A Possible Inspiration for The Mist?

by Chris Calderon

I don't know what influenced Stephen King to write his much liked novella The Mist.  By his own word, the idea almost seemed to spring whole in his mind while he was out shopping one day and wondered what would happen if a pterodactyl were suddenly to come flying over the food aisles.

However that hasn't stopped some from speculating.  For instance, an earlier entry in Wikipedia once noted "The Mist bears resemblance to the earlier H.F. Arnold short story "Night Wire," in which a radio operator details how a malevolent mist falls over a city, containing creatures that consume townspeople "piecemeal."  The page also contains a link to a copy of the Arnold story.

Whether or not there is any truth to those speculations, I don't know.  This is just something I ran across from someone I don't know and is probably just a wild guess on their part in the first place.  That said, even for a wild guess, I have to admit, it's pretty entertaining.

As it happens, the H.F. Arnold story was anthologized as part of a YouTube audio series called Chilling Tales for Dark Nights, a series of narrated (sometimes dramatized) short stories in a similar vein to those quasi-camp fire stories from the golden age of the audiobook era.  Watch and listen to Arnold's story in the clip below, and judge for yourself whether or not King may have subconsciously remembered such a story from his past.  Even if such an idea is unlikely, I have to admit, the Arnold story still makes for a very entertaining October read.

9/11, Our Choices, and Making a Stand

I really enjoyed Julie Davis' insightful article at Patheos titled "9/11, Our Choices, and Making a Stand."  She graciously gave me permission to repost it here.  Note her insights on The Stand and faith. 

9/11, Our Choices, and Making a Stand
by Julie Davis

Two days after 9/11, my father-in-law had a massive stroke. My husband and I drove from Dallas to the hospital in Houston. Largely in shock between the double burden of terrorist attacks and personal tragedy, we were nevertheless stirred with pride at the many flags and hand-made signs we saw along the road. Tears sprang to my eyes when we passed a battered pick-up truck complete with obligatory shotgun rack and "We are all New Yorkers today" written on the rear window.


My husband said, "Those terrorists don't know what they have done. This guy would've spit on a New Yorker last week. And now he'd fight for them."

We were lucky. We didn't know anyone, then, who had died or been in the attacks. But we still suffered with the rest of the nation. It changed us as a people and as individuals.

It taught me a big lesson in forgiveness; as I expressed my forceful wish to see the people behind this attack "killed," a gentle friend from our parish looked at me with a troubled face. "I don't know," she said slowly. "But that doesn't seem right either."


I was taken aback and began to pray, even as I expressed anger. Gradually, the anger faded and the ability to forgive crept in.

Ten years later, I mourn the 9/11 attacks as much as ever. Easy tears still spring to my eyes when I look over the old pictures, video footage, and exchange "what I was doing when I heard" stories with others.

I also think about the opportunity that we had to go forward as a people united—to bring something good out of the evil. We are more divided than ever, and ruder than ever. We squabble and complain about the red states, the blue states, the liberals, the conservatives, the Muslims, the Catholics, and on and on it goes.

Some of this is basic human nature, as old as the stories in Genesis, of brother striking brother. It seems to me, though, that some of it is Evil pushing its way into the world, and we are failing to push back for the common good. We listen to the siren call of "my way," which goes hand in hand with pride.
As always, when it comes to thinking things through, I find that others have pondered the matter so much more thoroughly than I could. Recently I picked up one of my favorite "good versus evil" books and found the words defining my thoughts.

It is said that the two great human sins are pride and hate. Are they? I elect to think of them as the two great virtues. To give away pride and hate is to say you will change for the good of the world. To vent them is more noble; that is to say the world must change for the good of you. I am on a great adventure. (Harold Emery Lauder, in Stephen King's The Stand)

Twenty-three years before 9/11, Stephen King published one of his best-known and best-loved books, The Stand. It tells a tale of the United States, laid to waste when a biological weapons-grade virus inadvertently gets loose. As survivors roam the post-apocalyptic ruins, they begin to have dreams about an incredibly old holy woman, named Mother Abigail, or of a supernatural entity—Randall Flagg—who is her opponent.

Following their dreams, two communities begin to form—Mother Abigail's in Boulder and Flagg's in Las Vegas—and the stage is set for a final "stand" between Evil and God.


King has expressed frustration that so many fans call The Stand their favorite work, even though he has written scores of books since its publication.

Well, it's a heck of a book for one thing, so it's no wonder people love it. And although this is a horror novel, it is very translatable to our own lives. We no longer worry about bio-terrorism the way we did back then, but we can still relate to the scenario King paints.

In The Stand, King holds up the mirror to us. God and evil are present, of course, but they work through men, as ever, and we recognize ourselves in the pages.

Harold Emery Lauder was the quintessential misunderstood nerd, picked on in school, crossed in love, and finding power in hatred. His note could have been written by any of the terrorists who flew those planes into the World Trade Center. I imagine that, like Harold, their betrayal of innocents was the culmination of a long trail of choosing their own desires first. King shows us enough of Harold's choices—sometimes made despite the screaming of his own instincts—so that we can see a little of him in every selfish choice we make.

Harold's end is not a good one, and it is made pitiful by the fact that he is tossed aside like a worn out doll when evil is done using him for its own purposes. We cannot hold onto our anger at him because he has been misled so completely. In a similar way, when I think of those terrorists and their deliberate evil, I have a bit of that pity for them as well.

Once they were somebody's babies. I don't know what led them astray, but I lament the loss of the people they could have been.

King directly juxtaposes a rock star, Larry Underwood, against Harold.

