Cujo By Stephen King

Cujo
By Stephen King
Copyright 1981

Vic Trenton is a man with a lot of problems. His fledgling advertising agency has been beset with a major, national public relations crisis. His wife has been cheating on him, and worst of all, his Ford Pinto has a stuck needle valve in the carburetor. While problem number three should be the least of his problems, it is that mechanical difficulty in one of the worst automobiles in American automotive history that brings Vic’s world crashing down around him.

Cujo opens with a brief recounting of the horror that befell Castle Rock, Maine just a few years prior – the police officer, Frank Dodd – a monster that stalked, raped, and murdered young women in the town. Castle Rock, King the narrator tell us, is a town that has known monsters.

Vic Trenton lives in Castle Rock with his wife, Donna and his four year old son, Tad. Like many children of four (yours truly among them) Tad lives with the belief that a monster inhabits his walk in closet. Young Tad Trenton lives in fear of monsters in a town that has known monsters.

Vic and his business partner Roger, own an advertising agency with one major client, a manufacturer of breakfast cereals. The lucrative annual billing from that company has allowed them to move their agency from the big city of New York to rural Maine and establish comfortable lives for themselves and their families.

They have created a commercial character who, in the commercials, samples the cereals, and proclaims, “Nothing wrong here!” The catch phrase enters the national lexicon much like that old Wendy’s slogan, “Where’s the beef?” But there IS something wrong there. The company’s newest cereal, a berry flavored concoction, has as an ingredient a red dye that, while not toxic, causes profuse vomiting which, when ejected from the body, resembles blood. While the FDA is quick to put to rest any fear of mass poisonings, the company’s reputation takes a major hit and becomes the butt of a national joke.

Roger and Vic know that they must find a way to meet this public relations crisis, and quickly, if they are going to keep their major client and their business. They decide they must travel to Boston to meet with their video team, then on to New York to meet with public relations people, before moving on to the cereal company’s headquarters in Cleveland to pitch their solution to the company’s public relations nightmare.

Joe Camber lives outside of Castle Rock in rural Maine with his wife, Charity and their son, Brett. He makes his living fixing cars for local residents. The Cambers own a big, affable St. Bernard named Cujo who is as good as a good dog can be. Cujo is everybody’s friend.

As we come to learn through reading the stories of Castle Rock, many Castle Rock residents harbor dark secrets and Donna Trenton is one of them. She has been carrying on an affair with an itinerant. furniture refinisher. But she’s resolved to break it off, no longer excited by the illicit sex and secrecy of it all. When her lover, Steve Kemp shows up at the house, she spurns him and tells him to stay away from her from now on. Kemp, his huge ego bruised, does not take the breakup well and resolves to inflict cruel revenge.

One evening, as the happy family is returning from a shopping trip into town, their Ford Pinto begins to lunge and sputter. The car misbehaves for awhile before settling back into smooth operating condition. Vic diagnoses the problem as a faulty needle valve in the carburetor. He tells Donna that, while he’s gone to New York, he should take the car out to Joe Camber’s garage and get it fixed.

Meanwhile, the unlikely villain in our story is engaged in his favorite pastime – chasing things. Cujo chases rabbits, birds, and squirrels not to kill them, but for the simple joy of the chase. Cujo is not a killer, he’s a good dog who loves his boy, his man, and his woman.

Cujo’s pursuit leads him to a small hole in the ground that opens into a large, limestone cavern which serves as home to a flock of bats. Cujo sticks his muzzle into the hole, determined to capture his quarry. One of the bats bites Cujo on the nose. That bat has rabies.

Steve Kemp decides on the method of his revenge. He writes a crude note to Vic that says, in crude terms, how much he enjoyed having sex with Vic’s wife. To authenticate the letter, Kemp includes a short note about the placement of a mole on Donna’s body. He mails it to Vic’s office and then prepares to clear out of town.

Charity Camber also harbors a secret – one she decides to share with her husband. She has one the lottery to the tune of $5,000. This is a lot of money to the Cambers who get by on Camber’s repair work, but have little to show for it. Charity wants to visit her younger sister whom she has not seen in several years.

Joe Camber is not the most compassionate husband in the world. He is cold, distant, and prone to using his hands to make a point when the marriage takes a turn that doesn’t suit him. Charity knows that Joe resents Charity’s husband – a successful lawyer – and the money he earns. She concocts an elaborate bargain to gain Joe’s ascent.

She purchases a an engine puller for Joe's Garage that will allow Joe to take on and complete larger jobs faster. She presents Joe with the gift and asks permission to go to Connecticut to see her sister. At first, Joe adamantly refuses. Then, he figures with Charity and Brett gone for a week, he’ll have a chance to go to Boston with his buddy, Gary so they can go drinking and whoring. He agrees.

Vic receives his note and is shattered. Not only does he have to deal with the prospect of losing his livelihood, he now must confront the possibility of losing his family. He confronts Donna who is repentant and supplicant. She wants to save the marriage. Vic is undecided and uncertain about his marriage, but knows if there is any future for the marriage or for himself, he must make this trip to save his agency. Two days later, he takes off for New York with his partner, making no commitments one way or the other to his wife.

Charity Camber and her son Brett, board a bus and take off for Connecticut. After they depart, Joe goes to Gary’s house to plan their Boston debauchery. Cujo lays in the Camber garage, suffering and pondering his new misery with a heat and hatred building in his diseased brain.

Joe returns home that evening to find that Cujo is not around. He does find that Cujo, the most obedient and well mannered of dogs, has taken a dump in the middle of his garage. Joe is puzzled. This simple act, so out of character for his good dog, makes him suspicious, but he finally reasons that Cujo is simply upset about Brett leaving.

He summons Cujo to mete out some discipline but Cujo is not around. Cujo has gone to Gary’s house. Gary greets Cujo who he knows is a good dog. But Cujo is good no more. The 200 lbs dog sets upon Gary and rips him apart in an effort to rid himself of the painful fever ripping through his brain.

As Vic takes off for New York, Joe Camber prepares for his trip to Boston. He goes to Gary’s house to find the carnage in Gary’s living room. As he is pondering the mess, Cujo shows up. Joe’s last thoughts are of what could have happened to turn his good dog bad.

Cujo goes home to seek solace in the dark garage, his head raging with pain and fever.

The Camber home, in the rural woods of Maine, is empty except for its lone canine inhabitant whose desires are to be in the dark and quiet and to kill whatever disturbs his uneasy rest.

As Donna and Tad are returning home from a trip into town for ice cream, the Pinto starts to act up again. She nurses it home and decides that she will take it to Joe Camber’s garage the next day.

As she prepares to take the balky Ford out into the country to Camber's Garage, she tries to leave Tad with a babysitter. The skittish Tad doesn’t want to be left with a babysitter and is afraid of the monster in his closet. He wants to stay with his mom. Donna relents and allows Tad to come along.

The Pinto runs smoothly for most of the trip out through the Maine country roads. However, as they are just getting ready to turn into the Camber door yard, it balks, lunges, sputters, and dies in the driveway. She counts herself lucky to have made it to the garage. She gets out to find Camber, but it’s apparent that no one is home. As she looks around, she hears the throaty growl of a wild animal. Cujo, the loveable St. Bernard she had met months before when she and Vic had been at Camber’s house for a repair, emerges from the garage.

Cujo is no longer a good dog. His red, rheumy eyes hold malice. Strings of viscous slobber dangle from his powerful jaws, and foam covers his muzzle. He knows this woman and this boy are the cause of his agony. He is determined to kill them.

Donna makes a break for the car and barely gets inside before Cujo slams his bulk against the car repeatedly. She tries to start the engine without avail. She and Tad are alone. Nobody is in the Camber home. Nobody plans to be at the Camber home for at least a week, and her only means of escape is one of the biggest hunks of junk to ever come off a Detroit assembly line. Meanwhile, the summer sun beats down on the Pinto, heating its interior to intolerable temperatures.

Tad and Donna spend the night in the hot, sticky comfort of Ford vinyl seats.

In Connecticut, Brett Camber worries that no one has made provisions to feed his dog while he is away. Charity tries to call home to ascertain if Joe is home. There is no answer she can hear, but Cujo, enraged by the sound of the phone ringing in the house, answers by throwing himself against the door of the house and then launching into another attack on the Pinto, cracking the window and buckling the door. Finally, exhausted by the heat and the toll of his fatal disease, he collapses to rest in front of the Pinto.

