stephen king c/d?

in some of the same locations

i approve of stuff like this, it's oulipian and thickens the textures

How's Creepshow? I heard that's actually ok

It's a hair above average, iirc. Pretty boilerplate, but has its moments, gruesome and macabre. Monster in a box, fuzzy plants from space ...

Yeah, some of them are better than others, but overall I enjoyed it. It's been years since I've seen it though and always get it mixed up with Cat's Eye.

Also has its moments! Cigarette smoking, ledge bet ...

I think Creepshow is mediocre but some people really love it. See it for the funny stuff, if anything.

I bought the reissue of the Creepshow comic this year and was pretty bored.

Yeah, the Amicus Tales from the Crypt movie is my favourite EC comics inspired portmanteau horror flick

Creepshow is kinda like from dusk till dawn in that it's two nerdy guys just having fun

I liked it a lot when I was about 14 but haven't seen it since (& never saw any of the sequels)

It's classic for King's acting if nothing else

2/3 of cats eye is good, the third story & framing device is really dumb & bad

xp: yeah, the Jordy Verrill bit is definitely a highlight.

I saw Creepshow last year for the first time probably since it was new, at a local theater's "12 Hours of Terror" Halloween marathon, and was surprised how much I still enjoyed it. The first segment is a little meh, although it was fun to see a young Ed Harris. But the rest is pretty camp/scary greatness.

I'd be shocked if nobody has made a gif of Ed Harris dancing.

Creepshow is the only certifiable "cult classic" in the King filmography. Carrie and The Shining are the best, but Creepshow is my favorite.

I *really* liked Gerald's Game. It highlighted for me why I like Flanagan's movies so much - a real facility for digital effects, strong performance, and he never loses sight of the adult themes being tapped into, even when it gets silly (eg the Scooby Doo ending, which I gather is derived from the book?)

Also: it was almost uncomfortably timely, *that scene* was appropriately squirm-inducing, and Henry Thomas was really good and infuriating in his few scenes

Agreed on all of that. I almost never flinch at OTT gore, and *that scene* made me avert my eyes. I texted my wife while I was watching this (she had no interest) and said "Elliot from ET is in this and he is NOT nice."

The ending is, indeed, right out of the book, almost verbatim from the page. Weirdly, the makeup for that character matched in my head how I always pictured Baldanders from Gene Wolfe's "New Sun" books. Like it was pulled straight from my brain.

He's also really good as a very different character on Better Things.

Thinner is one of the most compellingly terrible films I've ever seen, in a way you only seem to get with Stephen King movies. Might be the best worst one

the book was p disturbing when i read it aged about 12.

I'm a third of the way into Revival and, if I hadn't already heard about the ending being ultramegableak, I honestly would've assumed I was reading something more along the lines of the novellas in Different Seasons. It doesn't code as anything even slightly resembling horror at this point. Which is probably a great way to set the stage if you really want to pull the rug out from under someone.

Oh, yeah. Keep a-readin'.

he never loses sight of the adult themes being tapped into, even when it gets silly

i absolutely didn't feel this -- i felt he never really had them genuinely in sight in the first place (the gerald-related themes or the childhood-related themes); to me they felt like atmospheric devices at best* and after "that scene" they p much vanished from the film's concerns (the "letter to my younger self" device was more an evasion than anything, less effective even than the daft scooby-doo conclusion**, bcz so sententiously pious; in general, "bad device but straight from the book" isn't a much of a get-out clause when you're making a film)***

*i minded this less re the S&M-to-save-a-marriage tbh; we were never given the slightest hint of a reason to mind abt gerald, but he was such a charmless up-himself pill i didn't care (in a better film i wd perhaps have been more torn) -- i was really bothered by how plotline functional the damaged childhood was though -- it ended up feeling there to set up a sleight-of-hand so that you assumed Moonlight Man was figments, palpably affective yes, but only bcz she had good historical reason to be afraid of the dark
**i also disliked the acromelagy = you are seen as a monster by others = actually fuck it yr the worst kind of monster all-round (tho as i said upthread, there was a moment -- where MM echoed what jessie had said to him -- that you could read as a kind of mirroring and hence a brief glimpse into his hell and misery, the idea that she had perhaps been a haunting figment to him
***the fact that several different ppl have said they really liked it probably means i will rewatch at some point, through another's eyes, as it were -- maybe there's enough distance from the unrelieved dislikability of literally every character except the excellent dog

i also disliked the acromelagy = you are seen as a monster by others = actually fuck it yr the worst kind of monster all-round

