Pet Sematary (1983)

Ages ago, I mentioned in the Christine post, perhaps a shade too cryptically, that Stephen King wouldn't write another "proper" book until It, three years later. Well, what do you call this, then? For many Pet Sematary is the quintessential King novel, the most faithful to the horror genre since perhaps 'Salem's Lot. Ah, but to call the book "irregular" doesn't mean it's bad. It simply doesn't reflect the trajectory of King's early 1980's output and behaves more as a throwback.

Allow me to explain. Nowadays nobody is surprised that King can knock back three novels a year when he has stories to tell. However, as the Bachman books showed, even he was constrained by contracts and other artificial (paper?) barriers. Starting with Danse Macabre, King began to show he didn't need to hide behind a pseudonym any longer to release additional books beyond the "one per year" standard of most writers. I think part of it was due to the freedom of being released from his original publisher. Next thing you know, alongside the throughline of books like Firestarter, Cujo, and Christine came a new subset. The Bachman books were at this point still secret, but Danse Macabre, the first Dark Tower book, and the yet-to-be reviewed-here Cycle of the Werewolf ran alongside the "regular" books. However, his original publisher apparently wasn't through with him, as he left his contract a book short. He had written something so dark and horrid that he had indefinitely banished it to the darkest recesses of his desk, the unfilled final act of his first contract. So even though Christine was the Novel of the Year for 1983, Pet Sematary comes along for the ride, and likely ends up upstaging its predecessor.

It's quite a testament for this book to be so scary that even Stephen King wanted to keep it squashed, but there's nothing like the phrase "contractual obligation" to get something released against one's will. As King reminded us in Danse Macabre, horror is about the things that scare us. Typically the scarier the premise, the better the book at succeeding in the genre. 'Salem's Lot works because vampire are scary. Cujo works because rabid dogs are scary. The Stand works because global pandemics (as in the ones that kill 98% of humanity, not 0.5%) are scary. Of course vampires aren't real, rabid dog attacks are rare, and pandemics are a shared societal problem. What is really scary? Something that invariably happens to all of us: the loss of a loved one. Scarier even is the notion that their death was our fault. Fundamentally the death of a child, as a cruel reversal of the natural order, tears at all of us, even those without children of their own. It is one of the darkest places we can go, and Stephen King went there.

Pet Sematary has two distinct parts: the before and the after. Part one is plenty sad. A family wants to make a new start, but the choice of house is challenging. It borders the back-of-beyond Maine, it's by a road that "uses up animals", and there's some pet sematary (sic) a short walk away. It's like they walked into the jaws of death. The father, Louis Creed enjoys perhaps the single worst first day any doctor has ever experienced, with a student dying on the operating table after a gruesome accident. That student takes Louis on a beyond the grave tour of a place beyond the pet sematary that must be avoided at all costs. His beer-loving neighbor Jud, not aware of this, lets Louis in on a little secret after the family cat dies, that death is not the end and the secret just happens to be the very place Louis's spirit-guide told him not to go. Aw, heck, it's just a cat though, so Louis goes there (in multiple senses) and revives Church the Cat. It's all sorts of wrong though. Church smells awful, has a mean disposition, and, when Jud's wife succumbs to her terminal illness, Jud does NOT take her there. Nevertheless, Louis manages to wrap up the book's first part with a perfect day of kite-flying with his son Gage and in spite of the deaths and questionable resurrections all seems to have turned out fine.

It turns out the kite-flying was just one last deep breath before Stephen King takes us down to plumb the watery depths of the book. It had been teased throughout the first part, but the unthinkable strikes when Gage is run down by a truck. Even though fully aware of how messed up Church turned out, and with Jud strongly discouraging him from taking another trip beyond the deadfall, Louis's heart overrides his brain and he works his long game to bring back Gage. He packs off his wife Rachel and daughter back to Chicago with the in-laws, spends about 100 pages fighting his way into the cemetery (the people one) and moving his son's corpse to the new burial ground to resurrect him. If you thought Church was a bad resurrection experience, Gage is something else altogether. Jud knew from past experience that people come back evil, but Louis, rent by grief, doesn't care about any of that. Reminiscent of that awful experience of Jud's, Gage returns as a full-on murder baby, killing Jud and his own mother, who rushed back from Chicago at just the wrong time. Even with all the bloodshed and destruction (Louis kills Gage and Church....again), Louis is spotted taking his Rachel toward the pet sematary, so we can relive the nightmare over and over.

