Earlier this year The Life of Chuckwas released in theaters to either deeply affected or puzzled audiences. It reminded me of another recent curious adaptation of a Stephen King story, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone. Both stories were published in the collection If It Bleeds and they share similar themes (both deal with the supernatural to some extent and are unconventional coming of age stories) even though they are quite different in subject matter. They would make an interesting double feature. Call it The Boy and the Beyond double feature.
Somewhere in the rows of chaotic mayhem that is Netflix, you can find Mr. Harrigan’s Phone. It is not a horror movie, not really. In the tradition of gothic literature, it is not a ghost story but a story with a ghost. The film begins in 2003 when young Craig is offered a job reading books aloud to old Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland), a wealthy and reclusive retired businessman who enjoyed Craig’s readings at the local church. Years pass and teenaged Craig (Jaeden Martell) receives an iPhone for Christmas; he loves it. After one of the scratch off lottery tickets Mr. Harrigan gives to Craig for Christmas pays off big, Craig uses part of the winnings to buy an iPhone for Mr. Harrigan. Harrigan is thankful but has no interest in the phone until Craig shows him the stocks app that updates in real time and the free access to the most current edition of the Wall Street Journal.
Being a shrewd businessman, Mr. Harrigan foresees all of the possibilities and consequences of smart phones. Companies giving away their product for free can’t last forever and eventually people will have to pay. But will people pay, or go looking for other free news and entertainment sources, even if the source is questionable? King’s story heavily ponders the consequences and effects of smartphones and addictive technologies. This is present in the movie too but blends into the story and characters well so the movie never feels like it is preaching or trying to be prescient.
When Mr. Harrigan passes away, as a final gesture Craig puts Mr. Harrigan’s phone in his suit pocket. Feeling lonely one night, Craig calls Harrigan’s phone and leaves a message. Then he receives a reply, a garbled text from Mr. Harrigan’s phone. Later, Craig calls Mr. Harrigan’s phone and leaves a message about a violent bully. The next morning he finds out the bully died suddenly.
There are not really any scares but there is a sense of unease that pervades throughout the movie, especially after that iPhone makes its first appearance. Craig’s investigation about the mysterious deaths provides some answers but also more questions. Further text messages from Mr. Harrigan from beyond the grave only bring with more unease and more death.
There is something gentle to this story of a teenage boy whose best friend is an old reclusive billionaire. Some scenes and music choices play with heartstrings, but there is also a pall over every scene. The decision Craig makes about his phone in the final scene may not be satisfying because it is likely the same decision we would make.
Mr. Harrigan's Phone is available to stream on Netflix.
This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.
With sharp direction by Rob Reiner, a screenplay by William Goldman adapted from a novel by Stephen King, cinematography by Barry Sonnenfeld, and a cast that includes Lauren Bacall, Richard Farnsworth, James Caan, and Kathy Bates there’s little wonder how Misery turned out so
well. Even with all of this talent behind and in front of the camera, the key
to Misery’s success is the phenomenal and chilling performance by Kathy
Bates as Annie Wilkes, one of the most memorable and frightening non-supernatural
horror movie villains.
Author Paul Sheldon (Caan), famous for writing a series of
novels set in the 19th century featuring a heroine named Misery, is badly injured in
a car accident during a snowstorm in rural Colorado. Fortunately, he’s rescued
by a former nurse who also happens to be his “number one fan,” Annie Wilkes.
She tells Paul that the road to hospital is blocked by snow but as the winter
rolls on Paul realizes that Annie is dangerous and he is a prisoner.
The situation Paul finds himself trapped in is grim, but the
film itself is not thanks to the still fresh feeling approach to the material. There
are moments of dark humor peppered throughout that at times border on absurdist
but are welcome breaks to the tension. They also help ground the story in the
real world, where humor slips in at the strangest times in the strangest ways.
Annie and Paul are both clever and resourceful characters
which really ratchets up the tension. We think one character has the upper hand, then the situation flips in a believable way. We’re always rooting for Paul to
outsmart Annie but we know he has his work cut out for him. Scenes of Paul’s
agent (Lauren Becall) in New York and the local sheriff (Richard Farnsworth) in
Colorado keep the film from being claustrophobic and add to the tension as we
wait for someone to figure out what has really happened to Paul.
A very well played and uniquely scary scene, which also has
humorous undertones, happens when Annie explains to Paul why he can’t just
change the ending to the last "Misery" book to fit the new one she is forcing him
to write. Her reasoning is so clear and logical, and her disdain for being
condescended to as an audience member is so intense, that it makes her all the
more frightening. Tricks and plot holes won’t work on her; Paul will have to be
extra clever to outsmart her.
