It is a bit of cinematic shorthand developed by De Palma specifically for Carrie that now occurs with stultifying regularity in virtually all of the later movies made from King's books.
I submit this bogus technique is further evidence that, flensed of characterization and allegory, what the makers of these morbid exploitation films are left with does not suffice to create anything resembling the parent novel, however fudged for visual translation. And so fangs are added, eviscerations are added, sprayed blood is added; subtlety is excised, respect for the audience is excised, all restraint vanishes in an hysterical rush to make the empty and boring seem scintillant.
Children of the Corn is merely the latest validation of the theory; or as Cinefantastique said in its September 1984 issue: "King's mass-market fiction has inspired some momentous cinematic dreck, but Children of the Corn is a new low even by schlock standards."
Of the nine films that originated with Stephen King's writings, only three (in my view, of course, but now almost uniformly buttressed by audience and media attention) have any resemblance in quality or content—not necessarily both in the same film—to the parent: Carrie, The Shining and The Dead Zone.
The first, because De Palma had not yet run totally amuck and the allegorical undertones were somewhat preserved by outstanding performances by Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie.
The second, because it is the vision of Kubrick, always an intriguing way of seeing, even though it is no more King's The Shining than Orson Welles's The Trial was Kafka's dream.
(The sort of people who call Kubrick's version of King's The Shining "self-indulgent" are the same kind of people who think secular humanism is a religion, or that there is some arcane merit in astrology. If I hear "self-indulgent" used once more as a pejorative, violence will follow. Listen very carefully: what else is Art but self-indulgence?
(Only the blamming of rivets into Chrysler door panels escapes the denotation "self-indulgent." The Sistine Chapel ceiling is the artistic self-indulgence of Michelangelo; Moby-Dick was Melville's self-indulgence; sculptor Gutzon Borglum indulged himself by creating Mount Rushmore National Memorial; and bombing Pearl Harbor was the self-indulgence of Japan's prime minister, Hideki Tojo. The former trio of artistic "self-indulgences" brought their creators fame and approbation; the latter "work of art," World War II, got its architect hanged as a war criminal. There is a lesson here.
(It seems somehow beyond the intellectual grasp of those who widely disseminate their opinions on cinema, that King's The Shining is not Kubrick's The Shining, any more than Kafka's The Trial is Orson Welles's The Trial; but all four of these creations of a superior, individual intellect bear the stamp of High Art. Kubrick is one of only seven real directors in the world. By that I mean superior beyond comparison. All the rest are craftspersons of greater or lesser merit, but simply not touched by the divine madness suffusing every frame of work by these seven. That to which Kubrick turns his hand becomes, despite your affection for the original, something different, something equally as great as the original. In some cases, greater: Capra's Lost Horizon beats out James Hilton's famous novel of the same name by a dozen light-years.
(Apart from Jack Nicholson making a meal of the sets and situation, foaming and frothing to a fare-thee-well, I am nothing less than nuts about Kubrick's film.)
The third, because David Cronenberg as director is the only one of the field hands in this genre who seems artistically motivated; and because Christopher Walken as the protagonist is one of the quirkiest, most fascinating actors working today, and his portrayal of Johnny Smith is, simply put, mesmerizing.
But of Cujo's mindlessness, Christine's cheap tricks, Firestarter's crudeness, 'Salem's Lot's television ridiculousness, Children of the Corn's bestial tawdriness and even Steve's own Creepshow with its intentional comic book shallowness, nothing much positive can be said. It is the perversion of a solid body of work that serious readers of King, as well as serious movie lovers, must look upon with profound sadness.
We have had come among us in the person of Stephen King a writer of limitless gifts. Perhaps because Stephen himself has taken an attitude of permissiveness toward those who pay him for the right to adopt his offspring, we are left with the choices of enjoying the written work for itself, and the necessity of ignoring everything on film . . . or of hoping that one day, in a better life, someone with more than a drooling lust for the exploitation dollar attendant on Stephen King's name will perceive the potential cinematic riches passim these special fantasies. There must be an honest man or woman out there who understands that King's books are about more than fangs and blood.
All it takes is an awareness of allegory, subtext, the parameters of the human condition . . . and reasonable family resemblance.
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction / December 1984
INSTALLMENT 5:
In Which The Left Hand Giveth Praise And The Right Hand Sprayeth For Worms Of Evil
I have suffered for your sins, children. I have seen Buckaroo Banzai (20th Century Fox). So you don't have to. An unintelligible farrago of inaudible sound mix, bad whitefolks MTV video acting, blatant but hotly denied ripoff of the Doc Savage crew and ouevre spiced with swipes from Mike Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius stories, a plot that probably makes sense only in Minkowski Space, six funny lines, four clever sight gags, and billions of dollars' worth of promotional hype such as Big Brother-style rallies at sf conventions—all intended to make this "an instant underground cult classic."
Were you to fail to heed my warning, you might go to see this village idiot of a movie; and you might go back to see it three or four times more in an effort to unravel a storyline in which mindlessness reaches deification and in an effort to decode the garbled soundtrack; all in aid of gleaning some sense from a film you'll be told is "fresh and innovative."