Steve Kemp, cooling his heels in a rundown motel outside Castle Rock, also has hate festering in his head. His note hit Vic hard. He knows that. But his lust for revenge upon Donna is not slaked. He decides to return to the Trenton residence to mete out a little revenge and perhaps a little rape. He gets there and finds the house empty. He flies into a rage and trashes the home, then flees the state in his van.

Vic is working overtime with his partner to try to save their account. They have an idea and are working with videographers to develop a script and shot sequence. Vic tries to call home several times, to no avail. At first, he is able to develop plausible reasons for his wife and son to be gone. But eventually grows alarmed. He calls Castle County Sheriff Joe Bannerman for help.

Meanwhile, Donna is growing desperate. The unrelenting summer heat in a sealed car is taking a toll on the young boy who is having seizures and slowly dying of heat stroke. She resolves to try for the Camber back door to get into the house and call for help. She exits the car and starts for the door. However, Cujo has been waiting for this moment. Having concealed himself at the front of the car, he springs at her. Donna grapples with the dog who bites her in her midsection and her thigh before she is able to drive it off by driving her thumbs into Cujo’s eyes. She returns to the car, bleeding profusely and probably infected with rabies.
A Castle County deputy is dispatched to the Trenton residence and finds Steve Kemp’s handiwork. With memories of Frank Dodd fresh in his memory, the deputy and Sheriff Bannerman assume the worst. They call Vic Trenton who abandons his advertising project to come home.

State investigators swarm the Trenton home to gather evidence and question Vic about possible motives. They suspect that Steve Kemp has kidnapped Donna and Tad. However, one of the state guys notices that Donna’s Pinto is not there. Kidnappers don’t usually bother kidnapping vehicles along with people. While he doubts that it is an important detail, he doesn’t want any details overlooked. Vic tells them that the Pinto had a bad carburetor and that Donna had talked of taking it to Joe Camber’s garage. Sheriff Bannerman is dispatched to check out the Camber residence.

Bannerman arrives and is surprised to see that the blue Pinto is indeed parked in the driveway. He approaches the car and sees the damage to the driver’s side door and the two motionless figures in the front. Just as he sees Donna stir, Cujo sets upon Bannerman. The sheriff of Castle County who brought a horrific serial killer to justice just a few years before is no match for the animalistic killer that he meets in the Camber door yard. Cujo eviscerates Sheriff Bannerman.

Donna, working herself out of her heat and thirst induced delirium knows it’s now or never for her and her son who lies at death’s door. She jumps from the Pinto and grabs a wooden baseball bat. She and Cujo square off.

Vic is alarmed that no one has heard from Sheriff Bannerman and takes matters into his own hands and heads for Camber’s. Along the way, he passes Gary’s house and sees Camber’s car in the driveway. He stops to see if Camber is there. He walks into Gary’s house and finds the remains of the two men. He knows a monster is loose and knows that his family is in terrible danger. He flies toward Camber’s house, less than half a mile away.

Cujo leaps at Donna and she swings the bat with the might of Ted Williams and breaks Cujo’s ribs. Cujo gathers himself and makes another leap. Donna connects with Cujo’s hindquarters, breaking his hip. Not to be denied revenge on the woman the irrational dog is certain is the cause of his agony, Cujo makes one final leap. Donna swings for the fences and connects with Cujo’s head. Cujo falls to the ground dead.

Vic pulls into the door yard just in time to see Donna’s final swing. He runs to the car and pulls his son out and takes him to the shade. Donna, now in a mindless frenzy, pounds Cujo into a shapeless pulp. She is stunned out of her frenzy when Vic asks how long Tad has been dead.

Donna’s mind enters a whole new realm of frenzied action, trying to breath life back into her son’s lifeless body. Vic uses the Camber phone to call for help, but it is too late for Tad. The monster his dad assured him was not real, finally got him.

The book ends with Charity Camber looking forward to the rest of her life with mixed emotions. She is relieved to be unburdened of her slovenly, wife beating husband, but is sad for her son who has lost his father and beloved pet. She finds that by selling Joe’s equipment and by collecting on his life insurance policy, she and Brett will have enough financial breathing room to figure out where to go from there.

Vic and Donna reconcile. They grieve and they move on. Vic’s PR plan is accepted by the client and his agency is awarded with a new two year contract. Donna and Tad have time to figure out where to go from there.

As for the town of Castle Rock, more evil and misfortune lies in store. . .

I’ve read this book four times and I do not like it. Why read it again and again if I don’t like it you ask? Because, for the most part, it is exceptionally written and it is a good story with a strong premise.

I don’t like the book on an emotional level. First and foremost, I hate reading about Tad’s suffering. I think all but the most loathsome of us hate to see or read about children suffering. But for some reason, I am hyper sensitive to it. My wife finds it intriguing that I can read what I read and watch the television and movies that I watch, but I can’t stomach even the mildest amount of discomfort inflicted upon a child. I don’t know why that is, but it’s the way I’m wired. As you might imagine, I loathe the ending.

I’m also not particularly happy that an adulterous wife is the hero of the novel. I understand the concept of anti-heroes and redemption being powerful vehicles for stories. But Donna Trenton isn’t written as an anti-hero. She is remorseful, but not remorseful enough for me to be sympathetic toward her.

King’s writing through most of the novel is as tight as anything he has ever written. He cleanly and plausibly sets up the predicament. There’s no extraneous development of peripheral characters for the most part. The story is well paced and Vic Trenton is among the most sympathetic of all of King’s characters.

King usually visits the mind of his monster or villain to provide glimpses of their motivation. He does that better than any writer I’ve read. However, here the monster and villain is a dog and I absolutely loathe when writers try to write from the point of view of an animal. They usually have the animals engaging in reasoning and interior dialogue. Dean Koontz does this frequently and it’s just foolish since, while animals can adapt their behaviors and solve simple obstacles, they can’t reason. King keeps Cujo’s thoughts quite simple. Cujo doesn’t reason. He feels and we all know that animals – especially dogs are capable of complex feelings.

King really twists the roles of hero and villain and deserves a great deal of credit for pulling it off, my own personal feelings aside. The hero: an adulterous wife. The villain: a loveable, oafish dog. That’s an original twist.

The primary weakness of the book is King can’t decide if Cujo’s nature is part of a broader evil that lurks in Castle Rock or if he is an animal driven mad by rabies. He makes frequent reference to an evil that lies inside Tad’s closet. That is never developed. He also mentions an evil that resides in Castle Rock first manifested in Deputy Frank Dodd of The Dead Zone. But he never connects that evil, if it does exist, to Cujo. In fact, in the entire Castle Rock cycle of novels, that concept of an evil entity or being never really develops. When true evil finally manifests itself in Castle Rock, it comes in the form of a visitor in the final novel, Needful Things.

The other primary weakness is toward the end, King feints at character development of one of the most peripheral characters – that of the assistant district attorney who is at the Trenton home to lead the investigation. This is a bit character, but King pauses in the heat of his climax to give us a page of backstory on this guy that leaves you wondering why he wasted his time.

Most King fans rank this as one of his weaker works. I put it in the middle. Not as good as The Talisman, but better than Eyes of the Dragon. Many King fans revisited the story when King disclosed in his book, On Writing, that because of his alcoholism and drug addiction, he had absolutely no recollection of the writing of this book. He wrote it surrounded by piles of empty beer cans and with cotton stuffed into his nose to staunch the bleeding from cocaine use.

The next story in the Castle Rock cycle is The Body from the anthology, Different Seasons, which is a poignant and haunting coming of age story that is absolutely bereft of supernatural content. That story stands as one of his best and most revered by King fans and fans of mainstream stories and movies.

The Bad Place By Dean Koontz

The Bad Place
By Dean Koontz
Copyright 1990

Frank Pollard appears in a Los Angeles neighborhood with no memory of who he is, where he’s been, or who is pursuing him. He only knows that somebody or something is following him and trying to kill him.

He hot wires a car and flees. As he drive, his pursuer attacks the car, blowing out its tires. He continues to allude this mysterious presence and hides out in a low rent motel. He is carrying a dufflebag. He opens that bag to find more than $100,00 in cash and several red gems.

He decides to hire some private investigators to help him figure out who he is, where he comes from, why he has all this money, and finally, who wants to kill him. He hires Bobby and Julie Dakota, high tech private eyes whose clients consist mostly of industrial and high tech espionage. He shows the cash, the jewels, and several fake ID’s he has in his possession. They start there research.

Meanwhile in a rundown cape cod near the Santa Barbara coast, Candy Pollard lives with his two sisters, Violent and Verbina. Candy is one strange and evil being. He enjoys dining on the blood of all living beings – especially humans. He lives for revenge on his brother, Frank, who killed his beloved mother eleven years earlier. Candy is able to teleport himself to various locations at will and is gifted with superhuman strength.