Perhaps the most famous scene in Misery is the “hobbling” scene. Annie has discovered that Paul has broken out
of his locked room and explored the house. She holds a sledgehammer and calmly and meticulously explains the purpose and method of “hobbling.” The scene is set to
Beethoven’s hypnotic “Moonlight” sonata, a perfect choice. There is no blood
and you don’t have to look hard to see the special effect, but the scene is
heart pounding and shocking nonetheless. I still jump or look away every time.
Overall, Misery is not an especially bloody movie which makes the few
scenes of violence even more effective and shocking. Aside from the “hobbling”
scene, maybe the most famous moment of Misery is the shot of Annie's face coming into focus as Paul regains consciousness from the car wreck. It’s an unforgettable introduction.
In a rare instance of the Academy Awards recognizing and
honoring horror, Bates deservedly won the Oscar for Best Actress of 1990. Annie
is never really likable but thanks to Bates, she is always interesting to watch
and her swings from wholesome and vulnerable to psychotic and violent are believable
and frightening. Even as she tortures Paul, you still believe her affection for
him is real and that’s what makes her so scary. She
plays Annie Wilkes to such perfection that you can’t imagine the character or
the movie without her.
This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.
Night 8: Shelter-in-Place Night/Stephen King Night “I wish we could stay here forever... and ever... and ever.” The Shining
The poster for Stanley Kubrick’sThe Shining advertises it as “A Masterpiece of Modern Horror.” For once, the marketing does not exaggerate. Each scene is crafted with superb skill and contains iconic characters and images. The influence of The Shiningon later films and pop culture is immeasurable. Countless movies and TV shows have referenced The Shining; it’s one of the few movies that people will understand a reference to even if they have not seen the movie.
The plot follows what happens to a family living alone and isolated in a snowbound hotel. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) has taken a job as the winter caretaker for the Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Jack, his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and young son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), will be entirely alone at the Overlook and, once the heavy snow falls, entirely cut off from the rest of the world. Early on we learn that one of the previous caretakers suffered from “cabin fever” and murdered his wife and two daughters with an axe then killed himself with a shotgun. Not to worry, Jack assures the hotel director, his wife loves ghost stories and horror films (though it’s unclear if he tells her about this) and he is looking forward to outlining a writing project. The hotel itself has a sinister supernatural side and the ghosts of the hotel influence Jack to harm his family. Unbeknownst to his parents, Danny has a psychic power, a sort of telepathy, that makes him a target for the malicious ghosts of the hotel. The Overlook chef, Dick Halloran (Scatman Carruthers), also has this power, which he calls “the shine.”
Watching the film this time, I found that The Shining’s sense of terror comes from Shelley Duvall’s performance. Jack and Danny are caught in the hotel’s supernatural schemes, but she is alone in not understanding what is happening or why. She is the audience substitute and the scene of her running through the hotel experiencing something frightening at every turn is the experience of a viewer watching the movie. Jack Nicholson is an actor not afraid to go big, or even over the top for a role. When Jack (the character) begins to unravel, Nicholson contorts his face, makes his eyebrows go wild, and speaks in a comic tone though his grin is all danger and menace. Child actors can make or break a movie and here Danny Lloyd gives a performance that really makes the movie. Danny is a smart child but never feels as though his precociousness is required by the script; he always feels like a real kid. When he goes catatonic and starts shouting “REDRUM!” while holding a knife it is genuinely creepy. Scatman Carruthers gives a good performance as the kindly chef. He handles explaining “the shining” well and also convincingly conveys the danger of the hotel even while trying to hide it from Danny.
The Shining is difficult to classify: it’s a haunted house story, a ghost story, sometimes it plays like a slow burn psychological horror story, other times it has intense shock visuals. It’s an odd, unique movie. Little is made of the fact that the hotel was built on an Indian burial ground. Long stretches of the film are filled with mundane things like Wendy and Danny watching TV, Jack throwing a baseball against a wall, or Danny riding his tricycle around the endless hotel hallways. Then a music “scare” cue will hit startlingly on something random like Jack taking paper out of his typewriter or a title card letting us know that it is Tuesday. If you’re paying close attention you might notice that Danny seems to be riding his tricycle on the ground floor then turns a corner is on the second floor. In a film about a haunted hotel, a “mistake” like this works in the film’s favor. The vision Danny sees of creepy identical twin girls in old fashioned dresses asking him to play with them “forever and ever and ever” is chilling and one of the most iconic images in horror cinema, perhaps only topped by the image of gallons and gallons of blood pouring out of the elevator doors in slow motion. When the horror hits, it hits hard.
