The Dead Zone

Title: The Dead Zone
Director: David Cronenberg
Released: 1983
Starring: Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt, Herbert Lom, Anthony Zerbe, Colleen Dewhurst, Martin Sheen

Plot: After a car crash leaves school teacher Johnny (Walken) in a coma for five years he awakens with psychic abilities which allow him to see the future of any person he has contact with.

Review: One of the more unusual movie choices for Cronenberg especially being released when he was at the height of his powers of the maestro of body horror which would hit its peak three years later with his remake of The Fly. Of course it’s not just Cronenberg who is playing against type as Christopher Walken heads up this Stephen King adaptation as the psychic school teacher Johnny, a role which has originally been set to be played by Bill Murray, an equally inspired choice for the role as Walken. 

Toning down many of his usual quirks (even his hair is uncharastically flat) Walken is a pretty inspired choice for the role as he’s initially introduced with everything going his way in life as he has a girlfriend and liked by his students only to lose everything when a car crash lands him in a coma leaving him trying to put his life back together especially when he finds out that not only has life continued to move on without him with his girlfriend Sarah (Adams) having got married and had a kid in the years which have passed but he also has to try and make sense of the psychic flashes of the future he gets whenever he touches someone. It’s a role which really brings out a more dramatic side to Walken’s performance as he brings out a vulnerable side to this character who is not only trying to adapt to his new abilities but also trying to find a way to rebuild his life. 

In much the same way as he approached Naked Lunch, Cronenberg doesn’t aim for a straight adaptation of Stephen King’s book with Jeffrey Boam cutting out most of the story with Cronenberg further condensing the script to a three episode structure which even got the mark of approval from King himself who felt that the script “improved and intensified the power of the narrative”. King would also submit a script for the film which focused more on Johnny helping to track down the Castle Rock Killer which Cronenberg felt was “needlessly brutal” and was rejected in favor of Boams script. With this episodic structure the film did feel a little jarring when I first watched it with the Castle Rock Killer mystery being wrapped up around the halfway point and the film focusing on Johnny rebuilding his life and trying to find a way to stop Martin Sheen’s senate candidate Greg Stillson who he receives a vision of starting a nuclear war as the president which much like John Carpenter’s They Live only feels all the more chilling in the shadow of Trump’s presidential dalliance. 

Despite being a Horror film there is much more of a focus here on the drama which is only further helped by Walken being so engaging as Johnny and supported by equally interesting characters which build this small town vision where the dark secrets run underneath the seemingly idyllic surroundings. At the same time Johnny and Sarah trying to deal with their feelings for each other, having been put on hold for the last five years only adds to the film as much as him trying to figure out how to use his newly awoken powers which prove to be a blessing as much as a curse as he reveals with a cupboard of mail from people hoping that he might be able to help them too. 

When it comes to Stillson he truly presents Johnny with the first real challenge as all the other uses of his abilities are based around stopping tragic events from happening were as with Stillson we get the classic conundrum of if you could kill Hitler before he rose to power would you and certainly with Stillson being shown launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike it’s easy to view him the same. The fact it boils down to whether Johnny chooses to take a shot or not only adds to the finale making it a suitable climatic moment for his abilities. 

Light on horror outside of a couple of memorable moments the film is really driven by the human drama here and yet somehow still manages to be a satisfactory treatment of its premise thanks to some great performances alongside the subtle world building easily makes this one of the better Stephen King adaptations if one which is still far too overlooked.

Creepshow

Title: Creepshow
Director: George A. Romero
Released: 1982
Starring: Hal Halbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Fritz Weaver, Leslie Nielsen, Carrie Nye, E.g. Marshall, Viveca Lindfors, Ted Danson, Stephen King, Ed Harris

Plot: Horror anthology bringing together bugs, alien virus’ zombies and a very angry monkey over the course of five stories in a homage to the EC Horror Comics (Vault of Horror / Tales From The Crypt)

Review: Bringing together Zombie maestro director George A. Romero and the equally legendary Horror writer Stephen King who here makes his screen writing debut aswell as giving a rare acting performance which is often mistaken for being his first despite the fact it comes after his actual acting debut with Romero’s previous film Knightriders. The pair coming together to pay homage to the EC Horror Comics such as Vault of Horror and Tales From The Crypt over the course of five stories.