"You ain't no nice guy!" she cried at him as he went into the living room. "I only went with you because I thought you were a nice guy" . . . A memory circuit clicked open and he heard Wayne Stuckey saying, There's something in you that's like biting on tinfoil. ~ The Stand

After the plague, Larry is haunted by those words, "you ain't no nice guy"—they jump to mind whenever he contemplates a selfish or cowardly act. Ultimately, he actually becomes a "nice guy" by consistently choosing the nobler act, if only to prove those words wrong.

Larry is no different than you or me, or anyone who can see themselves with a modicum of self awareness. None of us are "nice guys" deep down because we are all stained with Original Sin. And we know it.

We have help, though, that Stephen King didn't give Larry Underwood. We have the grace of Christ, the sacrament of reconciliation, and our faith to strengthen us. Like Larry, though, we have to keep picking ourselves up and trying again. We must practice until we are more perfectly "nice guys."

9/11 has presented us with a chance to practice forgiveness over and over again. We're all in this together and lifting our thoughts (or hands) in hatred belittles us and our targets. We are Christ’s followers, charged to see Him in everyone they meet. We all have the same choice. Do we embrace Harold's way, or Larry's?

There's always a choice. That's God's way, always will be. Your will is still free. Do as you will. There's no set of leg-irons on you. But . . . this is what God wants of you. ~ Mother Abigail, The Stand

__________________________________________

Julie Davis blogs at Happy Catholic and discusses both books and movies at A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast. Her new book is Happy Catholic, published by Servant Publishing.

Mick Garris’s The Stand: The Black and White version.

by Chris Calderon

I just hope he’s not a figure of controversy.  That’s one way I thought of starting all this.  The other was to start off with the question: Does anyone think The Stand is kind of, well, weird (I'll explain what I mean in just a minute)?

Either way, one things is certain.  For most fans of Stephen King, the adaptations done by constant collaborator Mick Garris will always be divisive.  Some will fall on the side of support and others on the downgrade side.  Those who aren’t impressed with Garris’s King work may have number of reasons for their dislike.  For some, it may be that his cinematography is dull and uninspired, others may say that he chooses poor actors for the roles.  Then of course, there’s always the question of the writing itself.  Or it could just be that Garris’s take on King never seem to raise whatever highs or lows the viewer may desire, the film’s success in this case being determined by its emotional content (this always seemed to be Roger Ebert’s ultimate rule of thumb).

For my part, as someone who, after all these years, still falls on the Pro-Garris side of the fence, all I’d prefer to do right now is simply ask yet another question: ever try watching Garris’s version of The Stand with the color off?  No seriously, all TVs, most of them anyway, have a color setting on their screen, and you can adjust it all the way off if you want.  What follows is simply some observations on what happens when some moron with too much time on his hands decides to turn the color off and watch a black and white version of Garris’s Stand, just because it sounded like a cool idea to found out (in other words: lame!).

First Impressions
A word of warning, from here on in, things get pretty impressionistic, as I was always trying to balance paying attention to the story while at the same time trying to pay attention to the images on screen (something I’m not sure if I’ve really done before, however that may sound).  So if it sounds like things are wandering off point or I’m losing a thread somewhere, blame trying to juggle two things at once unsuccessfully.  Oh yeah, and the author’s to blame of course (rimshot!).

Viewing the miniseries on a purely visual aspect (bearing in mind it’s not my strong point), what strikes me first most of all is how quickly the visual style, minus color, easily jumps from one style to another depending on what the scene calls for.  For instance, it starts out with the breakout of Captain Trips, and the visual style is on par with those old 50s nuclear fallout movies from back when the Cold War was at its height, mixed with a little bit of the original George Romero NOTLD vibe.  Cut to Arnette, TX (“about 110 miles from Houston”) and now the style resembles something you might see in a Steinbeck film if it were crossed with something out of the Universal horror flicks of the 30s.  Cut back to another army sequence and the 50s fallout style is back, only this time reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove.  After a brief return to Steinbeck country, the visuals shift again into another mode as the army takes over the town, featuring footage that is similar to Vietnam documentary footage to a certain extent.  Next, we meet Larry Underwood, in footage of New York that recalls, of all things, Martin Scorsese.  The scenes in Ogunquit have a Frank Capra pastoral quality to them without any color to get in the way, and yet the overall gray tone gives the proceedings an ominous vibe.

Mother Abigail’s homestead is clearly revealed as an onstage set, and if you’re looking for more convincing Nebraska farm fields then the great irony is, yes, the Children of the Corn series probably looks more realistic (not real sure how to feel about that).  However, the set also conjures up memories of the kind of live action MGM or RKO fantasies spun out in the 40s by Robert Wise and Jacques Tourneur.  As for Stu’s escape from the medical facility, I can only I’m not kidding when I say the shot of him emerging from his cell reminded me of certain scenes from Ridely Scott’s original Alien, only in a dull clinical, unsettling monotone.  In fact, the lack of saturation gave the whole scene a genuinely creepy edge.

Things get Weird.
It was in watching part two that things sort of kicked into overdrive.  Starting with the introduction of Tom Cullen, I don’t if many realize just how fundamentally weird the character really is.  Our first sight of Tom is really a tableau of department store mannequins all arranged in a row of sorts in the middle of a small town main street.  I think in color the immediate reaction is that it’s either charmingly quirky or something like that.  Let me tell, in stark black and white it’s downright unnerving.  Maybe others will react differently, but I’ll swear nothing is saw suggested a mind that was in any way normal.  I know the character is supposed to have a mild mental handicap, yet I’ve also read him in comparison with the Trashcan Man, and what that suggests to me is that the two are in fact similar polar opposites.  There is something fundamentally wrong or off-kilter about the both of them, and yet one is good, while the other is an out of control train looking for a place to wreck.  What I saw made me think of what might happen if Tim Burton and David Lynch collaborated on a project.  Everything about the scene was just off kilter, and really I think it colored (pardon the pun) everything that came after.