The use of a character w/ acromegaly was a bit distasteful but I liked there being an explanation as an extension of revealing what's hidden - Gerald and his rape/domination fantasies, the truth of her childhood abuse, the true nature of MM, and how silence and ambiguity can work to oppress

I also liked how the dog was handled, and tbh it's one of the few survival movies of this kind where nothing the main character does was inexplicably stupid

last is def true, yes -- in a desperate pinch she was good at level-headed puzzle-solving, coping and just keeping on keeping on

(when she ended up where she ended up, and the torchlights were bobbing thru the wood, i had a flashback to texas chainsaw, where the central character -- also good at keeping on -- escape and flees, but straight back into their clutches…)

um hello she THREW AWAY THE WATER 😤

I don't remember her doing that?

she was ordered to by one of the voices in her head that we didn't meet, possibly her imagined version of the dog

There was water left in the glass that she was saving for later and when she got the idea to smash it she first tipped the remaining water out, for no reason, while dying of thirst

tbh I hope I'm remembering this wrong because the way I remember it is deeply upsetting, maybe the most upsetting thing I'll see all year

enh there was like 80ml left at that point

And she was about to either be free or bleed to death. The water in the glass didn't factor into the equation.

What's wrong with drinking the water tho

there's blood in it iirc

Hydration is very important people

Our bodies are 70 percent water it's the stuff of life

What if the very water you’re made of is EVIL, tho? That’ll make you go bump-de-bump in the night.

pfft

"evil water" that's preposterous

"secret electricity" now you're talking!

https://www.theonion.com/bangor-police-bring-in-stephen-king-to-help-track-demon-1820848385

cute!

Inspired by this thread, I went back & re-read the early short stories (Night Shift & Skeleton Crew) after about 25 King-free years. Some pretty good ones in there - The Mist is all-time. Feeling like I should read something I haven’t read before or my brain will atrophy, though - anyone got any recommendations for mid/late-period King? I think the last book of his I read before abandoning him was The Dark Half, so anything after that would be fair game.

Out of the mists of time, I think my favourites of his were The Shining, The Dead Zone, The Stand (tho god knows what I’d think of it now). Maybe I should just pick a book of his starting with “The” and go for it.

Revival is really good. I also liked Duma Key and 11/22/63, and Under The Dome is better than the show.

i'd say 11/22/63 and Full Dark, No Stars

seconding Duma Key, especially if you were a fan of his in the long-ago. it reminded me of the style of his early work where he leads you gently through innocuous familiar stuff into a weeeeiiirirdass nightmare

i think 11/22/63 is great too but for yr needs might be better suited if you don’t want classic King with a capital K

full dark would be interesting to read back-to-back w night shift.

The talisman is great and if you dig it then launch into the follow up black house

Duma Key and Revival would probably be among my top ten King novels.

i need to read revival

Fantastic, thanks!

Oh, I forgot to check back in after finishing Revival. My dissenting opinion is that it was fine overall but ultimately an interesting failure, inasmuch as its construction hinged entirely on King sticking the landing (which, I think we can agree, is not his strong suit). It's possible that I'm judging it harshly against a lot of the early 20th Century weird fiction which inspired it and which I was reading around the same time.

Didn't know there was such respect for Duma Key. Just ordered a copy; gonna enjoy reading a book I know absolutely nothing about.

11/22/63 is a fun, easy read, but it's empty calories, and takes a long time to go exactly where you know it's going. Under The Dome was much more satisfying for me. Faster plotting, more unexpected twists (a dog that sees ghosts!), sharper writing and just this overarching sense of chaos. I wouldn't compare it to early King, but it does seem like peak late-period King to me.

Under the Dome felt like The Stand for most of the novel in structure & pacing, characters etc but with a waay worse farty ending which kinda ruined the whole thing for me