Burnt Offerings By Robert Marasco

Burnt Offerings
By Robert Marasco
Copyright 1973

Robert Marasco, a high school teacher in New York wrote a play over the course of two summer breaks, had it open on Broadway, and saw it nominated for a Tony in 1970 for Best New Play, and penned a novel in 1973 that was well received and made into a movie. Yet, he never really followed up on either. That’s too bad because Burnt Offerings is a good novel that scared me as a kid and is still satisfying to read as an adult.

Marian and Ben Rolfe are New York City dwellers. He is a teacher and she a housewife who makes it her business to keep a meticulous home. They and their son, David, reside in a small apartment in Queens. The neighbors are noisy, the streets are noisy, and their quarters cramped. Marian longs for a little space and quiet over the summer break from school.

She finds an ad for an upstate rental at a reasonable price “for the right kind of people.” Ben, eying their finances, is reluctant to rent anything but agrees to accompany her to look at the place.

When they arrive, they are astounded to find, not a cabin or small house, but a huge mansion on a sprawling beachfront lot. The home is in poor, but serviceable repair. The owners, Roz Allerdyce and her brother, Arnold, immediately take a liking to Marian. The Rolfes, it seems, are the “right kind of people,” and the Allerdyces offer them the entire estate for $900 for the summer.

There are two little catches. First, the Allerdyces want Marian to “care for the place.” It is structurally sound, but needs a good cleaning – a task that appeals to Marian. Second, three times a day, they must carry a meal tray to the Allerdyces’ mother “Our Darling!” who resides in a room on the top floor. Mother will be no trouble they assure the Rolfes and they probably won’t even see her.

Ben sees the responsibility of caring for an old woman as a deal breaker, but Marian has her heart set on it and talks him into it. The Rolfes, along with Ben’s aunt Elizabeth, move into the estate the first week of July. The Allerdyces are already gone, leaving a note with some contact numbers and instructions.

Marian makes a point of preparing food for mother Allerdyce upon their arrival. She carries it up to the room and sets it on the table. Nearby, she sees a large collection of photos. Some are recent; others are daguerreotypes. Many people populate the photos, but they have one common trait: their faces are devoid of emotion.

She is fascinated by the ornate door that leads to the old woman’s room with its swirled patterns. She knocks on the door and tries to introduce herself. Nothing comes from the room except a humming noise which she assumes is an air conditioner.

After seeing to Mrs. Allerdyce, Marian starts cleaning, finding silver and gold furnishings and antiques all over the house in need of elbow grease. The house has become her new love.

Later that night, Ben wants to make love. Marian is inexplicably not in the mood. At first, she tries to put him off, but eventually yields. Instead of pleasurable, she finds it barely tolerable and painful. She is troubled by these feelings because she and Ben have always had a healthy sex life.

Meanwhile, Ben tries to make the pool serviceable. It’s in poor repair. He starts the filter and it makes slow work of cleaning the water. After a few days, he deems it clean enough to swim in. Ben and David jump in while Aunt Elizabeth sits with a martini in hand under an umbrella and looks on. Marian has locked herself in the upstairs room, spending time with Mrs. Allerdyce’s photographs which have become intensely interesting to her.

While he’s in the pool, Ben finds an old pair of eyeglasses on the bottom. One of the lenses has a small, round hole through the middle. He places them on the edge of the pool.

Ben and David start playing and Ben begins to throw David into the air with David splashing back into the water. At first, the game is fun, but then it gets too rough for David. He begs his dad to stop throwing him, but he won’t. Finally, David claws at his dad’s eyes and frees himself. Aunt Elizabeth is horrified at Ben’s behavior. Snapped back to reality, Ben is horrified by his own behavior.

Ben is deeply troubled by the events at the pool. He is at a loss to explain them. He can’t even remember them. David recovers his wits quickly enough, but the entire event takes something out of the previous spunky Elizabeth, who finds herself growing more and more tired with each passing day.

A few nights later, Ben goes back out to the pool. After finishing with Mrs. Allerdyce’s needs, Marian joins him and tries to bridge the growing distance between them. Both notice that the pool is a lovely shade of blue now. Ben reasons that the filter must have kicked into overdrive and removed the sludge from the sides that were dingy brown. Marian wonders how the pavers all straightened themselves and who repaired the cracks.

Ben once again tries to entice Marian. He strips naked and jumps into the pool and invites her to do the same. Reluctantly she strips and gets in, but she feels embarrassed. Every time she looks at the house, she feels ashamed. She rebuffs Ben again, puts on her robe, and heads for the house and the comfort of Mrs. Allerdyce’s sitting room.

That night Ben awakens late at night and finds that Marian has finally returned from the upstairs sitting room and come to bed. He ventures out into the hallway and notices that David’s door is closed which is odd because he never sleeps with a closed door. As he approaches the door, he smells gas. The door is jammed. He finally forces his way into the room and gets David out.

Ben brings David to their room and awakens Marian. He is alive and breathing, but groggy. Marian calls the doctor on the list provided by Roz Allerdyce. The doctor assures her natural gas poisoning is either fatal or it isn’t and if he’s not dead, he’ll be fine. Ben returns to the room and finds the gas valve on the old fashioned room heater is open.

The next morning, Ben decides to prune the brush back from the driveway and sets off with the shears. Marian confronts Aunt Elizabeth about David’s room. She admits she was in the room, just to put a blanket on him. Marian presses her on whether or not she fooled with the heater. Elizabeth can’t remember. Marian presses her harder, all but accusing her of nearly killing her son. Elizabeth, horribly distraught and terribly tired, returns to her room and her bed.

Meanwhile, Ben is battling the brush. As he works in the sun, he inexplicably recalls a scene from when he was a kid. A neighbor had died and a hearse pulled up to the house to claim the body. He recalls the deep rumbling of the engine and can’t help but remember the sound of the Allerdyce’s old Packard. He begins working harder and harder. As he makes his way through the brush, he hears the deep rumble of an old flathead motor and feels his knee come up against a bumper. He blacks out.

He finally comes out of his somnolence walking back to the house. He looks at his watch and notices that he’s lost two hours. The last thing he recalls is the cold chrome against his knee.

He’s angry at Marian when he hears about her confrontation with Elizabeth. Marian promises to apologize when she gets done cleaning some newly unearthed pieces of silver she's found. While Marian is preoccupied with cleaning, Ben goes up to check on Elizabeth. The lady, who had always defied her natural age of 74, now looks old and tired. She claims she doesn’t have the energy to get out of bed.

The Rolfe marriage is now completely asunder. Marian spends more and more time in the sitting room, entranced by the ornate door and the photos on the bureau. She has lied to Ben about having seen Mrs. Allerdyce and that troubles her briefly before she dismisses the unpleasant feelings. She also dismisses from her mind any guilt she feels about her fight with Aunt Elizabeth. The sitting room provides her with comfort and solace.

There is no comfort or solace for Ben. He’d planned to work on his courses for the next school year. But the texts and his notes sit on his desk, ignored. His wife is alien to him. His aunt has become a shade of her former self. David is distant from him after the incident at the pool.

He’s starting to realize that this house and its environs are not good for him or his family. He mentions the possibility of leaving to Marian. Marian is appalled. She has a responsibility to Mrs. Allerdyce she won’t yield. In her own mind, giving up the house is something she cannot do.

The next morning, Elizabeth tries to get out of bed and finds herself too weak. She has sharp pains in her chest. Ben comes into the room to check on her and finds her barely alive. A doctor is summoned, but before he can arrive, Elizabeth dies.

Ben and David return to the city to arrange for Elizabeth’s funeral. Marian refuses to go, claiming she must take care of Mrs. Allerdyce. After the conversation ends in anger, Marian goes to the greenhouse to find the plants have really taken off after Elizabeth’s death. She returns to the sitting room to find a picture of Elizabeth has joined the other photos. Just like the other subjects, her face is expressionless. Marian also notices that her hair has gone completely gray over the course of the month they’ve spent at the Allerdyce estate.

Ben and David return. Marian decides she is going to make one last attempt to bridge the gulf between her and Ben by preparing the family a nice dinner. Ben’s not in the mood to eat. He asks Marian if she can give up the house if it means keeping her family. Marian is horrified at having to choose. She begs Ben not to force her to choose because she is afraid of the choice she will make. Ben’s heard all he needs to hear.

The next day, he resolves to leave. He puts David in the car and starts out. Marian is upstairs, consoling herself in the sitting room. Ben and David get a few yards down the driveway when they find the brush to be impenetrable. Ben tries to ram his way through, but the brush won’t yield. He feels vines making their way into the car to tangle his feet and his hands. His mind snaps. He hears Marian come to the car and push him out of the way. She drives them back to the house.

Ben lapses into a catatonic state. He won’t communicate at all. David is dazed as well. For a week, Marian tries to reach Ben without success.

One afternoon, The Allerdyce’s caretaker stops by. He is pleased with how the house is coming along. Marian tells him of Elizabeth’s death and Ben’s catatonia. He’s just resting, the old caretaker assures her. Marian pleads with him to tell her what to do. He tells her to go on doing what she’s been doing. He tells her that she’s made a choice. She’s put things into motion. He asks her if she really wants to give it all up. Marian starts to wonder if it was all really worth it.