For instance, there’s the Meeting Hall scene in Boulder.  Many fans may take this scene to task as one of King’s moment of unfortunate sentimentality.  Stripped of color, the scene is a cross between a Capra film and The Manchurian Candidate.  Instead of being bored by syrupy sentiment, I found myself slightly on edge with the uncertainty on display, and found myself thinking, “Well yeah, that’s all well and good, but what do you really want out of the American Experiment?”  Don’t how that must sound (I told you it would get weird).

There is another scene with Tom after this, and once more the weirdness of the character is more noticeable without color to get in the way.  Instead of being bright and cheerful, his house is drab and somewhat dark, decorated with several surreal brick-a-brack.  For instance, there are decorations of miniature nuns hanging from a light fixture over the middle of the table the characters are gathered round (no, I did not make that detail up, look closely and you’ll see them hanging there).  In fact, surreal is the word that pretty much sums up every scene that comes after.  The scenes with Harold and Nadine, in particular, now really have a sordid, sleazy noir feel about them.  The cumulative weirding out effect comes from the stark setting of Americana slowly being invaded by the fantastic, at least to all appearances.

As the final part of the show closes in, the barren Nevada landscapes take on the hallucinatory feel of an acid western, and there’s the scene in the washed out pit of a highway next to some old cars where Stu separates from the rest of the Stand Group.  I’ll swear it has the peculiar look and feel of both Bergman and Kurusowa, maybe even a little Samuel Beckett.  Yeah, it was all pretty surreal experience.  I wasn’t expecting any of that.

 Final Thoughts.
So, what effect does viewing Garris’s Stand in black and white have on the miniseries as a whole?  The answer, my answer anyway, is: not bad, really. 

To go into a bit more detail, I think watching the film sans color can at least highlight the surreal qualities of the work, or maybe it just makes things seem more surreal than they are.  For me, the whole experience of the story in black and white had a strangely hypnotic effect, and yet I remember wondering whether or not that was because viewing from a different angle just naturally lowered my defenses (whatever they are) and allowed me to take in more of the story than I normally would, or whether I was just letting the oddness of the bleached cinematography get to me at the expense of the story. 

In the end, I’ve come to the conclusion that even though the experience was worthwhile, it ultimately was more a stylistic exercise than anything else.  What tipped me into this realization was reaching the same stumbling block other fans have tripped over a million times before.  While the overall story of The Stand is more or less solid, the ending (in both the edited and restored versions of the novel, as well as the miniseries) still needs a bit of retooling after all these years.  When I felt the same sense of letdown at the literal deus ex machina denouement just like so many times before, I knew that black and white couldn’t save the ending, and that hence there was a big difference between style and substance.

This is something I’ve believed in for a long time, yet this de-Turner-ized viewing of the Garris miniseries just helped solidify it.  I’ve always felt that the writing of a story, even for film, is more important than whatever style it’s told in.  This may have been driven home to me when I first viewed two films by the same director, An American Tail and The Secret of Nimh, by Don Bluth.  Both films are pretty much gorgeous to look at, yet I was only drawn into the drama of Tail while to this day I find the story of Nimh lacking.  The reason why, I think, helps explain why I think The Stand ought to be appreciated on a story level, regardless of visuals.  The problem with both Nimh and King’s book is that they have a creditable buildup, yet the pay-off is sorely lacking, and all the little flourish of images never seemed enough to me to salvage things.

The funny thing is, no matter what its format, I can’t really say The Stand is a bad story.  It may be imperfect, yet in spite of this it holds up really well, even with a bit of a botched end.  I think the reason why is very simple.  In spite of its flaws, the rest of the story is very well written, and I think it is this more than the flaws which keep old readers (and viewers) coming back, while still managing to bring in new ones over the years.

While watching The Stand in black and white may be just a stylistic exercise, it might nonetheless be a profitable one for those interested in making the experiment.  In particular, it may help skeptics and naysayers by forcing them to look at the series in a different way.  In particular, it’s helpful to note that while the experiment manipulates the image, it doesn’t fundamentally change it in any great way.  Even more important, the story remains the same, in either book of film.  The trick here, as I see, is to realize the manipulated, therefore plastic, therefore treacherous, therefore less importance of the images, which take second place to the quality of the writing.  I think it’s an experiment well worth making, even aside from the novelties and interesting questions about entertainment it may raise.  Either way, the story still remains, and while it’s not perfect, I’d say it’s entertaining enough.

Top 5 Horror Anthology Films of All Time

Top 5 Horror Anthology Films of All Time

by  Brandon Engel 

If it wasn’t for fifties horror comics (especially EC titles like Tales From The Crypt and Haunt of Fear) it’s probably safe to say that horror movies and literature simply wouldn’t exist as we know them today. Stephen King is himself a huge fan of the comic format, and he has borrowed liberally from the influence of such works throughout the course of his career.

There have been many great horror anthology films over the decades, typically comprised of three to five short stories with wrap-around segments to stitch the disparate stories into one self-contained narrative. Many follow in the footsteps of the EC, while one title from the list below predates such comics, and might have, itself, influenced the format of the comic books.

