Scary Movie Month 2016: Misery (But For Real)

So I had a plan this month to write as much as I can about Stephen King adaptations. It appears, however, that I'm going to have to cancel that plan. You see, the Annie Wilkes-ian specter of real life has got its sledgehammer (or ax, if you're a Constant Reader) in its hand and it's swinging like hell for my already feeble ankles.

This is the first Scary Movie Month in 3 years I've had to tap out due to unforeseen circumstances, and to the small handful of people who read these (hi mom), I appreciate your support and I thank you for reading my ramblings. Hopefully things will become more manageable soon but in the meantime: enjoy your Scary Movie Month, and I hope to be on here rambling away again soon. 

Scary Movie Month 2016: Battleground

Battleground 

I wanted to start with a lesser-known and under-appreciated King adaptation, and while this is an episode of television rather than an actual movie I feel it fits the bill nicely. Adapted for basic cable as part of the Nightmares and Dreamscapes anthology series (even though the story is from the Night Shift collection), this tribute to Richard Matheson's Amelia (itself memorably adapted as the final story in Trilogy of Terror, the one with Karen Black menaced by a Zuni fetish doll, the doll even makes a brief cameo here) is a fun, briskly paced tale of suspense.

William Hurt (always awesome) plays a hitman who, in the opening sequence, takes out the CEO of a toy company. When he returns home he finds that he has been delivered a suspicious package that turns out to be a small foot locker filled with army toys. Being a Stephen King story, the toys come to life (l'chaim!) and set out on a mission of vengeance against Hurt.

The silly, pulpy material is played completely straight, which goes a long way toward making it effective. Matheson's son, Richard Christian Matheson, wrote the adaptation and it's directed by someone who knows a thing or two about bringing life to inanimate objects, Brian Henson, son of Muppet mastermind Jim Henson. The special effects are for the most part terrific (some are a little wonky, but what do you want from a decade-old television production?) and they keep the threat escalating in new and interesting ways.

What really makes this stand out is that the story is told without a single word of spoken dialogue, and that choice is quite effective. Lots of filmmakers (particularly modern filmmakers) wouldn't trust their audience enough to tell a story without spoken exposition, and it's a great choice that serves the story well. Hurt is excellent in the lead, and there's never a moment where he refuses to believe what's happening which is a refreshing take on this sort of thing. Having him accept his situation at face value and try to work his way out of it helps the threat feel legitimately threatening and amps up the tension nicely. The pace is terrific, too, this thing really moves.

Nightmares and Dreamscapes as a whole is a well made, satisfying anthology series and absolutely worth seeking out (it's available on DVD for around $10 on Amazon). I may talk about other episodes later on (can you tell I don't have these things mapped out in the slightest?) or I may not, but either way I strongly recommend tracking it down.

I'll be offline for the next couple of days (happy new year to my fellow Hebrews and Shebrews) but I'll be back Wednesday to see what else the King has in store for us. In the meantime, make sure all your toys are put away. Maybe count them to make sure they're all there. Some of them could be missing.

They could be hiding.

Waiting.

Scary Movie Month 2016: Hail to the King, Baby

Let's talk, you and I. Let's talk about fear.

Those are the first words I ever read that were written by Stephen King (they began the introduction to Night Shift, his first collection of short stories), and they changed my life. They were intimate yet forbidding, and they made me feel both intrigued and very, very nervous. I was much too young to be reading some of the stories in that book, and I was a kid who was very easily scared by movies and such. That being said...Uncle Stevie wanted to talk to me, and who was I to refuse?

As I dug into that book and learned about the dangers of possessed motor vehicles, demonic laundry presses, vengeful army toys, the parentless children of Gatlin, Nebraska, spoiled beer, and all the rest, I was certainly scared but I was also feeling something that the horror movies I had seen up to that point hadn't made me feel: joy. Exhilaration. I was having fun. As scary as the stories were (and to my 10-or-so-year-old brain they were fucking terrifying), as each one came to an end I couldn't wait to see what the next one had in store, to see where Uncle Stevie would take me next. I trusted him, even though I was afraid of him. 

The next book of his I attempted to read was the brand new (at the time) It. I say attempted because I got only a few pages in before poor little Georgie Denbrough went chasing after his paper-and-paraffin boat and accepted his final balloon from Pennywise the Dancing Clown. That opening shook me to the core and scared me so much that I didn't build up the courage to go back to the book for over a year to read the next thousand pages, many of which contained nightmares that have never been and will never be matched. Finishing It (again, much too young) was running a gauntlet, and after I finished, my first order of business was to grab whatever I could get my hands on that had the name Stephen King on the cover (next up for me was Thinner, and that's a deliciously poisonous slice of Gypsy pie).

Every fan of King that I know refers to themselves the same way King himself refers to us: we are Constant Readers. He speaks to us, to our family of Constant Readers, in his introductions and annotations, and he always does so in such a personable manner that it feels like a conversation. Let's talk, you and I. Even if you're not addressed by name, you are a Constant Reader, and that's enough to let you know he's having this conversation with you, he can hear your voice just as clearly as you can hear his. That avuncular tone inviting us into the darkness, making us feel safe and scared for our very lives all at once, that's magic. There's nothing else like it, and imitators be damned there's no one else like Stephen King.

As much as I love and will always love King's writing, there's another thing that I love and always look forward to despite the fact that it can often be a crushing disappointment: movie (and television) adaptations of King's work. They are legion, and they range from excellent (The Shining, The Dead Zone, Misery) to execrable (The Mangler, Pet Sematary Two, most of the Children of the Corn franchise). These are what I've chosen to write about this year, and yes I'm including sequels and such that aren't directly based on his books or stories but still wouldn't exist without him (so something like Lawnmower Man 2: Jobe's War counts, while something that's only inspired by King like Stranger Things doesn't count. Make sense?). The order in which I write about them will be random, because I have a feeling that going chronologically would be a bit depressing, quality-wise. I won't cover every single adaptation out there, but just whatever strikes my fancy on the day that I'm writing each post.