One day, she decides to bring Ben down to the pool. She seats him under an umbrella. David is prepared for a swim. She leaves the two alone. David decides that maybe if he can show his dad how he’s learned to swim, his dad will snap out of his fugue. He plunges into the pool’s deep end and surfaces. He finds he’s not quite the swimmer he thought he was. Waves force him under. He struggles to keep his head above water, but the water has a will of its own and he soon succumbs to it.

Ben struggles to free himself of his trance. He manages to rise under his own power, he takes a step and then falls. His head strikes the pavement. Blood begins to flow from his eyes. He slowly dies.

Marian sees the scene unfold from the house. She tries to rush to the pool, but the door is jammed. She runs frantically through the house and tries to find a way to get to her husband and son. All egresses are blocked.

There’s nothing left for her now. She made her choice whether she knew it or not. She puts on a nice sun dress and climbs to the sitting room. There, she finds Ben and David’s pictures have joined the gallery. Her hair has turned white.

She begins to pound on the ornate door. She tells Mrs. Allerdyce she’s given all she has to give. There’s nothing left. She wants to know what it was all for. She hears a quiet click and the vault like door swings open. Inside, she sees an ancient woman, obscured by shadows. She advances on the wraithlike figure. She begins to hear the voices of Roz and Arnold Allerdyce. “Our mother. . . Our Darling. . .Restored to us in all her dearness. . . Her beauty. . .Her glory. . .” Marian steps to the chair and grasps it. She can feel the hum now. She can feel it in her and she can feel it coursing through her into the house. Behind her, she hears the sound of a vault door closing.

The Allerdyce’s appear in the living room. “In silent reverence,” Marasco narrates, “they tour the restored home through all of the restored rooms of their mother’s house, which had never looked so rich and shining and perfect.” Roz insists that their caretaker photograph the home and the grounds. They place the photo on the wall above all the others taken of the home through the decades. They celebrate.

This novel was a formative book in my life. It is the first adult novel I can recall reading and, while I’d always enjoyed scary movies and scary stories, it set me on a path of lifelong pursuit of horror novels. I’d not rank it as a great book, but I sure do enjoy reading it and must have read it five or six times as a kid growing up.

Compared to other popular horror of its time (of which there was very little) it’s not a great book. It doesn’t match The Exorcist in its depth. It has not the character development and social relevance of Rosemary’s Baby. It’s character development is light and its plot linear. But, it’s a fun story and easy to read.

It does have some glaring flaws and omissions. The glasses found in the pool seemed to be an important clue as to the nature of the house. But they never appear in the story again. Providing some motivation or explanation as to why Aunt Elizabeth ventured into David’s room would have helped that part of the story. We never learn if it was Elizabeth, guided by the spirit of the house, who turned on the gas, or if the house did it itself in the process of being reborn. The scene was purely incidental and only served to set up the short conflict between Marian and Elizabeth. It impacted David not at all.

Nothing impacted David and no explanation is provided. His mother is going gray at a rapid rate and has developed an obsession that makes her neglect him. He doesn’t seem to care. His dad is going nuts. He doesn’t seem to care. His beloved aunt dies. He doesn’t care. Or so it would seem. The not caring might have been a clue unto itself, but Marasco gave us no reason to believe that it was a clue. We see the story from Marian’s point of view, Ben’s point of view, and Elizabeth’s point of view. Marasco never lets us into David’s head. It would seem to be a case of character neglect.

There is a subtext, thinly veiled, about materialism. Marian loves the gold, the silver, and the expanse of the mansion and its grandeur. On several occasions she is asked to choose between her family or these beautiful things. While she always cops to the responsibility to the old lady in the attic, she chooses her new possessions, right up until the end when she loses her family. Even when she realizes the terrible choice she’s made, she must find out what it was all for.

Stephen King does not deny that the novel influenced him when he wrote The Shining which contains similar circumstances. Although it does not appear in the Kubrick movie, Jack Torrance develops an obsession with a scrap book he finds in the hotel’s cellar. He comes to love and respect the hotel. The difference is, Jack succumbs to an evil unwillingly. He was offered no stark choices like Marian Rolfe. He was seduced. For Marian, the house filled a void in her life and filling that void became the obsession.

The book was made into a hit movie that starred Oliver Reed, Karen Black, and Bette Davis. The scene with the hearse driver, which is scarcely mentioned in the novel, became iconic in its own way. It terrified me as a child. My wife, who generally doesn’t like horror, recalls seeing that particular scene and having nightmares. If you mention the movie to casual fans of horror, they can recall that hearse driver with the evil grin and eyes hiding behind mirrored lenses.

Marasco followed up with another novel called Parlor Games in 1979. I have never seen it although there are a few copies available on Amazon. It netted just one, two sentence review on Amazon and the reviewer gave it five stars.

With a hit play and a decent novel under his belt, it seems that the late Robert Marasco (he died of lung cancer in 1998) was an underachiever. Like Frank DeFellita, he seemed to have a promising writing career that could have blossomed with honing his craft on new projects. But, unfortunately, it never developed.

The Wind Through the Keyhole By Stephen King

The Wind Through the Keyhole
By Stephen King
Copyright 2012


Stephen King revisits the Ka-Tet of Roland of Gilead for a story within a story, within a story. Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy have left Lud in ruins. Blaine the Mono has met his doom. They are once again following the path of the Beam en route to the Dark Tower.

Along the way, they meet an old ferryman who invites them to sup with him. As they dine, Roland notes the peculiar weather and tells the old man he suspects a storm – a rare killer storm called a starkblast. Starkblasts are like the opposite of the Santa Ana winds. In Roland’s world, unseasonably hot weather is sometimes followed by killer cold winds. The cold and the wind come on so suddenly they trap people outside and they freeze in their tracks. Trees freeze instantly and explode. One does not stay outside in a Starkblast.

The ferryman agrees to take Roland and his ka-tet across the river where they can seek shelter in an abandoned village before they storm. They safely cross the river and find an old stone building that appears sturdy enough to survive the storm. They gather firewood and settle in. The storm hits and they gather around the fire to try to stay warm. To pass the time, Roland agrees to tell the group another story of his youth.

Shortly after the death of Roland’s mother (at Roland’s hand), his father, a Gunslinger from the direct line of Arthur Eld, summons him to his study. He tells Roland he has a mission for him in a barony town of Debaria. There, several residents have been killed by a “Skin Man” which is a human who changes shape into various vicious animals to kill them. Roland’s father wants Roland and his friend Jamie to identify and bring this evil being to justice.

The pair of newly minted gunslingers, still in their teens, arrive in Dabaria and meet the local sheriff, an old friend of Roland’s father. He tells all that he knows about the Skin Man attacks. More than two dozen have died. All were slaughtered viciously. Whole families have been torn to pieces and the city, whose chief commerce is a salt mine, is frightened.

During their second night in town, the Skin Man hits again. A ranch just outside of town is the scene of the slaughter and the entire family and all of their hands and animals have been killed. The tracks of a giant bear are found at the scene. Jamie notices that the tracks slowly turn back into human form as they leave the ranch, and the killer left on a horse that was waiting for him, indicating the Skin Man is not the innocent victim of a curse. He knows who and what he is and plans his attacks.

When the Gunslingers and the sheriff’s men return to the ranch, Roland hears movement in the tack shed. He investigates and finds a small boy hiding under saddle blankets. He is the lone survivor of the Skin Man’s latest foray. This boy named Bill saw the creature transform from animal to human. He didn’t see the face, but he saw the tattooed ring around the man’s ankle. The tattoo had a white defect or scar in it.

Roland takes Bill back to town. The boy is distraught because his father and everyone he knows was slaughtered at the ranch. He’s also scared because Roland tells him he is going to identify the Skin Man for him.

Roland locks the boy in jail (to keep him safe) and then sees to the fashioning a silver bullet – the only device that can kill a Skin Man.

Upon Roland’s return, he tells Bill a story told to him by his mother when he was a child. This is the story within the story and takes up approximately half the book.

Tim Ross lives with his mother and father in a logging town. His father, Big Ross and his business partner, Bern Kells make a comfortable living harvesting ironwood trees from the forest nearby.

But Big Ross meets with misfortune. He is attacked by a dragon and incinerated into oblivion. His wife and small child are left to fend for themselves.

Bern Kells, a widower and former drunken brawler, comes to call on Tim’s mother, asking for her hand in marriage. Seeing no other way to makes ends meet and fearing the Barony’s tax collector who will seize their home when they can’t pay, she says yes. Bern Kell and Tim’s mother are wed.

Shortly after they are married, Bern Kells returns to his cups. He comes home drunk and beats Tim’s mother. He can’t find a business partner to help him harvest ironwood because nobody wants to be associated with him. Tim is miserable and fearful for his mother.

On the appointed day, the tax collector bearing the title, the Covenant Man, comes to call. He’s a wicked, evil man. He takes Kells’ coin and summons Tim to his horse for a private conversation. The Covenant Man tells him to meet him in the forest that night to hear an interesting tale. He slips into Tim’s hand a magic key that will open any lock, but will work just once. Tim uses it to open his stepfather’s footlocker. There, Tim finds his father’s lucky coin – a coin that should have been destroyed had his father really been attacked by a dragon.