Here is a look at the top five horror anthology films of all time.

5. Trilogy of Terror (1975)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RAxCWU4of0]

Originally made for ABC, the film is comprised of three short stories all written by Richard Matheson (author of I Am Legend and frequent contributor to The Twilight Zone). Actress Karen Black appeared as a different character in each segment. The most memorable sequence is the film’s closer, “Amelia,” about an upscale New Yorker who brings home a Zuni warrior fetish doll (which resembles a piranha with fearsome fangs and stringy black hair). There’s a golden band across the doll’s waist, and it’s said that if the band is removed, the dormant spirit which inhabits the doll will be unleashed. The segment is significant in the annals of movies with killer dolls, and was even once parodied in a Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror segment.

4. Dead of Night (1945)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86v2N-GffQM]

This was one of the only horror films made by the English Ealing Studios, and it’s often regarded as  one of the most inventive horror films of all time. A group meet for a weekend vacation, and one member of the group is plagued by a sense of the uncanny. This provides the narrative container, as each guest then relates a story about an eerie occurrence or dream they’ve had. The most famous sequence features Michael Redgrave as a psychotic ventriloquist who can’t seem to discern where his identity ends, and the identity of his doll “Hugo” begins.

3. Tales From The Darkside: The Movie (1990)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9lVoUKk-8Y]

The film was of course a spin-off of George Romero’s cult TV show, Tales From the Darkside (which is itself enjoying its own resurgence in popularity now that it can be streamed directly from DTV - see their website) and the feature film also features a story contribution from King himself, The Cat From Hell. The most memorable sequence features a woman who plots to cook her newspaper delivery boy. Even more memorable is the device used for the wrap arounds: a young man is telling these stories to distract a witch who intends to eat him. A technically well-executed and enjoyable horror omnibus in the Romero tradition.

2. Tales From the Crypt (1972)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3FpZEkaIS4]

Released by the British film studio Amicus, this take on the classic fifties horror comics offers wonderful performances from Hammer Horror icon Peter Cushing as an ostracised but nevertheless benevolent eccentric who is driven to suicide by the taunts of his community (only to come back as a vengeful zombie on Valentine’s Day) and the great Patrick Magee, who stars in a segment as blind man who exacts his revenge on a cruel administrator of an asylum for the blind. The film also features a segment about a monkey’s paw which gives its owner five wishes, as well as a story about the homicidal Santa Claus (the very same story which would serve as the basis for the Robert Zemeckis directed pilot of the HBO Tales From the Crypt series).

1. Creepshow (1982)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bO3gyT3Imc]

Written by Stephen King and directed George A. Romero, Creepshow is a highly-stylized tribute to EC comics, which even integrates comic book frames. The film opens with a father reprimanding his son (Joe King, Stephen’s actual son) for reading a gruesome comic book entitled Creepshow. This provides the container for the five vignettes, and among the most memorable are: “Father’s Day,” about a murdered father who returns from the grave to collect his father’s day “cake”, “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill,” which features a performance from King himself as an east coast bumpkin whose life is turned upside down when a meteor crashes in his backyard, and “The Crate”, a story about a blood-thirsty primate discovered in a crate under the stairs in a university which evokes Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue.

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Brandon Engel is a blogger in Chicago who writes about a variety of topics - everything from vintage exploitation films to energy legislation. Brandon has a penchant for horror literature, and his favorite authors within the genre include: H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Clive Barker, and, of course, Stephen King. Follow him on Twitter: @BrandonEngel2

Compare and Contrast: Stephen King and Arthur C. Clarke

by Brandon Engel

Meet Arthur Charles Clarke and Stephen Edwin King, Jupiter and Venus of the science fiction solar system. In 2005, the government of Sri Lanka designated Clarke Sri Lanka Abhimanyu, meaning “The Pride of Sri Lanka,” the highest civil honor in the country. The year before, the World Fantasy Convention bestowed upon King the Award for Life Achievement. No satellite explored further than the reaches of blackness that Clarke and King dived into with science fiction and fantasy literature.

But, the two had different notions of where the future of humankind led.

Stephen King: Scribe of Horror

In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes famously claimed that the state of nature of man was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Stephen King took Hobbes at his word. In King’s 2009 book, Under the Dome, an invisible dome barrier envelopes the small Maine town of Chester’s Mill. Thus isolated, the townsfolk pull a page from Lord of the Flies, with the climax of the story ending in asphyxiation and incineration. “I saw it as a chance to write about the serious ecological problems that we face in the world today,” said King. “The fact is we all live under the dome.”

Like many contemporary authors, King worried that short-term politics would upset the teeter-totter of technological equality. He extrapolated that concept in his 1982 work, The Running Man, the story of a desperate man, living in a state-sanctioned media-saturated dystopia, who wages his life in hopes of a $1 billion grand prize. Yet just as in Orwell’s 1984, the omniscience of technology thwarts Richards’ plans. What can Richards do against the Hunters, who draw from endless resources?

Or what if, suggested King in his 1986 horror film, Maximum Overdrive, machines were themselves malicious? In the movie, King’s only directorial effort and winner of a 1987 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director, machines come to life and launch a lethal vendetta against homo sapiens. King described his film as a “moron movie,” but nowhere else does he so blatantly suggest that one day, for reasons inexplicable, mankind may regret its first electrical transistor.

Arthur Clarke: Science Fiction Storyteller

Statistically speaking, King is in the minority. According to a Pew and Smithsonian research poll, some 59 percent of Americans believe coming technological changes will improve the future, while 30 percent hold the glass half empty. Those within the 59 percent are in good company with Arthur Clarke. A lifelong proponent and enthusiast of space travel, terraforming and computer networking, Clarke believed in a fundamental goodness of technology that would improve the human condition. “It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive,” he believed, “when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.”