Around the time I read the novel, I started calling this movie Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining to firmly differentiate it from the 1997 TV mini-series (starring Steven Weber) and Stephen King’s novel, to which the film is less than faithful. King has been quite open about his disdain for Kubrick’s adaptation which he feels misses the whole point of the novel. To King, the story of The Shining is about a man warped by alcoholism into a threat to his family. To Kubrick, alcohol is merely the catalyst, the result is pure terror, and the cause is not important. In an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, King talked about a phone call he had with Kubrick that revealed their fundamental differences when it came to ghost stories. Kubrick told King that all ghost stories are inherently optimistic because they imply something existing after death. King replied, what about Hell? After a long pause, Kubrick said, “I don’t believe in Hell.”
I end up re-watching The Shining every few years. I even got to watch it at the Stanley Hotel, the real-life hotel in Estes Park, Colorado where King stayed with his family on a lonely, snowy night and was inspired to write the novel. I ate a delicious steak and drank a fine whiskey while sitting under a portrait of Stephen King at the hotel restaurant; easily one of my vacation highlights. The Stanley Hotel had no hedge maze, but such was the influence of the movie that it eventually grew one (it was only knee high and not very ominous when I visited). It seems too on the nose to describe The Shining as haunting, but that perfectly describes the film. It stays with you and creeps into your thoughts and you wonder if you ever really left.
This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas.
Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the
month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, in the days
leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help
you celebrate Shocktober.
Night 11: John Carpenter/Stephen King Night
“You better watch what you say about my car. She's real sensitive.”
John Carpenter’s Christine, based on Stephen King’s
novel about a demonic classic car that kills people, is a hard sell. The story
has an undeniably ridiculous premise, but it is excellently crafted and well
worth watching. The approach taken by director John Carpenter and screenwriter
Bill Phillips takes the premise as seriously as a movie about a haunted car
should be taken. That tone is serious enough to allow for legitimate suspense
and scares but never gets desperate for believability. Thanks to the skill at
work behind the camera and a great cast, there is no trouble believing the
characters or the unbelievable situations in which they find themselves.
Christine is a cherry red 1958 Plymouth Fury that was just
born evil; she killed someone even before she came off the assembly line.
Twenty years later, Arnie (Keith Gordon), a stereotypical teenage nerd—thick
glasses, clumsy, low self-esteem, relentlessly bullied—finds the rusted, broken
down Plymouth Fury for sale in the yard of a creepy old man. As Arnie fixes up
Christine he changes too. He stops wearing glasses, slicks back his hair, and
goes from put-upon wimp, to brimming with confidence, to an entitled sociopath.
His best friend, Dennis (John Stockwell), a popular but level headed jock, is
puzzled and troubled by Arnie’s change and suspects it is linked to Christine.
Arnie
begins dating Leigh, the attractive and demure new girl that every boy at
school wants to get with, played by Alexandra Paul. When they are at the drive-in,
Leigh finds herself alone in Christine for just a moment. The radio turns on by
itself, glowing green and playing a 50’s pop song, and Leigh is
choking suddenly.
The special effects in Christine are impressive to
say the least. Scenes of the car on fire chasing down someone or smashing
itself into a narrow ally to get one of Arnie’s bullies are surprisingly scary.
The big showcase scene comes after Christine has been completely destroyed by
Arnie’s bullies. Out of the corner of his eye, Arnie sees that the rearview
mirror is fixed. He walks in front of Christine, says “show me,” and watches as
Christine repairs herself to perfect condition. It is a titillating sight for Arnie
and the score goes from eerie synthesizer to a salacious saxophone; it’s a sort
of love scene. Needless to say, the special effects hold up so well because
they are all practical. Christine’s impressive self-repairing scene was achieved by
crushing the car and running the footage in reverse. When Christine smashes
into something, a real car is really smashing into another car or through a
wall. The sight and sounds of real twisted metal make the danger feel real.
A lot of small touches add up to give Christine an
eerie, uncanny tone: the soundtrack of synth music and 1950’s rock and roll,
the out of time feel (made in 1983, set in 1978, but feels like it takes place
in 1958), the understated approach to the supernatural scenes. My favorite
eerie element is Christine’s green glowing radio that only plays music from the
1950’s. There are good performances all around. Keith Gordon gives a great and
believable performance as Arnie becomes more and more dangerous. John Stockwell,
Alexandra Paul, and Harry Dean Stanton, as a state police detective, give solid
performances that ground the movie in an acceptable reality.
There is very little blood and no gore in Christine
and since the monster is a classic car you could easily watch this with someone
squeamish. Christine doesn’t get talked about as much as other Stephen King adaptations, or John Carpenter movies, or horror movies in general, but it
should because this a top tier horror film from two true masters of horror.