Wanting more information on how Bern acquired his father's lucky coin, Tim sneaks out and travels into the forest. He finds the Covenant Man camped out alongside the road. The Covenant Man prepares a bowl of stew for Tim, then tells him to go to the stream and get water. When Tim does, he finds the body of his father, submerged in the stream. The Covenant Man tells Tim to retrieve his father’s hatchet from the body and carry it home with him.

Tim returns home to find that Kells has beaten his mother badly. She is blind and bedridden. Tim’s school teacher is there to tend his mother and the men of the town have been dispatched to find Kells and bring him to justice and to retrieve Big Ross’ body. As he sleeps that night, The Covenant Man enters Tim’s dreams and tells him to find him in the forest. He will supply Tim with the magic he needs to help his mother.

Tim takes off for the forest, packing a gun provided to him by his teacher. Once deep into the forest, he encounters a fairy who seems to guide him. But the fairy is evil and duplicitous and guides him into a swamp. There, he finds a real dragon who rises from the water and spews fire. Tim begs for his life and with a reproachful look, the dragon settles back into her nest. He then finds some “muties” in the swamp who help him by providing him with a device to help him find his way. The device is a product of the ever helpful North Central Positronics Corp.

The device guides Tim to a Dogan (which King fans will recognize as one of North Central Positronics’ computer centers) deep in the forest. Before self destructing, the device warns Tim that a storm is coming; a starkblast just like the one Roland and his ka-tet are enduring. Resting near the Dogan is a tiger in a cage.

Tim desperately tries to get into the Quonset hut that is the Dogan, but can’t. The door is locked. Attached to the lock is a note from the Covenant Man telling him that his salvation lies inside the tiger’s cage. To get it, he will have to open the tiger cage, and the tiger is hungry, having been penned for a long time.

Knowing that he will die in the starkblast, Tim risks opening the cage. The tiger steps out and settles peacefully on the ground, watching Tim. Inside Tim finds a small napkin. Terrified of the approaching storm, Tim unfolds the napkin which is magical. It continues to unfold until it forms a large tarp. Tim goes to the leeward side of the Dogan to shelter himself from the wind and covers himself with the tarp, hoping it is enough shelter. He invites the tiger to join him. Together, Tim and the Tiger ride out the starkblast under the protection of the magical tarp.

After the storm is over, Tim and the tiger climb from beneath their magical shelter. The Tiger then transforms himself into a man and proclaims that he is Maerlyn, the white wizard. He says he was imprisoned in the cage by the Covenant Man when he caught Maerlyn drunk one evening. For rescuing him, the tiger instructs him on how to use some magical eye drops to save his mother’s sight. Tim uses the tarp as a magic carpet and returns home.

His mother is still blind, but overjoyed to see him. Tim puts the drops in her eyes and restores his sight. As instructed by the tiger, he gives his father’s hatchet to his mother. He then goes downstairs to awaken his teacher who is sleeping in a chair.

When he gets downstairs, he tries to wake his teacher and she won’t wake up. He then notices that that her dress is soaked in blood and that her throat has been cut. Just has he makes these observations, he is grabbed from behind by the throat. His stepfather is strangling him. Just as he’s about to pass out, the hands release him. He looks up to find that his mother has planted the hatchet in the back of Kells’ head.

With Bern Kells dead, Tim and his mother live happily ever after.

Roland concludes telling his tale to young Bill and tells him to rest. Tomorrow will be a big day when the suspects are marched before him so he can identify the Skin Man.

The next day, the salt miners are rounded up, relieved of their boots, and made to parade through the jail. The tattoo, Roland has learned is somewhat common among the miners for it is an identifying mark of a local prison. Several of the miners bear the tattoo, but only one has the telltale scar deforming it.

The miners parade through, one by one as the terrified Bill watches from the safety of his cell. Finally, he sees the miner with the scar and points him out. Once identified, the miner transforms into a giant snake and strikes, killing two of the sheriff’s deputies. Roland, equipped with his enchanted bullet, shoots and kills the Skin Man.

Roland and Jamie receive the thanks of the sheriff and leave town. On the way out, they stop at a small village called Serenity. It is there that his mother sojourned to try to regain her sanity after being seduced by her husband’s wizard, Marten. He drops Bill off with the proprietor of a brothel who has a gift for Roland. She places in his hand an envelope that contains a letter written by his mother. In it, she apologizes to him for allowing herself to be seduced by Martin and seems to predict that she will die by Roland’s hand. She forgives him for what she knows he will do.

There, Roland concludes his tale. The ka-tet pack up their belongings and resume their journey, headed toward Calla Bryn Sturgis where they will meet Andy the Robot, Father Callahan, and the Wolves of the Calla.

Those looking for depth to be added to Roland’s character through another chapter of his early life won’t find it in this story. It adds nothing to Roland’s backstory. I think we were supposed to feel some heartwarming catharsis on Roland’s behalf when he received the letter from his mother, but that part of the story was really under written. It could have been told with greater depth.

Both stories contained in Roland’s narrative were straightforward tales with no subplots. There were no red herrings or anything to throw us off the trail of the Skin Man. Roland and Jamie identified the suspect early on as one of the salt miners and a salt miner it was. There were no conflicts or subplots in that part of the story.

The second story was told with the same narrative voice as The Eyes of the Dragon. In that story, I thought that King was trying to imitate Tolkien’s style of childish story telling he employed in The Hobbit. As with the other story, it was a linear tale with nary a subplot or red herring. The reader is again allowed the pleasure of experiencing King’s Dark Man as the Covenant Man identifies himself as Randall Flagg by initialing his note to Tim with “R.F.”

Fans of Roland and the Dark Tower will no doubt enjoy a new edition to King’s expansive tale of a world encompassing all worlds. King classifies the book as “Dark Tower, book 4.5” to be shelved between Wizard and Glass (which contains extensive Roland backstory) and Wolves of the Calla which is the book that starts the story toward its climax.

Were this story read in order with the other books, I think it would have been an annoying distraction. Read on its own, it’s a fun, stand alone story of Roland telling story within a story.

Book to Movie: 1408 (2007)

Book to Movie: 1408 (2007)
Screenplay by Matt Greenburg, Scott Alexander, and Larry Karaszewski
Directed by Mikael Hafstrom
Based on the short story, 1408 by Stephen King from the collection Everything’s Eventual:14 Dark Tales

1408 is the first serious film based on a Stephen King work to be made in many years. Much dreck has been churned out by Hollywood looking to make a buck on King’s name. 1408 is not dreck. It is a tense, frightening, and chilling translation of King’s work to the big screen that is worthy of being mentioned with the likes of Carrie or Christine.

Mike Enslin is a writer who travels around the country debunking haunting. He stays in haunted houses, haunted cemeteries, and haunted hotels, reporting on his findings and rating them on how creepy they really are. He has never seen a ghost.

He learns of a New York hotel called The Dolphin and its room 1408 which is reputed not to be haunted, but to be evil. Twenty-two people have killed themselves in the room and there have been many natural deaths as well. He calls and finds out that the room is permanently unavailable.

Enslin’s agent calls and assures him that he will be allowed to stay in 1408. New York discrimination laws dictate that if a room is available and is requested, it must be provided. The viewer is provided with some foreshadowing as his agent asks him if he really wants to come back to New York. Apparently some tragic events occurred there for Enslin. Enslin says he’s ok with it.

This is all backstory installed by the screenwriters to set up the story. King’s story begins with Enslin’s arrival at the Dolphin.

That scene plays out on screen much as it was written. The manager of the Dolphin, played by Samuel L. Jackson, tries in every way to dissuade Enslin from taking 1408. He tells him of the horrific deaths. Enslin has already done his homework. The manager says not all of the unpleasantness of 1408 has been reported and that a made once gouged out her own eyes in the bathroom. The skeptical Enslin doesn’t care. The manager gives Mike the file to ponder and a bottle of fine cognac along with a room key – a mechanical key. Electronics don’t work very well in 1408. The manager tells Enslin that nobody has lasted more than one hour in 1408 before dying or fleeing.

Enslin goes to the room and settles in. It is a two room suite that resembles many midscale New York hotel rooms. He methodically records his observations of the room into a tape recorder.

He goes into the living area to look around and the radio turns on to the strains of the late Karen Carpenter sweetly singing that she’s only just begun to live. Enslin dashes back into the room to find the bed turned down and mints on the pillow. After a joke about ghosts providing turn down service, he frantically searches the room for the person he is certain must be hiding in there. He doesn’t find anyone.

While making more notes, the radio turns on again with Karen Carpenter providing the tunes. The time changes and the clock starts a countdown from 60 minutes.

From that point on, Enslin’s world goes insane for room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel at 46th and Lexington in New York is a world unto itself.

He watches as ghosts from the past make their way across the room and jump from the window in suicide plunges. He is attacked by an obscure maniacal knife wielder. The temperature fluctuates from extremely hot to extremely cold.