Clarke was a pop prophet extraordinaire. He predicted satellite internet coverage that could be accessed from virtually anywhere, cloud computing, and in his seminal film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, he even predicted the iPad – or “newspad.” Most famously, Clarke popularized the concept of geostationary satellites for telecommunication purposes. Some of his more fantastic notions have yet to manifest, though, such as slave chimpanzees, bioengineered whales, suspended animation, and an earth-to-moon space elevator.

But some of Clarke’s most important words, which hint at the same fears King discussed, are rarely quoted. “As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals.” In his 1972 essay, for example, “Profiles of the Future,” he was quick to give wasteful transportation a thorough tongue-lashing. “In one lifetime they [automobiles] have consumed more irreplaceable fuel than has been used in the whole previous history of mankind. The roads to support them … cost as much as a small war; the analogy is a good one, for the casualties are on the same scale.”

Perhaps the truth lies between the two authors. The future is without form and void, and it is humans who will author its genesis, for where humans lead, technology follows.

* * * * * * * * * *

"Brandon Engel is a Chicago-based blogger whose favorite Stephen King book is either Hearts in Atlantis or The Shining. Follow him on Twitter: @BrandonEngel2"

King and Carpenter: A Match Made in Hell?

King and Carpenter: A Match Made in Hell?
by Brandon Engel

The most compelling monsters are the ones who illicit our deepest sympathies. John Carpenter’s The Thing, however, elicits sympathy in a surprisingly pathetic way: he got his ass handed to him by E.T.! The fearsome shape-shifter of Carpenter’s misanthropic visions just couldn’t hold his own in the box-office against Hollywood’s favorite doe-eyed, feeble weakling (no, not Spielberg, but the alien).

And it’s really too bad that the film didn’t enjoy a more dignified theatrical run, because a.) it deserved to and b.) the rumor is that if Carpenter’s film hadn’t tanked, he was going to be brought into direct a big-budget film adaptation of Stephen King’s Firestarter. And it’s really too bad, in a way, because the Firestarter film that ultimately was released was an enormous let down.

It didn’t prevent Carpenter and King from teaming up, however. Not long after the release of The Thing, Carpenter was recruited to direct a feature length adaptation of King’s Christine (1983), which tells the story of a bloodthirsty 1957 Plymouth Fury. This was perhaps, the most appropriate King story for a collaboration between the two men, and I say this for a couple of reasons. For one, King’s stories can become so involved, with so many characters introduced, that, in many situations, it would be impractical and distracting to compress all of them into a single film. One of the things that distinguishes Carpenter’s work on the whole is that he’s capable of telling captivating stories with very few principal actors (think Halloween, Dark Star, Starman, The Thing). Christine is a story with relatively few characters, and with much of the narrative tension borne out of the intensity of a few key relationships. For another thing, Carpenter is versatile in that he has shown a facility for both visually driven narratives (The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, Escape From New York) and narratives that downplay the importance of intense visuals and make economic use of what is not seen (Halloween especially). King has an extremely colorful imagination, and while there are certain images that he evokes successfully through his writing, attempts to translate these images directly to screen have in some instances, fallen short.

One of the things that becomes clear looking at the work of both men, is that Carpenter and King spoke the same language, and had many of the same cultural reference points. Both men drew liberally from the influences of EC Comics. Both men, in fact have spoken in interviews about the significance of those horror comics, and both men have paid tribute to them: King with Creepshow (1983) and Carpenter most directly with John Carpenter’s Body Bags (1993). Both men were also huge admirers of Ray Bradbury, who might have, in some way,s provided the seedling for the idea that would blossom into Christine. Ray Bradbury was a pre-eminent purveyor of cold-war era technophobia. Themes of rapidly evolving technology (amplified by the arms race between the states and the former U.S.S.R.) are prevalent in his work, and King and Carpenter have integrated elements of this into their work also.

While critical response to Christine was mixed up its initial release, the film has aged pretty well in many ways. After all, we live in an age of cars that can drive themselves, and wireless home security monitoring systems that control everything. One of the things that has perhaps kept it relevant to modern audiences is the fact that technology is still creepy. It’s creepier now than it’s ever been.

With Halloween season upon us here again, let’s toast to two masters of menace! And here’s to hoping that King will manage to pull Carpenter out of semi-retirement and provide him with a decent script to work off of (something that Carpenter, sadly, has been lacking for a few decades now)

................................

Brandon Engel is a Chicago-based blogger with a keen interest in all things horror. Among his favorite Stephen King novels are: Firestarter, Cujo, The Shining, Carrie, Hearts in Atlantis, and Misery. Follow him: @BrandonEngel2

Shaun Lawton's Review Of "Stephen King, A Face Among The Masters."

This is a review by Shaun Lawton of my book, "Stephen King, A Face Among The Masters."  It is also posted at amazon.com

If you've read the book, tell me what you think.

Here's  Shaun's review:

The Face Behind The Mask Revealed

Stephen King: A Face Among The Masters, by Brighton David Gardner, published earlier this year (2014) is a quite useful analysis of King's writing which I highly recommend to any one who loves to read fiction, regardless of whether they are a Stephen King fan or not.

To the "constant readers" of King, this overview of the author's history is indispensable. Gardner breaks his book down into eight chapters which trace King's development as a horror writer from his sensational first novel Carrie right up through his latest books.

