: to make a quick buck. But at least they weren't turned into a long miniseries...oh wait, a short novella called The Langoliers did. Look at how that turned out.



#9: Unnecessary sequels

The answer to why there would be sequels is the same as why adapt stories that shouldn't be made into films: studios want money. It's not a crime but it doesn't mean that the results end up to be anything good. In fact, I've yet to see a sequel to a Stephen King film (even a good one) that turns out to be anything less than terrible. Let's look at Children of the Corn. Every sequel in that series turns out to be much worse than the film before it. Can you imagine how bad the last entry in that series ended up being? Obviously bad enough that they thought the best course of action would be a Syfy remake. Syfy is worse than direct-to-video these days.

But there are also bad sequels to good movies. It makes a little sense. The story was good for one film, maybe the elements can be stretched out for a new one. The only problem is that King was never involved and the sequels end up not having anything resemble the previous film. Look at Pet Sematary Two. The concept of a burial ground that brings the dead to life really is a story that could be lent to more than one movie if they wanted. But this sequel ends up more of a parody of the original than a faithful sequel. Return to Salem's Lot is another example. But this rule doesn't always apply: The Dead Zone was turned into a seven season television series.



#8: Virtual Reality Sex from The Lawnmower Man

This one ranks low this time around because King had nothing to do with it. There is no virtual reality to be seen in his original short story. While I went over why the movie in general is bad, this sex scene is just the cherry on top. It's poorly animated, completely impossible and just stupid. There's really nothing else I can say about it except show you.



Do you see what I mean? What's the point of that? It's not stimulating, it's not entertaining, it's just like a bad dream. What exactly are you supposed to be seeing at the end of it? Why does she lose her mind? I've never really figured it out. Perhaps it's best not to devote so much thinking to such a terrible movie.



#7: The Escape Plan from Maximum Overdrive

If you haven't seen Maximum Overdrive, it's another version of "Trucks" that Stephen King decided to adapt himself by writing the screenplay and directing. Let me say one other thing about it: It's bad. But the reason that it didn't make last week's list is because as bad as it is, I have a soft spot for it. It's so goofy, so over-the-top in it's badness that I can't help it. The rampage at the beginning that included an evil soda machine and a kid being run over by a steamroller are almost cartoon-like and that pretty much seals the deal on why I will always watch this whenever it's on television.

In case you haven't figured it out, some bizarre space radiation makes all of the machines on Earth gain sentience and they decide they want to kill anything that isn't like them. The rampage is fun but what follows is a bunch of semi-trucks holding a group of strangers hostage in a truck stop. They're lead by Emilio Estevez and he has a brilliant plan for avoiding the chaos: he'll escape to an island where there are no machines. It's a little like Day of the Dead but at least they didn't have one glaring problem. The problem here is that they forget about little things called planes. And speedboats. And helicopters. All of them are machines. I'd imagine a few military jets with missiles could take care of that problem rather quickly. Of course the plan works, which makes the machines even more stupid.



#6: The final story in Cat's Eye

Cat's Eye is a fairly harmless Stephen King anthology film that takes two decent stories "Quitters, Inc" and "The Ledge" and adapts them as well as can be expected. "The Ledge" could have used more work but otherwise they're not bad. It's the original story at the end that derails the entire picture and makes it forgettable. Before the third story begins, we are seen the other two through the eyes of a cat that is walking around town (hence the title). The cat is eventually adopted by Drew Barrymore (back when she was a precocious little rascal) and named "General".

General decides that he has been sent to the girl for a reason. That reason is a troll that lives in her house and wants to steal her breath. The parents won't believe the cat or the girl that the troll exists and of course this puts her in serious danger, even if the cat is trying to protect her. Luckily the cat saves the day, the troll is dead and thanks to the remains the parents believe her. It's a harmless and nice story, right? Wrong. The troll looks stupid and the whole thing feels like some bad episode of a kid's show than a Stephen King tale to cap off two dark and grim stories before it. Why they didn't just put another story here instead of making what they did is confusing.



#5: Morgan Freeman's overacting in Dreamcatcher

I mentioned this last week when I was going over why Dreamcatcher was a bad adaptation. Before I continue, just look at those eyebrows. That's just...wow. I completely forgot that his eyebrows were that big and goofy-looking. But that's his character in a nutshell. We're supposed to be under the belief that Col. Curtis is crazy anyway, but Freeman decides this would be the perfect opportunity to chew up the scenery and act like a complete moron. It's the worst performance I've ever seen from the man, and one of the reasons the film ends up being bad. As Roger Ebert pointed out in his review, "how could even Morgan Freeman, an actor all but impervious to bad material, be brought down by the awfulness"?