He holds a strong bond to his dead mother who use to cut her hands and occasionally her breast to let him suckle on her blood. Candy was an instrument of God, he learns from his mother. He must remain pure and chaste and can only kill those who have done him or her wrong. He must also protect his strange sisters.

Verbina and Violet are twins. They live an isolated existence tied to each other emotionally and sexually. They commune with a pack of cats that roam their property. Those cats serve as their eyes and ears, a relationship like witches and their familiars. Verbina tells Candy that Frank has been back to their house, looking in on them and has killed one of their cats. They want revenge on Frank for the death of their cat.

Another story line develops in Julie Dakota’s brother, Thomas, who has Down’s Syndrome and lives in an assisted living community. Shortly after taking Pollard’s case, Bobby and Julie visit Thomas. After leaving, Thomas finds he has a strange, psychic connection to an evil being he is sure is going to harm his sister. Thomas does what he can to find out who or what this being is and where and what the Bad Place is in which he dwells.

The Dakotas check Pollard into a hospital for observation and place a watch on him. They begin researching the various identifications provided by Pollard. They find that the people were once real, but had died. Following their deaths, tragedy struck the homes in which they dwelled. One man’s family was killed in a fire. Another was murdered. Candy killed them in his pursuit of Frank.

While Julie and Bobby are doing their research, Frank Pollard disappears into thin air from his hotel room. The Dakotas return to the hospital and wait for Frank to return. He returns a few hours later, carrying more money, more gems, and a companion – an insect or arachnid (it has an insect’s body supported by eight legs). It becomes clear after this latest trip that his travels are taking a physical and mental toll on Frank Pollard. When he materializes, his clothes are not put back together quite right, with bits of his shirt woven into his pants and the zipper of his pants melded into his shoes. He is convinced that each time he reconstitutes his body, there are parts not being put back together quite right.

The Dakotas learn that the jewels are actually exceptionally rare red diamonds that are too valuable to put a price on. The insect, they learn, is nothing of this earth. It’s primary function is to consume minerals and produce gems as waste.

Frank is brought back to the Dakotas offices as they conduct more computer research on his origins. They finally find where he was born and where he resided in the small home in Santa Barbara. As they are discussing this, Frank winks out of existence. This time, he takes Bobby with him.

Bobby and Frank travel to various places that Frank has lived and hid in the eleven years since he killed his mother. While traveling, Frank remembers killing his mother and Candy’s bloodlust for him. They pop in and pop out of various homes on various continents before landing on what appears to be another planet. On that planet are hundreds of the large, foreign insects Frank brought back with him. Among them are thousands of the priceless red gems. While on this foreign planet, Bobby loses physical contact with Frank and Frank disappears, leaving Bobby behind.

Bobby is desperate and scared. He observes an alien spaceship monitoring him and the insects seem to be mounting an attack. Before they can attack, however, Frank returns and grabs him. From there, they are transported to a doctor’s study. The doctor appears quite surprised, and them quite angry, to see Frank. Before he can say much, they disappear again to reappear in the Dakota’s offices.

Bobby has the name of the doctor he is sure is in Santa Barbara. They also have the address of the Pollard home. Bobby and Julie set out for Santa Barbara to see the Pollard home and find the doctor.

Meanwhile, Thomas has been using his psychic abilities to spy on Candy as much as possible, but he fears him. He is only able to catch quick glimpses of Candy and his activities before Candy becomes aware of him. Thomas desperately fears getting caught. Finally, he lingers just a little two long and Candy captures his mind. From Thomas, Candy learns that Thomas has some connection to Frank.

Candy teleports to Thomas’ room at the assisted living center. He kills Thomas’ roommate and tries to interrogate Thomas who does not have the mental capacity to understand what has happened or answer the questions. Candy kills Thomas and then tries to find psychic links to Frank in Thomas’ room. Finally, he learns about the Dakotas and their efforts to help Frank.

From Thomas’ room, Candy transports himself to the Dakota and Dakota agency and kills the people there. He then goes on to a Dakota employee’s home and kills the employee’s wife. He learns that Bobby and Julie are en route to Santa Barbara, so he returns home to wait for Candy.

The Pollards learn of the death of their friends and family. Now, they are more determined to find Frank’s brother and mete out justice. They find the doctor who tells them the strange tale of the Pollard family.

Frank and Candy’s grandfather had amassed a small fortune in the motion picture industry. He died in an accident and his daughter was left in the care of her uncle who molested her and eventually impregnated her. The doctor attended the birth of Roselle Pollard who was born a true hermaphrodite with fully functional sex organs of both genders.

Fifteen years later, Roselle returns to the doctor, she herself pregnant. She delivers Frank whom the doctor is disappointed to see, is perfectly normal. A couple years later, she returns, pregnant again. This time she delivers a boy with a strange abnormality. He is born with four testicles and no penis. This creature, the doctor tells him, would be loaded with testosterone to help him develop incredible strength. He would also be mean and evil, with no outlet for sexual frustration. Two years later, she returns and delivers the twin girls.

At Frank’s birth, Roselle tells the doctor that the birth is a miracle, for Frank and her children that followed, were born of a virgin. She impregnated herself using the sexual equipment as her disposal.

While they are having this discussion, Verbina and Violet’s cats are stalking and watching the doctor. They find the Dakotas there and Candy teleports in. He seizes Julie and demands that Bobby summon Frank. Frank, who has been traveling, finally arrives. His constant travels have left him markedly deformed, with partial insects and red jewels now being incorporated into his body. Candy tells Frank that he is taking Julie to their house. If Frank will accompany Candy to the house and sacrifice himself in atonement for killing their mother, he will let Julie live. He then disappears with Julie.

Bobby and the nearly dead Frank Pollard race by car to the Pollard residence. When they get there, they find that, in his rage, he has slaughtered his sisters. Julie is held hostage. Bobby implores Frank to confront his brother and his troubles. The two engage and begin traveling. They pop in and out of the kitchen. Each time they return, they are more and more closely amalgamated into one melded being bearing little resemblance to anything human. Bobby and Julie set fire to the home and kill the living lump of flesh and bone that used to be Frank and Candy Pollard.

The book concludes with the Dakotas living out their dream of residing on the coast and relaxing in their hobbies. They have the cash and jewels left to them by Frank. They also discovered a large cache of cash in the Pollard home, acquired by Frank over the years to support the family. It is just compensation, they rationalize, for the death of Thomas and their friends.

The Bad Place is one of my favorite Dean Koontz novels. With me, Koontz is hit or miss. He has written some compelling tales that have engaged my imagination like few others. Such books as Twilight Eyes, Watchers, House of Thunder, Phantoms, and The Door to December, are fun books to read. Others, such as the unreadable Seize the Night, Dragon Tears, and Winter Moon make me leery of picking up other Dean Koontz books.

One of the chief complaints of Koontz’s writing is that his characters are all the same. In most of his books, the characters are overachievers who have overcome horrible childhoods to succeed tremendously in whatever industry it is they pursue. They always do so at the expense of friends and family. None of this shows up in The Bad Place. In this book, Koontz steps away from his templated writing and develops original characters set in an original story.

A device that Koontz often employs effectively is the splintered story telling with different characters, unattached to each other, beset with similar problems. He usually is quite adept at engaging the reader into thinking and analyzing what these characters all have in common. He usually brings the story lines together into a exciting conclusion, as he does in The Bad Place.

Koontz provides few clues as to what links his various story lines together. Instead he weaves new anecdotes that only increase the mystery. As the book climaxes is when Koontz ties his story lines together.

One area where Koontz surpasses Stephen King is his ability to write erotica. King seldom uses erotica in his stories. Koontz does it and almost always does it well. In The Bad Place, the seductive twins who are primarily attracted to each other is well crafted erotica.

Then there is Candy, who so abhors sex and sexual arousal (for obvious reasons) that he washes his privates (such as they are) with a special mitt so he won’t have to touch them.

Dean Koontz is a writing machine who cranks out at least one novel and usually two novels a year. Being a novel factory probably detracts from the quality of his work. When Koontz is on, you can understand why he’s one of the better selling novelists of modern times. When he’s off (which is more often than not lately), you end up feeling foolish for having picked up the book. I can recall only a couple occasions when a book was so bad that I just could not find the will to finish it. One of these was Seize the Night.

