Book to Movie: Children of the Corn (1984)

Book to Movie: Children of the Corn (1984)
Screenplay by George Goldsmith
Director: Fritz Kiersch

The movie Children of the Corn is a retelling of the Stephen King short story that appeared in his first collection of short stories, Night Shift. The essence of the story is the same. A young couple traveling to California (the reason in the movie is unstated) hit a kid in the middle of a lonely stretch of road in rural Nebraska. The take the kid to a small town called Gatlin where they find a murderous cult of kids.

What is immediately evident is this is a completely different pair of characters than those of the King story. In the King story, they were a bickering couple, driving across the country trying to save their marriage. In this version, they are young and in love. Burt – played by Peter Horton -- is a newly minted doctor and their future seems bright. His girlfriend, Vicky – played by Linda Hamilton – is pushing him for a commitment in the relationship.

This was a wise change in the story in bringing it to screen. Young lovers make for a much better set of heroes than do bickering couples. The bickering couple worked well in the short story because it was short. Abrasive bickering would have made the movie tiresome and the characters unsympathetic.

Unlike the short story, we are introduced to the children, and it is those characters that really carry the movie. New to the story are Job and his sister, Sarah who has the gift of sight and draws horrific pictures that predict ghastly events in the future. They are there to see Joseph off on his ill-fated trip through the cornfield to the highway to get help for the kids who are trapped by the evil child-preacher Isaac and his fanatically sadistic sidekick, Malachi.

Just as in the story, Joseph meets his end with a cut throat, under the wheels of Burt’s car. Burt and Vicky put Joseph’s body in the trunk of their car and go off in search of help.

They find a roadside garage whose owner is unfriendly and hostile. He tells them he has no phone and no gas. He warns them away from Gatlin, telling them that “folks there got religion,” and don’t like outsiders. He directs them toward Hemmingford (which King fans will recognize as the home of Mother Abigail from The Stand) which is 17 miles beyond Gatlin.

Burt and Vicky get lost and the signs seem to be guiding them toward Gatlin no matter how hard they try to avoid it. This scene is foolish. It is apparent the director was trying to build a high level of tension as Burt and Vicky feverishly drive down dirt field access roads, making random turns. The choppy shot sequence and shrill music are supposed to lend to this tension. It amounts to three minutes of wasted time.

After driving through miles of cornfield, they arrive in Gatlin and find the place deserted. They decide to take off exploring. After Vicky has a scary encounter with some of Malachi’s henchmen, they resolve to get gone from Gatlin. But on their way out of town, they see movement in one of the houses. They stop to investigate and find Jobe and Sarah.

Things get improbable here. After hearing an account of what transpired in Gatlin three years ago when the kids slaughtered all of the adults on behalf of He Who Lives Behind the Rows. Burt inexplicably decides he wants to visit town hall and leave his girlfriend behind, knowing murdering, rampaging children are on the loose. With Burt off exploring, Vicky becomes easy prey for Malachi who kidnaps her and takes her to the cornfield where she is placed on a cross made of corn to be sacrificed to the unholy agrarian demon.

Burt investigates the church stumbles into a religious ritual where Amos, having attained the age of 19, shares his blood with the youthful congregation before going off to join He Who Walks Behind the Rows. This could have been a great scene, except for one stupid line that is so stupid it deflates the tension. In the midst of this horror, Burt tells the kids he wants to discuss the possibility of infection from Amos’ cut with whomever is in charge. He proceeds to engage the priestess in a theological discussion while his girlfriend is being held prisoner in the cornfield. George Goldsmith really blew this scene.

Eventually, the tension that has been developing between Malachi and Isaac -- the religious leader of the colony and he who speaks for He Who Lives Behind the Rows -- over whether or not to sacrifice Vicky now or later erupts. Malachi takes control and sacrifices Isaac to the demon in the corn. But when He Who Walks Behind the Rows is done with Isaac, he sends him back to tell Malachi that he is also to be sacrificed.

With both their leaders gone and the terrifying demon in their midst, the kids flee the cornfield. Vicky escapes and finds Burt, Sarah, and Job. Job recounts the last attempt to thwart Isaac, undertaken by the chief of police, and Burt figures out how to slay the monster. Then we have a happy ending where the young couple commits and decides to take the young orphans with them.

