Movie: Children of the Corn (1984)

Although the page-to-screen time was a little lengthy, the Children of the Corn movie franchise is now up to nine, with a tenth on the way! Needless to say, I'm going to limit myself to two, this one and the 2009 TV remake (which I am already aware is awful), otherwise I may be stuck here for a good long while.

Like a lot of the Night Shift screen adaptations, it was hard to see how one would stretch Children of the Corn into a 90-plus minute feature film. Like observed with Maximum Overdrive and anticipated with all the rest, extra padding of the story plot was needed. Whereas the story drops a bickering couple into a mystery, the movie portrays a mostly-loving couple (though Peter Horton stops things short of wedding bells) entering a situation we the viewers already know is going to be dangerous thanks to the helpful flashback tacked on to the beginning. While the flashback is certainly educational, it sucks the Twilight Zone feel out and replaces it with stock "don't go in there!" horror tropes.

Also in the padding department is the development of the child characters. In the book, they are mostly just a bunch of Old Testament names and all corrupted. In the movie, Malachi is propped up as the diabolical one, Isaac as the clear leader (yet flawed and overthrown), and the brother and sister Job and Sarah, who are salvageable and are, in fact, rescued by the heroic couple (and in all fairness Linda Hamilton was about to become Sarah Connor, so it only makes sense they will save the day). This is quite a turn from the story, where the couple is flat out killed in the cornfield.

Finally, maybe because there was special-effects money to burn, the movie posits that there is some creature along the lines of the Tremors monster that is making all the kids do these things. Again, this serves to make the mysterious scary and sets a different tone from the story. Obviously what seemed like a nuclear detonation in the cornfield didn't stop this creature permanently, otherwise we wouldn't have the five direct-to-video sequels. Or maybe some other shenanigans take place later on. This all goes past my concern, though.

As I mentioned, there was a little more lag in page-to-screen between the appearance of the short story in Night Shift and the release of the movie. The first three novels all received adaptations four years or earlier from their book date of release. Children of the Corn was the first of numerous movies spawned from Night Shift, but took over six years to make it (add another year if calculating from the story's first appearance in Penthouse). After this, however, it would be a torrent of mediocre to outright-awful movies being barfed out almost annually.

Here's a weird factoid to leave you with. John Franklin, who played 12 year old Isaac, was 25 years old when the movie was released. I guess this makes him the white Emmanuel Lewis, but it should also give great hope to aspiring actors who look very young for their age!

Movie: Maximum Overdrive (1986)

My theory that the worst movies are the most frequently shown on television was absolutely crushed, when, of the entire smorgasbord of Night Shift adaptations, only Maximum Overdrive was readily available. In the interest of full disclosure, I've seen parts of this movie, as it seems to always be on one premium channel or another, but I've never actually intentionally sat down to watch it from start to finish. There is such a high amount amount of unnecessary profanity I can only imagine how this would have played on network television, especially the cursing ATM and marquee at the beginning.

According to the library listings at stephenking.com, Maximum Overdrive was the twelfth Stephen King movie to be made (unless you don't count Creepshow, and then it's number 11). This means, by 1986, the "Stephen King Movie" genre had really started to settle in, which isn't necessarily a good thing if you're holding out for Oscar nominees. Just to be extra special, Maximum Overdrive is directed by Stephen King himself, right at the height of his coked-out phase. The result is nothing short of craptacular.

It's hard to know where to even begin with a critique of this movie. It was only the second movie (following the still-warm Children of the Corn) to be based entirely on one short story. Therein lies part of the problem. Whereas a novel-based movie must slash, a short story-based movie has to pad. The source material, "Trucks" really doesn't offer enough to go feature-length, although I contend it would have fit nicely into a Twilight Zone episode (maybe one of the one-hour versions). So, in comes the padding. Extra characters abound, and, of course, an explanation about what is causing the machines to go haywire. Apparently a comet's tail can cause many (but not all) machines to malfunction. Trucks are the most impacted, becoming almost sentient, while smaller appliances just misbehave. And electricity isn't a requirement, as sprinklers also malfunction. Don't worry about regular cars, though. They are unaffected, although one can't rule out a freak car window rolling up unexpectedly and trapping your hand (complete with massive diamond ring), causing you to despair and die.