However, Koontz is on his game in The Bad Place. He deviates from his formulaic characters and develops original thoughtful characters. The mystery of Frank Pollard and his strange abilities deepens throughout the book until the apocalyptic meeting at the doctor’s house. The final battle between Frank and Candy is riveting.

Those who fear reading Koontz for fear of stepping into a pile of crap like Seize the Night can safely pick up The Bad Place and know they are headed for a good reading experience.

An Ohio Reader: Reconstruction to the Present

An Ohio Reader: Reconstruction to the Present
Edited by Thomas H. Smith
Copyright 1975

To properly understand and study history, one must occasionally disengage from the research and writings of others and examine primary sources of information -- documents, reports, and newspaper accounts -- authored by participants or contemporaries of those events. Ohio history is a passion of mine and this books documents Ohio's post Civil War history through various means. It relies too heavily upon statistic laden reports and would have been better served by providing more anecdotal illustration. Nonetheless, it provides some insight into how Ohio developed and confronted many problems on a state level years before those problems became national crises.

Thomas H. Smith, who, at the time of this book’s publication, was director of the Ohio Historical Society, compiled various documents, speeches, and historical writings that chronicle Ohio’s history from the period immediately following the Civil War, to the present.

Reconstruction
Smith selects documents that reflect three schools of thoughts by Ohioans during the post Civil War era known as Reconstruction.

The first is an exchange of letters between abolitionists who now want to see blacks be enfranchised through the right to vote and the gubernatorial nominee of the Union Party, Jacob Cox. Cox was a nominal Democrat who migrated to the Union Party because he supported preserving the union. He was a general through the entire Civil War. Supporting the union did not necessarily translate into supporting suffrage for blacks, which he rejected. In a long, convoluted explanation, Cox theorizes that blacks and whites will never be able to live together in harmony and as equals. To give the black man the vote will promote further disharmony and hatred.

Cox would go on to serve one uneventful term as Ohio’s governor and tried for the Republican nomination in 1866, but his support for Andrew Johnson’s soft Reconstruction polices cost him the nomination. He would go on to serve as President Grant’s Secretary of the Interior where Grant came to loathe him.

The second document is a series of excerpts from a Rutherford B. Hayes campaign speech entitled “Waving the Bloody Shirt.” In this speech, Hayes advocates for careful and deliberate policies on Reconstruction – more deliberate than President Johnson was considering and supported enfranchisement of blacks, metaphorically waving the bloody shirt of the blacks who served and fought in the Union Army.

The third document is a series of Democratic platform proposals put forth by U.S. Representative Clement Vallandingham of Cincinnati. Vallandingham was an ardent supporter of states rights and was opposed to the Civil War, the policies of Abraham Lincoln, and thought the Johnson’s soft Reconstruction policies were too hard. Realizing that he was fighting a losing battle against victory in the Civil War, he launched what he called “A New Departure” which was a quest by Democrats to continue the fight for states rights and to leave the Civil War behind for historians to analyze.

Social Growing Pains
Ohio emerged from the Civil War with cities that had grown rapidly during the conflict. They were wholly unprepared for the mass urban migration and this chapter talks not only of the environmental and health concerns of this influx of population, but the demands placed upon rural Ohio to meet the needs of the population and the lack of conservation in the state.

President Garfield writes a letter to the Ohio Secretary of State General Isaac Sherwood documenting the unprecedented urban growth in Ohio in the 19th century and worries about cities like Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, and Youngstown and what they will do with all those people, many living in squalid conditions.

In the Second Annual Report of the Ohio Forestry Bureau, its director states that the rapid deforestation of Ohio needs to halt. That once upon a time, a woods was a thing to be conquered. At that point, it was something to be conserved. He discusses the death of several cities in Ohio that went belly up when the wood that powered their smelting furnaces was depleted.

H.J. Sharp of the Ohio Department of Health chronicles the problems of those who lived along Darby Creek in Madison County in the 1870s. A paper mill upstream in Plain City was dumping its toxic waste into the stream which served as the source of drinking water and water for the livestock for several farms down stream. Families were becoming ill at an alarming rate and one man had died of the poisoning.

An Ohio agricultural report documents the plight of Ohio farmers who have not shared in the post war economic boom that was being enjoyed in the cities. While wages and profits were both on the increase, farmers had not seen a raise in their income in more than two decades.

The Ohio Board of Charity reports the deplorable conditions that existed within Ohio’s overcrowded prisons. They also document the atrocities of several county jails where young boys are incarcerated with hardened criminals in cells with no ventilation. It also discusses what it calls infirmaries which were hospitals for children with disabilities. Children of that era in Ohio history were locked away and left to die in squalor.

The Developing Urban Crisis – 19th Century
The squalor of urban Ohio is chronicled in this chapter along with political bossism – dubbed Coxism after Governor Jacob B. Cox, a heavy handed Republican.

The descriptions of the slums of Cleveland and Cincinnati documented in the Cleveland Leader are beyond our ability to comprehend. People dumped their chamber pots into the streets and over embankments in the neighborhoods. They tossed their garbage over hills, making poor neighborhoods unbearable for the reporter.

Entire families of six lived in 10’ X 12’ rooms with no real ventilation. In Cincinnati, the tenements were built so closely together that the backs of buildings nearly abutted, blocking out not only air, but natural light from the one room, one window tenements. Sewage, garbage, and dead animals littered the streets of Cincinnati’s 19th century slums.

The 1902 small pox epidemic is documented. The strain that year was particularly virulent and contagious. It went through the urban slums and literally slaughtered a good portion of their population.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer recounts the run of political bosses in Toledo. In the 19th century, Toledo’s political operations were run out of Canton Ave. saloons. Canton Ave. – all but desolate today – was a hive of gambling and saloons in the 19th and early 20th century.

Labor
Detailed in this chapter are the plights of various laborers working in Ohio’s cities and rural areas.

An Ohio labor report details the difficulties encountered working as a coal miner in the 19th century. They were paid by the ton rather than by the hour. They had to buy their own tools and there was that notorious Company Store made famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford. Also included is an Ohio senate inquiry into a strike at the Hocking Valley coal mine in Buchtel, along the Hocking – Athens – Perry County border. A minister and former coal miner testifies to the physical and mental hardships endured in the trade of mining. He also describes a system of pay that makes it impossible for the miner and his family to save and forces them further into debt. However, John Buchtel, owner of the mine and president of an Akron iron company testified that the prices in his company store were just as fair, if not cheaper, than in the stores in Nelsonville and that his wage scale was on par of that of other coal miners.

Also documented in government reports and newspaper profiles are the trials faced by the women who sewed garments for a living. Rather than operate sweatshops, clothing manufacturers in Ohio encouraged the women to work at home. The provided the women with sewing machines that they had to pay for through payroll withdrawals. The women were given orders to complete a certain number of garments and then were paid on Saturday when they brought the garments back to the factory. If they did not complete their entire order, they were often sent home without any money, but with a new order that was to be completed on top of the uncompleted order. Many women were forced to work up to 20 hours a day to meet orders. Ohio’s war widows who relied on this type of work to raise families deserved better.

Progressivism
The state of Ohio was at the forefront of the Progressive Movement which started at the turn of the century and died on the shoals of the Great Depression. Around the turn of the century, Progressivism found its strongest advocates in the cities with mayors such as Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones and Brand Whitlock of Toledo fighting utility and streetcar monopolies and Mayor Tom Johnson of Cleveland leading a broader fight for reform in Columbus.

This chapter opens with an article written about Cincinnati’s corrupt political machine led by the city’s mayor, Cox. While Toledo and Cleveland were becoming more progressive, Cincinnati held firm to its system of tightly controlled fiefdom’s under the rule of political bosses.

An article for McClure’s magazine in 1911 chronicles the wide spread vote selling that typified rural political bossism in rural Ohio where it was easy for political bosses, controlling smaller populations that bought votes stayed bought.

In a message to Toledo’s city council, Samuel Jones decried the resistance of party bosses to relinquish some control of the city’s utilities to government control for the good of all people. He also made the case for the poor who inhabited that county’s workhouse for no other reason than they were too poor to pay their fines ( a condition of the American judicial and penal system that still exists today).

Cleveland mayor Tom Johnson makes an eloquent and well reasoned plea for home rule of cities. At that time, cities laws and statutes were debated and enacted by the General Assembly. Cities had no control over how they could administer their own government. Eventually, the home rule advocates would when as slowly, state government allowed cities to draft charters that spelled out municipal codes that afforded some control of local government.

Debates over issues such as home rule, women’s suffrage, and initiative are chronicled here as well.