One of the things that makes A Face Among The Masters such a great read is the fact the author himself is a "constant reader," and therefore very familiar with King's raison d'être. I myself who have been reading King since Salem's Lot was published gained a tremendous amount of insight into King's writing methodologies, thanks to Gardner's detailed analysis.

Gardner begins the book by describing King's extensive list of influences, among them past masters such as H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, and others. Gardner's keen insights really bring the reader into the shady realm that marks King's still evolving literary world. He also goes so far as to make a connection between King's novels and the films of Alfred Hitchcock by asking the reader to think about which Stephen King books would Hitchcock have loved to adapt. In this chapter, Gardner lists nine King books which would have made excellent Hitchcock movies; it's a compelling list and provides the reader with a lot of interesting insights.

Gardner goes on to associate King's writing style with the old television show The Twilight Zone, in Chapter 5. Once again the reader is guided by Gardner's deep knowledge of King towards understanding the integral connections the world's most famous horror author has with Rod Serling's classic TV series.

Chapter 6 guides the reader through the nearly forgotten world of radio plays, exemplified through the spooky narratives of Arch Oboler and Orson Welles. The various connections which Gardner makes between King's techniques and these old radio plays which held a nation in the grip of fear are wonderful and once again quite insightful.

Chapter 7: Dark Theologian is my favorite part of this book. In it, Gardner brings his extensive knowledge of theology to the table for what I consider to be the most enlightening chapter. He takes readers on a profound excursion focusing on the King novels The Green Mile, Pet Sematary, The Shining, Salem's Lot, The Stand, and The Dark Tower series. Brighton does a remarkable job of explaining to readers just how Stephen King has woven religious and spiritual themes into these narratives. The results are fascinating and represent one of the best reasons to read A Face Among The Masters.

In short, readers both familiar and unfamiliar with Stephen King's novels will find a motherlode of interesting information inside the pages of Brighton David Gardner's insightful and illuminating treatise. I can't recommend it enough, so be sure to get it either for your Kindle or e-Reader of choice, or buy the print version because it's easily worth twice the cover price.

If you're interested in learning more about Stephen King, be sure to visit Gardner's popular blog Talk Stephen King, you can Google it easily or just copy and paste the following url into your browser: http://talkstephenking.blogspot.com -- and maybe I'll see you there in the comments section. Gardner started this blog devoted to all things Stephen King five years ago, and he shows no signs of stopping or even slowing down. There is a plethora of interesting posts archived already, with more coming almost on a daily basis.

One of the reasons for this is the happy fact that the subject of mutual interest here is Stephen King, clearly the best-selling and most popular horror writer of all time. Brighton David Gardner's excellent book explains just why that is in an approachable and easygoing manner, and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Stephen King certainly does belong on the short list of the Grand Masters of literature, and may consider himself far more than just a mere horror writer or the "literary equivalent of a Big Mac." So don't hesitate to get your copy of Stephen King: A Face Among The Masters by Brighton David Gardner. I promise that you'll be glad you did.

Posted from: amazon.com/review

Grover Gardener: The Return of The Stand

This is good!  Grover Gardner, who has narrated LOTS of audio books, was the reader of both the abridged and unabridged editions of The Stand.  In a recent blog post, Gardner discussed the recent recording of the 1990 version of The Stand.

Mr. Gardner graciously gave me permission to reprint his blog post here.  It comes from Grovers Audiobook Blog, and was originally posted on February 14, 2012.  

The Return of The Stand

by Grover Gardner

Well, it's out on Audible today--Stephen King's The Stand. This is not the edited version I recorded twenty-five years ago, it's the complete, uncut edition published in 1990, all forty-eight hours of it! It took four weeks to record, and I had to pace myself so I wouldn't sound fatigued or thread-bare at any point. I'm pleased with the recording, though I'll be interested to see how it holds up against the earlier version in the memories of King devotees. The old version was only available on cassette and has been out of print for a decade or more. I still get emails from people asking if I have a copy they could borrow and duplicate for themselves. Alas, no, I never got one. But now there's no need. The new version is complete, and in my humble opinion I'm a better narrator than I was twenty-five years ago, so I was delighted to have a chance to re-record it.

There are few better writers for audiobook narration than Stephen King. He gives you all the right cues, creates wonderful characters, keeps the story moving and injects emotional twists and surprises at every corner. Never a dull moment in the booth with this guy.

The odd thing is, as I read the uncut version in preparation, I found that I remembered very little of the story and the characters. The opening scene remains vivid--the clunky old Chevy containing the first victims of the superflu plowing into a lonely little gas station in rural Texas. And I remember Randall Flagg (who could forget Randall Flagg?). But beyond that most of the book felt completely new to me. Perhaps it was the added material that threw me off, I don't know. But it's just as well, since there was no temptation to replicate any voices or characters or moods from the earlier recording. What you hear is as fresh as last month, not a recycled rendition from 25 years ago.

I'll be interested to see what "the critics" say. The proponderance of male characters seemed to hail from the Midwest or Southwest, so there were an awful lot of "good ol' boys" to sort through and make distinguishable. The most difficult characters for me were Harold and Frannie. Harold is a pimply, overweight, pompous-sounding 16-year-old, not an easy person to replicate. And eighteen-year-old Frannie is the emotional core of the book, enormously smart and feisty, but extremely vulnerable--and pregnant. I played around with a Maine accent for her and it sounded just awful, so I let my native East Coast tones predominate. A fifty-five year old man is already handicapped in this regard, and I didn't want her to come off as a caricature. So she's voiced in a pretty straight-forward manner. I gave her father and some of the other Ogunquit characters a dose of down-east, so hopefully that will placate the die-hards.