It turns out he was. Instead of bringing the movie up a notch, he makes it worse and plays the prototypical miltary man, who just wants to blow some stuff up real good. Morgan Freeman essentially played a role that probably should have went to R. Lee Ermey. At least then the role would have been well-cast. But it's Morgan Freeman lowering himself to the material and making every moment he's shown a bad one. My only regret is not finding a good example to show you here in this column. Go see the movie if you want, but it's not worth it.



#4: The dialogue in Children of the Corn

As I predicted, a number of you did not enjoy the fact that I chose Children of the Corn to be one of the worst King films of all time. I stand by my decision, because I think it's really, really bad. The acting is one thing but the script is another. There's a reason I've seen the lines in this film mocked in other places and that's because it is awful. They call their god "He Who Walks Behind the Rows", they frequently talk in pseudo-biblical terms which sounds hilarious coming out of the mouths of children. Here's a good example.



You may find that scary, but I don't. The kid's got a big knife, big deal. Smack him upside his head and remind him who's in charge. Maybe then he'll stop with all of the stupid "we have your woman" nonsense.



#3: Bad Special Effects in The Langoliers, Dreamcatcher and Thinner, among others.

Maybe in the case of The Langoliers you could argue that it was made for television and in the 90's. Maybe. But even then why not adapt it a different way than show the most ridiculous looking monsters you've ever seen? Because everything wanted to show off with special effects in the 90's, even if they weren't good by the standards of the decade. But Thinner and Dreamcatcher were made later, and they were Hollywood releases. One used bad CGI and the other used a bad fat suit and practical effects.

The CGi alien fight in Dreamcatcher was so bad you can't really tell what's going on or who is winning until it's over. The aliens only look okay before that. In Thinner you have the most obvious fat suit in the world, and then other bad practical effects like a gaunt looking man and a man with scales. It all looks fake and unbelievable. The example I've decided upon was from The Langoliers, because I can never think about those mouth-things and not laugh. Whoever it was that thinks this was a good film, how can you really defend that statement after this clip? Not only are you treated to bad special effects, but you get the added bonus of Bronson Pinchot feasting on the scenery as if he hasn't eaten for days. Enjoy!





#2 The Giant Spider in IT

Okay, while this is a pretty bad moment and just caps off what turns out to be a really bad second half to a miniseries that had a really good first half, I'm willing to give the filmmakers a little credit here. If you've read the novel IT (I have multiple times, it's my favorite book) then you know that The Ritual of Chud and the out-of-body experiences are a little too out-there and grandiose to be properly translated into a television miniseries. I'd argue that it would be hard to do this for a film. So I at least have to give some credit that they didn't even try. Unlike something like The Langoliers, they knew what their limitations were and went with something a little different.

Unfortunately that "something different" was a giant spider that looked like it walked off of the set of a bad 1950's monster movie than an impressive King adaptation. The special effects aren't the best in IT anyway, but they're not all that bad either. This spider is the exception. It doesn't look scary, it barely moves (except with stop-motion) and yet it somehow manages to almost kill them all towards the end. It's also incredibly disappointing because at that point in the film you want the showdown to be with Tim Curry's Pennywise, given the fact the movie has revolved around him. But as the miniseries continues he appears less and less. They should have somehow just had a big battle with the clown than shooting a silver earring into a spider's chest to win.





#1 The ending of The Mist

WARNING: SPOILERS WITHIN THE NEXT FEW PARAGRAPHS! Okay. I had to do that because I'm discussing the entire end of a film here, and not everyone may have seen it. I do like to avoid spoilers in this column unless the film in question is really old. The Mist is not. Now, this movie ends very bleak and dreary. The survivors all gather in the car and decide to kill themselves with a gun, including Tom Jane's son who he shoots and kills instead of allowing to live in a world that has become what it is. I have no problem with a bleak and dark ending, but I have a problem with this dark ending and I'll tell you why.

It doesn't make any sense. In the context of the story and the characters within, the decision to give up and shoot themselves makes no logical sense. In the original novella, King left it open-ended about whether or not they escape, or the world changes back to normal. In the film, Frank Darabont decides to give it a definite ending and it ends up hurting the film as a whole. Why? Because it's been established that these characters have a strong will to live and wouldn't simply "give up" like that. Furthermore, Jane's character has shown that he will kill another human being to protect his son and it's completely out of character for him to decide that killing his offspring is the best way to save him. That's why the ending is terrible.

Throw that in with the fact that Jane overacts with his screaming and the fact that the military shows up five minutes later to clean everything up (cue the "wah-wah" music) and you have a terrible finale to what was previously a great film.



That's it for me. Leave your agreements and disagreements below and I'll see you next week. I'm getting rid of my negative side and going into the best on-screen characters in King's films. He wrote enough good characters in his books that you know some of them were properly adapted. But which?