The War Years and After
This chapter is an examination of the later period of Progressivism when, after having won hard fought victories at the state constitutional convention in 1912 that gave voters the rights of initiative, referendum, and recall, Progressives sought women’s suffrage and the more ideological moved toward temperance and prohibition.

The chapter opens with two senate floor speeches by Senator Atlee Pomerene of Ohio. Pomerene was a giant among the Democrats of his day and would later go on to hold the honor of becoming the nation’s first “special prosecutor” appointed by Calvin Coolidge to investigate and prosecute those involved in the Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding adminstration. Pomerene spoke against prohibition and temperance, claiming his state’s voters – at that time, all men – did not want prohibition and resisted the temperance movement as evidenced by failures of statewide initiatives. He also came out against women’s suffrage, pointing out that women did have the right to vote on school questions in Ohio, but few exercised the franchise. History puts Pomerene on the right side of prohibition and the wrong side of women’s suffrage. However, the latter came to pass and the empowerment of women at the polls brought the former into law. Women did not forget Pomerene’s views on their pet issues and he was soon voted out of office – replaced by temperance men.

Rep. Isaac Sherwood, an Ohio congressman from Toledo explains his vote against American entry into World War I, invoking Washington’s farewell address to the country and the long history of hostility between the U.S. and Great Britain and the valuable assistance provided by Germany during the Civil War.

Ohio Senator Simeon Fess defines what became a strong American sentiment during the years of World War I which was an antipathy against all things not American. Not only were German and subversive pro-German forces to be feared within our borders, but also communist and Bolshevik forces that would undermine our capitalistic, free market economy. History has placed on its back pages the red scare of the 1920s, but Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s fight against communism was every bit as ruthless and sweeping as that of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the red baiters of post World War II.

Not to be outdone in fear of German influence was Ohio Governor James M. Cox whose message to the General Assembly chronicled how subversive German sympathizers were indoctrinating Ohio school students with pro-German school books, lessons, and language instruction. In his shrill, xenophobic plea to the state legislature, he asks for legislation banning the teaching of German to children in grades lower than eight.

In a shameful episode in Ohio history, socialist and former chairman of the Ohio Constitutional Convention of 1912, Herbert Bigelow, tells the federal government of his abduction from a Cincinnati hotel. He was taken across the river to Kentucky where he was stripped and horsewhipped for his efforts to break the streetcar monopoly in the city of Cincinnati. It also appears that he was being set up to be murdered, but the clever Bigelow figured out the ruse and was able to escape back to Ohio with his life.

The fight over race equality in Ohio is chronicled in two essays. One is written by the Grand Wizard of Ohio’s new chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan never gained a foothold in Ohio during Reconstruction because most Ohioans were anti-slavery and favored black suffrage. But the migration north of blacks looking for work in Ohio factories and their willingness to work for lower wages turned the tide in the Klan’s favor. Also working to strengthen the Klan in the Buckeye state was the arrival of numbers of non WASP peoples who fled the political instability and war that ravaged Europe. The Klan in Ohio was different than that of the south. They certainly targeted blacks, but were just as wont to target Catholics and other non WASPS.

A magazine article for The Independent magazine describes the hard core segregation that existed in Cincinnati in the early 20th century. Cincinnati was one of Ohio’s river cities which still harbored many pro-southern political views and culture. More than any other Ohio city, Cincinnati disenfranchised blacks by not allowing them to practice professional services and assuring that they did not rise in economic stature.

B.F. McDonald, Ohio’s Prohibition Commissioner documents for his superiors the nearly impossible task of enforcing Prohibition. Money and manpower, although plentiful, was simply not enough to stop the manufacture and importation of illegal liquor into the state. McDonald’s short report is illustrative of how futile the prohibition efforts were. We watch today as the same type of moralists fight the fight against tobacco. . .

The Depression Years
The Great Depression hit Ohio harder than it hit most states for Ohio was perhaps the most industrialized state in the union in the Roaring Twenties. The problems and inequities of distributing relief to the poor are documented in this chapter.

Ohio’s Unemployment Commissioner, in a report to the governor, complains that unemployed families that have managed to hold on to a few assets are forced to liquidate those assets to qualify for food relief. Families were given the choice of parting with all they had in exchange for food from their government.

Martin Davey, one of Ohio’ most colorful and some say corrupt governors, lays out a defense of his conduct of Ohio’s relief efforts during the early days of the Great Depression. He chronicles the myriad of conflicting rules and regulations put upon the states by the federal government and the difficulty of adjusting to the constantly changing alphabet of abbreviations that came with FDR’s alphabet agencies that typified the New Deal. He also states that Ohio’s problems are not his fault, but the fault of Washington politicians who want to use federal programs to manipulate Ohio’s politics.

Another Ohio governor (this one a little more distinguished ) also argues that Washington interference has made the delivery of relief to Ohio’s unemployed difficult. Gov. John Bricker complains that too many young, college educated relief workers appointed in Washington are running relief programs. These college educated kids usually came from well to do homes and had no practical knowledge or experience in meeting financial hardship. The common man, the conservative Republican argued, imbued with both intelligence and wisdom earned through confronting hardship, was best qualified to administer relief efforts on the local level. He further argues for the empowerment of city and township officials to set policy for their own relief efforts. Bricker would go on to be a distinguished U.S. Senator and Wendell Wilkie’s running mate in 1944.

Government reports document the plight of Ohio farmers with falling prices for their products, yet their advances in soil conservation and crop rotation. Of all that came out of the New Deal, this government education of the farmer on crop rotation was one of the best things to emerge.

Along those same lines, Congressman Harold Claypool chronicles the success of rural electrification in his southern Ohio congressional district. This was another of the great successes of the New Deal.

The chapter concludes with a congressional debate over the Little Steel Strike that bedeviled the Mahoning Valley during the depression. Pro business advocates stated that while working men had the right to bargain collectively, all men had the right to work and he decried the tactics of strikers to keep “scabs” from entering steel mills to earn a living when so many were out of work. Meanwhile, pro labor advocates complained of the ruthless tactics employed by mill owners, and industrialists since the advent of manufacturing, for keeping wages low and workers subservient.

The Incredible Forties
Ohio’s industrial capacity was put to use in the war against the Axis in World War II and the worries of the Great Depression were quickly replaced. While the war years were prosperous for many, thousands of families lost loved ones in the second war to end all wars.

Writer James H. Rodabaugh provides a statistical analysis of the Ohio labor and manufacturing efforts during the war as well as Ohio’s contribution in the European and Pacific theaters. Singled out for mention of meritorious service was Co. C, 192nd Tank Batalion composed of men from Port Clinton and Northwest Ohio.

The magazine Communikay documents the prisoner of war camps established in Ohio. The largest was at Camp Perry, along the Lake Erie shore near Oak Harbor, OH. There were a mix of Italian and German soldiers housed there. Prisoners were relocated to a camp in downtown Defiance where they provided labor on farms in that area, harvesting tomatoes.

Another government report published in Communikay analyzed the War Department’s efforts to construct highways in Ohio to move the newly manufactured war materiel quickly and effectively out of the state and into the European theater. As we know, President Eisenhower used the idea of national defense to justify the creation of the Interstate Highway system.

An article from Business Week Magazine described social attitudes toward blacks working in war industries in Cleveland. According to their analysis, blacks who moved to Cleveland to get jobs in defense plants came from large cities in the south and adapted better socially than the white Appalachians who moved to Cleveland. Appalachians did not adapt well in the cities. Blacks generally worked well with whites in factories, but unions fought hard against admission to their ranks.

A New York Times article details Toledo’s Labor Management mediation program established by local government and administered by labor, management, and private citizens to broker deals to avoid strikes in postwar Toledo. This “Toledo Plan” was a great source of pride for the city and the plan’s founder, Michael V. DiSalle who would go on to be Toledo mayor and Ohio governor. Toledo was a city where blood had been shed in the early days of organized labor at the Toledo Autolight Strike in 1934.

A Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter chronicles the above board work of the Ohio Communist Party to organize and recruit in Ohio during the Red Scare. Communists in Ohio worked hard to recruit blacks and other minorities who experienced discrimination when returning whites came home from Europe at war’s end to reclaim their jobs. The communists as portrayed by the Cleveland Plain Dealer were open in their activities and bore little resemblance to the boogie men created by Sen. Joe McCarthy.

The chapter ends with a Cleveland Plain Dealer sports beat reporter discussing the potential of Cleveland Indian rookie, Larry Doby who was the first black player on the Cleveland Indians. He predicted that Doby’s career would be much like Jackie Robinson’s. Were Doby successful, his teammates would accept him. Were he a bust, he could count on little support from fans or teammates. History bore him out.