Enslin tries desperately to hold onto the lifeline of skepticism when the television turns on and he watches home movies of himself, his daughter, and his estranged wife playing. The scene switches to Enslin and his wife struggling with the news that their daughter is terminally ill.

The wife and daughter are elements introduced to the story by the screenwriters. They are clever and add an emotional element to the story. The writers walked a fine line between irrelevance and lugubriousness successfully. The tragedy of the Enslin family becomes the core of Mike’s stay in 1408.

Now, Mike is a believer. He wants out of 1408. He tries to get out, but the key breaks off in the lock. He opens his lap top and miraculously, he’s able to reach his ex-wife via Skype. She’s pissed that he’s back in the city without contacting her. He wants her to call the cops and get them to the Dolphin so he can get out. As he’s trying to tell her this, the sprinkler opens up and drenches the computer, cutting him off.

Suddenly, 1408 begins to crumble around him. The various pictures hanging on the wall become live scenes of tragedy. One of them, a Currier and Ives print of a ship on a stormy see shows the crew struggling against the weather to keep their ship afloat. Enslin smashes it and is immediately immersed in water. He struggles to service before succumbing.

He awakens on a beach, coughing and gagging. He is transported to a Los Angeles hospital to recover from his near drowning. His estranged wife shows up, happy to see that he is still alive. He tells her of his experiences. A lifelong New Yorker, she’s never heard of the Dolphin. They conclude it must have all been an ugly dream.

The pair reconciles and begins a new life in Los Angeles. Mike writes a new book and delivers the manuscript to the post office. When he arrives, the workers are remodeling the post office. They suddenly begin to demolish the walls, revealing that he is still in room 1408. The room is now nearly destroyed. The plaster has fallen away from the walls. The furniture is smashed. Enslin stands among the rubble, alone.

As he ponders it all in a state of near shock, he notices his computer is working again. His wife is back on Skype. She tells him that the police are in room 1408 of the Dolphin and that he’s not there. She says she’s on her way down to the hotel. Mike starts to plead with her not to when a likeness of him appears on the screen imploring her to come help him. He smashes the computer.

He then hears the voice of his daughter and looks up. She walks to him, asking if they can be together again – if she and mommy and daddy can be together again. He hugs her and tells her that they can. She then dies in his arms and crumbles into dust. He passes out.

He awakens and 1408 has resumed its normal form. The phone rings. He answers it and hears a polite voice asking him if his stay was satisfactory. If not, he’s told that guests in 1408 have free will and are invited to use the hotel’s express check out system. A noose appears in the room. Mike is tempted, but has a better idea. He tells the room if he’s going to die, he’s taking 1408 it with him. He sets fire to the room.

The fire summons the fire department as the hotel’s guests are evacuated. Firemen break down the door and rescue Mike. His wife is waiting outside for him.

The couple reconcile, having moved past the death of their daughter. They are moving into a new apartment when Mike comes across his tape recorder that he carried into room 1408. He turns on the partially melted electronic and the tape plays with a warbled sound. Mike and his wife hear the voice of their daughter, pleading with Mike to let them all be together again.

As I stated at the outset, this was a superb movie. The screenwriters retooled the story to add some emotional depth and poignancy. They embellished the events in King’s story to far beyond what appeared in the text and added new events. None of it was wasted. All of it added to the viewing experience.

The movie was brilliantly directed and edited. The tension never let up. Hafstrom avoided the misstep that I feared would make this movie into something other than what King envisioned in his superb story. He didn’t make the hotel manager the villain or provocateur. Too many times, directors and screenwriters take an abstract concept about evil manifested in a room or a home and transfer it to a human. This is standard dumbing down by Hollywood. Thankfully, Hafstrom and the writers respected their audience.

Much of the film’s excellence can be found in John Cusack’s outstanding performance. More than an hour of this film is a one man show featuring him being scared by events around him. He never overacts. His performance never lapses from terror into silliness. Cusack’s performance was stellar.

With so much incredibly average or bad Stephen King inspired material appearing in theaters and television, it is heartening for King’s Constant Reader to see works like this and The Mist make their way into cinema. It proves that as King matures, he’s still capable of telling a spine tingling tale that will thrill movie audiences as well.

Book to Movie: Riding the Bullet(2004)

Book to Movie: Riding the Bullet(2004)
Screenplay by Mick Garris
Directed by Mick Garris
Based on the short story, Riding the Bullet, by Stephen King from the collection, Everything’s Eventual: 14 Dark Tales

As I noted in my review of Garris’ adaptation of the Stephen King book, Bag of Bones, Mick Garris has had an uneven track record in translating King’s work to screen. He was awful with Bag of Bones and pretty good with The Shining (considering the script he had to work with).

With Riding the Bullet, Garris deviates from straight forward storytelling and throws curveball after curveball in telling King’s tale of a young man on his way home to see his ailing mother. Sometimes the curveballs are outside the strike zone, but often, they are entertaining, occasionally zany, and make for a good movie.

King’s story opens with University of Maine college student, Alan Parker getting the call that his mother has had a stroke. Garris opens with some in your face character development. We see right away that Alan Parker is an art student with a flair for the dark and morbid. He is in art class where a nude model is posing for a group of students. While others sketch her as she is, Parker makes her into a zombie with a figure of death looming over her, much to the chagrin of his teacher.

Garris’ story is set in 1969 and it seems that Parker’s girlfriend has her heart set on a little free love. She wants to break up with him. Alan doesn’t take it well. He goes home, lights candles and soaks in a bathtub. He drinks, smokes a joint, and ponders the razor blade lying by the tub. He picks it up and holds it near his wrist.

The Grim Reaper walks in, hits the joint, and tells him to go ahead. In the Garris style of “gotcha!” the vision winks out of existence and Parker holds the blade to his wrist, summoning his courage. Just then his ex-girlfriend and a number of his friends burst into the room to shout “Happy Birthday!” He is startled and ends up cutting his wrist.

He recuperates in the hospital and his imagination runs away with him a number of times with dark fantasies of death as well as his girlfriend getting back together with him. She comes to visit him, chides him for his abortive suicide attempt, and gives him two tickets to see John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band – her birthday gift to him.

He returns home to his two stoner roommates who are excited by the prospect of joining him at the concert. As they discuss their prospective road trip, the phone rings. He fantasizes that it’s his girlfriend asking him to come back to her. In fact, it’s his mother’s next door neighbor telling him that his mother has had a stroke and is in the hospital.

Alan tells his buddies to take the tickets and enjoy the concert. He starts the long trek from Orono to Lewiston, Maine, hitchhiking. As he walks, he recalls the death of his father and his mother’s grief. He recalls many fond moments and sad moments he shared with her as her only child.

He’s first picked up by a dope smoking pseudo hippy in a VW Bus who gets stoned and wrecks. This was a needless padding scene that added nothing to the story and was not in King’s story.

His second ride is the old farmer from King’s story that ruminates on his lost wife and yanks at his truss constantly. As he rides with the farmer who can’t keep the car in the right lane and has several near misses with head on collisions, Alan has conversations with “himself” who rides in the back seat providing Alan with advice. Himself’s advice is to get out of this guy’s car as soon as possible to avoid being killed. He convinces the old man to drop him off in the next town.

He walks out of town out into the Maine wilderness late in the night. His dark imagination runs wild. He also remembers his trip to Thrill Village and his abortive attempt to ride the park’s roller coaster, The Bullet. Alan and his mother wait in a long line to get on. When the time comes to get on the coaster, Alan chickens out. His mom, angry at him for making her wait in line and then bailing, clouts him on the head and won’t speak to him the rest of the day.

After being chased off the road by some rednecks in a truck, Alan makes his way into a cemetery. He stumbles upon the grave of a 19 year old kid named George Staub. Staub was born the same day as Alan and died two years prior to the night Alan finds his grave. Staub’s headstone bears a picture of the young man.

At first glance, Alan reads the stone’s inscription which says, “Fun is fun and done is done,” which is one of his mother’s favorite sayings. He takes it as a sign that his mother is dead. But Himself tells him to take another look where he reads the inscription as it really reads. Creeped out, Alan hits the road again.

After many hours of walking, a souped up 1960 Plymouth Fury pulls up and a young man offers him a ride. (Note that this is NOT Christine. Christine was a 1958 Plymouth Fury). Alan climbs aboard. Himself is in the backseat and is immediately panicked about the car and its driver. He tells Alan to lie about who he is and why he’s hitching.

The driver, played over the top by David Arquette, introduces himself as George Staub. After a bit of verbal jousting, Alan claims to be car sick and asks to be dropped off. Staub refuses. Staub said it is the smell of the car that is making him sick. He says there are some smells you just can’t get out of a car.

He then launches into the oft-told tale of the guy who sells the expensive car for cheap because his wife died in it and it smells of rotten flesh. When I heard this tale as a kid (told to me by an Ohio State Trooper as fact) it was a Corvette. In Staub’s telling, it’s a Cadillac. Alan insists it was a Thunderbird.

Here we see that Garris, who’s already made it clear he is telling King’s story in a more avant garde fashion, really diverges from the standard horror movie formula by inserting a movie into a movie. After we see the scene with the man selling the car, telling some kid who happens upon it about how his wife died and laid dead for two weeks in it before he found her, we see the final moments of George Staub’s life play out on a movie screen. This movie within the movie is complete with a marquee and a trip through the theater lobby.