This movie certainly had its weaknesses, as noted above. However, I still rank Children of the Corn as one of the better adaptations of King’s work. Goldsmith introduced new interesting characters to make for a visually exciting adaptation. Sarah and Job help move the story as juvenile religious dissidents. The characters of Isaac and Malachi are among the creepiest in any King film. Kudos to John Franklin who portrayed Isaac in his first acting gig, and Courtney Gains, also in his acting debut, who made Malachi one menacing son of a bitch. Gains’ portrayal steals the show.

The happy, sappy ending was horrible. King films should end badly as the original stories do. King does not usually end stories in a happy way. The same thing was done to Cujo as a movie. Burt and Vicky should have died or barely escaped with their lives at best.

I saw this movie for the first time in my parents’ basement family room when it came out on Betamax in 1985. At the edge of my parents’ back yard was 15-20 acres of corn. My friends and I played and played in that corn as children. . .

Book to Movie: Cat’s Eye (1985)

Book to Movie: Cat’s Eye (1985)
Screenplay by Stephen King
Directed by Lewis Teague

Two stories from King’s first collection of short stories, Night Shift are adapted in this anthology. The first is Quitters, Inc. The second is The Ledge. The movie wraps up with an original screen vignette.

The movie is set against the backdrop of the travels of a stray cat. In the movie’s opening credits, the cat is chased by Cujo, nearly run over by Christine, before he ends up in a moving van that takes him into the city. There, he hears the voice of a young girl (Drew Barrymore) beckoning him to help save her from the monster that inhabits her bedroom.

As they cat sees the image of the young girl in a television in a show room window, he is snatched up and placed in a cage. He is delivered to the offices of Quitters, Inc.

James Woods and his buddy pull up out front and Woods’ buddy drops him off to begin his trek toward being tobacco free. The story closely follows the short story from this point. The cat is used as the object in the torture demonstration.

Woods character has a tougher time with the quitting on screen than in the book. At one point, at a party, he begins to hallucinate. Just as in the story, he backslides and his wife is brought in for torture. A skirmish ensues and as Woods battles to stop his wife’s torture, the cat escapes the lab. Woods surrenders as the torture ends.

The final sequence ends with the same exclamation point as the story.

The cat then makes his way to a casino where two men, in a gambling haze, wager as to whether or not the cat can make it across the road. The coax the cat who successfully crosses the street, but not before causing a traffic accident. The cat is then scooped up by one of the high rollers and taken to the penthouse suite of the man with the ledge.

The vignette of The Ledge is essentially the same story as in the book. The tennis pro (played by Robert Hays of Airplane!) is forced to traverse the ledge around the building to win the gambler’s wife and $20,000. The plot twist is a bit more graphic than in the story, but the end is the same. The pro overpowers the bodyguard and forces the gambler out onto the ledge, where he is forced to walk. . .

As the men battle for control of the gun in the penthouse apartment, the cat escapes and makes it to suburbia. There, a young girl is being stalked by a spear-wielding troll who wants to suck the breath – and the life – out of young Drew Barrymore. This is very much in the keeping with the old wives’ tale of how a cat will suck the breath out of a baby.

Barrymore’s parents let her keep the cat, but he doesn’t get to sleep inside. Nonetheless, when the troll launches his first attack on Barrymore, the cat gets in a window and is able to ward off the troll. On his way out, the troll kills the girl’s pet parakeet for which the cat receives the blame. Despite being cast out of the house by the parents, he is there to fight the final battle with the troll to save Drew Barrymore.

The movie ends with the cat peacefully passing the days in suburbia.

This was one of King’s early efforts at a screenplay and he did a splendid job of adapting his stories to the big screen. The took on the quality of a comic book horror story much as his stories in Creepshow.

King clearly understands how to write for the visual medium. Like with his books, sometimes the stories leave a lot to be desired. Witness Sleepwalkers and Maximum Overdrive. More often than not, he hits the mark as he did here.

Book to Movie: Sometimes They Come Back (1991)

Book to Movie: Sometimes The Come Back
Made for television, 1991
Screenplay by Lawrence Konner
Directed by Tom McLoughlin

It would be more accurate to call this a retelling rather than an adaptation. While the plot of the movie follows the short story, many plot elements are reworked to make the story work for television.