At Mid Century
This chapter could have been so much more interesting had it relied less on government reports. It is devoid of any anecdotal documents that tell real stories about real people.

The chapter documents the problems that came to Ohio’s cities and rural areas in the spread of industrialization during the 1950s. It documents the problems that came from the 1903 Hanna Amendment to the Ohio constitution that prescribed that every county should have at least one state legislator of their own. This gave disproportionate representation to the rural areas, making it difficult for urban legislators to move legislation vital to their constituents.

The problems and some of their solutions related to the environment are documented as well. One problem that they tried to address in the 1950s and still haunts southern Ohio today is the existence of so many abandoned and uncapped coal mines. Water leaches through them and is contaminated. As late as the 1990s, Ohio U.S. Senator Mike DeWine was attempting to get federal funding to fill and cap these mines to prevent further harm to the environment and to protect area residents who often had children who played in these abandoned mines.

Documented here are some of the observations of the Ohio Un American Activities committee who described a very different Communist Party than the one documented in the 1920s. These communists received their schooling directly from the Soviets. They were underground – not card carriers. They were subversive and government called on labor and management to block their efforts to infiltrate Ohio industry and government.

The Inconclusive Sixties
In this chapter, we can see the early beginnings of problems that still haunt Ohio today in terms of Appalachian poverty and state services for the elderly.

Also documented in this chapter by an Ohio bureaucrat is the “passive” discrimination that existed in Ohio in terms of accommodations for blacks. Ohio had no Bull Connor. Fire hoses were not used peaceful protesters. Dogs were not set loose upon them. What existed in Ohio was denial of accommodations.

Blacks were very often forbidden to stay in certain motels. While urban hotels were often non discriminating, suburban and rural hotels openly denied blacks accommodations. Restaurants and bars in these areas and particularly southeastern Ohio often restricted their patronage to white only.

However, the most riveting part of the chapter is the documentation of a 1967 race riot in Cleveland’s east side neighborhood of Glenville. Two reporters chronicle the events that led up to three days of riots that caused the deaths of two Cleveland police officers and more than 22 blacks in a 1966 riot.

The Hough riots that preceded the Glenville riots had occurred while Ralph Locher was mayor. An investigation of that riot concluded that black nationalists had been spurred to riot by communist infiltrators. It was hoped that the election of America’s first black urban mayor Carl Stokes, would quell racial tension in Cleveland, a city many in America was a power keg waiting to explode.

Many concluded that the riot started when black militants opened fire with carbine rifles on two tow truck drivers dispatched to haul away an abandoned car. Others claim that police opened fire on black militants who returned fire. The two tow truck drivers, one of whom died and the other was wounded, were caught in the crossfire.

What ensued was nearly as much of a police riot as a militant riot. Having abandoned the radios in their cars, the police had no central command authority. Some police officers fired wantonly at homes and businesses. Meanwhile black militants and unaffiliated black teenagers took to the streets, setting fires and looting stores.

The riots lasted nearly six days. Near the end, when black police officers were the only ones patrolling the neighborhood, the police department’s white officers were in near rebellion. White police officers with the help of the National Guard, controlled a perimeter around Glenville where a 7 PM curfew was established. With the help of Mayor Stokes and his allies in the black community, peace was eventually restored.

The primary conclusion drawn was that, no matter who fired first, Cleveland’s police department was woefully deficient in training to handle urban riot scenarios. No strategy existed to provide a central command authority and to establish a strategy to quell and contain the riots.

Cleveland was not the only Ohio city to experience racial tensions that exploded into riots during that time. Toledo had three race riots. Akron had a riot. Cincinnati as well. But Cleveland, the Ohio city that had experienced such a large influx of blacks from the south following World War II and who had elected the nation’s first urban black mayor, was the city upon which the nation’s eye turned that summer.

One might conclude this was the beginning of Cleveland’s precipitous fall in national reputation. It would not be long before the Cuyahoga River caught fire, bringing further embarrassment to the city. When the de-industrialization of the 1970s took hold, Cleveland disintegrated, never to return to its years of being one of the most prosperous big cities in the country.

Book to Movie: The Dead Zone (1983)

Book to Movie: The Dead Zone (1983)
Screenplay by Jeffery Boam
Directed by David Cronenberg

It was about 1983 that movies based on the works of Stephen King really became a hot commodity. The Dead Zone, Cujo, and Christine were all made into movies in 1983 with Children of the Corn and Firestarter following in 1984. During this time, screenwriters took liberties with King’s stories and usually made them work in the visual medium.

Jeffery Boam uses the ideas and concepts of King’s book. The movie captures the essence of King’s tale. However, he tells a different story. As I noted in my review of the book, this story was a tragedy. Boam tells King’s tale in a four act screenplay.

Sarah and Johnny – played exceptionally by Christopher Walken -- are planning to get married as the movie opens. They return home from the carnival where nothing happens. Sarah invites Johnny in to spend the night. The virtuous Johnny says he wants to put off sex until after marriage. They say goodnight and Johnny drives off into the night.

As he’s headed home in his yellow Volkswagen Beetle, a milk truck overturns in front of him and he collides with it. Sweet, wholesome milk does in sweet, wholesome Johnny Smith.

Johnny awakes in a private clinic run by his doctor, Sam Weizak. Almost five years have passed and he is stunned and heartbroken to hear that Sarah has moved on and gotten married.

Johnny’s first precognitive event is a great deal different in the movie and too melodramatic. Instead of just telling his therapist her house is on fire, as he does in the book, Johnny tells the therapist that her child’s bedroom is on fire with the child in it. The call for help is placed and Johnny saves the day!

His parents come to see him. We get hints of Johnny’s mother’s religious mania, but it is never developed. Sarah stops in also to tell Johnny of her life with her new husband and baby. She shares Johnny’s sorrow for their lost and doomed relationship.

Johnny returns home and tries to rebuild his life. His mom is now dead and he and his dad live alone in the country. One day, out of the blue as Johnny is splitting wood, Sarah shows up unexpectedly. They have lunch and when Sarah’s son falls asleep, they make love. They have dinner with Johnny’s dad, then Sarah leaves, making it clear that, after their love was consummated, she was moving on with the life she’d made for herself, without Johnny.

That is the chief emotional difference between the book and the movie. In the book, when Sarah and Johnny made love, Sarah made it clear it was a single act that was to suffice to make up for what was lost. It was ritualistic, and it was emotionally uplifting.

In the movie, the scene plays out as if Sarah is trying to absolve herself of something. She is quick to cut off Johnny’s pleas to see her again. She is done with him. She’s done her best to make it right. The scene in the movie is a downer.

Here ends Act One

Sheriff Bannerman of Castle Rock pays Johnny a visit. Driving him is the young deputy, Frank Dodd. Bannerman makes his plea for assistance and Johnny rejects his request and tells him to leave. But after hearing of another murder and pressure from his father, Johnny gives in and agrees to meet with Banner.

In the book, Johnny first handles the cigarette pack in the station where he can’t get anything. When he visits the crime scene is where he’s able to figure out Frank Dodd is the killer. In the movie, they are visiting the crime scene of the last murder when they are called to yet another murder that has just happened. Deputy Dodd drives them there and is then dispatched to handle crime control.

Johnny hovers over the spot in the town gazebo where the girl was killed and identifies Dodd as the killer. Dodd has taken the sheriff’s car and has headed for home. Bannerman and Johnny go to the house where they find Frank Dodd dead in the bathroom by his own hand.

The scene where Bannerman and Johnny close in on Dodd is the best part of the movie. Dodd’s mother is played exactly like Norman Bates’ mother and one can’t help but believe that King delved deeply into Robert Bloch’s Psycho inasmuch as he tapped Bram Stoker for ‘Salem’s Lot. The fifties, little boy cowboy motif of Frank Dodd’s bedroom and in the dilapidated house is a creepy setting suitable for a Stephen King movie. The brief interaction between Walken and Colleen Dewhurst who played Dodd’s mother is intense.

Here ends Act Two

As in the book, Johnny gets a job tutoring the son of a rich industrialist. But this story line plays out entirely differently than it does in the book.

As Johnny enters the Stuart home, he is introduced to Greg Stillson who is running for the U.S. Senate. Roger Stuart promises to consider a large donation to the Stillson campaign, but later tells Johnny that the guy is a buffoon – but a buffoon who will probably get elected.