This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas.
Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long
celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies
out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream
critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few
quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and
subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some
recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober. Night 4: Stephen King Rules Night "He Who Walks Behind the Rows" Children of the Corn (1984)
Children of the Corn is not quite as iconic as other 1980’s
horror classics like Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street,
however, it is still one of those horror movies that everyone knows about, even
if they’ve never seen it. The source material is a short story by master of
horror Stephen King. By 1984, when this movie was released, Stephen King was an
established powerhouse brand in horror fiction and horror movies;this film
is billed as Stephen King’s Children of the Corn. With a budget of less than $1
million, it ended up grossing $14 million at the box office and spawned
numerous sequels of drastically diminishing quality. The first and only time I
saw Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (it wasn’t) was as part of
Monster-Vision on TNT, hosted by Joe Bob Briggs. The best part of that movie
was the jokes Joe Bob would make just before or after the commercial breaks. I
think all of the sequels may turn people away from the original, which while
not a masterpiece is a scary good time.
Children of the Corn opens with shots of a quiet, empty
rural town. The titles play over a child’s drawings of what has happened to
the town of Gatlin and are set to creepy choral music. All the children of Gatlin have
fallen under the spell of a mysterious creature that lives in the cornfields
and have formed a cult to “He Who Walks Behind the Rows.” One Sunday after
church, the children murder every adult in town and begin a new way of
life and follow a new religion. Three years later, Burt and Vicky (Peter Horton
and Linda Hamilton) are driving across the country so Burt can start a new job
in Seattle. While passing through rural Nebraska they runover a young boy that
stumbles into the road. They examine the body and find that the
boy’s throat has been cut.
They decide to drive the body to the nearest town, which happens to be, you
guessed it, Gatlin.
The influence of the bloody slasher movies of the 1980’s
looms large over Children of the Corn. While not graphic or gory by current
standards, there is still a lot of slashing and a lot of blood. The
supernatural element (He Who Walks Behind the Rows) doesn’t come into play
until the end of the movie. The optical effects at the climax are visually
dated, but are still effective for the scene.
The climax is an exciting action centric scene, but until then Children
of the Corn is a creepy, moody slasher movie. It makes the most
out of a low budget: empty streets, abandoned buildings, deserted roads all build a great unsettling atmosphere. But, as you might imagine, the
element that Children of the Corn utilizes most, and best, is creepy children. When
Burt and Vicky arrive in the ghost town of Gatlin, there are creepy children
lurking around every corner. The town is now lead by a twelve-year-old boy
named Isaac (John Franklin) who dresses in black and speaks for He Who Walk
Behind the Rows. His lieutenant is a teenager named Malachai (Courtney Gaines),
who strictly enforces the new laws. Isaac demands blind faith from all the
children of the town, but the children fear Malachai since he is the enforcer.
Malachai is such a staunch believer in He Who Walk Behind the Rows that he
begins to question Isaac. Courtney Gaines is probably the most memorable thing
about this movie. He stands out because of his red hair, but much more so for
his menacing performance.
This is a well-paced, effective horror movie that finds a
good balance between atmospheric creepy horror and bloody slasher horror.
It makes good use of handheld camera shots and POV shots, a mainstay of slasher
movies. I’ll give you fair warning that Children of the Corn ends with perhaps
the weakest final scare ever put on film, but, fortunately, this does not undo
everything that came before it and is one of only a couple of missteps the
movie makes. Despite all of the blood and death, this is not an especially dark
or dreadful film. I was pleasantly surprised the first time I saw Children of
the Corn and hopefully you will be too.
This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober. Night 7: Anthology Horror Night A Trio of Terror
Stephen King’s Cat’s
Eye is a not-so-scary but interesting horror anthology written by King
himself. The first two segments are based on short stories from the collection Night Shift and the third King wrote
specifically for the movie. A nameless stray cat loosely connects the three
stories; in its wanderings it encounters main characters of the first two
stories but plays a much larger role in the final story.