In the short story, three of the hoods that accosted Jimmy and Wayne Norman in the underpass die in a car wreck six months after Wayne is murdered. In the movie, they die in that underpass. The car is hit by a train because little Jimmy Norman, in an act of terrified defiance, snatches their car keys so they are unable to get out of they way. Revenge on Jimmy for killing them is the motive rather than the ambiguous “unfinished business” of killing Jimmy that serves in the short story. I thought the movie’s plot enhancement worked.

The movie adds a son to the mix. Jimmy Norman, his wife and son settle in the New England town and Jimmy takes up teaching. Just as in the short story, students die tragic deaths and are replaced by the ghosts that stalk Jimmy. However, Konner adds a twist in having Jimmy nearby when the deaths occur, casting suspicion on him.

Konner enhances the element of an evil car. Haunted machinery, particularly cars, appears in a great deal of King’s fiction. Christine is the most popular example. But there’s a sinister car in It, in Riding the Bullet, and in From a Buick 8, the car is a portal into a hellish dimension. Like Christine, this car is a late fifties model. All nameplates have been stripped from it, so I am unable to identify it. The ghosts take to chasing Jimmy, his family and his friends around in this black car.

In the short story, Jimmy summons a demon to assist him in defeating his ghosts. In the movie, the fourth bully who survived the crash tries to help Jimmy, but ends up getting killed. When he dies, Wayne enters and the drama replays itself with the ghosts getting their just desserts.

Konner’s screenplay is a superb retelling. The padding of the story works in subplots and new characters. However, the movie was not well cast. This was perhaps the weakest performance I’ve ever seen from Tim Matheson. He phoned it in. The rest of the cast is undistinguished and uninspired.

Book to Movie: Battleground (2006)

The Night Shift short story, Battleground was adapted as the premier episode for a TNT television miniseries based on the short works of Stephen King. Battleground was the only story from Night Shift adapted for the 2006 television series. The other seven episodes were drawn from the book of the same name or a King collection entitled Everything’s Eventual.

The story unfolds on screen with Jason Renshaw carrying out the hit on the owner of Morris Toys, Hans Morris. Renshaw returns to his apartment to find a package from the Morris Toy Co. waiting for him, just as the short story began.

The action in the apartment unfolds much as it did in the short story. The tiny plastic soldiers have surprisingly effective weapons including helicopters, bazookas, RPGs, and cannons. They shoot it out in the apartment before Renshaw is forced out of the apartment, out on the ledge. In the short story, Renshaw meets his end as he climbs from this ledge onto the terrace.

In the TNT show, the battle continues and Renshaw actually defeats the troops. As he is relaxing in his hot tub, the special surprise makes himself known. In the short story, that was the thermonuclear device. In the screen version, it is a commando who is deadly.

The battle takes them out of the apartment, into the elevators and elevator shafts before Renshaw meets his end, much as he did in the short story, only in a different location.

In my review of the short story, I remarked that this story very closely resembled Richard Matheson’s Prey. This was not lost on King or the producers of the series. The screenplay was written by Matheson’s son, Richard Christian Matheson. A fleeting homage to the Matheson story appears when one of the rockets fired by the toy soldiers blows up a replica of the troll doll from the adaptation of Prey that appeared in Matheson’s television anthology Trilogy of Terror.

I recall reading a review of the miniseries that the screenplay very closely resembled a Twilight Zone episode entitled Invaders which was co-authored by Matheson and Rod Serling. In that episode, an old woman living alone on a frontier, does battle with miniature aliens from a miniature flying saucer. The episode contained just a few lines of dialogue at the end of the episode. Battleground contains just a couple lines of dialogue from a computer.

Unfortunately, the screenplay makes the weaknesses of the short story glaring. As I’ve stated many times, to enjoy horror fiction, one must be able to suspend belief. However, the author should not create a scenario whose real circumstances make it entirely improbable.

What is absolutely unbelievable is that a battle such as the one that takes place in Renshaw’s apartment would go unnoticed and unreported. Renshaw fires dozens of rounds into the floor of his high rise apartment which would have certainly passed through to the apartment below. There are multiple explosions. Shots are fired outside on the terrace and explosions are detonated inside the apartment. Despite all that noise, Renshaw is able to relax peacefully in his hot tub after the battle is fought.

Renshaw’s end in the short story comes much sooner, so it is plausible that authorities had not yet arrived before the miniature nuclear detonation. However, Renshaw’s respite makes that impossible in the film adaptation.