Being Stephen King, there's a lot of supernatural stuff to unpack, as usual. The whole notion of resurrecting the dead is undoubtedly not something natural, there is some mystical Native American demon figure that seems to be pulling on the strings. This creature has its hooks in everyone's lives, taking the form of Rachel's bogey(wo)man, his sister Zelda. So it would seem that the secret burial ground isn't ginning up the inherent evil in Church, Gage, and all the rest (I mean, how much evil could Gage have took on at that age?!), but infecting them all with this omnipresent demon. Said demon may also be behind Louis's weird dream visions, as well as his daughter's inexplicable way of knowing something was wrong from over 1000 miles away....and inadvertently sending Rachel to her death. So, we can say perhaps there's a demon dwelling in all of hearts, preying on our weaknesses, exploiting the guilt, and that it isn't just us alone driving these grim decisions. On the flip side of the supernatural, this is one of King's most autobiographical novels, as the introductory essay explains, with many elements of the story being lifted from his own experiences (including the pet "sematary" iteself), revealing his own vulnerabilities about this own young family.

So while the next "proper" novel may be It, there is still much to explore before we get there. One more Bachman book, an oddball werewolf novella, a monster sized collaboration with Peter Straub, and the second great short story collection must all be addressed first. Pennywise will need to wait just a little bit longer.

Christine (1983)

No,  you aren't seeing double in the blog post titles. Christine set some kind of world record for page-to-screen time, with the movie released barely seven months after the publication of the novel. In fact, I've been so lame about posting here, almost more time has passed between the book and movie posts than the releases of the actual book and movie (I'll do the mature thing here and blame Covid). I wouldn't be surprised if the early production of this film predates the book's release, which would have made for an odd start and practically guarantee a movie that doesn't resemble the book. Thankfully it didn't go into Lawnmower Man territory though.

It seems like a natural fit for John Carpenter to direct a Stephen King adaption, but this is the only time this has ever happened. Then again, it doesn't seem like anyone (except maybe Mick Garris) has a fondness for directing these, and it isn't the first time a big name director took the helm, but follows the tortured tradition of Cronenberg and Kubrick's trips to the well. 

Like many movies from this period, the action was lifted from where the book takes place (in this case, Pennsylvania) to Southern California. So if your favorite part of the book was the vivid backdrop of winter, you aren't going to get this in the movie. For me, I was disappointed that the heroic sewage tanker Petunia was written out of this. Again, you can't squash a 500+ page novel into a 100 minute movie; something's got to give.

So, given this limited running time, Christine necessarily pivots to the more two-dimensional "demon car" narrative and the LeBay character is marginalized and merged into the character of his brother. Recall that in the book, the car is more a vehicle (no pun intended) for Roland LeBay to terrorize (1950's style) in the afterlife. In the movie, the car is born bad, killing a guy on the production line right in the opening. Plus, the movie is more clear that you can't kill Christine, which regenerates much quicker and it is made very obvious that crushing her (literally, not just emotionally) doesn't solve anything either, but just passes the buck to the next poor sap.

Finally, just like there are a lot of fun stories about how to make a dog act in a movie like Cujo, Christine has its share of mostly car-related trivia. I won't replicate that here. As for Keith Gordon and John Stockwell, both relatively new actors who played friends Arnie and Dennis, both later ditched acting and went into directing, although I have to say Keith made the smarter move directing good television, while John pivoted to crummy movies.

Christine (1983)

When all the trucks become self-aware (plus a rogue lawn sprinkler, or a toy), the result was unintentionally comical. However, when one car goes psycho, then it is truly terrifying. Frankly, I would be more scared by a bunch of trucks. Heck, even one truck in a Duel style encounter would be pretty unnerving. So all credit is due to Stephen King for creating a cherry red Plymouth Fury with a real mean streak.

I think this book, like Cujo, gets misrepresented when one tries to boil the plot down to a couple sentences. As you may recall, to the uninitiated, Cujo is thought of as the book where a rabid dog runs all over town randomly killing people. Similiarly, Christine is thought of as the book where a possessed car drives all over town killing people. Really, the car gets a bum rap in these summaries. The really nasty guy is the ghost of Roland LeBay, the thoroughly unlikable fellow who sells lifelong loser Arnie Cunningham the car. Perhaps it is not obvious to the people she is running over (repeatedly), but Christine isn't acting alone. Of course making this into a simple "possessed car" tale is an easy crutch, as the movie, which came out in record time after the book, will show.

Let's talk about location. Christine is one of the least Maine-oriented books King had written. In fact, I don't think the state gets a single mention. This isn't his first foray out of the Pine Tree State, as anyone who has read The Shining of Firestarter can attest, but it is still the default location of a standard Stephen King horror novel. Instead Pennsylvania gets the starring role. I'm not sure what reason he had for moving it out of Maine except for diversity's sake, but location does not play a critical role in the plot. In some ways that's good for building the "it could happen anywhere" sense of dread in his readers.

