All the movies that come from Night Shift

I've been bogged down in a bunch of other reading, so Night Shift is still waiting in the wings, but I can promise there will be forward progress next month. This update is just to whet your appetite for mostly bad movies. After three versions of Carrie and two each of The Shining and 'Salem's Lot (and mercifully none for Rage), I'm hoping I've received enough of an inoculation to withstand what lies ahead. Night Shift would ultimately yield a bonanza of ten movies, six theatrical and four for television. None of them are anywhere near the level of Kubrick, but many enjoy a high degree of notoriety. The more ill-advised ones may be a little hard to track down, and I was clear in my opening manifesto that I won't spend large amounts of money to read or watch something. So without further ado, here is the Murderer's Row of Movies, with Rotten Tomatoes scores as of March 2017:

Children of the Corn (1984) - 38%
Cat's Eye (1985) - 69%
Maximum Overdrive (1986) - 17%
Graveyard Shift (1990) - 13%
Sometimes They Come Back (1991, TV) - 50% audience score
Lawnmower Man (1992) - 38%, and yes I know it has zero relationship to the short story
The Mangler (1996) - 27%
Trucks (1997, TV) - 30% audience score
Battleground (2006, TV) - an episode of Nightmares & Dreamscapes, with a 7.9/10 rating on IMDb
Children of the Corn (2009, TV) - 17% audience score

If you are a fan of the "How Did This Get Made" podcast, then I'm sure you will find the upcoming posts for these fine adaptations at the very least amusing.

King on the art of short stories

As we prepare to read Night Shift, the first story collection published by Stephen King, here's some advice from the Master of Horror himself:

Rage (1977)

It only took four books to reach what may very well be the most controversial book of the King oeuvre, his first Bachman book, Rage. Up until this point everything with Stephen King has been on the up-and-up. Carrie was pretty good, 'Salem's Lot was better, and The Shining hit "classic" territory (but the movie was better). Then comes Rage.

To put this book in the same continuum as the other three is probably unfair on a number of levels. First off, this book wasn't intended to be the proper fourth novel, but since novel #4 would be the magnum opus The Stand, it was necessary to throw something out there to tide folks over until then. While the short story collection Night Shift filled in for early 1978, King realized that some of his earlier unsold works may now actually have a market that they didn't have in the early 1970's. However he wasn't at the point in his career where his publisher was prepared to break the "one-per-year" rule, and thus Richard Bachman was born to skirt this little problem. Therefore, no one living at this time was probably aware of the pseudonym. Bachman was just a sick and twisted paperback writer in no way related to the rising star known as Stephen King. So they thought.

I don't have the details handy and I'm just writing off the cuff, but Rage probably dates back to the early 1970's, written well before Carrie. Undoubtedly the book was heavily edited for its paperback-original publication, but the juvenilia shines through nevertheless. Even before Stephen King himself decided to yank Rage from publication in the late 1990's, not because it's a poorly written book, but out of concern (guilt?) that he may have inadvertently inspired the recent uptick in deadly school shootings.

So, yes, if you haven't figured it out yet, Rage is about the not-too-uncommon adolescent fantasy of blowing up your school. For those who are (usually) male and were not in the top 5% of the popularity scale in high school, it is more than likely you had a passing fancy of one day being the great equalizer and cutting your more-popular peers and clueless teachers down to size. Of course you didn't act on it, but the thought probably flittered around in a hormonally-clouded weak moment. And then you fall back into the healthier and safer "it'll get better" mode of thinking. Charlie Decker, the "protagonist" of the story, however, has decided that thanks to his miserable past it will most definitely not get better and it's time to settle accounts. He starts off guns blazing, taking out two teachers, and then holding a class hostage. Unlike the more horrifying real-life school massacres, Charlie threatens, but never kills a fellow student. Instead he submits them to horrific examinations of consciousness. Meanwhile, the adults get to bear the real brunt of his rage, either through bullets or harsh interrogation.