But if you are thus foolhardy, you will find yourself at one with Brother Theodore's monologue about rats, in which he says: "You can train a rat. Yes, if you work for hours and days and months and years, you can train a rat. But when you're done, all you'll have is a trained rat!"
This has been a homiletic analogy. God knows I've done all I can.
What Buckaroo Banzai pretends to be (and with the pretense brings new meaning to the word boredom), Repo Man (Universal) sure as hell is. Cleverly constructed, freshly mounted, engagingly acted, bizarrely inveigling and, in the words of Pliny the Younger, sui generis. Ninety-two minutes of enthusiastically nihilistic anarchy.
This is a first feature for writer-director Alex Cox and as a virgin effort indicates arrival on the cinematic scene of a quirky, elitist (in the positive sense) intelligence worthy of our close attention. Through word-of-mouth prior to its initial release, I had been advised there was "something special" going on in Repo Man, and I shouldn't miss it. As I had not been as warm to Quadrophenia or Liquid Sky—"punk" films about which I'd heard raves—as I'd hoped to be, I didn't expect much from Repo Man. In fact, as a "control" element of viewing, I took along both a devotee of the music of Steve Reich (which music makes my headbone throb) and a Jewish American Princess. My thought was that these disparate world-views would provide insights into my own opinion. The overage new-waver burbled with joy, and the Beverly Hills materialist grew more and more bewildered. But when we emerged from the screening, both admitted the film refused to let go of their risibilities.
My Reichfreak contends Repo Man is about belief systems. My social butterfly insists it's about people purposely alienating themselves from reality.
I think both of them have too much book-larnin'. This movie is about Otto, a spike-haired layabout who falls in with Bud, a car repossessor; falls in lust with Leila, one of the happyface-wearing numbers of the Smiley cult who live by the tenets of a philosophy to be found in the book Dioretix: The New Science of the Mind; falls into trouble with the thuglike car thieves, the Rodriguez Brothers, with Agent Rogersz and her cadre of secret service bloodhounds, with his ex-buddies of the pink&purple hair set whose co
llective social conscience is best expressed by Duke, who says, "Let's go do some crimes," to which Archie responds, "Yeah, let's go order sushi and not pay," and falls into the middle of a situation in which the burned-out nuclear scientist J. Frank Parnell tries to stay ahead of all or some or none of the above who are trying to filch his '64 Chevy Malibu, in the trunk of which reside deadly aliens who can fry you to taco chips with a hellish blast of light.
That's what it's about.
And get away from me with that strait jacket.
If for no other reason—and don't tell me the plot as outlined above doesn't make you go squishy all over—the acting by the inimitable Harry Dean Stanton as Bud, and Emilio Estevez as Otto makes this a don't-miss flick. Throughout my screening of the film I kept mumbling, "That kid playing Otto is a dead ringer for the young Martin Sheen, even the way he walks, the way he stands, jeez it's uncanny," until my maven of minimalist music thumped me and pointed out that Marty Sheen's real name is Estevez, and that Emilio is his kid. Oh.
Dozens of little touches in the movie provide a deranged superimposed reality that draws nothing but admiration: all the food is generic, including blue-striped cans that are simply labeled FOOD; Otto's family is mesmerized by TV evangelist Reverend Larry and his Honor Roll of the Chariots of Fire; no faintest touch of sentimentality is permitted onscreen distraction, as when Otto is about to fly off with the aliens and Leila screams, "But what about our relationship?" and Otto remains true to the tone of the film by replying, "Fuck that!"
Repo Man, when first released, drew such confused reviews that Universal pulled it back quickly. But true madness cannot long be squelched by the mentality of accountants; and now this looney thing has been let loose again. Look around and find it. Unless you are one of those dismal unfortunates who thinks Jerry Lewis is funny, you are guaranteed a filmic experience that can only be compared, in terms of a good time, with watching Richard Nixon sweat on television.
Ghostbusters (Columbia), as most of you know, was the box-office smash of the summer. Good. It is more wonderful than one would have expected from the directorial paws of Ivan Reitman, source of Cannibal Girls, Animal House, National Lampoon's Vacation and Heavy Metal, among other class acts.
But Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, Annie Potts and Dan Aykroyd all running amuck chasing demonic presences in what starts out to be an urbane yet cockeyed slapstick fantasy that smoothly turns into something Lovecraft might have scripted if he'd beaten the Man with the Scythe and lived on into the era of SFX, provide Reitman with such a gobbet of goodies that Ghostbusters emerges as one of those films you see again and again for mounting pleasure.
Had I not spent two columns on the Stephen King essay, and had I not been captured by extraterrestrials masquerading as Moonies, who spirited me away to their underground lair beneath Orem, Utah, where they tortured me with Naugahyde and hot fudge sundaes, thereby causing me to miss my deadline last issue (you don't think I was intentionally late, do you?)—I'd have had this review of Ghostbusters to you in time for you to have made an informed viewing decision, rather than just stumbling across it in the twelve hundred theaters where it was blockbooked through the hot months.