The special effects were top notch. As someone who had a large collection of plastic toy soldiers when I was a kid, it was cool to see them brought to life on the screen, looking as green and drab as they do in real life.

William Hurt turns in an acceptable performance that was not nearly as strong as Agnes Moorehead’s in similar circumstances in the Twilight Zone. The action scenes move nicely and the story builds to a nice climax. However, I can’t get by the improbability of it all and that ruins it for me.

Book to Movie: The Mangler (1995)

The Mangler (1995)
Directed by Tobe Hooper
Screenplay by Tobe Hooper

I said in my review of Graveyard Shift that it was the worst adaptation of a Stephen King work, but that I feared I would plumb new depths with this movie directed by Tobe Hooper who has a respectable horror film résumé. Thankfully, my fears were not realized.

That’s not to say I enjoyed it. I certainly did not. It suffered from many of the same weaknesses as Graveyard Shift, I would give The Mangler one half star as opposed to zero stars for Graveyard Shift.

The essence of the short story and the movie are the same. A small town police officer investigates the deaths of some workers at an industrial laundry. Each was crushed to death in a sheet press. A college professor determines that the blood of a virgin spilled upon the machine brings its evil to life. The short story does not end happily as the cop hears the press struggling to escape the confines of the factory and move into the world. The movie ends with typical Hollywood finality – with just enough room for a ridiculous sequel.

Tobe Hooper is marginally better at padding the story than was Graveyard Shift screenwriter John Espisito. I think the idea of the evil laundry owner presiding over a slaughter house of a facility was somewhat clever. However, where Tobe Hooper the screenwriter had a good idea, Tobe Hooper the director botched it badly. The evil laundry owner is a caricature, played badly by Robert Englund.

The film progresses much as the short story. Two guys carrying an old refrigerator bump into a young lady working at the press. She cuts her hand badly and her blood falls into the works of the press, priming the pump for evil. It’s not long before the evil industrial ironing board reaches out and snatches a sweet, old lady and folds her into something that would fit on a linen closet shelf.

The corrupt small town judge and sheriff show up at the laundry and declare it all to be just an unfortunate accident and that the press is safe. The town constable is not so sure because his college professor buddy is certain the machine is cursed.

More workers die or are injured. The factory owner peers down from his loft office and scowls and cheers as it happens. Inside his office is his ward and niece whom he has taken to molesting and raping. She is terrified of him and the machine because she knows its nature.

The Kelvinator that caused the accident becomes possessed by evil as well and swallows a small kid, having arrived in suburbia from the scrap yard. This works in the book because reading horror fiction and enjoying it requires the acceptance of certain absurdities. Our imagination generates images from the text that work for us. When we see them on film, our eyes can’t accept the absurdity. The scene looked foolish with the refrigerator trying to walk toward the constable and the constable knocking its “head” off with a sledgehammer.

In the end, with the assistance of the niece, the cop and the professor are able to enter the laundry, kill the evil owner with his own device, then perform the exorcism.

The twist at the end is another redeeming bit of writing in an otherwise terribly adapted movie. I did not see it coming. Of course, the twist opened the door for sequels. I will not suffer those. The Mangler 2 was made in 2001 and, from what I can tell from various plot summaries, involves the installation of a terrible computer virus on a high school computer system. The Mangler Reborn was a straight to video title in 2005 that has a man resurrecting the evil machine. According to an IMDB review, it is the best of the three Mangler movies. I’ll pass. . .

Tobe Hooper should not have touched this project. Stephen King’s Night Shift has three “machines come to life” stories. All three were made into movies and all three were ridiculously bad. The Mangler rises above Graveyard Shift only because Tobe Hooper does a marginally better job with his characters (except for the factory owner and the strange mortician who pops up at every death with no real role or purpose) and he does a marginally better job of padding the story.

Book to Movie: Graveyard Shift

Book to Movie: Graveyard Shift (1990)
Directed by Ralph S. Singleton
Screenplay by John Espisito

In the early 1990s, Adaptations of Kings work became the most popular pursuit in Hollywood. Adaptations of his books and short stories were constantly in the theaters or being broadcast on network television as miniseries. Several, including Graveyard Shift, were taken from King’s first short story collection, Night Shift.