One thing I've grown to accept in reading any given novel by Stephen King is that there is some kind of supernatural element. Richard Bachman, however, has no room for this. It is all deathly real in Bachman's world. Everything that made Charlie the deranged psycho he turned into were all things that could happen to anyone. Among his struggles with his parents and social life, there are episodes that anyone can relate to or perhaps experienced themselves. Few of us are cursed enough to experience all the struggles Charlie went through, and of those, most probably wouldn't lash out as he did.

And oh my is Charlie a cruel guy. But perhaps the cruel one is the author. While I was reading it I felt like it was coming close to violence porn, where the characters were created simply to hurt each other as part of the amoral world they were made to populate. Certainly in the beginning with the shooting of two teachers and before that tearing into the principal in the most callous imaginable way, it all felt very icky. However most of the act is holding a classroom of his peers hostage and, as he puts it "getting it on". Not like that, but rather getting everything out in the open. People crack and true selves ooze out. It ends up feeling like an awkward delusional fantasy, where the loser tears the masks from the trendy kids he suffered under for so long. The class is strangely interactive with Charlie. I don't know about you, but if I was held hostage I shut up tight as a clam and only speak if my life depended on it. These kids started acting like they were on Springer or something, bickering and fighting with each other,

Ultimately, to nobody's surprise, following the incident Charlie is sent away to an institution for the criminally insane, because, according to the rules of polite society, he's completely off his rocker. If the book had been better written, I think the reader would be more sympathetic to his lifelong ordeal and seen him as more justified. Unfortunately, I saw this as a fitting end for an ultimately unlikable character. I never really saw him reaching the point where the standoff ended either victoriously, or in a total bloodbath topped with a suicide. Sadly, that latter seems to be the more likely scenario in the headlines of recently.

As a final note here, I implore you NOT to spend large amounts of money to get this book. If you aren't a completionist you can live a perfectly normal life without it, because it really is not a good book (in either quality or disposition). If you are, do what I did and find a modestly-priced edition of  The Bachman Books. At least you get The Long Walk included, a much finer effort (to be discussed about three books from now!).

In Progress: Rage

February 9 (page 23): This Richard Bachman guy is one sick puppy. I'm not ready to label this violence porn yet, but it is definitely toying with the limits of violent behavior right out the gates.

February 11 (page 76): I can't wait to be done with this book. Maybe I've just been hardened from news stories of myriad school shootings, but Charlie's interactions with the rest of the class just seem a little too cozy. On the other hand, if it's an adult, it's cruel and/or fatal.

(Note: I later finished the book. I guess these updates work better for stuff like The Stand. Review to come.)

Early intermission

I know it's probably bad blog karma to let a whole month slip by without a post, but I promise the next entry is coming up soon. Just in case you don't have the list handy, it will be Rage by Richard Bachman, the first book by Stephen King's now-widely-known pseudonym.

If I was being respectful of King's wishes, I would be skipping this one, which has been effectively out of print by request of the author for the last twenty years. This article from Business Insider provides some background as to why. However, I am not a respectful person, so I've got my unexpurgated copy of The Bachman Books ready to go. I believe that whole collection is now out of print, with the other three novels being returned to individual publication.

For the curious, here is the essay "The Importance of Being Bachman", which I am skipping (for now) since it is riddled with spoilers, and I am but an innocent lamb. What is interesting to keep in mind is that he effectively had the public fooled through the early Bachman books, so one must approach the reception of these stories as being from a deranged mind with no relation to the by now venerable Stephen King. I believe it was a crafty librarian that was finally able to crack the enigma.

After three straight novels under King's own name, this will be a bit of a divergence. There is no movie based on Rage, but the next entry in this mad quest is Night Shift, a short story collection that spawned no less than ten movies of varying quality.