Staub finally gets down to business. He’s shown Alan his “I Rode the Bullet,” button he got on his final day of life and asked Alan if he’s ever ridden it. Alan lies and tells Staub that he has. Staub calls him out and says he’s lying, that he chickened out. He made his mother wait and wait only to chicken out on the ride.

Staub says they are approaching the city and it’s time for Alan to make a decision. George is the angel of death and he’s taking someone with him. He can take Alan or he can take Alan’s mother. Alan must choose before they pass the first house going into Lewiston. Alan, with his dark imagination running wild decides that death and its dark fantasies don’t have so much appeal and tells Staub to take his mother.

Staub laughs maniacally and then Alan wakes up in the cemetery. He believes it’s all part of his overactive imagination. He hitches a ride to the hospital in Lewiston.

He arrives late in the evening and is told that visiting hours are over. The nurse obliges him and makes the call to see if he can see his mother for a few moments to let her know he’s made it. Alan has several dark fantasies about how that call turns out before he’s informed that his mother has just received medication and he can have but just a few moments with her. As he turns to go to the elevator, he sees George Staub get in ahead of him. He panics and rushes to get to his mom’s floor. He find her room and is relieved to see that she is resting comfortably. She recognizes him and is able to talk. The stroke was minor. Alan is relieved.

She tells him that she dreamed of the day at the amusement park when they waited in line to ride The Bullet. She says she was mean to him and she’s sorry.

As he’s leaving his room, he reaches into his jacket pocket and finds George Staub’s “I Rode the Bullet” button there.

We then flash forward to current times. Alan is a graying baby boomer who never made it as an artist, but still enjoys painting. He tells us that his mother recovered and they enjoyed two more years together. He and that girl that broke up with him on his birthday got back together with him, got married, and divorced. He says that his mom quit smoking after her stroke, but picked up the habit again and it eventually killed her. The movie ends with Alan watching his mother lowered into her grave.

If one watches it as straight horror, the viewer is going to be disappointed. While the vehicle for telling the story is based in horror, it is about a young man’s relationship with his mother.

In his introduction to the story, King tells us that it was inspired by the death of his own mother. The story is an allegory about death and the feelings of guilt loved ones are left with in its immediate wake – memories of cruel acts and harsh words that can only pass between two people who love each other dearly. Garris is true to that sentiment and to King’s story and as a result, produces a good movie that is sometimes scary, sometimes silly, and quite poignant.

Garris keeps the viewer guessing as Alan’s fantasies play out straight from the story before the viewer is unexpectedly snapped back to the reality of the story. This method of telling King’s story would have been quite easy to botch and make the movie into a disjointed series of vignettes. Credit Garris for finding a surprisingly original and entertaining method of telling King’s story.

The movie is not without its faults. The Grim Reaper image is hokey and wasn’t really necessary. There’s a fantasy scene set in the amusement park with Staub chasing Alan through the park and Alan riding The Bullet with the Grim Reaper at his side which was silly and useless. While the vehicle of having Alan’s conscience appear as a manifestation of himself was usually done well, sometimes it was silly.

The movie absolutely bombed in the theater, lasting just a few days and drawing just over $100,000. It appeared on television just a few months after it left theaters.

With its faults, the movie is still entertaining and, if you’ve ever sat waiting as your mother lay dying (and I have), the subtext will resonate. If you’re looking for a “Stephen King movie” by which I mean a straight horror story, you will be disappointed.

Fatal Revenant by Stephen R. Donaldson

Fatal Revenant
The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant Book 2
By Stephen R. Donaldson
Copyright 2007

Stephen R. Donaldson misses not a beat in picking up his story where he left on in book one, Runes of the Earth. Linden and her party are in besieged Revelstone, trapped by a large contingent of Demondim wielding the power of the once lost Illearth Stone. Thomas Covenant and her son, Jeremiah, are riding to the doors of Revelstone.

Covenant and Jeremiah arrive at Revelstone and are allowed in. Linden, delighted at the arrival of her beloved and her son goes to embrace them. Covenant says she can’t touch them. Covenant has become part of the Arch of Time and he is bending time to allow him to be with her. In doing so, he has brought her son with him although his corporal being is still trapped with Lord Foul.

Linden climbs to the top of Revelstone to bathe in the waters of Glimmermere, hoping that its waters, rich with earth power will provide an anodyne for her dilemma over the siege of Revelstone and the return of Thomas Covenant who is not himself. Covenant has told her that he plans to use his place in the Arch of Time to travel back 10,000 years to partake of the Earthblood – waters that flow beneath Melenkurion Skywier, the highest peak in the Land. It was there, many millennia before, that High Lord Elena drank of those waters and acquired the power of command that sundered the law of death and nearly destroyed the Land.

While at Glimmermre, she is visited by Esmer, the enigmatic being who is the grandson of Kastenessen and the son of the Bloodguard Cail and the Merewife of the sea that bewitched him. Esmer tells her that Kastennesen, formerly one of the Elohim whose lives transcend the needs of the Land, has his own plans to destroy the Arch of Time. Esmer, who has both helped and betrayed Linden, tells her that she must be the first to drink of the Earthblood.

Linden returns to the gates of Revelstone where the Demondim are massing for an assault. They are channeling the Illearth Stone through a caesure – a storm that is a time anomaly – created by Covenant’s ex-wife, Joan – who is mindlessly wielding the power of her own White Gold wedding band. Using the Staff of Law she found in the Land’s past by using a similar caesure, she closes the caesure and cuts off the Demondim’s access to the evil artifact.

She meets with Covenant and Jeremiah and Covenant tells her that he plans to leave today to transport them to Melenkurion Skywier where he will gain the power of command to end Kastennesen and Lord Foul’s assault on the Arch of Time.

Linden notices some subtle changes in Thomas Covenant. While he was always gruff, self pitying, and generally negative, he was always compassionate and abhorred violence and killing. Now, he’s coarse, uncaring, and dispassionate about most things except gaining power. He has also hinted that he’d like to have his white gold wedding ring back. Linden demurs.

Linden joins Covenant and Jeremiah as they prepare to make the trip in time. Covenant whispers the words and they are transported not to Melenkurion Skywier, but to a snowy field, hundreds of leagues from Melenkurion Skywier. They were waylaid by one of the Insequent – a race of beings similar to the Elohim in that their lives transcend time and their powers exceed those of the Land. He is the Theomach and makes no apologies for having altered their plans. They will journey to Melenkurion Skywier on foot, he tells them as he joins the party – much to Covenant’s chagrin.

They start across the Land as it was 10,000 years ago. The party happen upon a camp of warriors commanded by none other than Berek Heartthrew – also known as Berek Halfhand – Lord Father of the Land and founder of the Council of Lords. Berek and his men are engaged in a great battle with the forces of the King who would rule the Land as an autocrat.

Linden senses pain and suffering all around her as tents are filled with the wounded and dying. Her first instinct is to heal, but Theomarch warns her to do so judiciously so that she does not alter the course of history. Using her medical training as well as earthpower, Linden aides and heals many of Berek’s wounded soldiers, earning his trust. The Theomach reveals to Berek and to Linden the knowledge of the seven words of power. Theomach tells Linden he will remain with Berek, perhaps to assure that history goes as it should. He sends Linden on with Covenant and Jeremiah, who carries with him a relic of his former life, a small metal race car.

Covenant and Jeremiah attempt the bending of time again to teleport to Melenkurion Skywier, leaving Linden alone. She encounters the ancient race known as the Viles. These Viles will be corrupted by Lord Foul to become Demondim and will eventually creating the self loathing race known as ur-viles who will bedevil the Lords and Thomas Covenant in the first trilogy with their powerful lore and merciless attacks. She tries to forewarn them of their corruption, but before she can do so, Covenant and Jeremiah arrives. Their arrival draws the Forestal, Caer Wildwood who hates all walking beings who he deems responsible for the massacre of trees since the dawn of time. The Forestal proceeds to slaughter the Viles. Linden, Covenant, and Jeremiah escape and head for Melenkurion Skywier.

The party finally arrives in the large cavern beneath the high peak. Remembering Esmer’s words to her, Linden drinks deeply of the Blood of the Earth and gains the power of command. Suspecting that Covenant is not who he claims he is, she commands that the truth of her companions be revealed to her. Covenant is instantly revealed to be Roger Covenant, Thomas Covenant’s son who so desperately wants to get his hands on his mother’s white gold wedding band to aid Lord Foul. She also sees the truth of her son. He bears a bullet wound he received when Roger Covenant shot it out with the sheriff and his deputies back in their world. Linden now knows that her son has probably sustained a fatal bullet wound, just as she and Roger did in that shootout.

Roger and Linden battle it out with the power at their disposal and the cavern is rent. Roger and Jeremiah flee and Linden is transported out of the cavern via the Black River, depositing her alone in the forest known as Garroting Deep, alone and 10,000 years displaced from her own time.