The short story, the itinerant college drop out agrees to accompany his foreman and a few of his coworkers into the cellar of the textile mill where they work to remove the debris and kill the rats so the mill can pass a health and safety inspection.

They descend and begin the cleanup process of 100 years of detritus. They are alarmed by the number of rats and their seeming lack of fear of the humans who proceed to blast them with a high pressure hose. Finally, they find a trap door that is not part of the existing structure of the textile mill. They descend into an ancient cellar where they find the queen of the rats.

The short story is very much like a comic book story. Amusing, engaging, and entertaining. The movie is none of that.

Instead, the screenplay unfolds as a low grade rip off of Alien set inside a textile mill instead of a spaceship. The queen of the rats is a creature that stalks workers in the plant, killing and eating them. An exterminator, played by Brad Douriff (who played Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers) is introduced as a maniacal presence in the cast who serves no real purpose except to provide unintended comic relief.

Short stories made into full length motion pictures require padding to fill the time. Sometimes, like in Children of the Corn, that padding develops the characters and builds the suspense. The padding here is just scene after scene of stupid people getting killed by a reject from Night of the Lepus. Every time one of them dies, I thought, “No great loss,” which is a phrase that appears in almost every King work.

As in the short story, the mill can not pass a health and safety inspection, so the foreman Warwick, played by Stephen Macht, chooses a crew to accompany him in the cellar over the July 4th weekend to do the cleaning.

The attempt to develop the characters is ridiculous. In the short story, Warwick was a bit of a prick. In the movie, he’s a caricature of a sadistic boss. The screenwriter contrives an underdeveloped sexual tension between college boy Jon Hall and Warick. Warick picks Hall and the object of his unrequited ardor for the weekend job to put torment them within the confines of the cellar. Macht tries to act menacing, but his attempt at a Maine accent sounds like a German trying to sound Irish and it’s just silly.

The crew descends into the cellar and begin their cleanup work. They become separated for just a few moments and super rat gets them. In the end, Hall and his new love (who I don’t think he ever gets around to kissing in the picture) find great queen rat and slay her.

Graveyard Shift the movie is not something to be enjoyed. It is something to be endured and suffered. If you do it more than once, you’re a fool. If this isn’t the worst adaptation of a King work in existence, I don’t look forward to finding it. The Mangler is next on my list as I work my way through the film adaptations of works from Night Shift. I may yet plumb new depths. Stay tuned. . .

Night Shift by Stephen King

Night Shift
by Stephen King
Copyright 1978

Night Shift is Stephen King’s first published collection of short stories. Many are new for the book and several are drawn from his early publishing history when he was publishing short stories in “gentlemen’s magazines” and horror pulps. The collection contains some very early King writing where we see the young man learning his craft. Other stories show us a writer who has learned, and is now honing his craft. Not all of the stories are good. But as a collection, the book is a gem!

Introduction by John D. MacDonald
John D. MacDonald introduces us to Stephen King. For readers of that time, this was King’s first formal introduction. Night Shift being his fourth book, he was a quickly rising star in the field of horror writing.

MacDonald introduces King with a narrative about the motivation, the process, and the excitement of writing. He scoffs at those who say, “I’ve always wanted to write,” for he argues that if you want to write, you write. If you’re a writer, you have to write. That is how he describes Stephen King.

MacDonald also says that King, whose works at the time were pilloried by critics as schlock horror, writes for an audience of one: himself.

For a writer of King’s youth, it had to be high praise and high honor to be feted by the likes of John D. MacDonald who had been publishing short stories in a variety of genres before King was born. MacDonald published short stories and novels in horror, sci-fi, traditional thrillers, and hardboiled detective stories. His name is not well known in the mainstream, but many writers in these genres were inspired by him.

Foreward
This is Stephen King introducing himself to his readers for the first time in his books. King’s “constant reader” knows that King often includes afterwords in his books to talk to the Constant Reader about where the idea of the story came from, about the writing process for the story or novel, and how he felt about it.

However, in this introduction, King seems a bit defensive. Well he should at that time. While giants of genre fiction like Bradbury and Asimov were starting to gain some legitimacy in the mainstream in the late 1970s, writers like Stephen King, Ira Levin, and Richard Matheson were still considered hacks writing dreck that no reputable connoisseur of literature would be caught dead reading. King talks about how people apologize for liking his books, saying they must be a little ghoulish for enjoying works like The Shining. King is defensive of his chosen genre and defiant of his critics. As the years have passed since Night Shift was published 32 years ago, we now know that that young, defiant Stephen King was replaced by a writer that, even though he would not admit it, wanted to be accepted by the mainstream as a “legitimate” writer of fiction.