My favorite character, of course, is Tom Cullen (who doesn't love Tom Cullen?). In the uncut version he really gets fleshed out, and it's truly wonderful to experience his transformation from a fool to a hero. In one critical scene I took a risk that, under normal circumstances, I would have avoided like...well, like the plague. But to do other than what I did seemed like such a cop-out that I took the plunge. I'm curious to see if anyone even notices--and whether they like it or hate it.

But by far the biggest, most overwhelming challenge, of all the challenges in a story so fraught with them, was that of coming up with seventy-plus ways of saying, "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" It seems that every character, at some point in the book, shouts or screams or bellows or rasps the word, "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Anyway, it was a terrific experience and it's great to have the story out there again for everyone to enjoy.
.....................
reposted from March 2, 2012

Swanson Reflects On King's Impact

How has Stephen King impacted the world of writing?  Like an earthquake. Often when reading King I've thought, "I didn't know you could do that!"  I mean, I always  wanted to -- I just didn't know it was allowed.  And maybe it wasn't, until King did it.

Here is Jeremiah Swanson's article about King's influence on his own writing.  Swanson is author of, And Death Will Seize The Doctor.

I first became aware of King in the mid 80’s, watching his movies when they came on cable back when having cable was a big deal. I remember watching his movies while hunched over greasy pizza boxes and grape sodas, munching away as his newest (to me, anyway) monster or cult or dog or car or kid with psychic powers caused mayhem behind the safety of my television screen.

I always loved King. Even before I knew what a genre was, I knew I loved the kind of stories he told, horror stories. I understood, long before I could articulate, the truth behind all good horror stories, the truth that is so present in all of King’s works. That truth is simplicity itself: people want to live. No matter how dark or scary it gets, people have a drive for life. That truth is what all good horror is about; awakening and sharpening the instinct, drive and desire for life. In our daily grinds we can sometimes get to where we forget we are alive at all; that we are unique beings here but for a short time and when we’re gone, will be gone forever. But in King’s work-as in life when we have a near miss on the highway or are sitting in the doctor’s office waiting nervously for her to come back with the results- we are shocked into being reminded that we are alive, now, but there is also this thing called death that always seemed somehow far and mythical but now is suddenly very close and very real. We are reminded how we so very much want to keep on living. We are reminded of just how much death will be taking from us, and we are spurred on to fight it.

Even in a world overflowing with the horrible beasties and circumstances his amazing imagination can fill them with, there is something incredibly life affirming about his characters who do not give up, who keep on fighting, who keep on wanting to live even after it seems they’ve lost everything worth living for, and indeed, any chance of living at all.

The story that encapsulated that drive the most was Cujo, the tale (pun?) that did for me with neighborhood dogs what Jaws did for generations of beach goers. I always thought Cujo was scarier than Jaws, actually. With Cujo, you couldn’t just get out of the water. In fact, with Cujo, you couldn’t even get out of your car. Not even if you were broken down in sweltering heat with your son dying beside you, he wouldn’t let you out. You had to hold on and find a way, or succumb and die.

The movie was much kinder than the book. (SPOILER ALERT) In the movie the lead character escapes with her son. In the book, the boy dies. I must say, I always found the book’s ending more…I don’t want to say satisfying, but perhaps edifying than the movie’s. I was always more interested in the consequences of violence and the costs to survivor’s who opt not to be overwhelmed, who try to live with their guilt, than with the violence itself. King always does this better than most other writers, and I credit his portrayal of these circumstances as having a huge influence on my writings, particularly in my book, And Death Will Seize the Doctor, Too.

In my story, Christian Thompson has the power to heal with a touch of his hand, but for every person he cures, he must first kill someone else.

His talents grant him entry into a secret organization with other paranormally gifted people who help him try to use his gift for the greater good. His handlers create a situation for him where he can extract the life from death row inmates after staged executions. He hates the idea of killing, but if taking the life of someone who was going to be executed anyway meant the lives of others can be saved, he’ll do it. While killing never gets easy, over time, it does get easier. Tolerable. Until he discovers one of the men he killed was actually innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. He is so overcome with guilt he quits, vowing to never take another life. For years he sticks by that promise, but when a person he loves becomes deathly ill, he has to come back for one last job. And when he does, he is forced by circumstances to commit a murder so horrible, so ghastly that he knows he can never wash himself clean again. But he also knows he can never stop trying. He doesn’t have that right.

That type of impossible situation and relentless drive in the face of hopelessness is one of the hallmarks of Stephen King’s writing. And while I do not pretend at all to have his talent for portraying it, I am eternally grateful for his being able to do it so well that it made me even want to try.

AND DEATH WILL SEIZE THE DOCTOR, TOO is available now at: 
 AMAZON.COM

The Shining by Stephen King (1977): Now I Wanna Be a Good Boy

I really like Will Errickson's blog, Too Much Horror Fiction.  It's like a cave full of horror books from the 60's and 70's.

I also enjoyed this article  on The Shining, which he declared, "unputdownable."  I think it's insightful.  And is reposted here with permission.

By the way, the first cover Errickson posted (the silver) is the version I first read.  I never liked that faceless, silver cover -- but the book grabbed me anyway.  My favorite is actually the first edition.  I wish they would print a paperback with that cover.

Reviews and insights on The Shining are all the more fun now that we have Doctor Sleep.