The most interesting structural device of the novel is the shifting point of view. Our narrator, Dennis, Arnie's unlikely best friend, suffers a serious accident at the end of part one, one so bad he is "fired" from his role in the second part. If he hadn't been, readers would have been treated to a heart-pounding tale of being confined to a hospital bed for months. Arnie doesn't supplant him in the role, but he is the focus in the middle section, enjoying a Dorian Gray type of transformation from ur-dork to a 50's rocker. By the time Dennis gets his narrator job back in the third part, Arnie is too far gone. Dennis is probably relieved that he just had to "kill" the car and not his friend. It's a coming of age story with a twisted, ugly ending.

Final thoughts: Christine is one of the better Stephen King books. He tottered a bit in his post-Dead Zone novels, the first Dark Tower felt stitched together, and the 1980's Bachman books were mostly dreck. Different Seasons was a real shot in the arm that reversed the doldrums, but Christine showed that this mini-renaissance of the early 1980's wasn't due to avoiding the horror genre. Christine is every bit a horror novel, driven by supernatural forces of fate and featuring The Thing That Cannot Be Killed (thanks Danse Macabre!). Not much here can be explained by purely rational explanations, as we saw in Cujo and most of Different Seasons. However, Christine will be the last "normal" book for quite some time in this project. As we move into the next titles, I will try to explain why we aren't going to see a book not published under unusual circumstances, until we reach It, whenever that might be.

Stand By Me (1986)

Housekeeping note: It wasn't my intention to take four months off from the blog, but I have continued at least the reading part of this project. With a new job, a new year, and hopefully a fresh new perspective on things in general, I plan to get this blog back up and running. Thankfully I'm just a handful of books and movies behind. The posts may be a little shorter for a little bit as my memories are a little less fresh and because I really want to get caught up again. All right, that's it. Now where was I?

Of the three Different Seasons movies, the irresistible power of nostalgia and the relative lack of gory content propelled "The Body" to the silver screen first, under its new name, Stand By Me. This should have been an obvious clue that the movie was going to deviate from the source material. For some reason I had it in my head that this was the "faithful" adaptation and that Shawshank was the rebel. It turns out that is quite the opposite.

First off, this movie is about 90 minutes long, while "The Body" is the longest of the four stories, so something is going to end up on the cutting room floor. For a lot of reasons this is a good thing. Nobody needed an adaptation of Gordie's "other" story (the one that was not about Lardass), that may have been the most depressing thing Stephen King even wrote. Speaking of depressing, I was fine with not learning the fates of Vern and Teddy in their adult lives. On the other hand, some character development was lost. Ace in particular went pretty flat. He was far more menacing in the story, and believe me, he was not going to let the incident at the tracks just slip past him.

Secondly, director Rob Reiner decided to double down on the nostalgia. The soundtrack really carries the movie, so much so you need to remind yourself the Walkman hadn't been invented yet and that portable radio just knew the right song to play at the right time. Another change for the sake of nostalgia is bumping the year back from 1960 to 1959. That way it makes it a 50's movie rather than a 60's movie, more Happy Days and less Wonder Years. Other changes I cannot explain. Why Castle Rock was moved from Maine to Oregon is past me, for example.

Naturally the casting was a huge stroke of brilliance, though that observation is rooted in pure hindsight. Some of them (Corey Feldman, Keifer Sutherland) were known quantities going in, while Wil Wheaton and River Phoenix had their breakthrough roles in this film. Jerry O'Connell was the late bloomer, and for playing such a hapless character, probably turned out the best of the bunch (unless you identify as high nerd, in which case that goes to Wil Wheaton). If you have some time, check out their Wikipedia headshots and not one of them looks much of anything like they did in the movie. People change, but wow.

On a personal note, this is not only one of the first (if not the first) Stephen King movie I ever saw. It also is one of the first (if not the first) R rated movie my parents let me watch.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Critically-acclaimed movies based on Stephen King tend to be few and far between. Yet the valiant attempts to adapt never seem to subside, and now it is spreading into television, which has largely replaced movies without tons of explosions.

I first saw this movie back in 1994 in the theater. I was visiting a friend in New York and had no idea it had any connection to Stephen King. At the time I definitely didn't think it would become the award-winning basic cable staple that it turned in to. Now I think I should have had shirts made bragging that I saw it "first". Oddly enough I never saw it in its entirety again until this summer, so when it came up in this project, I was actually pretty excited.

Clearly a good deal of time passed between my first viewing of the film and reading the story. Therefore, I felt that the movie messed around with the source material to make the story more cinema-ready. However, on the second viewing I think I'll take that back. I think Shawshank culture (see below) made me forget that much of the grit from the original stayed in the movie. There are a few understandable consolidations of various events, but nothing sending the plot in a different direction. Red and Andy still reunite at that hard-to-say place on the Mexican coast. Ahhh....