Jerusalem’s Lot
Told through a series of old letters and a recovered journal, we learn the history of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine – known to movie and book fans as ‘Salem’s Lot. In the early 1850s, a young man has just inherited his family’s palatial estate in Cumberland County, Maine. He is shunned for his family and its estate has a reputation for being haunted and his family in known for being bringers of evil. He and his manservant travel to a nearby village called Jerusalem’s Lot which is feared by local inhabitants. They find the town deserted and an unsettling feeling of death pervades the village. They go the church where they find a blasphemous and evil book on the alter. Our hero comes to learn that it was his ancestor who brought this ancient tome of evil to Jerusalem’s Lot and invited the hosts of an ancient race and religion to this former section of Massachusetts. These old ones are familiar to scholars of horror fiction.

In a review of a collection of works by Ramsey Campbell, I panned his efforts to capture and imitate the voice of the legendary H.P. Lovecraft. Where Campbell failed, King succeeded and brilliantly! Using the story telling device of correspondence, King employs a Lovecraft device. Using the formal letter writing style of an earlier age, King captures Lovecraft’s voice. In invoking Yogsoggoth – one of the “nameless ones” of the Lovecraftian Cthulu mythos, King links one of his most famous “strange little towns” to the master of modern horror. It’s an absolutely brilliant imitation of Lovecraft that I can’t help but feel the old master would consider a homage and high compliment.

Graveyard Shift
A transient college dropout finds himself working in a New England textiles mill that is infested with rats. Down on his luck and needing money, he agrees to help his foreman on a crew to clean out the mills basements over the Fourth of July holiday. Down there, he and his fellow works find a different breed of rats; rats who do not know and do not fear men. . .

This is old fashioned pulp horror. King gives us no backstory. The characters are simple, bordering on clichés – the mouthy college dropout, the abrasive foreman who is the consummate company men, the cliché of the blue collar, working class slob who work in the mills. The horror is simple and straightforward and made me feel as if I were reading a comic book story. That’s not necessarily bad. A story need not be meaningful it is fun to read, and this one was fun.

A movie was made based on this story in 1990. I have not seen it, but I know it was panned by critics and King fans alike. I shall watch it and add a review to my blog.

This story was originally published in Cavalier October 1970

Night Surf
As Captain Trips, the fatal flu virus from The Stand rages across the country, a loose community forms on a New England beach to see what happens next. A small group feels that they are immune to Captain Trips because they have all had a strain of the flu earlier that’s antibodies seem to provide defense against the more lethal disease. But when one of the supposedly immune contracts Captain Trips, the crew on the beach is left pondering whether or not the immunity really exists and if they’ll survive much longer as fall approaches.

The publication of this story precedes publication of The Stand, so we might consider this a prequel for King’s crowning work. The characters are weak and we are given scant few clues as to what Captain Trips really is. Perhaps were I not so familiar with Captain Trips and its transcontinental swath of destruction, I would have enjoyed this story more.

This story was first published in Cavalier August 1974.

I Am the Doorway
An astronaut barely survives a splash down after returning from the first manned orbital probe of Venus. As he lounges in retirement, his hands become afflicted with strange blemishes. Those blemishes quickly evolve into eyes; eyes of a creature bent on killing.

In his halcyon days, King made a few attempts to crossover from traditional horror into a Bradbury type cross of horror and science fiction. He did this with uneven results. I didn’t enjoy this story as much as some others in the book. While King is able to recreate the narrative prose of Lovecraft, he misses the mark in trying to mix two genres as Bradbury was so able to do.

This story first appeared in Cavalier March 1971.

The Mangler
A police detective investigates a horrific industrial accident where a worker was pulled into a mechanical laundry presser and crushed to death. As his investigation proceeds, there are more unexplained accidents. When he and a college professor determine that the cause is a curse brought to life by the spilled blood of a virgin, they take action to break the curse and exorcise the ghost from the machine.

This story is representative of King’s early work. It is taut, honed, and tells a good story in a short period. There was a movie made based on this story that was universally panned. I have not yet seen it and will review it at a later date. Alas, I fear that seeing the movie may make me appreciate the story less.