Be sure to check out, toomuchhorrorfiction.blogspot.co.uk

The Shining by Stephen King (1977): Now I Wanna Be a Good Boy

by Will Errickson

Although it may be Stephen King's most famous horror novel and certainly the one that made him a household name, I must confess that for many years, The Shining was not a novel I really liked. It was never a book that I revisited as I did with many of King's other works, although I knew its reputation was stellar. About five years ago I skimmed through a copy and was even more disheartened as it seemed to me - yes, it's true - poorly written and conceived. Well, I don't know what the hell I was smoking: I picked up my recently-acquired Signet '78 first-edition paperback (only edition with that fantastic, yet easily faded, Mylar cover) on Friday morning, ready to give it another try and... could barely put it down all weekend: this time I got it. I raced through The Shining and barely gave myself the time to jot down a note or page number. It is awesome fun to find that a reread of a once-dismissed book is so rewarding. If you haven't read King, The Shining would be a fine intro.

Original 1977 hardcover

Do I even need to recount the plot and the characters? Jack Torrance is a struggling writer, trying to create believable people and conflicts in his play, when he's had no shortage of conflict in his life. His alcoholism has put serious rifts in his relationships with his wife Wendy and five-year-old son Danny; he's lost his job as prep school English instructor; he's also had two very grave moments of violence. But all that, he hopes - they all hope - that's in the past now that he's hired to be the winter caretaker for the Overlook Hotel, thanks to an huge favor from an old drinking buddy who's cleaned up. Sitting high atop a frigid, panoramic Colorado mountain, the enormous hotel is closed for the season and the only occupants will be the Torrance family.

Jack's feelings of inadequacy are front and center in the opening chapter, in his humiliating job interview with that infamous officious little prick, Mr. Ullman (one of my favorite scenes in the book is when Jack calls Ullman and tells him he's going to write a book about the history of the Overlook and Ullman freaks the fuck out). But Jack knows it's time to do right by his family, and taking this job is the classic point of starting over. He's not drinking and he's writing again, but Jack's about to go on one hell of a dry drunk, and have one motherfuck of a writer's block.

UK hardcover 1977

As for "the shining" itself: Danny's psychic power comes in the form of Tony, a little boy a bit older than Danny who appears inside mirrors and as a tiny shadow down a midnight street, always with some bit of information that Danny would have no other way of knowing. It is this ability of Danny's that the Overlook "wants," so it "employs" Jack's troubled past as it spurs Jack on to murder his family, to truly own the Overlook and inherit its foul nature. You almost ache for Danny, who so wants to please his parents, his daddy most of all (which makes Wendy feel guiltily jealous), who wants his daddy to be well and not do the Bad Stuff. King is great at getting inside kids' heads, their goggle-eyed yet strangely rational perception of the strange adult world that surrounds them.

Thematically, The Shining is one of King's richest. Yes, the Overlook Hotel is a repository of human evil; Jack knows this when, in the basement, he finds the scrapbook containing clippings of its unsavory past. Generations pass on their faults; sons pay for their father's transgressions. Abuse becomes a family trait. These are all very much in the grand tradition of haunted house and Gothic tales. Jack's creativity suffers; the real first sign of his madness is a complete 180-degree reversal of his feelings towards his play's characters. The relationship between Jack and Danny is mirrored in the memories of Jack's relationship with his own father, as both are fraught with a heartbreaking mixture not only of love and concern, but also of violence and alcoholism.

UK paperback 2007

It is the back-story in which King *ahem* shines, as he reveals what he wants when he wants for maximum impact. There's the Overlook's blood-drenched past, of course. We get glimpses throughout the novel of Jack's fearsome father, as well as harrowing moments from his drinking days with a colleague. The tortuous memory of accidentally breaking little Danny's arm plagues him, as does his beating of a debate student of his whom he had to kick off the debate team because of a stutter. Both Danny and this student had destroyed something of Jack's: Danny, as a toddler, pours beer over the manuscript of Jack's play, while the student slashes Jack's car tires. He was drunk when abusing Danny but sober when attacking the student, but no matter: it's all Jack Torrance.

UK paperback 1984

The novel is easily one of the most "unputdownable" - wretched word - I've ever read, at least it was this read. The pacing is relentless, lulling you at one moment and then shocking you the next. Suspense wracks up in the final chapters by interlacing chapters on the family's last stand against Jack - or whatever he is at that point - with Dick Hallorann's journey through the snowstorm, the Overlook head cook who also has "the shining" and is heeding Danny's psychic call. But still, we must ask: are there faults in The Shining? Of course. King's writing can be thin in places, too familiar, too pedestrian; there are times where a character's feelings of horror are told to us, instead of simply letting the horrific scenarios speak for themselves. The constant italicized interior thoughts, or maybe too many flashbacks. That final chapter, perhaps (King has intimated he may write a sequel).

Holy shit, they made a movie out of it?!

But these are to quibble; when you're reading King you know you're not getting an elegant flight of poetic prose or a delicately composed novel of modern manners and foibles. Fuck no! You're getting shrieking blasts of icy terror happening to real people. That might sound like one of the myriad cheesy critical blurbs from the first page ("REAL SCARE-ABILITY!" "DELICIOUSLY SHIVERY READING!" "BACK-PRICKLING!") but I don't know how else to phrase it. My moments of fear? When the wasps come back. When Jack hears his dead father's voice on the radio. When the unmanned elevator starts to clank into use. When Danny enters Room 217. When Wendy turns around and sees Jack. When the long-dead masquerade party guests screech "Unmask! Unmask!" and reveal rotting insect faces...

Mmm, now that's good horror, from a good little boy.

 
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