The other thing I'm doing a little differently this year is that my posts won't be daily. I'm going to write as much as I can, but unfortunately I won't have the time to post every day and to be perfectly honest I want to enjoy this time bathing myself in the works of my favorite writer, I don't want it to start to feel like homework, so I'm going to pace myself a bit. Thank you to those of you who read these, and who encourage me to keep writing them. I will be back tomorrow with more.

Now let's talk, you and I. Let's talk about fear.

Happy Scary Movie Month!

Top 10 of 2015 and Shadowboxing With My Father

Top 10 2015

Worst:

Vacation

Honorable Mentions in no particular order: 

The Gift

Krampus

Spring

Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation 

Straight Out of Compton

Turbo Kid

What We Do In the Shadows

Magic Mike XXL

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

We Are Still Here 

Top 10:

10. Bone Tomahawk 

9. Sicario

8. Chi-Raq

7. Ex Machina 

6. Mad Max: Fury Road 

5. Spotlight 

4. It Follows

3. Love & Mercy

2. The Hateful Eight

1. Creed

Let's talk a little about my number one pick. I generally try not to get too personal online, but I gotta do so a bit here, so expect a fair level of incoming schmaltziness. 

From the day I saw it until the day after Thanksgiving, I thought Love & Mercy was a lock for my top spot. While I love a lot of Beach Boys music, I was mostly unfamiliar with Brian Wilson's story (I basically knew just enough to get the references in the Barenaked Ladies song "Brian Wilson") and I only went to see the movie because I knew my dad wanted to, if he hadn't I probably would have skipped it until it hit home video. We went together, and to my surprise I was completely swept up in it from the very opening frames. Two hours flew by in what felt like the length of a single Beach Boys song, and by the time the end credits rolled (over footage of the man himself singing the title song) I had tears of pure joy running down my cheeks (warning: this may become a theme here). It touched me in a way that's rare, and I've since become a tremendous fan of Wilson and gained a new appreciation for his genius on a level that I had never been able to comprehend before. Over the span of two hours, I fell in love with Brian Wilson.

My dad, on the other hand, didn't think much of the movie. He wanted less time spent on all the Dr. Landy stuff and more time spent in the studio in the Pet Sounds era. I was a little bummed that the movie didn't connect with him the way it did with me, but I was still happy that we had the opportunity to see it together.

Cut to the day after Thanksgiving. I had the day off from work and I'm not the Black Friday shopper type, so I decided to go see Creed. It was my dad who introduced me to the Rocky series so many years ago (around the release of Rocky III, circa 1982), and while I knew he'd want to see it, he was out of the country so I went on my own figuring that if it was any good I'd go see it again with him when he got back. I certainly wasn't expecting much from it. I love the Rocky movies, but the thought of a spin-off centered around a character who never existed before seemed like it was destined to be a forgettable, cynical cash-in at best. 

Sometimes movies can surprise you.

A funny thing happened during that first screening of Creed. Those Love & Mercy tears? They ain't got nothin' on what Creed did to me (told you it would be a running theme). I had tears streaming down my face for a solid half of the movie, completely caught up in the passion co-writer/director Ryan Coogler poured into every frame. At first I didn't understand why it was so emotionally overwhelming, but then I realized what it had to be. I needed my dad to see this movie. I needed to share it with him. 

My father is a good man, and I love him, but we didn't always get along. When I was a kid, I was often afraid of him (not physically, he wasn't abusive or anything like that, just very intimidating) and as I got older, there were times I resented being compared to him. Times when I felt there was no real me, that in most people's eyes I wasn't Josh, I was just Bob's son. 

There's a scene in Creed, a very small moment but also my favorite single moment in any movie this year, in which Adonis Creed is watching a YouTube clip of his father, Apollo Creed, in a title fight with Rocky Balboa. The clip is being projected onto a wall so that it's practically life-size, and Adonis stands up and begins to shadowbox. What struck me about the moment isn't the imagery of this conflicted man fighting alongside the father he never knew, it's the fact that he's not fighting alongside Apollo, the moves he's matching are Rocky's. He's fighting against his father, against his legacy, against his very name. 

Shortly afterward, when he meets Rocky and they begin to slowly form their own familial bond, I couldn't get the image of him fighting against his father out of my head. The whole movie revolves around Adonis deciding how to make his own way without either embracing or besmirching his father's legacy. To suggest this might have hit a nerve with me is to suggest the sky might, at times, be blue. 

A short while after my dad got back from his trip we went to see Creed together, and I've never been more grateful for the darkness of a movie theater, because it meant he couldn't see that I cried through the entire movie that time. I didn't even know I had that many tears in me. I don't think he knows why the movie resonated so deeply with me (at least not until now, because he's one of the three people who will read this) but there are tears welling in my eyes as I write this. 

Adonis Creed learns to take pride in his father's legacy rather than shun it. It took me a long time to learn the same thing, but over time I did learn it. Sitting there with my father, watching this tale of fathers and sons, watching a man struggle with the intimidation of living up to his revered father, was the best two-plus hours I spent in a theater all year. 

I love Rocky Balboa, and I have ever since my dad introduced me to him when I was seven years old. I could never have imagined back then that someday I'd be 40 and I'd still have a new Rocky movie to share with my dad, much less one that helped me appreciate him and his love and support that much more. As proud as Adonis becomes of his father's legacy, it can't even touch how proud I am of mine.

And I don't even have to wear star-spangled shorts and punch other people in the face repeatedly to show it.