This story was originally published in Cavalier December 1972.

The Boogeyman
A man recounts for his psychologist how he each of his three children die over a decade because he failed to check the closets for the fabled creature. The psychologist becomes a believer in the end.

This story, like many others in the book, had a comic book feel to it. It is wordy for the little bit of story it tells. King develops the main character as a narcissist for no other apparent reason than to make him interesting. Kudos for that!

This story was originally published in Cavalier March 1973.

Gray Matter
Country town retirees become concerned when one of their local drunks quits coming in for his daily ration of beer. Instead, he sends his son in to the store to be his canned beer. His son says that his father is slowly turning into something not human. The retirees go to investigate.

This story really doesn’t quite rise to the occasion. While I’m a firm believer that over-explaining a supernatural event in horror or science fiction is a bad idea. But I think the reader needs at least a hint of its origins. That’s the missing element in this story. There is a lesson in it, however. Don’t drink skunky beer!

This story was originally published in Cavalier October 1973.

Battleground
A hitman returns home after a job to find a package waiting for him – a gift from his next target, a toy maker. The package contains toy soldiers and military equipment. Being replica of Vietnam era equipment, the toy soldier package contains some bonus items sure to be enjoyed by kids and hitmen of all ages.

This story very closely resembles Richard Matheson’s Prey. The notion of children’s toys being malevolent attackers can be frightening. Matheson’s toy is. King’s is not.

This story was made into an episode of the TNT network series, Nightmares and Dreamscapes. This was the only story drawn from Night Shift for this series. This was a rare case where the screen adaptation exceeded the original story. Perhaps it was because it was none other than Richard Christian Matheson, the son of the horror and sci-fi master.

This story originally appeared in Cavalier September 1972.

Trucks
Several people are trapped in a truck stop diner by semis that have developed will and intelligence and want to kill all living things. The semi trucks are soon joined by smaller trucks and construction equipment. Their fuel is running out and they demand that the humans trapped inside come out and refuel them. The trapped people must decide if they will fight and die or become servants of the machine.

This was a fun story. None of the characters had an iota of development, but the story moved rapidly with a satisfying, but nebulous conclusion. The young Stephen King was not prone to using allegory or metaphor, preferring to tell stories for the fun of it. But, as the main character reflects on the future, he concludes that men have made machines that make it possible to access any point on earth, assuring that no place is safe in a world dominated by machines.

This story was made into a bad movie called Maximum Overdrive that was Stephen King’s first attempt at a full length screenplay. It was also directed by Stephen King. I will not be reviewing it since Netflix does not deem the film worthy of being in their collection of movies. I have seen it and it forced me to conclude that King should stick to books and leave screenplays to screenplay writers.

This story originally appeared in Cavalier June 1973.

Sometimes They Come Back
A young teacher takes a job at a upper middle class high school. Soon after taking the job, he starts having a recurring nightmare that recounts how his brother was murdered by some street toughs when they were young kids. When those same street toughs show up, one by one, in his seventh period lit class having aged not a day, he fears he’s having a breakdown. After his wife is killed, he decides to meet them head on.

This is a well told tale. It’s longer than most in the book, but it probably has the deepest, richest character in the book.

This story originally appeared in Cavelier March 1974 and was made into a made for television movie in 1991.

Strawberry Spring
Strawberry Spring comes once every eight to ten years in New England. And when the dense fog rolls into Maine, it brings out Springheel Jack, a serial killer who has a taste for college co-eds. A male student recounts Springheel Jack’s activities in the Strawberry Spring of 1971.

The twist, such as it was, was pretty apparent early because there was no other character in the story. For what the story lacks in plot, it makes up for in atmosphere. King makes the fictional college campus into the Scottish moors.

The Ledge
An aging tennis pro is confronted by the wealthy man with whose wife he is having an affair. The man offers him the opportunity to gain not only the wife, but $20,000 cash if he will simply walk around the ledge of his high rise apartment building. Should he choose not to accept the wager, he will be framed for heroin possession. The tennis pro starts out onto the ledge and begins his trek, forty stories above the city with his wealthy antagonist making it difficult for him.

This story was a lot of fun. I’m certain that the story has been told in different ways over the years, but King’s rendering is exceptionable. Instead of character development, King focuses his words on developing physical pain, which lends an urgency to the prose.