Speaking of which, Shawshank culture is amazing. Some genius managed to manipulate it into a rom-com trailer:

And although released in the middle of the 16-bit era, here is the 8-bit video game version:

God bless the Internet!

Apt Pupil (1998)

Different Seasons spawned three movies (an impressive 75% conversion!) and two of them were good. This was not one of them. It wasn't bad, but just okay. The source material definitely sets a high bar, so expectations may be to blame.

"Apt Pupil" is technically the subtitle of the story "Summer of Corruption" and true to form there are no winners in the story. Both Todd, the punk kid turned Nazi sympathist, and Dussander, the Nazi turned scared old man, begin their respective journeys toward their inevitable suicides. Clearly the producers, in spite of Brad Renfro's involvement, were not going to go this dark. Instead, they decided to make Todd more resilient. Since Dussander was a Nazi, he still dies; nobody is going to miss him. Todd, on the other hand, has grit. He fights back against French. So instead of deciding to go out in a blaze of glory after being exposed, he concocts some dirt on his old counselor to ensure he lives to see another day.

I'm still trying to puzzle out where the movie fell flat. The story is a good deal more gruesome that the movie. Todd and Dussander kill a lot more "winos" than the movie depicts. Also, the intricacy of the writing just doesn't lend itself to a plot that would fit neatly into a normal movie running time. Yet at the same time to really feel just how far these two fall you need to read about all the nightmares and evil deeds, not just some representative acts or consolidations for the convenience of making it under the two hour mark.

Anyway, watching Apt Pupil isn't the worst mistake you'll ever make, but bear in mind that the original story is way better, though not for the faint-hearted.

Different Seasons (1982)

It was truly a joy to read my first 5-star Stephen King book since The Long Walk. For the most part the books typically are 4-star territory while the movies average around 3. Longtime followers of this blog will know we've gone through some real dogs, such as the other Bachman books, or books that cater to way more die-hard King junkies than I think I'll ever be (Dark Tower). Of course, there are some unexpected gems along the way, like Cujo. Given my unexpected enjoyment of that book, I suppose it isn't a huge shock that I'd go for this book pretty strongly.

I think we are hitting the first nexus in the Stephen King writing career story. Given his early success with just about every 1970's novel he wrote under his own name, any publisher would be perfectly content to pigeonhole him into horror fiction. He writes about people with supernatural powers that cause them pain and trouble (Carrie, Firestarter, The Shining, The Dead Zone) and monsters in our midst ('Salem's Lot, The Stand). All of these depend on the reader accepting that there are things more powerful than our boring old physics will actually allow. In the case of the former, these folks will ultimately triumph over adversity, while in the later they will largely be suppressed by "regular" people, but not destroyed.

In Danse Macabre, King stepped away from the veil of fiction to reveal a writer not comfortable with simply producing stories that run one way or the other. Nor did he feel that writing "literary fiction" meant something boring. We got an inkling of what else he could do in the mixed-bag Night Shift story collection, but Cujo was probably the first effort under his own name where he left the supernatural behind. Although you could run with the monster-in-the-closet concept and graft the idea of supernatural possession on to a dog, that is a stretch. He was ultimately a rabid dog thrust into a web of poor decisions by fallible humans. Nothing supernatural here, the cereal professor might say.

Therefore, Different Seasons is a continuation of King stretching out beyond horror, but not stepping into the dull. Unlike the last collection of stories, these are all original and "novella" (he mocks the term) length. Aside from the last story, it is all regular people, albeit in unusual situations. Shawshank is just your basic prison, featuring a guy who didn't do the crime he's serving the time for. A kid obsessed with Nazis decides to have a little harmless fun teasing an old man trying to hide his past indiscretions and both end up going more than a little deviant. Four boys in Maine want to see a dead body, a story captured in the reminiscing of a "serious" fiction writer. Finally there's a place in New York City where one can escape to hear a good story, even if the story is a bit strange.

As you can see, these can all be played straight, just from reading the single-sentence summaries. King takes them all in directions only he can do, so none of these turn into boring works of serious literary merit for serious literary journals. They aren't hack jobs though, which is the whole point King is trying to make here. There are no crutches to be found. The boys don't accidentally cross into Jerusalem's Lot and meet up with vampires. The warden isn't into black magic. Even when the final story, "The Breathing Method", breaks the boundaries into horror territory, one can easily say it's just a story within a story and no more real than the last campfire story you heard as a kid.

Having not read ahead, but being aware of what's to come, it is clear that King wasn't ready to leave the supernatural behind altogether. We'll take a break and prepare ourselves for the return of the possessed vehicle in the next book.