She begins to wander in despair. She sees a campfire off in the distance and makes for it. There, she finds the maid from Revelstone, the woman who calls herself the Mahdoubt. The Mahdoubt reveals that she, too, is one of the Insequent. She tells Linden that the Insequent are a race of advanced, highly independent beings who guard their names and their purposes closely. Linden wins her loyalty by removing a small piece of flannel and sewing it into the Mahdoubt’s piecemeal cloak. In turn, the Mahdoubt speaks on Linden’s behalf to the Forestal who inscribes the Staff of Law with runes to add to its power. She then returns Linden to her proper time and place.

Upon her return to Revelstone, she learns that the Demondim have been waylaid by a single man who now camps outside the gates of Revelstone. The Haruchai who guard Revelstone have not approached him. Linden sets out to find out who this powerful being is.

She confronts him and he reveals that he is also of the Insequent. He bears the title, The Harrow. He wants Linden’s staff and White Gold and attempts to take it from her. The Mahdoubt arrives to confront Linden’s foe and forces him into a promise to make no more attempts to take what is not his. He agrees, but tells Linden that she will soon give up those things to him because he can take her to her son.

Having seen her son and knowing his peril, Linden’s single purpose is to get to him. To do so, she decides, she needs more power. She informs her companions that she intends to go to Andelain where Thomas Covenant received guidance from his dead friends after the law of death was broken and where her friend Hollian was resurrected when the Forestal, Caer Caveral died so that she might live. There, she hopes to find the Krill, the sword that allowed Thomas Covenant to channel his power over the White Gold.

Linden sets off with her friends. She is accompanied by the Stonedowner, Liand, who befriended her when she was imprisoned in Mithil Stonedown upon her arrival in the Land; Stave, the former Master and Haruchai who renounced the Masters to stand with Linden in her quest; The Maithrall of the Ramen and two of her kin who tend the great horses of the Land known as Rhanyhyn; three of the Haruchai who bear the title, The Humbled for having half of their right hands removed to resemble Thomas Covenant; and Anele, the deranged son of Hollian and Sunder, the two stonedowners to whom the new staff of law and future of the land was entrusted at the end of the second trilogy.

The party enters a deep forest known as Salva Gildenbourne which surrounds Andelain. The forest is dense and not easily traversed. As they travel, they are attacked by a Skurj, a serpent like creature created by Kastenessen to inflict harm upon the inhabitants of the land. The battle is going against them when a giant arrives. Linden remembers with fondness the giants who aided her and Covenant in their quest for the One Tree. However, this giant attacks her.

Linden is sure it is all over for her and her party, beset by a powerful magical creature in the Skurj and a crazed giant. Just as it seems all hope is lost, a large party of female giants arrives on the scene. They dispatch the Skurj and imprison the rogue giant.

The giants tell Linden the sad tale of Longwrath, the grandson of the First of the Search who aided Thomas Covenant and Linden eons before. He went insane shortly after reaching adulthood, always scheming to leave home and search out a mysterious “her,” constantly exclaiming, “Kill her! Are you insane?” Their purpose was to discover the source of Longwrath’s madness which they now know is focused on Linden Avery. They agree to join the quest, hoping to learn more about Longwrath’s ailment.

As the party nears Andelain, they are attacked again. This time at least a dozen of the powerful Skurj are pursuing them. With the giants and the Haruchai doing battle with the Skurj, Linden and her companions make it to Andelain where the Skurj cannot follow.

Upon their arrival in Andelain, the party encounters the benevolent Wraiths – creatures of pure energy that resemble floating balls of flame. They guide her to the resting place of the Krill. When Linden arrives, the Harrow of the Insequent and Infelice of the Elohim – she who drove Thomas Covenant deep into his own mind to keep him from using his White Gold during the quest for the One Tree – arrive to try to convince Linden that her desire will be her ruin and the ruin of the land.

Linden beseeches her dead and the breaker of the law of death, the former high lord Elena – daughter of Thomas Covenant; the breaker of the law of life, Caer Caveral; and Thomas Covenant whose power over the White Gold. None will offer her counsel. The Harrow offers to take her to her son if she will give up the White Gold and staff of law. The Humbled try to overpower her. Linden’s purpose is singular and not to be thwarted.

She grasps the Krill. She now has the power to wield the staff of law and the white gold which destroys law. Using this new power, she summons Thomas Covenant to her aid. When he arrives, the Elohim, terrified, tells her that by this act, she has awakened the Worm of World’s End – the most powerful creature in the world, capable of destroying the Arch of Time and the universe with it.

There ends the second installment of the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

This was by far the longest of any of Donaldson’s books – 590 pages of tiny font. While it was long, it was compelling and move the story forward.

Linden Avery has been transformed as a character. She is no longer the self doubting, mousy follower of others who can seldom make up her own mind. With the singular desire to save her adopted son from the clutches of Lord Foul, she is now purposeful, active, and decisive.

This transformation, which Donaldson carries out quickly, but plausibly, makes the story much more compelling. In previous reviews of Donaldson’s work, I have complained about the contemplative nature of his characters who, between bouts of self loathing and deprecation, analyze and second guess every move for page after page. That is not the case in Fatal Revenant. Linden Avery sets her sight on a goal, overcomes obstacles, and achieves them which makes for much more interesting reading.

Donaldson has also introduced some ambiguity to this story which was not present in the first two trilogies where the enemies, the friends, the goals, and the potential consequences were known to the reader from the outset. Lord Foul is the constant and Linden’s primary concern because he has her son.

We know Roger Covenant is evil and serves Lord Foul’s purpose. But we don’t know to what end.

Kastenessen attacks the world out of spite with no clear target or reason. We don’t know his ends.

Somewhere, out there, Joan Covenant, in her madness wields power almost equal to that of Linden Avery. She is a wild card because she acts without ends or purpose. But her deeds always spell trouble for Linden and her friends.

The character, Anele was mostly a spectator in this book. But with his knowledge of the Land’s history after the fall of the Sunbane and his close connection to Thomas Covenant, Lord Foul, and the staff of law, the reader knows that he is going to emerge as a major player in the story to come.

The Worm of World’s End has been unleashed. We got a taste of its power at the end of The One Tree. It can devour the earth and time itself. We do not know enough, nor does Linden Avery, to know how it may be countered.

Of all the books dedicated to telling the story of the White Gold, this is Donaldson’s most exciting and compelling. Characters acted. The story moved. New elements were introduced. Mysteries remained unsolved. I look forward to taking in the next book!

Book to Movie: Autopsy Room Four (2006)

Book to Movie: Autopsy Room Four (2006)
Teleplay by April Smith
Directed by Mikael Salamon
Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King
Adapted from the short story, Autopsy Room Four in Nightmares and Dreamscapes

Richard Thomas plays the leading role which calls for him to lie motionless on a table for most of the episode while providing tension building voice over as pathologists prepare to carve him up while he was still alive.

The short story is almost entirely interior dialogue by Howard Cotrell, a stockbroker who seems to have had a heart attack and died on the golf course. In the television version, we open the same way. Contrell is laid out on an autopsy table. Two pathologist and an obnoxious lab assistant cut off Cotrell’s clothes and begin the physical examination of his body before preparing the “Y” incision to open up his innards.

Thomas does his voiceover bit, screaming inside his mind while his body is unceremoniously tossed and turned. He knows that eventually, the scalpel and rib cutter are coming. This is all in the story.

Smith adds to King’s story by taking us to the moment that Cotrell hit his golf ball into the rough and is bitten by a snake King calls a Peruvian Boomslang. The venom paralyzes the victim and gives the appearance of death. An elderly doctor playing in the foursome behind him pronounces him dead on the course.

We also get a taste of Cotrell’s backstory which Smith weaves well into King’s tale. Cotrell was wounded in Vietnam when an anti-personnel mine tore up his crotch. Smith has Cotrell recall a romantic moment he shared with his wife that ended in his failure to perform. We learn that this sometimes happens to him because of Mr. Johnson’s war.

The two pathologists continue to poke and prod Cotrell’s body while Cotrell’s fear builds. They share a romantic moment over him and he’s forced to look on while waiting to be carved up alive.

In another scene added by Smith, Cotrell’s wife arrives at the hospital and wants to see her husband. About that same time, his golf bag is unloaded from the ambulance that transported him. The obnoxious orderly, Rusty, and another orderly get into an elevator with the golf bag. Rusty wants to steal the golf clubs, figuring that Cotrell won’t miss them. As he’s admiring them, a snake jumps out and bites the guy he’s riding with. Rusty subdues the snake with a golf club. Obnoxious or not, Rusty is determined to get to autopsy room four and stop them from carving up what he now knows is a paralyzed, but very alive man.

Cotrell’s wife is just as anxious to get there and makes her way past security to pathology. Meanwhile, the junior pathologist prepares the bone saw for cutting when the orderly and the wife burst into the room. The orderly tells them about the snake and a careful examination of Cotrell’s ankle reveals the bite. He is administered antivenin and comes out of his paralysis to the hugs of his wife.

King’s original story of course had Cotrell having an erection as the female pathologist probed his genitalia, examining his war wounds. Smith’s script cleaned it up some for television.