This story was originally published in the January 1976 edition of Penthouse. It was adapted to film as a segment of the movie Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye starring Robert Hays.

The Lawnmower Man
A man, concerned with how he has let his suburban lawn go hires a landscaping company to mow his grass and clean up the mess. The crew of one arrives with a strange lawnmower and a strange way of disposing of the yard waste.

This story was pure foolishness and is the weakest in the collection. There is nothing terrifying, mystifying, or even intriguing about the monster, such as it is. We do see another appearance of a haunted piece of machinery bedeviling a King hero, but that’s not enough to save this bad story.

This story first appeared in Cavalier May 1975. It was made into a movie in 1992 starring Jeff Fahey and Pierce Brosnan. It does not remotely resemble the King story, but isn’t any better and perhaps much worse.

Quitters, Inc.
A hopelessly addicted smoker tries a radical program implemented by a radical company. One must stop smoking cold turkey, or his or her family will suffer increasingly painful punishments. The punishments get worse if the subject gains weight. The hero struggles against his addiction, knowing one slip will lead to agony for his wife.

King’s addiction to cigarettes is well known. I, too, have known the power cigarettes can have over one’s life. This is my favorite story in the book simply because, I can identify. The story telling is fabulous and this tale stands as one of his most brilliant short works.

This story was also a part of the Cat's Eye anthology and starred James Woods.

I Know What You Need
A college girl is approached by a fellow student while studying in the library who simply tells her “I know what you need.” Amazingly, he does. After her boyfriend is killed in a highway construction accident, she falls for the mysterious young man. But her nosy roommate finds out the young man has a bizarre past that might make him dangerous.

This story was two-thirds character study of the heroine. King wrote few character studies. He includes just enough story to keep this character study interesting.

This story originally appeared in Cosmopolitan January 1976.

Children of the Corn
A feuding couple decides to drive across the country from Boston to California to take one last shot at saving their marriage. As they travel along a rural Nebraska road, they strike a boy who runs out of the cornfield into the path of their car. A little investigation reveals that the boy’s throat was cut before he was hit by the car. The couple take him to the town of Gatlin which is seemingly deserted. They soon meet the young residents of Gatlin and the Old Testament demon they worship.

I saw the movie several years before reading the story, so the characters were already formed in my mind. Upon reading the story, I found King’s characters much different than George Goldsmith’s screenplay characters. The hostile relationship is a great backdrop against which to play out this terror.

This story was originally published in Penthouse March 1977. It was made into a movie in 1984.

The Last Rung on the Ladder
A corporate attorney receives a one sentence letter from his sister living in California. That letter’s contents remain a mystery to the reader as the attorney recalls an event from their childhood when the two of them were playing in a hayloft. As his sister ascends a ladder to the high rafters of their hayloft, the last rung breaks, leaving her hanging. Big brother is there to save the day. . .

When I read Stephen King, I read his tales for the horror or the fantastic tales he tells. It’s always been my judgment that whenever King tries to be politically or socially relevant, or tries to tell a story that has some other goal than to scare or intrigue, he falls short. This story is the exception and may be his best piece of mainstream fiction. I’m a big brother to a little sister. I understand that role and cherish the memories of it. This story really moved me with its profoundly sad end.

The Man Who Loved Flowers
A neat, prim fusses over what flowers to buy his sweetheart on his way home from work. Things go wildly awry when he shows up to deliver them.

We’re given a clue that is easily overlooked in the narrative, and I’ll give King credit for burying that seemingly innocuous piece of information in the narrative. However, there just wasn’t enough story or character development to make the story work.

This story was originally published in Gallery August 1977

One for the Road
Stephen King takes us on one last journey to ‘Salem’s Lot. A man staggers into a rural Maine bar during a blizzard. His car is stuck on a rural country road about six miles away. The bartender and patron recognize that the man’s family is in trouble, being left alone so close to the doomed village. They head out into the storm to find them.

This story was a nice exclamation point on one of King’s finest novels.

The Woman in the Room
A man plans to help his terminally ill mother die. He goes through the tedium of planning and plotting and . . .

What a horrifically weak ending to a great collection of short stories. This is the worst story in the book. It is dull beyond imagination. Characters are not interesting. The story is one dimensional.