I digress, but clearly there are some inconsistencies here. From reading some secondary material, I suppose the intention of the film was to be "good-bad" so that people would appreciate that it is actually a clever movie that makes fun of other scary movies. Unfortunately, though the thick lens of cocaine, it came out more "bad-bad" - ridiculous is some ways, and just boring in others. Perhaps the whole "standoff at a truck stop in North Carolina that just happens to sit on a huge cache of weapons" plot line didn't work for me. The cast in general hovered somewhere between dislikable and forgettable, and lead man Emilio Estevez didn't have a lot to say, even it was because he spoke to trucks. Pat Hingle, who we met in the Shining remake, is here as a gun crazy, fast-drawling chauvinist station manager, who makes firing rocket launchers look surprisingly easy, almost like he modified a toy to shoot actual missiles. One fringe benefit of bad movies like this one is catching an actor or two before they were really famous. In this case, look sharp for Marla Maples (playing "Woman #2") and Giancarlo "Gus Fring" Esposito as an ill-fated video game enthusiast. Do they make the movie worth watching, though? No. Maybe better to watch a Breaking Bad marathon. At least Esposito has some lines in that!

To be clear, this was a bona fide bomb. I have gained some understanding that a lot of Stephen King material from the mid and late 1980's, both page and screen-based, are not particularly top notch, and probably reflected the bad place King was in mentally and physically. It should be acknowledged however, that these works can also be comfort food of a sort, if it reaches one in the right state of mind at the right time. Therefore, I wouldn't necessarily say this is a movie that never should have been made, but there is a time and a place for these things, and I just wasn't there in either sense. Perhaps it will be (or was) different for you.

Night Shift (1978)

For this post, which will probably be shorter than the ones on his first three novels, I'll be discussing more "big picture" concepts about the collection rather than delving into individual story details. More by accident than design, that kind of thing can be found in the previous post.

Believe it or not, one part of this project I was looking forward to was tackling the volumes of collected short stories by Stephen King. Some have, for better or worse, become part of the pop culture fabric of the last half century. However, as was evident with Night Shift, that wasn't a fully-formed development. All great writers take time to find their voice, and King is no exception (and we can argue elsewhere about the "great" label!).

If I had approached this in the strictest chronological order possible, about half of these stories would have kicked off the project, beginning with "Strawberry Spring" from 1968. I think some of the later collections might have thrown in some early stories as well, but my mind isn't there yet. To make matters even more confusing, the publication data provided in the back of the book masks a couple of the stories, "Strawberry Spring" and "Night Surf", which were originally published in Ubris, a student literary magazine, but are given the later dates (1975 and 1974 respectively) of their publication in Cavalier, presumably in slightly reworked form.

The stories are laid out in publication order, but not strictly so. Given that 'Salem's Lot was still pretty fresh in 1978, the temptation to kick things off with a "previously unpublished" story related to that universe was probably overwhelming. Most of the stories published prior to the publication of Carrie fall in the first half of the book and exhibit the developing author. From "Sometimes They Come Back" onward, the stories are those of an author with one well-known novel on the market and in general are more solidly written. The last few stories are either originals, or published outside the men's magazine market, showing King's growing appeal on the mass market.

King was a pretty regular contributor to Cavalier, and just over half of the stories in this book appeared in their pages. Two were published in Penthouse and one in Gallery, which means those few people that read these magazines for the stories were richly rewarded, or at least provided a more believable cover story for what that pile of magazines was doing under their bed. Writing forty years in the future, it seems pretty crazy that he would publish in men's magazines best known for their photos, but it really shines a light on the author King was perceived to be in the 1970's. This is very pre-Green Mile and still a couple years in front of the time in which anyone would suspect a director like Stanley Kubrick would take an interest in adapting one of his novels. You go where the money is, I suppose!

As I've alluded to, Night Shift would provide the fodder for no less than ten movies, six to the big screen and four TV adaptations, and this does not take into account the gazillion sequels and remakes of said movies. Short stories are more tempting to adapt, I think, because you don't need to cut out stuff to make it fit into a feature length running time. However, sometimes you need to pad, and that's where the problems begin. I'll gradually explore some, if not all of these, as I can find them, and appropriately bemoan all their faults. Stay tuned for the most prevalent and ghastly of the bunch...Maximum Overdrive.