King’s story was tense. Smith’s story was black humor. King’s story worked well on the printed page. Smith’s story worked well on television. Forty four minutes of Richard Thomas doing voiceover while the pathologists did their thing would have been boring. Voiceover alone would not been enough to stimulate a television audience. King’s story alone would not have been enough to interest a television audience. Credit Smith for changing the tone ever so slightly and making this a fun episode to watch.

For my generation, it’s going to be impossible to see Richard Thomas as anybody but John Boy Walton. Although The Waltons does not stand the test of time and is not aired today, John Boy Walton remains iconic. I’d like to have seen someone less likeable on that autopsy table.

April Smith hit the mark on this episode because she’s a veteran of television writing. She started with that great seventies television show, James at 16. She also wrote several episodes of Lou Grant and Cagney and Lacey.

Mikael Salomon gets credit for not lousing it up. He had a good story, and good script, and a good cast. He made a good episode of Nightmares and Dreamscapes. Salomon also directed the 2004 remake of ‘Salem’s Lot, giving him some experience in directing King’s work.

It would seem that experience paid dividends. Too many directors want to tinker with the story too much. Salomon directed an updated version of 'Salem's Lot, but he did not lead the characters astray from King's original development of them. He exhibited the same wisdom in his installment of the TNT miniseries.

Book to Movie: Bag of Bones (2011)

Book to Movie: Bag of Bones (2011)
Teleplay by Matt Venne
Directed and produced by Mick Garris
Based on the novel, Bag of Bones by Stephen King

Bag of Bones, the novel, was billed as a haunted love story. That was apt billing because King’s prose developed the love that existed between Michael Noonan and his late wife even though she was dead before page one of the book. He also deftly develops a May-September romance between its principle characters that stirs the heart. The worthless piece of garbage that is the made for television miniseries will haunt me as well. It will haunt me as one of the gravest injustices ever done to a King work.

I know some awfully bad movies have been made from Stephen King’s work. The Mangler, Graveyard Shift, and Lawnmower Man all come to mind. But the stories from which those movies were drawn were more low brow to begin with, written for men’s magazines of the 1970s. They were not without their charm on the printed page and were entertaining to read. Each contained fantastical elements that did not translate well into the visual medium. The movies based on them were bad, but did not do them the injustice that Matt Venne and Mick Garris did to Bag of Bones which was actually a pretty good novel.

The movie is difficult to summarize in comparison to the book, because it appears as if Venne stole elements from King’s book and put them together in a disjointed story of his own telling. In between Venne’s mismatched story elements are random “gotcha!” scenes inserted by Garris that have no bearing upon the story at all.

King’s story has two plots running simultaneously. Writer Michael Noonan is communicating with the ghosts that inhabit his summer home. One he is sure is his late wife. The other, he suspects is a long dead blues singer. Both have goals that he is trying to ascertain.

The other plot line is Noonan’s efforts to help Mattie Devore, a young widow, keep custody of her daughter against the forces of Mattie’s billionaire father in law.

The plots are interwoven; linked by the sins of Max Devore’s ancestors and, unbeknownst to Noonan, his own. The subtext is the secrets of the institutional families of the American small towns.

Venne takes King’s subtext and turns it into a sledgehammer, driving it home early without any subtlety. These New Englanders that King characterized as great keepers of their own secrets are free and easy with the information regarding the horrific events that befell the town.

Subplots such as Noonan wondering if his wife was having an affair are introduced, never developed, then easily resolved. The chief villain, Max Devore, hardly appears in the story and is never menacing. Another subplot, Mike’s growing infatuation with Mattie Devore – a girl young enough to be his daughter and his moral qualms about it – are eliminated, taking away much of the story’s texture. Sure enough, a romance of sorts “develops” (“appears” is probably a better verb since there is no development in the script), but it is passionless and the viewer cares little for it or its characters.

The climax, such as it is, is tacked on. It was as if Venne saw he was running out of time, so he just wrote a final scene that wrapped it up. The viewer is left wondering why Noonan has so much affection for Mattie’s little girl because, as far as they know, he’s only seen her twice.

Pierce Brosnan is badly miscast, but does the best he can with what he has to work with. Noonan is supposed to be an everyman in his personality as well as physically. While Brosnan has a range of acting ability, one cannot forget he was once James Bond. He does not come across as an everyman.

Stripped of its various romantic elements; stripped of its mystery and stripped of its subtext, Bag of Bones may rank at the bottom of the made for television Stephen King miniseries.

Garris has an uneven relationship with King material. He made a bad movie – Desperation – out of a bad novel. He took King’s mundane script for The Shining and made it a better miniseries than it could have been. He took a pedestrian King short story, Riding the Bullet, and made it into an interesting character study of the relationship between a young man and his mother.

For all of the good that Garris has done with King’s work, it is still hard to forgive him for this bag of crap based on Bag of Bones. To make a worse movie, he’d have to have had malice in his heart for King and the viewer.

Hardcore King fans should see it so they know how easy it is to butcher King’s work. General movie and horror fans should dismiss it without a glance.

Gerald’s Game by Stephen King

Gerald’s Game
By Stephen King
Copyright 1992

When King wrapped up Needful Things, he made it clear that he was going in a different direction with his writing. He wiped out Castle Rock because he’d felt that he’d visited the “strange little town,” once too often and might be tempted to do so again. In Gerald’s Game, King indeed takes his writing in a much different direction, much to the dismay of the fans of his horror novels.

Jessie Burlingame and her husband, Gerald are at their cabin in the Maine woods. Gerald has just handcuffed Jessie to the bed in preparation for a little bondage sex. Jessie’s not into it today and tries to tell Gerald so, but he’s not listening. He thinks it’s part of the act. When he prepares to mount her, Jessie kicks him in the crotch. Gerald is momentarily stunned by the kick to the gonads, then dies, presumably of a heart attack.

Jessie Burlingame is handcuffed to a bed in a remote cabin in the woods of Maine. She is alone.

After a few vain attempts at escape, her mind starts to wander and various voices – voices she’s heard her entire life – start talking to her. The voice she calls Goodwife Burlingame – or Goody for short – tells her she should have just let Gerald do his thing and be done with it. Had she done that, they’d be enjoying dinner. The voice of her old college roommate, Ruth Neary, tells her to hang tough and that Gerald got what he deserved. Ruth, we learn was part of the Women’s Lib movement in the early 1970s.

After several hours in the uncomfortable repose, Jessie becomes quite thirsty. Gerald – ever the creature of habit – always places a glass of ice water on the headboard before sex. For several pages, we follow Jessie’ struggle to get that glass of water and fashion a straw out of a subscription card to allow her to drink.

Hours later, a stray dog enters the room. It is near starvation, being a former pet dumped in the Maine wilderness to fend for itself. To this dog, Gerald is a banquet. While Jessie lies helplessly trapped, the dog dines on her late husband.

The smell of minerals in the water trigger something in Jessie’s memory – something unpleasant. She resists remembering. She recalls that she was going to a therapist several years before and when the therapist had delved toward these memories, she quit going. When her roommate noticed that she was about to spill the beans on something at a feminist consciousness event, she pressured Jessie to reveal her secret. Instead, Jessie moved out of the room she shared with Ruth.

With her thirst sated and no new escape ideas coming to her, she lapses into a light sleep. The voices begin arguing. Goody says to leave the memory buried. A new voice called, “Punkin” says out with it. Despite her best efforts to repress it, the events during the solar eclipse of 1963 reemerge in Jessie’s mind.

Jessie is just 12 years old. Everybody who has a summer home on Dark Score Lake in Maine is excited about the imminent eclipse because Dark Score Lake is in the path of totality. All of the residents plan to travel to New Hampshire’s tallest mountain to view the event. But Jessie is staying at the cabin with Daddy while the rest of the family goes.

Jessie recalls with clarity how her dad fashioned an eclipse viewer out of panes of glass smoked over an open fire. He then invites Jessie to sit on his lap and look through the viewer at the eclipse.

Jessie, with just the vaguest notions of what sex is and the anatomy of the human male, is oblivious to her father’s arousal. She moves and squirms with excitement over the disappearing sun, intensifying her father’s arousal. As the eclipse reaches totality, he has an orgasm, leaving semen on her dress. She then realizes that something very bad has happened.

During the eclipse, Jessie’s mind glimpses a middle aged woman looking down into a hole. Behind the woman, the eclipse has blocked out the sun. Jessie has no idea who this woman is. We will learn about her and her experiences during the eclipse of 1963 in King’s next book.

Jessie is distraught about what just happened. She goes to the bathroom, vomits, and begins to clean herself up. Her father comes in and apologizes. They agree that it will be their secret. Jessie’s father never molests her again. When she awakens from the dream with the memory completely recovered, she is angry at the voices for making her remember it and angry at her father, although she finally decides that many men have done many worse things to their daughters and lets him off the hook in her mind.

During the night, she is visited by what she can only believe is an apparition. A tall man enters the room and sits in a chair near the bed. Most of his features are concealed by shadows. He carries with him a wicker fishing creel. He leans forward so Jessie can see the elongated, distorted features of his face. He smiles and opens his creel which is full of bones and jewelry. Jessie passes out from fear. When she awakens, he is gone. But a single earing lies on the floor, positive proof that the apparition was not in her mind, but very real.