Johnny agrees to tutor Stuart’s son, Chris. Chris is shy and struggles with school work. Johnny tutors him in reading and also works to build the kid’s self esteem. Roger is pleased with the progress. To reward Chris, Roger decides to form a hockey team, purchase the equipment, and coach it.

When Roger arrives at the home with the hockey gear, Johnny touches it and gets a premonition of the boys falling through the ice and sinking to the bottom of the pond (instead of being trapped in a burning building). Johnny frantically begs Roger Stuart to cancel the hockey practice. Johnny’s behavior scares Chris who also begs his dad to call it off. Disgusted and angry, Roger agrees. But Johnny is told his services are no longer needed.

Here ends the Third Act.

There is a knock at Johnny’s door and there to greet him is a Greg Stillson supporter going door to door for the campaign. As Johnny talks to him, his long lost Sarah walks up and introduces the campaign worker as her husband. The meeting is slightly awkward.

Greg decides to cross the street to the park and hear what Stillson has to say and see what makes him so charismatic and engaging. He greets Stillson as he approaches the stage. The two shake hands. Johnny gets hit with a terrifying image.

President Stillson is in his bunker. Before him is a general, reluctant to place his hand on a palm scanner and authorize a nuclear strike. Stillson is dressing him down for his cowardice when the Secretary of State bursts into the room, claiming that a diplomatic solution has been achieved. Stillson ignores them and launches the missiles, reveling in his triumph and his place in history.

When the two separate, both are stunned. Stillson staggers toward the stage, terrified by his new knowledge. A few days later, he asks Dr. Wiezak if he were given the opportunity, would he kill Hitler in his infancy. Without a moment of moral reflection Wiezak declares that he would.

This was where the movie is weakest. When asked in the book, Dr. Wiezak is concerned that Johnny has asked the question. He reflects before admitting that he would kill Hitler given the opportunity. In the movie, it appears almost as if Dr. Wiezak, whom Johnny has told of his Stillson vision, is compelling Johnny to act. Wiezak’s character is developed enough in the book and the movie for us to know he would not be so reckless in answering such a macabre hypothetical question asked of a man who is experiencing nervous and mental difficulties.

Greg decides to act. He acquires a sniper rifle and breaks into the town hall, hiding in the gallery. He is awakened by the entry of Stillson’s people when they enter to set up for the rally. He locks, loads, and waits. Stillson arrives and works his way to the stage.

Johnny jumps up and takes two shots, missing with both. As in the book, Stillson grabs a child and uses him for a shield. In the movie, it’s Sarah’s child who is at the rally with mom. Johnny recognizes her and her child just as a bullet from a Stillson body guard takes him in the chest. He falls from the balcony to the floor.

In the pandemonium, Stillson approaches the dying Johnny and asks, “Who are you?” Johnny grabs his hand. He sees Stillson, looking at the cover of Newsweek bearing the photo of him using the child as a shield. He takes a swig of whiskey and blows his brains out with a revolver. Johnny is satisfied he’s saved humanity.

Sarah comes over to him and weeps over his stricken body. As he dies, she tells him, “I love you.”

Although much different in the telling than the book, I thought Boam’s script was a tremendous rewrite of a book that would have been incredibly dull by direct transfer to screen.

This was before Christopher Walken had developed a reputation for playing crazy people, so his portrayal of vanilla Johnny Smith is believable and at times, superb.

King wrote many books better than The Dead Zone and many movies based on King’s work were better than The Dead Zone. However, many more were much worse. In the dozens of King’s works to be adapted to the visual medium, The Dead Zone certainly ranks as above average, but not anywhere near the best.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever: Lord Foul’s Bane

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever: Lord Foul’s Bane
By Stephen R. Donaldson
Copyright 1977

This is the first in the trilogy and introduces us to Thomas Covenant, a leper living in modern America. An author of former stellar repute, he is now an outcast in his home town where the locals pay his bills to keep him from coming into town.

While in town paying his phone bill, he encounters a homeless man who delivers a short, but cryptic message, Be True. In response, Covenant tries gives him his white gold wedding band, parting with it in bitterness as a symbol of his failed marriage, his wife having taken his child and leaving him when he is diagnosed with the disease. While walking away, he is hit by a car and knocked unconscious.

While unconscious, he is transported to a cave where he beholds a strange, misshapen being known as a cavewight. This particular cavewight, Drool Rockworm, holds a powerful staff. A powerful voice speaks to him, telling him he and others cannot hope for he, Lord Foul, The Despiser, means to acquire this Staff of Law from the crazed Cavewight and bring men and their world low, under his dominion. He orders Covenant to go to the Council of Lords and tell them that Drool Rockworm has recovered the Staff of Law and plans to use it against them and their homes. Lord Foul hopes that the Lords, in their panic, will wrest the staff from Rockworm, making it easier for his minions to acquire later. He comprehends none of this.

Covenant awakens on a high summit in a foreign land. While trying to recover his wits, he is greeted by a young woman. She immediately notices that he is missing two fingers on his right hand (amputated to prevent the spread of infection caused by his leprosy) and tells him that he is The Land’s hero reborn, Berek Halfhand, the founder and first leader of a long line of lords who are stewards of The Land, a magical place where all power, mystical and real, flows from the earth. Berek was the wielder of white gold, the metal that has the power of wild magic that will save or destroy the land. Like Berek, Covenant wears a white gold ring – the wedding band he tried to give away.

Lena takes him back to her village, known as a stonedown for its residents’ specialty in stonework. Lena’s father is a rhadhamaerl, a person who uses earth power to shape and construct with stone. Lena’s parents make Covenant welcome in their home.

Thomas Covenant is a bitter, rigid man – made so by his disease He rigidly holds on to the truths of his life. His has leprosy. There is no cure. He has no hope. He can only survive by leading a carefully regimented life of constant visual inspection of his body, searching for cuts and bruises that can lead to a resurgence of his disease. He is bitter over the loss of his writing career and the life he enjoyed with his wife and son.

Covenant is ill mannered and ill tempered with the stonedowners. These peace loving people ignore his bitterness and anger and offer him the comforts of their home.

Atiaran, Lena’s mother, also recognizes Covenant’s resemblance to The Land’s early hero and prepares to tell the village the legend of Berek Halfhand and of his return. She also tells Covenant the story of Kevin Landwaster, a lord who led The Land’s people in their fight against Lord Foul’s minions. In his time, earthpower was much stronger for he was the most knowledgeable of all the lords in the lore of the earth. However, as Foul’s troops started gaining the upper hand on the forces of The Land, Kevin invoked the most powerful and dangerous lore of them all – the Ritual of Desecration – that imprisoned Lord Foul, but destroyed much of the lore of the earth. In the generations that followed, the people had recovered just a small part of that lost lore.

Covenant does not want to listen to the story and refuses to believe that he is any kind of hero and walks away from the village meeting. Lena, who applied a poultice of sand called Hurtloom to Covenant’s scraped palms to heal them, follows him and offers to take him to a place where he can be alone.

She accompanies him to a remote area. There, the hurtloom applied earlier works its way deeper into Covenant’s systems and his nerves, deadened by leprosy come back to life. Formerly impotent, he finds himself suddenly sexually aroused by the young Lena. Losing control of himself, he rapes her.

The next day, he awakens and is certain that he is now a hunted man for having raped the young woman. Instead, Atiaran arrives and tells Covenant that she will guide him north to Revelstone where the Lords reside, so that they may know of his return. Apparently Lena did not tell her parents of Covenant’s ravishing of her. They set off south, headed for Revelstone. Along the way, Atiaran tells Covenant of The Land’s history, of Berek Halfhand rising up against his corrupt king and defeating him and of his creation of the Council of Lords who benignly rule the land and are warrens of earthpower and protection of all things in The Land.

Along the way, Covenant is assailed by Lena’s betrothed tells Atiaran of Covenant’s sin against her daughter. Covenant, riddled with guilt, can not bear to travel with the woman who he has so badly wronged, but has no alternative. He resolves that the entire event is just a dream. If he follows it through to its conclusion – getting to the Lords and telling them about the Staff of Law and Foul’s plans to dominate the land, then he will awaken.

As they travel south to Revelstone, they stop in a village in the trees, Soaring Woodhelvin. It’s residents (not elves) are known as Woodhelvennin who are versed in the lore of using earthpower to shape and build with wood. They rest there before continuing north.

