Firestarter (1984)

The Dino Di Laurentiis film festival continues here on Under the Tome. Admittedly he wasn't directly involved as a producer in this one (unlike The Dead Zone, Cat's Eye, and Maximum Overdrive, our previous feature presentations), electing to delegate to Frank Capra.....Jr. However, Firestarter fits very nicely into the sequence of these movies, which I think are best described as mediocre films with underachieving casts. It is pretty impressive that they managed to squander the talents of Drew Barrymore (fresh off E.T.!), Martin Sheen, and George C. Scott, and even more impressive that they attracted these actors in the first place. I suppose they were doing two-film deals with Martin Sheen, who is following up his turn in The Dead Zone, while Drew Barrymore returns in Cat's Eye. If those movies were really good, I suppose we could chalk this one up to contractual obligations. As for George C. Scott playing "evil Indian" John Rainbird, I've got nothing (actually, keep reading). This is also where the director chair falls into no-name territory in Dino's world. Mark Lester would go on to direct Commando the following year, but really didn't have much of a C.V. coming into this movie. Future directors Lewis Teague and Stephen King himself didn't do anything to reverse this trend, making it all the stranger that a director like David Cronenberg was ever involved in these projects.

In relation to everything I've watched so far for this project (Dino or no Dino), this one is actually mostly faithful to its novel. However this is not a ten-hour movie, so some things had to be cut, and that's where I think the movie hurt itself. Obviously the back story had to be boiled off, and that decision was fine, but it seemed like the dark humor of the novel was also left on the cutting room floor. For example, Andy doesn't get to use his powers of suggestion to make people ignore a screaming blind government agent, make a scientist stick his arm in a garbage disposal while wearing women's clothes, or make Captain Hollister become completely OCD about golf and snakes. Losing these elements made the movie much drearier than it could have been. Finally, probably also in the interest of staying compatible with the under-two-hour running time, the movie dumps the book's drawn out pacing. For example, instead of Charlie and Andy hanging out at the cabin all winter long, they get sussed out almost immediately. If any time passed at the Shop they made no effort to indicate it, as David Keith didn't need to wear a fat suit to satisfy the book's way of indicating a passage of time.

Racial stuff aside, I have to credit George C. Scott for doing the best he could with this material. When John Rainbird fakes being nice, he really does a convincing job that he is this sensitive janitorial type that Charlie cannot resist. It's just too bad that he gets tripped up by curious production decisions, forcing him to be scared of the dark, but the place is completely lit up as if they put a night-vision goggle rig in front of the camera when filming. I mean, the point of the blackout is for everything to be completely dark to the point of not being able to see your hand in front of your face, right? I get the whole "conveniently located outdoor lights", "bright moonlight", or good old-fashioned "day for night" strategies when filming night scenes, but it is really hard to feel bad about somebody who is afraid of the dark with so much light on the set. Maybe Drew Barrymore could have lit a fire?

Firestarter (1980)

With the publication of Firestarter, it was probably getting hard to ignore that Stephen King was settling in to a pattern, writing about special people, often of a youthful age, that are not understood by the population around them. In fact, especially in the case of the younger ones, these special people do not fully understand themselves. Quickly reviewing his first six books (Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Stand, The Dead Zone, and the featured book of this post), this applies to all of the books except 'Salem's Lot. Additionally this gives some more justification to "the importance of being Bachman", as those books don't follow this pattern, giving King a chance to flex a different literary voice. Also, I'm leaving out Night Shift because it's not a novel and covers a wide spread of King's early literary career.

Now writing about the same subject repeatedly isn't a bad thing, keeping in mind auteur theory and all that, but in the case of Firestarter there wasn't quite the thrill that King delivered with his earlier novels. The idea of a shadowy government outfit trying to reverse engineer and exploit supernatural powers seemed a little to much like the plot of an X-Men movie. The government as the antagonist is no new thing for Stephen King (The Stand, The Dead Zone) but never so directly cast in the role as they are here. Also, another annoying crutch reappears here in the form of young children speaking with adult voices under the pretense that they are exceptionally smart. I'm deliberately trying to stay away from talking movies, but it forces adaptations to either use much older actors (see 'Salem's Lot), or, as the movie version of this book did, make the original dialogue more "child-like". One thing new to a Stephen King novel, but a bit of an obnoxious trope in other works of fiction is the "evil Indian", a Native American character who has decided to use his special native powers to manipulate and kill in ways the white man would never understand. While this is disappointing, let's just say I had never imagined George C. Scott in the role of John Rainbird. (We'll save this for the next post.)