Movie: The Shining (1997)

After 1979's Salem's Lot, Stephen King on television went on hiatus until 1990. Although production standards and television's prominence relative to the movie theater had grown considerably over the intervening decade, there was still considerable room for improvement. The 1990's television adaptations are primarily network TV miniseries, and the novels tackled are typically the big (and not necessarily best!) ones: The Stand, IT, and The Tommyknockers, typically shown during sweeps-time. Did this inflate their sense of importance? No idea, but ABC kept coming back for more, almost annually from 1990, and finally, by 1997 Stephen King was ready to put forth the "authoritative" version of The Shining. This version would take full advantage of the miniseries format, presenting the saga of the Torrance family at the Overlook in six hours, including commercial breaks. It would use the real Stanley Hotel, and restore the dynamics among the characters that were stripped from the Kubrick version.

That was the idea, anyway. Unfortunately, this undoubtedly more faithful version would end up being painfully dull, and, ultimately, it too would end up breaking ranks with the source material. Plot-wise, this version is around 75% faithful. Even at six hours, some things would need to be removed. For instance, Hallorann has little difficulty getting back to the Overlook, and the flashbacks to the Torrances in Vermont are short and few. Other things were probably scrapped for budget reasons, so you don't get the huge hedge animal battle at the end, just some minimal shots to establish there are "living" hedge animals that don't do much more than move a little bit. Another twist from the book is the frequent and prominent references to Alcoholics Anonymous. While mid-1970's Stephen King never gave AA much thought, mid-1990's King was all about his sobriety and made a big point of building this into the screenplay. Finally, the big plot change sweeps in right at the end. In the novel, Danny and Wendy are staying at Hallorann's new gig in Maine, still recuperating from their ordeal. In this version, it jumps ahead ten years to Danny's graduation from Stovington Prep in Vermont (Jack's old gig), where it is revealed (GASP) that Tony was actually future Danny, turning a slight a-ha! moment in the book into a heavy-handed faux-shock scene. Also, did Danny graduate at age 15???

Let's talk setting. Last year, my wife and I visited the Stanley and quickly learned that although it inspired the novel, it appears nowhere in the 1980 movie. Well, the 1997 movie works fast to remedy that little problem, using the "real" hotel as much as possible. We probably should have figured that out, given the 1997 version was the only movie they were selling there, except for Dumb & Dumber, which also used the Stanley for some scenes. For what's it's worth, the trip there was worthwhile, but don't expect anything from the Kubrick edition except for the hedge maze, which was recently planted because they were tired of people asking where it was. As for being a great shooting location for the movie, that is debatable, as the Stanley is way smaller than the Overlook as depicted in the Kubrick film. It seemed like they were moving around a very confined space, compared to the vastness of the 1980 Overlook.

Finally comes the inevitable comparison of the casts. Watching this only reaffirmed how powerful the cast of the original movie was. Okay, so they didn't play it by the book, which upset Stephen King, but if you accept the movie for what it was, you really got into the heads of Jack, Wendy, and Danny. Steven Weber play a reasonable Jack, much more by the book as a loving father consumed by the demonic hotel, and even pulls off both sides fairly well. All the AA stuff added to the movie generally supported a Jack that was committed to getting better before the Overlook made him its pawn. Wendy is much stronger character in this one, but Rebecca De Mornay also didn't have to compete with Jack Nicholson at the height of his powers. And then we get Danny. Courtland Mead was no novice to acting when he stepped into the role. He was ten when the miniseries aired, but perhaps due to some measure of development hell he looks a bit younger, but probably older than Danny Lloyd in 1980. Since this version tries to stick close to the book, Danny talks a lot more, and it comes off pretty wooden. And maybe I'm just a bad person, but his mouth seemed to be hanging open all the time like he was in awe of everything around him. As for the rest of the cast, it's about even with the competition, although we really don't see as much of the extra-pimpin' Melvin Van Peebles Hallorann as I thought we would. The decision, however, to "visualize" Tony was regrettable. He just looked silly and showed up at the weirdest times. They probably should have just stuck to having Danny do voices.

All in all, this was a pretty weak miniseries, and definitely should make one question how important King's involvement or approval actually is to the reputation of a production. For comparative value, however, it wasn't an entire waste of time. I'll save my vitriol for some of the upcoming movies, which have a notoriety so great even someone as oblivious as me is leery of them.