In the first story, based on Quitters, Inc., James Woods plays a man who gets himself in way
over his head when he signs up with a mysterious treatment center called
Quitters, Inc. to quit smoking. The man who runs the clinic lays out cigarettes
on his desk and beats and smashes them screaming at Woods that he hates
cigarettes. Then he shows Woods a small room with a steel floor that becomes
electrified and they watch as the cat jumps like crazy while Twist and
Shout plays. The company man explains to Woods that if he smokes one cigarette his
wife will be put in the room. A second cigarette and his daughter gets put in
the room. After the third cigarette something far more hideous will happen to
his wife. Quitter’s, Inc. employees will be monitoring Woods at all times no
matter where he is. Woods thinks the Quitter’s Inc. boss was just exaggerating
until he finds traces of someone having been in his house in the middle of the
night. Everyone looks suspicious to Woods after that, but his urge to smoke is
ever present…
The second story, based on The Ledge, finds Robert Hays as a down on his luck tennis player
who is forced at gunpoint to walk along the ledge of a high rise penthouse. The
man forcing Hays to walk the ledge is the rich and sadistic husband of the
woman Hays was planning to run away with. This is the most basic and least
complex of the three segments, though none of the vignettes are very complex
stories. The Ledge plays on the fear of
heights, and the much more instinctive fear of falling and dying. The rich
husband taunts Hays from the windows, throws things at him, and at one point
turns a firehose on him. The cat is picked up by the husband after it
inadvertently wins a bet for him by not getting run over as it crosses a busy
street, but when it gets the chance the cat flees the posh high rise building
and ends up on a train to North Carolina where the third story takes place.
In the third segment the stray cat is found and adopted by
young Drew Barrymore and given a name, General. Her mother wants the cat gone,
and her father tells her myths about cats stealing baby’s breath while they
sleep. Some creature is trying to steel her breath, but it is not the cat, it
is the demonic gremlin that lives in a hole in a wall of her bedroom.
Thought Cat’s Eye
is a horror movie and written by Stephen King, the content and tone of each
story is along the lines of classic Twilight Zone episodes. The first two stories are thrillers that have no
supernatural elements. They scare through suspense. The third story, about the
cat and the gremlin, isn’t scary but is entertaining. I think it is the kind of
not-too-scary horror story that older kids can watch; it is about a pet saving its child
owner from a monster her parents don’t believe is real, after all. The gremlin
has scary eyes and sharp teeth but wears a jester’s hat with bells and makes
comical noises.
The blue screen effects do not hold up very well. Quitters, Inc. which relies the least on
effects fairs best in that respect. The effects in The Ledge don’t hold up, if they ever did, but if you have a fear
of heights the nature of the story will still provide some suspense. All of the
attempts of the old man to throw Robert Hays off balance get a bit goofy after
a while. Cat's Eye attempts to build the cat’s character and backstory; at the
beginning of the movie it sees little Drew Barrymore’s face appear in a store
window asking for help. The cat is not very expressive however, but I’m willing
to accept that it knows it has a mission. Cat’s
Eye is a good horror anthology to take a break from blood and serious
scares with some entertaining suspense.
This
is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has
arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long
celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of
horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down
upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that,
admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like
comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days
leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary
movies to help you celebrate Shocktober. Night 6: Death From Above: The Night Flier
The Night Flier is a little seen adaptation of a Stephen King short story published in the collection Nightmares and
Dreamscapes. It was shot for a theatrical release, but premiered on HBO in 1997,
before receiving a short-lived run in theaters, giving it the stigma of a
made-for-cable movie which in this case is undeserved. The Night Flier is a
good, solid, and scary movie with a fresh take on the most classic of movie
monsters: the vampire.
Miguel Ferrer plays Richard Dees, a cynical and bitter star
reporter for a supermarket tabloid called Inside View. He’s made his name
covering gruesome stories and getting equally gruesome photographs, which he
likely fakes. He is assigned to investigate a series of vampire-like murders
that are linked to a serial killer that flies into rural
airports at night. Dees is also assigned by his editor to mentor a new reporter
named Katherine who is helping him with the story, which he hates and resents
to say the least. Dees is also a pilot so he flies into the same airports as
the “Night Flier” to question the locals and get pictures of the corpses at the
morgue. The neck wound on the victims is not the traditional two small red dots
of other vampire movies. This wound is a large single hole, like a railroad spike
stabbed into the neck.
Despite how harsh he is towards her, Katherine still want to
help Dees track down the "Night Flier." She’s looking for her big break and sees this
as an opportunity. Dees finds himself just a step behind the killer. He
finds a mysterious black soil on the runway of an airport where the black
airplane was recently seen. The movie shows us
scenes of the mysterious caped pilot with victims he seems to have cast a spell
over. The mystery element of this story is the big driving force behind the movie. Though
Dees remains a mostly unsympathetic character we stay with
him because we want to know the answer to the mystery of the "Night Flier."
Horror is probably the only genre where you can spend so much time with an
unlikeable character since a supernatural or ironic comeuppance is probably in
order for them. It also helps that Miguel Ferrer is great in the role of Dees. He plays
the character with a bitter contempt that feels real and never goes over the
top.