They leave Woodhelvin and continue south and arrive in time to see a rare rite, the Celebration of Spring. Covenant watches and Atiaran is entranced as the Wraiths – beautiful points of light – begin a ritual dance to welcome the new season and the return of life that comes with it. But as the ritual commences, it is attacked by black, hideous creatures known as ur-viles. Atiaran pleads with Covenant to use the power of the white gold to save the Wraiths as their flames are extinguished, one by one by the ur-viles. The appearance of the evil creatures of legend is sure evidence that evil is afoot in The Land.

Emotionally exhausted by the slaughter of the Wraiths and the knowledge of what Covenant has done to her daughter, Atiaran trudges northward, leading Covenant but doubting her ability to deliver him to the Lords. Finally, they come to the Soulease River where they meet a Giant traveling to Revelstone to deliver news to the Lords. Atiaran begs the Giant, Foamfollower, to take charge of Covenant and deliver him to Revelstone. Foamfollower agrees. Atiaran, broken and exhausted, starts her journey home.

As they travel, the humorless and bitter Covenant hears the story of how the Giants came to the land and their allegiance with the Lords. They were once sailing people from another land who arrived in The Land and then could not find a way home. They met the people of the land and their leader, Kevin Landwaster and offered their allegiance and support to him and all peoples of The Land. It was they, with their stone lore and their might that carved Revelstone from a mountain.

They call themselves the Unhomed for they still seek to return to the land of their birth. The race is slowly dying out in The Land because, for whatever reason, Giant women have few babies in The Land. The news Saltheart Foamfollower is to deliver to the Lords is of the birth of triplets to a Giant wife which the Giants regard as a miracle and perhaps a harbinger of good fortune.

They finally arrive at Revelstone and Covenant is introduced to The Lords. He is greeted by Mhoram, the youngest of The Lords and is consigned to an apartment and held there, guarded by a Haruchi, or Bloodguard who serve loyally, dispassionately, and without fear, the Lords of Revelstone.

He is eventually brought before the Council of Lords who are alarmed by his message and by Covenant’s ring. They resolve that they must travel to the mountain Kiril Threndor where Drool Rockorm resides, and recover the Staff of Law. Recovering the staff, lost since the time of Kevin Landwaster, will help them in defending themselves against Lord Foul and unraveling the mysteries of Kevin’s lore, which he recorded and hid in various locations before his demise.

Before the Council of Lords, Covenant decries his own title to be that of Unbeliever. The Lords call him Ur-Lord.

Covenant, disappointed that his arrival at Revelstone did not bring his dream to an end, agrees to accompany The Lords, hoping that perhaps the recovery of the staff or the death of Drool Rockworm will end it and put him back into the rigid, disciplined life he is so afraid of losing.

The Lords, their accompanying Bloodguard, and warriors under their leadership set off from Revelstone, headed south to an area known as the Plains of Ra where the Ranyhyn reside. Ranyhyn are exceptionally intelligent horses who accept, then bind themselves to one person, whom they serve with unfailingly loyalty, actually being able to anticipate their rider’s call and arrive in times of need.

As the party makes its way southeast toward Ra, the moon changes color. As it rises in the evening, it is blood red. It casts a pall over the beautiful land. It also affects Covenant’s ring which takes on a sickly, blood red hue, further depressing the already depressed and obstinate Covenant.

As they pass east of Soaring Woodhelvin, they see it has been set ablaze. The party turns west to see what assistance they can provide. They find the village burned, its trees scorched, its people slaughtered except for a woman and a young boy. The woman tries to tell what happened is unable. She is able to communicate under careful questioning, that she and the boy, who is speechless, have been placed under a spell that prevents them from revealing the secret. Finally she is able to break through the spell and tell them that they have fallen into a trap. They are immediately set up on by ur viles. Battle ensues and The Lords are able to prevail with the loss of few. They take the boy, Pieten, and the woman, Laura, with them.

They arrive at Ra and one of the most astounding events in the modern history of The Land takes place. The powerful, willful Ranyhyn, who accept few as riders and live their own lives under the assistance of a people known as the Ramen, rear to Covenant and each of them offer themselves willingly. Covenant can ride any or all of the Ranyhyn if he so chooses. But the coward, whose wife broke horses for a living, has a fear of them and will not ride. He does see an opportunity to make some amends for his great sin, however. He orders the Ranyhyn to, at least once a year, make themselves available to the young Lena who dreamed of seeing and riding one of the great horses.

The Ramen agree to take charge of Laura and Pieten who will remain as residents of Ra.

The Lords and their party, now accompanied by Ranyhyn which bear the Lords and the Ramen who tend them, turn north toward Kiril Thrednor. They finally arrive and descend into the mountain’s caverns. They fight ur viles and cavewights along the way before finally arriving in Drool’s chamber to find the quite mad cavewight ready to do battle. The High Lord Prothall wrests the Staff of Law from Drool Rockworm, but Drool has yet another weapon at his disposal. He has found the Illearth Stone, a talisman of evil that bends and warps earthpower to evil purposes. He summons cave wights and ur viles to cut off the party’s escape.

They flee through the caverns and out into the open of a ravine where it seems they will be overwhelmed by the sheer number of their enemies. Finally, the Bloodguard Bannor, assigned to protect Covenant, cannot watch the desecration about to happen. He grasps Covenant’s hand which bears his ring and places it on the Staff of Law wielded by the dying High Lord Prothall. The power unleashed from Covenant’s ring by the Staff of Law summons the legendary Fire Lions of Kiril Threndor which slay their adversaries and Drool Rockworm.

With the creature who summoned him to The Land dead (Drool Rockworm under the guile of Lord Foul) dead, Covenant fades from The Land without time for goodbyes or even a chance to reflect upon what happened, its reality, or its connection with his disease.

He awakens in the hospital where a doctor tells him that, according to the driver of the car, he was not hit, but simply fainted and hit his head. The doctor tells him his minor scrapes have been treated and that he can go home. Covenant dresses and prepares to return to the farm where he has lived since he was married.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever, is one of the most heralded fantasy epics ever written. Stephen R. Donaldson completed this trilogy, then authored a second trilogy. After a 20 year hiatus, he started another series of Covenant books which will contain four volumes, three of which have been published.

Of course, the standard of comparison for all fantasy works is J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Too often, fantasy writers will copy the pattern of Tolkien’s work while changing the names, the settings, and the circumstances of their novels, but never escaping Tolkien’s shadow. Their emulation of Tolkien is usually apparent.

Donaldson does this to a small degree with all of the journeying to various locations to acquire different lore or magical items. However, Donaldson’s characters are the antithesis of Tolkien’s.

Thomas Covenant is the very definition of anti-hero. He is abrasive, nasty, self-pitying, petulant, rude, and emotionally weak. He’s also a rapist. To set up such a character and then make him sympathetic is a feat of literary accomplishment on Donaldson’s part. Donaldson goes out of his way to make Covenant unlikable, but the reader is always rooting for him.

Tolkien’s Middle Earth is the stuff of legends as well, mostly for its beauty which he creates with unparalleled skill. But Tolkien’s Middle Earth was just a setting. Donaldson’s land, while portrayed as beautiful, is more than just a setting. Donaldson’s characters do not serve a leader or a group of people, but the Land itself. The Land and the power it provides emerge as more of a character than a setting. Tolkien’s tale was of the struggle of various races against evil that threatened them and the people of Middle Earth. Donaldson’s tale is of evil which threatens the land itself which is more important to his characters than they or their charges.

Covenant will soon return to The Land and find that he is not the only person from his world to make the journey there in The Illlearth War which is the second book of the first trilogy in the chronicles.

This was the first serious fantasy book I ever read – even before Lord of the Rings. Before Lord Foul’s Bane, my fictional reading was confined almost exclusively to horror and psychological fiction. It was Donaldson who led me to Tolkien.

At the age of 18,I was in a self-imposed exile from my family and friends, working at Cedar Point Amusement Park when I made a journey into town and picked the first volume of Donaldson's work from the fantasy rack almost at random. I have to admit, it was the cover art that drew me. While working at Cedar Point, for personal reasons, I, like Covenant, was a loner. These books helped me pass many of those off work hours. That self imposed exile restored my emotional equilibrium. I have a strong emotional attachment to them to say the least.

Other than Tolkien’s trilogy, the first chronicles stands as my favorite fantasy trilogy. As Covenant makes two more journeys to the land, his already complex character grows more complex. The Land grows in importance and stature, and characters such as Lord Mhoram, Saltheart Foamfollower, the unfortunate Lena – forever fundamentally altered by Covenant’s assault, are developed wonderfully and new, interesting characters are introduced and developed.

Stay tuned. I plan to take you through the entire first, second, and third Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever.