The FilmNerds Blog

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

We arrive at the final and probably best-known Stephen King adaptation on our countdown, Cujo. While Cujo was only slightly more successful financially than The Dead Zone and Christine, I think it’s fair to say that it’s the most recognizable title of the three amongst the general population in 2010. It’s almost become a ubiquitous reference point in American popular culture. Mention Cujo and everyone, whether they’ve seen the film or not, knows that you’re talking about an evil dog.

Cujo did for dogs what Jaws did for sharks. It put an image in the minds of moviegoers that stuck with them, an idea which probably wouldn’t have been there otherwise. I confess that after watching Cujo, my next encounter with my uncle’s usually lovable golden retriever was just a tiny bit more nerve-racking than usual.

Having a lasting effect on the popular culture in a way that almost influences our basic fear responses over 25 years later has to be a sign of a successful horror film. But Cujo certainly wasn’t viewed that way at the time of its release. Roger Ebert was mercilessly critical of the film (he even mentions it derogatorily in his reviews for the other two 1983 King adaptations) and even the kindest major critics of the time called it mediocre and bland. Why then does the film hold such a strong place in the memories of viewers today and stand as an almost universally recognized horror classic?

I think the discrepancy comes from the film’s very unconventional approach to the horror genre. Like a conventional horror film of its time, say a typical slasher film like Halloween, the first half of the film is spent meticulously setting up the perfect scenario, leaving no holes that could distract the audience from simply experiencing the terrifying situation. King, who was perhaps more involved in this film’s production than any other adaptation of his work to date at the time, knew that in order for the audience to remain focused on what was happening later in the film, he would have to anticipate all the proposed solutions the audience would have to the heroine’s problem. Every possibility for salvation, right down to the mail man, is accounted for and neatly (though not unreasonably) taken care of.

But King’s hour-long setup does more than just tie up potential loose ends. It also creates a carefully crafted emotional subplot that gives our heroine’s plight later in the film an additional level of tension.

I won’t re-create the entire setup for you here but here’s a quick summary: Our main character is Donna, a suburban housewife who has revealed to her loving and devoted husband that she has been cheating on him with a local scumbag. The husband, despite his overwhelming love for their son, has decided that he needs a few days to work things out and heads out of town for an indefinite vacation.

Unfortunately for Donna, her car needs fixing so she decides to take it up to a local handyman just outside of town to see if he can fix it. The handyman and his family are unfortunately out of town and Donna’s car won’t start back up once she realizes this.

Now comes the film’s namesake: Cujo, the dog belonging to the handyman, has been bitten by a bat and has been infected with rabies. Cujo is a Saint Bernard, a formidable and intimidating dog, and is already covered in slime and blood from the first person who realized (too late) that he was rabid by the time Donna sees him.

I won’t reveals what happens beyond that but as you can see, our scenario finds Donna trapped in her broken down car with her small child with no hope of anyone turning up to help her for the next several days. Dee Wallace (The Howling, E.T.) is phenomenal as Donna, a fact that even the film’s harshest critics in 1983 were able to admit. The shift in her attitude as time goes by in the car is captivating to watch. We see everything in her face and reactions, from the sheer visceral terror she feels for her life and the life of her child to the guilt she feels about how her actions have in part created the situation she’s in.

Almost equally impressive is the heartbreaking performance by Danny Pintauro as Tad, Donna’s young son. Pintauro, who would later star in the long-running sitcom “Who’s The Boss?”, made his screen debut in Cujo and gives what is in my opinion one of the best performances ever by a child in a horror film. The film establishes early on that Tad has a fear of monsters in his closet that can only be soothed by the voice of his father saying one of those special little routine poems that all parents make up for their children. Donna, of course, doesn’t know the poem and is unable to soothe Tad’s terror when they are beset by what Tad believes to be a real monster. Pintauro’s screams and cries seem truly genuine and however director Lewis Teague was able to coax this out of him, it was incredibly effective. As a parent, watching a terrified child scream and not knowing how to calm him down has to be one of the most harrowing situations I can think of.

(SPOILER ALERT) According to a number of interviews and stories about the making of Cujo, King’s close involvement with the film stems in part from a desire to correct some mistakes he felt he made when writing the novel. King wrote Cujo at the peak of his alcoholism and while the plot and characters are among the most honest and believable of his career, the plot (particularly the ending) plays out in a way that is perhaps a bit too brutal for movie audiences. King has said that he regrets ending the novel the way he did and wanted to correct that error when writing the screenplay for Cujo. (END SPOILER)

Regardless of the film’s resolution, it’s the setup that makes Cujo effective and thus memorable as a horror film and to me this marks some of the best true horror writing of King’s career. Add to that an excellent pair of performances and some stunning (if occasionally overwrought) cinematography by Jan de Bont (who would eventually earn a reputation as one of the best action cinematographers of the 1980s) and you’ve got a horror film that holds up very well to scrutiny over a quarter of a century later.

Next Up: The quintessential space race classic The Right Stuff starring Ed Harris.

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

After a brief interlude by some lovely cartoon mice, we’re back to our three-film mini marathon of Stephen King films here on the Back to the Movies 1983 countdown. The second-most commercially successful King adaptation of the year turns out to be probably the least well-known of the three in 2010. There are a few reasons that could account for this but my guess is that unlike The Dead Zone and Cujo (which we’ll get to next week), Christine doesn’t really take itself that seriously. When it comes to horror film, though there are a lot of filmnerds out there that disagree, it’s absolutely essential that the audience takes the threat of real danger seriously. If they don’t, you don’t have a successful horror film by definition.

While Christine has a couple of good scary moments, it’s certainly not a film that keeps you in a sustained grip of terror in the way that many of King’s other stories manage to. Christine is much more of a slow burn, a decent into madness. The problem is that in the film version, we don’t know what that madness is coming from and what its exact nature is. That confusion impairs the horror.

I’ve said many times before that slavish adherence to the source material is neither a vice nor a virtue when it comes to film. A film should do what works best on film and not make decisions based on some kind of sense of “loyalty” to the source material upon which it’s based. Stephen King and his fans ran into this issue with Stanley Kubrick’s masterful adaptation of The Shining, which made significant departures from King’s book but nonetheless stands as one of the greatest horror films ever made. When it comes to the changes that director John Carpenter made to the original story, however, I think it may have been worth sticking a little bit closer to King’s writing.

Christine focuses on a classic car (the title character) that seems to have a strange effect on its new owner, a lowly high school nerd named Arnie (played by Keith Gordon). After purchasing the beaten up old clunker from a creepy old man, Arnie mysteriously begins to become cool and confident, dressing like the Fonz (even though the movie is set in 1978) and landing a date with the hottest girl in school (Alexandra Paul). He also manages to restore the car to looking brand new despite having almost no auto repair skills and no money.

It doesn’t take long for Arnie’s girlfriend and best friend Dennis (John Stockwell) to figure out what’s going on, and it takes us even less time since rather than giving us a clever mystery to be revealed later, Carpenter lets us see very early in the film what King only hints at for most of the book: Christine appears to be alive and can magically repair herself. Not only that but she’s also apparently quite jealous and vengeful and finds ways to kill those who hurt her (the bullies) or try to get between her and her owner (girlfriends, wives, etc.).

It’s a silly premise and Carpenter’s treatment of the story somewhat plays into that. The problem is that there’s not really anything particularly scary about a classic car, even when it’s running over people. It has no personality or expressiveness because it’s a big hunk of painted metal. It’s an idea that probably works a lot better on paper than it does on the screen, although the movie does do several things very well.

While the storyline of what the car is up to in 1978 may not be all that interesting, the backstory of the car is pretty intriguing. Upon first finding the car, Arnie talks to the owner, a grungy and strange-looking man named George LeBay played to creepy perfection by character actor Roberts Blossom (see the clip below). All the details about the old man and his story, the corset-like back brace, the murderous history of the car, all come from the book but are somewhat gutted in the film since we’re told that unlike in the novel, the previous owner was simply another victim of this inexplicably evil car. King’s story made the original owner the cause for the car’s evil, an obsessed ghost who was haunting or even possessing the car and making it do all the horrible things it’s doing in 1978.

Keith Gordon does an OK job in nerd mode but he’s never really able to convince us that Arnie could truly make a sudden transition to being the coolest guy in school. He’s much more effective in scenes like the early bully confrontation with Buddy Repperton played by William Ostrander, who despite being 24 when he made the film looks like he’s about 55. Arnie’s pathetic attempt to stand up to Buddy and his subsequent rescue by best friend Dennis make us really feel for the guy, though those sympathies go right out the window as the movie progresses.

As I mentioned before, it’s pretty difficult to work up legitimate terror when you’re watching someone get hit by a car. It’s just not as terrifying as watching someone be murdered in a more intimate way like with a knife (which you’d think Carpenter would understand having already made Halloween). But there is one legitimately cool piece of imagery that comes out of the car’s murderous night of revenge. In the midst of chasing Buddy, the ringleader of the bullies, Christine destroys a gas station which explodes in a ball of flame that must have accounted for half the film’s budget. As Buddy runs away down the highway, Christine rolls after him engulfed in flames. The sight of a flaming, murderous demonic car is a pretty cool image and probably the one enduring thing that really sticks with me after the film.

I have a few other minor beefs with the film but nothing that couldn’t have been overcome with a stronger premise or a tighter, more cohesive screenplay. One of my pet peeves with the film is the excessive swearing. I’m all for a good creative swear-off, I’m not offended by it. But when it’s used willy nilly without any obvious purpose, it comes off as ridiculous and really hurts my ability to connect with the characters. According to IMDB, the producers were afraid that because of the lack of gory violence in the film they would end up with a PG rating (since there was no PG-13 in 1983), a death sentence for a horror film. In order to land that much-needed R, the producers decided to insert as much swearing as possible into the film, even giving Arnie an oft-repeated nickname that involves the c-word. It’s a bush league move by the filmmakers and it certainly doesn’t do anything to help us buy the already ludicrous premise.

I wanted to point out one more detail that didn’t so much bother as amuse me. The film opens and closes with George Thorogood’s now-clichéd hit “Bad to the Bone”, a song that has become one of the most overused tropes of cinema over the past 25 years or so. Watching the film, the musical struck me as very odd, since the song has an almost comical connotation now when it’s used in movies and TV shows to signify something being unexpectedly bad-ass. But as the clever folks at The Onion AV Club point out, this is the first known instance of the song ever being used in a film, meaning the connotation I place on it as a viewer in 2010 is probably completely different from the effect the song had on viewers in 1983, when it was likely the first time they had ever heard the song, at least in the context of a film.

Maybe there are a number of elements in this film, like the use of “Bad to the Bone”, that made a much greater impact on audiences in ’83 than they do on me today. It would certainly explain why this film received so much critical praise in its time while the next film on our list, a film I much prefer to Christine, was almost universally panned and disliked.

Next Up: The final Stephen King adaptation on our countdown, Cujo.

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

We now reach our first film of the countdown to gross over $20 million at the box office and it also happens to be the first of three films released in 1983 based on the works of author Stephen King. All three films performed almost identically at the box office so you’ll be seeing them in fairly rapid succession here on the blog over the next few weeks.

Heading into 1983, King had already had two successful films made out of his novels in 1976′s Carrie and Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 masterpiece The Shining (a film adaptation which King vehemently disapproved of) and was also becoming a reliable hit-maker in the print world as well. But 1983 marks a new point in King’s career, a year in which he went from being a well-known novelist whose work lent itself to the screen to being a major entertainment franchise. According to Box Office Mojo, King has been the creative inspiration for 38 theatrically released films, making him possibly the most oft-adapted American writer of all time. Not every film made from King’s work has been of equal quality (as we’ll see in the next few installments of Back to the Movies) but it’s clear that as a writer one of King’s greatest strengths is coming up with a premise that everyone, including movie producers, finds intriguing and fraught with possibilities.

The premise of The Dead Zone, directed by a young David Cronenberg, is fairly simple and not all that unfamiliar sounding to fans of science fiction and horror. A man with the bizarrely boring name of Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) gets into an auto accident and awakens from a coma five years later to find that he has psychic abilities. As a premise, it could go either way: in the hands of a mediocre writer it could turn into a series of small episodes where Johnny uses his abilities to solve minor problems for people like some sort of superhero (in fact, that’s exactly what happened with the television adaptation of this story made for USA Network a few years ago). In the hands of a more twisted mind, it becomes a fascinating vehicle to explore what a true curse such a gift would become were an average person to find themselves in possession of it.

After his initial discovery of his gift helps to save the life of a young child, Johnny suddenly finds himself becoming a local media sensation, viewed as a fascinating freak show to some and a delusional wacko to others. Johnny does what he can to stay out of the limelight but when a desperate sheriff (played by the awesome Tom Skerritt) comes to him for help in an unsolved serial murder case, Johnny feels that lending his talents to the case is the right thing to do.

How that situation resolves itself I will leave unspoiled as it serves as a sort of climax unto itself, a standalone episode within the film that works as a fascinating example of where Johnny’s story could go if using his gift weren’t slowly destroying him both mentally and emotionally.

The second half of the movie almost serves as an entirely separate story, with Johnny trying to start his life over in a place where no one knows about his abilities. There’s also another advantage of moving away from his hometown for Johnny in that it allows him to put his former fiance Sarah (Brooke Adams), who ended up getting married and having a baby while he was in a coma, out of his mind once and for all. Or so he thinks…

What makes the second half of the movie really interesting, in addition to Walken’s superb acting throughout, is the appearance of Martin Sheen as the maniacal rising star politician Greg Stillson. As a huge fan of Sheen’s great work on “The West Wing” as a beneficent, principled president I got a real kick out of seeing him play the complete opposite, a dirty politician who has used pessimism and anger to facilitate his rise to power. Sheen’s performance, like his character’s storyline, just skirts the edge of being overblown and ludicrous but somehow manages to stay believable, thanks not only to great acting and directing but also to King’s attention to detail in his story. King manages to drop breadcrumbs all along the way in the story that all begin to pay off in the film’s final act.

Minor spoiler alert for this paragraph and the video below: A great example of this film’s ability to actually pull off a scene that could be disastrously outrageous comes when Johnny shakes hands with Stillson and has a vision of the future that essentially determines Johnny’s motivation for the rest of the film. In this vision, we see Stillson as the President of the United States in a room at what is presumably Camp David. He pressures a general into putting his hand onto a briefcase-sized hand scanner before inputting a sequence of numbers. Stillson then walks out of the room to face a group of advisors to whom he makes a chilling proclamation.

(End Spoiler)

It’s a scene that I’m convinced shouldn’t work and wouldn’t work if had a different writer, a different director or a different actor involved. But as with a lot of things in this movie, the combination of King, Cronenberg and the superb actors involved make potentially ridiculous scenes into believable and chilling ones (Roger Ebert pointed out in his review that the fact that they are believable is exactly what makes them so chilling).

According to most of the reviews of the day, The Dead Zone is far and away the best of the three Stephen King movies released in 1983 (almost every review nearly spits when referring to Cujo, released two months earlier). It’s a tough call, but I’d say for me The Dead Zone is perhaps my favorite of the 14 films I’ve seen for this project thus far. If nothing else, it has led me to strongly consider picking up King’s original novel, a major achievement considering I’m not much of a reader. The Dead Zone certainly isn’t the scariest King-based film ever made but it is one of the most interesting, character-centric films I’ve seen based on his work.

Next Up: The re-release of the 1977 Disney animated classic The Rescuers.