Utilising a much more visual style than I was certainly used to seeing from Romero who here creates his own comic book experience as the opening and closing of each story is bookended with comic panels, with Romeo even carrying the comic book imagery into the stories as he breaks up the screen with comic panel lines, backdrops and even little headers to indicate things such as locations and time passed all which really add to the experience.

One of the big advantages here over the other horror anthologies is that here we have a film which is all about quick pacing and fun concepts so thankfully there are no tedious slow burns or drawn out ghost stories and the stories vary greatly from each other as our first story “Father’s Day” the first of King’s story contributions and an original story which sees the a family gathering for their annual family dinner and remembering the miserly old patriarch of the family who we see from the flashbacks was continually abusive to his daughter until she had enough and she murdered him. However when she spills wiskey on his grave years later he returns as a maggot infested zombie eager to see revenge on the family. Sure It’s not the strongest story here but has some great effects work from Tom Savini who really pulls some neat tricks out of his special effects box for the film arguably creating for the film better zombies than he did for Romero’s Dead saga as they are more reminiscent of the Italian flesh munchers which Romero’s films inspired.

The next story “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” sees Stephen King steps up his acting career as he plays a redneck called Jordy who gets infected with a plant like organism from a meteorite which crash lands in backyard. Based on his own short story “Weeds” I’d heard a lot of people bash King’s performance prior to watching the film and sure he might not be winning any Oscars but it’s enjoyably daft as Jordy’s own stupidity makes his situation increasingly worse to the point he becomes a human-plan hybrid with the film ending on an ominous fate for humanity.

“Somthing To Tide You Over” brings with it a real suprise in that we not only get a serious performance from Leslie Nielsen who I often forget before Police Squad was a serious actor with his credits including Forbidden Planet and The Poseidon Adventure but here he is downright evil as the wealthy psychopath Richard Vickers who after finding his wife has been cheating on him burrys both her and her lover (played here by a ridiculously youthful Ted Danson) up to their necks at the beach and waits for the low tide all while watching them via CCTV from the comfort of his luxury mansion. Of course keeping with the general tone of the film this plan backfires in a suitably supernatural way with a great payoff.

For monkey suit fans “The Crate” is a lot of fun and also based off the Stephen King short of the same name and has a real Basketcase vibe to it as when a mysterious crate marked “Arctic Expedition – June 19, 1834” is found at a university and discovered to contain an ape like creature with a taste for human flesh. Soon the mild mannered professor Henry Northrup sees an opportunity to dispose of his abusive and continually drunk wife Wilma who he is seen frequently playing out fantasy deaths for. Out of all the stories this one could easily have been turned into it’s own feature but none the less it’s still a lot of fun while it lasts.

Lastly we have “They’re Creeping Up On You” which features one of the most memorable special effects moments of the film as the cruel businessman Upson Pratt with an overwhelming fear of germs to the point that he lives in a hermetically sealed apartment as his only connection to the outside world being through the telephone. However when a storm cuts out the power to the city he finds his apartment slowly becoming more overrun with cockroaches and try as he might to get rid of them their numbers only increase. Due to Pratt being a completely disgusting individual so forced to endure his company for the whole of the story is pretty rough going making his eventual comeuppance all the more sweet when it eventually comes.

Followed up by two sequels with a Shudder exclusive series at the time of writing set to launch in the coming weeks the original film is still worth discovering, especially as it’s so visually different from Romero’s other films with none of the stories outstaying their welcome it’s a fun experience and one worth adding to the Halloween watch pile.