The next day brings a realization to Jessie that she has to get out today or she will never get out. Her muscles are failing from being stretched and pulled. She has run out of water. The keys are on the dresser many feet away. She has no idea how she will get free.

The voice in her head she calls “punkin” for its childish demeanor continues to coach her. Finally, she comes to the realization that if she cuts herself, the blood might act as a lubricant to allow the cuffs to slide over the bony protrusion of her thumb and free herself. She breaks the drinking glass and cuts her wrist deeply enough to get a good flow of blood going. She then pulls hard, tearing skin and literally peeling her hand until one is free.

The sun has gone down and the voices in her head tell her the apparition she has named “The Space Cowboy” is going to return. She pulls the bed over to the dresser and reaches for the keys. She drops the first one. She is able to fit the second one into the lock. She then passes out from blood loss.

She awakens and it is night. The Space Cowboy has returned and is in the room with her. She shouts at him and he remains motionless, just studying her. Finally, she throws her wedding ring at her and flees. She grabs her husband’s car keys and jumps into their Mercedes. She gets it started and starts out of the driveway. She reaches the country road and turns toward the main highway when she looks up and sees the Space Cowboy in her backseat. She loses control of the car and crashes it.

We flash forward several months. Jessie is recuperating with the help of a nursemaid. Her hand is badly damaged and it will take many months to heal. She is typing a letter to her old college roommate, recounting the events. Some of it is philosophical about the evil men do and other parts of it tell a tale about a necrophiliac who has recently been arrested.

It seems that Raymond Andrew Joubet has been robbing graves all over rural Maine for more than a decade, stealing jewelry and defiling corpses. He himself was a victim of sexual abuse at an early age and had a disease which caused his features to be misshapen.

Jessie is eager to find out of Raymond Andrew Joubet was the man in the house with her that night, so she attends his arraignment. While in court, Joubet turns to her and mimics her position in that bed that night with her arms splayed. She spits in his face as her lawyer pulls her from the courtroom.

Her letter to her old feminist friend completed, she feels a catharsis. She insists that someday, she will be all right. After completing the letter, she lays down to sleep and for the first time since the incident, her dreams are not haunted.

I hated this book and hated it for so many reasons. I rank it as his second worst, only better than the dreadful Lisey's Story.

Primarily I hated it because it was not a good story. Stephen King always preached that stories did not have to be allegories or contain a sermon. Yet, with Gerald’s Game, we get nothing but a lecture about how men abuse women. Before Gerald’s Game King’s Constant Reader could count on a story told for the sake of a good story. This book tries to lecture the Constant Reader. Thank you Mr. King, but I have my own ideas on men and women and how they relate!

The narrative device of the various characters within Jessie’s head is annoying. King has confined himself with just one primary character in his story. There isn’t much room for dialogue. The character is chained to a bed, so there isn’t much room for action. Give him credit for challenging himself with this setting, but he failed the challenge.

The worst part was the end where King said, “Oh yeah, I need to explain that apparition I put in the story to inject a little tension and horror.” That’s a story teller’s cop out. The framework of this book is so bad that I can’t begin to suggest how Joubet’s identity could have been woven into the fabric rather than tacked on. But the entire resolution of the book was Stephen King saying, “Let me explain to you what you just read.” If he has to explain it to me, he didn’t tell me a very good story.

King would follow Gerald’s Game with Delores Claiborne, a slightly better novel about the mean things men do to women. Then he would move on to lecture us about how men oppress women via abortion policy and spousal abuse in Insomnia. He would end his five year obsession with gender politics by giving us the ultimate predator husband in Rose Madder. In between, he’d release Nightmares and Dreamscapes which was an average (and his worst) collection of short stories.

Perhaps part of my intense displeasure with Gerald’s Game is that it kicked off this period in King’s writing career that was so dissatisfying for me -- King’s Constant Reader. I read Stephen King because he tells a tale – be it horror or mainstream suspense – better than anyone else in the business. I’ll get my politics elsewhere. I don’t want them mixed with my escapist fiction.

Book to Movie: The Road Virus Heads North (2006)

Book to Movie: The Road Virus Heads North (2006)
Teleplay by Peter Filardi
Directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan
Based on the short story The Road Virus Heads North by Stephen King from Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales

In my previous reviews of episodes of TNT’s miniseries, Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King, I’ve noted how teleplay writers found creative ways to pad scripts to fill out stories so that they could fill 44 minutes of television with a meaningful story. In The Road Virus Heads North, the story is padded in a way that tries to make it a meaningful metaphor for growing older and confronting the health problems that come with it. It’s not done well and Filardi only feints at it, leaving the King story intact and therefore not ruining it for the television viewer.

Tom Berenger plays Richard Kinnel, horror author with an obsessed public. In King’s story, he’s on his way back from a book signing when he happens upon the haunted painting. The story opens with Kinnel arriving at his signing. Mimica-Gezzan makes sure to pack in every cliché about horror fans and makes them into obsessed lunatics who invariably scream at him, “Where do you get your ideas?”

After the convention, Kinnel visits his proctologist where he gets the news that he has some pre-cancerous growths on his colon. He takes the news stoically and heads north from New Hampshire to his home in Derry, Maine.

He arrives at the yard sale and the King story kicks in just as King wrote it. Kinnel admires the painting and hears the sad, twisted tale of its artist. He purchases the painting, puts it in the back of his car, and continues north.

He makes the stop at his aunt’s house. She views the painting and is appalled. She says it’s evil and that Richard ought to dump it in the river on his way home. It is here the Kinnel first notices that the painting has changed. He notices that the driver has turned so that a tattoo on his left arm is visible.

Krinnel continues north and takes his eyes off the road to check the painting for any additional changes. He loses control of his car in a construction zone, nearly kills some construction workers, and apparently tears off his exhaust system. After pausing to catch his breath, he continues north.

I know it has nothing to do with the story, but that scene really hurt the credibility of the story for me for purely scientific reasons. We blatantly see Kinnel’s muffler and exhaust pipe on the road as he pulls away from the near- accident scene. Yet the car is not any louder. It now smokes horribly, but there was no damage done to the engine or radiator. Technical details, I know. But getting technical details correct are important.

He stops at a gas station to fill up and dumps the painting in the river, just as in King’s story.

King makes reference to Kinnel’s ex wife who now publishes newsletters on UFO sightings and other worldly events. Firaldi, for no apparent reason, incorporates her into the story in a completely gratuitous scene. Kinnel stops to see his ex wife who lives in a trailer park. She is dog sitting for him. It is then he finds the painting has made its way back into his car and the driver is definitely moving north as Kinnel recognizes the new landscape in the painiting. He pauses long enough to get a New Age healing session with incense and crystals from his flaky ex wife, played by Susie Porter who is easily young enough to be Berenger’s daughter.

He gets home and we pick up the King story again. At this point, Richard is terrified by the painting and sets it on fire. As it burns, he hears the rumble of a muscle car pulling into his driveway. He opens the door and confronts the long haired menace that is the road virus. He tells the road virus, “You’re the disease growing in my body!” He goes on to reason with the driver that to kill him is to kill himself. The man driving the classic Pontiac Firebird turns to him and says, “I’m not your damn disease, you egomaniac! I’m what you don’t know!” He suddenly wakens from this nightmare in his shower.

Kinnel sees the news report about the woman at the garage sale who was decapitated. He immediately calls his aunt to make sure she’s ok. Just as in the story, she’s gone to the movies and calls Richard back later to tell him she’s ok. As he hangs up the phone, he again hears the rumble of Detroit muscle in his driveway and sees the Pontiac’s headlights in his driveway.

He retreats to his bedroom, but his dog escapes just as the driver walks into the house, brandishing a knife. He exits the bedroom and hears his dog’s barks cut off with a sharp yelp. He looks up on the wall and sees the painting hanging there with the driver silhouetted in his doorway. He rips the painting from the wall and throws it from the open staircase to the floor below, telling the driver he can have it. He tries to retreat, but slips on a paperback copy of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary and falls down the steps. He lands on the painting. It now shows the interior of the car. Just as in the story, he looks at the knife brandishing demon on his doorstep and says, “I think I’m going outside now.”

King’s story about a haunted painting is strong enough to carry it through Filardi’s attempts to booger it up with metaphors. It’s strong enough to carry it through pointless padding. The reason the story works despite Filardi’s efforts to tinker with it is because Filardi keeps King's intact. Most of the dialogue is direct from the story. None of the story's elements were eliminated and it was a strong story.

The Road Virus Heads North is an example of how, sometimes, a good story can overcome bad screenwriting and entertain despite the efforts of an overly ambitious screenwriter to put his own imprimatur on it and make it a “meaningful metaphor.”
Filardi, who did a decent job modernizing and adapting 'Salem's Lot for TNT has not written for television or the big screen since. . .

Director Sergio Mimica Gezzan, who was an assistant director on notable films such as Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, and Minority Report truly makes a silk purse out of the sow's ear that was this script. Berenger's understated performance was just what was needed to keep this misconceived metaphor from becoming hoky and foolish. Despite all it's shortcomings, it still made for decent television.