Movie: The Shining (1980)

The conventional wisdom has been that the book is always better than the movie. This makes sense, as Stephen King had 450 pages (or 659 if you read my copy) to tell his story, and Stanley Kubrick had a little over two hours to tell his. However, alongside Gone With the Wind, The Shining in its 1980 adaptation may enjoy the rare honor of standing above the book it was based upon. It is a well-known fact that King despised this film. His criticisms are not entirely without merit, and if your number-one criterion in rating an adaptation is faithfulness to the source material, you will probably agree with them. I'm not sure how much of the "blame" lies with the screenwriters and how much falls on Kubrick himself, but for simplicity, I will frame it as a King vs. Kubrick issue when making comparisons.

Obviously, given the constraints inherent in a feature film, plot elements were going to have to change or be thrown out altogether. Probably the most shocking plot change came at the expense of Dick Halloran. Scatman Crothers nailed the portrayal, but when he took an ax to the gut it was a truly jarring moment. Halloran wasn't supposed to die! This was just one of a number of needed plot changes to make the movie fit within the allotted time and make sense. For example, it isn't much of an ordeal for Halloran to get to the Overlook. Also, from the time the last of the summer staff leaves the hotel, it is pretty much full-on-trapped-in-the-snow wintertime for the Torrance family. And let us not forget the hedge animals are gone. Even if the lack of CGI as of 1980 wasn't a stumbling block, these critters just don't translate well to the screen, so enter the famous hedge maze, used to great effect by Kubrick. In fact, the movie adds a few iconic elements missing from the book, such as "all work and no play", "Here's Johnny!", and those creepy twin girls. And even the ending, in which Jack is physically absorbed into the Overlook's history, is completely different from the book, where the hotel explodes in a massive boiler blow-up (making it the third consecutive fire/explosion ending for King).

Characterizations also suffered in King's eyes. Jack a la Jack Nicholson is pretty much crazy from the get-go and is tepid toward Danny at best. He is not the doting father, or a regular guy who slips into insanity. This necessarily makes Jack, rather than Danny, the central character. Wendy meanwhile, not King's strongest female character to begin with, is even further reduced in this movie to a largely helpless role. Danny, however, is an interesting case. Danny Lloyd, the actor, was seven years old when this was released, which means allowing time for post-production and so forth, he was pretty darn close in age to the book Danny, who is five. As seen especially in the 'Salem's Lot adaptations, King is guilty of making child characters behave as little adults (usually under the pretense of being exceptionally bright), particularly those playing a central role to the plot. While it is probably doable to have an older actor play a younger character, it's not nearly as easy to get a younger actor to play either at their age or older, especially if the age in question is five. So it's quite the directorial feat for Kubrick to get an almost-five-year-old to play at that level and not come off completely fake or marginalized, and even more impressive that this was Lloyd's feature film debut.

Probably the most direct aspect of conflict King would have with Kubrick was over setting. Although the book never admits it, it's a well-known fact that the Overlook is based on the Stanley Hotel, located on the edge of Estes Park. Kubrick effectively nixed the Stanley from the moment he laid eyes on it. What few outside shots there are come from a hotel in Oregon and all the interiors are soundstages, albeit masterfully designed ones. Having been to the Stanley, I can sympathize with why Kubrick would jettison it from consideration. First off, Estes Park is really close by. It doesn't radiate the kind of remoteness the Overlook demanded, especially in a visual depiction. Second, the Stanley is kind of small. I think the giant ballroom in the movie equals around half the size of the entire actual Stanley building, and the kitchen would consume all of the rest. Finally (and most devastating), it was clear that Kubrick wanted to do things to the property that would have violated the Stanley's historical landmark status. In our visit to the Stanley, we learned Kubrick considered it as a location for less than five minutes.

The 1980 feature film adaptation of The Shining is probably the greatest piece of film based on a Stephen King novel. The other "great" adaptations benefit from coming from more concise source material (Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption). It also meant open season on moving much of King's writings to the big screen, so much so that every single novel under his own name alone until 1987's Eyes of the Dragon would get some kind of movie treatment, and that doesn't even take into account the Bachman books or short stories.