If one thinks too hard about the plot here, this is probably one of King's most preposterous novels. In the case of the aforementioned X-Men, the insurmountable problem is that they were born that way. While Charlie was born into her frightening power of pyrokenesis, Andy and Vicky were just normal people who, thanks to one drug test gone wild, not only acquired (or became able to express) special powers, but also could genetically pass along their new skills! Then again, perhaps that's the fun of it. I found this to be one of his funniest books. Seriously? No, bear with me here. First off, the Shop is run by a bunch of morons. They played up the evil role to nearly hyperbolic proportions, which played right into Andy's power of suggestion, bringing out darkly hilarious skeletons from closets involving intersections of women's clothes with garbage disposals and golf with snakes. Even earlier in the book, Andy's suggestive powers caused people to calmly converse while standing right next to a Shop agent screaming that he was blind.

I will say one great thing about the book is the pacing. For most of the second half of the book I thought it was going to be any minute that Charlie blew the Shop to fiery bits and the anticipation of the moment kept me turning the pages. Darn you, Stephen King, I had to get past page 500 before the fireworks started! But the unraveling of the Shop was handled very well. By the time things started exploded, the whole operation was pretty much on its last legs and probably wouldn't have survived even if Charlie left the place standing. It's important to remember this isn't a mystery novel, so the possibility of the Shop actually succeeding at anything never got on my radar, and it was really more the act of witnessing their undoing that made reading this book enjoyable.

In Progress: Firestarter

With Firestarter we continue (and probably end) a trend of knowing less and less about a particular book going into it. Unlike The Dead Zone, this book is far less likely to be a response to "name one Stephen King book". In a recent ranking of every Stephen King novel this one comes in at #12, lacking the hallowed status of The Shining (#1), but also the notoriety of, say, Cujo (#39). Perhaps it the bias of the list author, but the earlier novels completely dominate the top ten, so it may be a wild ride ahead for his project.

February 6 (Page 87): So far so good, but it feels like King took a step back for this one in terms of plot. Since Carrie he's been rolling out increasingly complex works and here we have something that reads closer to Carrie than any of the previous books: a child with powers she cannot control and doesn't fully understand. At least it seems like her parents are a bit better adjusted than poor Carrie's, but come to think of it, outside of the flashbacks to 1969 we don't know where Mom is. (The book nominally takes place in 1981, but the Padres didn't make the World Series until 1984. Bah, nobody's perfect.)

February 9 (Page 198): If you needed some kind of demonstration of just how bad Charlie's pyrokenesis can be, you get it here in the "Incident at the Manders Farm" chapter. One sinister character (Al Steinowitz) turned out to be a paper tiger, and an inflammable one at that, while a new psychopath (John Rainbird) is getting ready to start his vision quest. Rainbird reminds me of the psycho Native American from the second season of the TV show Fargo, so I guess it's a trope now to have these guys that are extra dangerous because they can use their special Native American skills in the most horrific ways possible. All the while, am I the only one who find it strange that two normal people take a trial drug that not only give them psychic powers, but all can then pass it off exponentially to their offspring?

February 11 (Page 289): This must be one of those books with a definite mid-point, or at least an act came to a close. From the bad guy perspective, it looks like Rainbird made a power play on Cap, and managed to become even more creepy in the process. From the point of view of our heroes, I guess all good things must come to an end. It turns out the shelter in Vermont was all an illusion pretty much from the moment Andy and Charlie arrived. I've already sneaked a peak at the start of the next chapter and it looks like the chronology advances further. Add to this the lengthy flashback to what started the whole chase, plus the season spent at the cabin, and it shows a broader perspective than a Carrie-type novel would have. So although I still contend this is a step back for Stephen King, it isn't all the way back to basics.

February 15 (Page 431): Any time you encounter a chapter called "Endgame" you know things are about to get real. Taking a really long term perspective, even not having finished the book yet, these government dweebs never had a chance against fully-aware Andy and Charlie. Even Cap seemed to indicate that the Shop had more than a little Keystone Kops flavor to it when he was pushed/hypnotized by Andy. The only thing keeping things from being a blowout already is that these special powers don't come for free. More on this for the main post coming soon.