And you'd also have gotten my vituperative observations about an evil little item called Gremlins. But that will have to wait till next time, when We Who Have Gone Blind From Watching Awful Films On Your Behalf return with the startling conclusion of (wait for it) Worms of Evil!
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction / January 1985
INSTALLMENT 6:
In Which We Learn What Is Worse Than Finding A Worm of Evil In The Apple
Some of us are better than the rest of you. Oh, yes we are. One who is better than the rest of you is a guy who lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, name of John G. Maguire. And John G. is better than most of you because not only won't he support corrupt films by buying a ticket to something he's been told overandoverandover is The One Not To Miss!!!, but he can smell the puke smell made by the Worms of Evil and he protects his kids from such movies.
Not in the Falwell m.o. that entails the burning of books and the regimenting of thought and the stifling of imagination, but with a sense of responsibility toward the lives he helped bring into the world. That used to be called being a good father.
And that makes John G. better than lots of you who went, like the pod-people you are, right into the burrows of the Worms of Evil.
You were warned, not just twice by me, but by dozens of other film critics all over America, who advised you in clear, precise language that could not be misunderstood: stay away from Gremlins (Warner Bros.); it is a corrupt thing, vicious at its core; meanspirited and likely to cause harm to your moral sense. Specifically you were warned: keep little kids away from this thing. Don't equate the frights it can cause youthful, plastic minds with the tolerable terror you cherish from your first viewing of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs when you were an impressionable tot. This ain't the same frisson. But you went, anyhow, didn't you?
And that makes John G. Maguire leagues better than the rest of you. Better than those of you I've seen in theaters, late at night, last show, with a kid half-dozing in the seat beside you, watching violent movies and teaching your kid to applaud wildly when some stunt double gets blown apart by a shotgun blast, when the Trans Am of the bad guy gets bulldozed over a cliff and tumbles and tumbles and impacts on the hillside and disintegrates into a flaming hell flower. I've seen you, and I know Falwell's got you in his pocket, with your viciousness and your sanctimoniousness. And I dote on the goodness of John G. Maguire.
How do I know about John G. Maguire? I know about him because he wrote to this magazine between the time of my first warning in this column (October 1984) and when I sat down to write this critique; and he said, "I appreciated your warning-off on Gremlins. I haven't seen the movie. I read a promo about it in Newsweek and decided not to take my kids to it: too vicious. Any movie that seems too vicious for me is too much for my kids. I'm old-fashioned like that."
Good for you, John G. No pod-person you.
But as for the rest of you, those of you who have happily contributed to Gremlins doing more than $143,000,000 worth of box-office in the first fifteen and a half weeks of its theatrical release . . . as you sat there watching the ripping and rending . . . did it cross your mind that Gremlins might be less significant as a cinematic event than it is as a grotesque breach of trust with all the kids who hear Spielberg and think E.T.? And if you can desist for a moment from the kneejerk animosity this attack on your bad taste boils up in you, could you give the barest consideration to the concept that one definition of evil is the manipulation of human emotions to support and excuse the excesses of dishonest art?
Understand: gremlins are a mythic construct toward which I am particularly well-disposed. Few of you out there will have heard of a 1943 Walt Disney production, Victory Through Air Power, but that film contained a marvelous episode titled "The Gremlins" (which, with artwork based on the animation cels, appeared as a children's book from Random House that year; a children's book written by a certain Flight Lieutenant Roald Dahl: I still own that book). It was my first exposure to the concept of gremlins, and even at the age of nine, which was what I was in 1943, 1 resonated to the idea. Dinosaurs, lost lands, the Titanic, gremlins.
Gremlins, like Kilroy, were the creation of a modern world needing modern mythology. I didn't understand (nor had I, in fact, ever heard of) the dialectical function, Joseph Campbell's cosmological symbolism, Jungian archetypal images or the universal psychic structure called The Trickster. But I knowed gremlins was real neat. Me loved they puckish pranks. Not just as Disney fifinellas and widgets, but as a character on a radio program I listened to every Saturday morning: Smilin' Ed McConnell's Buster Brown Gang, featuring Froggy the Gremlin.
No one who remembers the famous phrase, "Plunk your magic Twanger, Froggy!" could suspect this reviewer of anything but an overwhelmingly positive attitude as I sat the
re in the pre-release screening of Gremlins.
Further: while I am of a mixed mind about the Spielberg canon, having known him since his days on the Universal TV payroll, I would have to say that I'm solidly in his camp. (For the record—and you'll understand in a moment why I go into such minutiae—I admire the following Spielberg films: Duel, Sugarland Express, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. I'm not even as great a critic of 1941 as the rest of the world seems to be; it had its whacky moments and I think Steve need not be too bothered that it didn't turn out as he'd intended. My favorite film from the Spielberg factory is, oddly enough, an associational item, as is Gremlins: the vastly underrated and strangely unsung Poltergeist, which I view as a Tobe Hooper film, influenced by Spielberg. On the other side of the ledger I confess to a dislike of much of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Twilight Zone—The Movie.)
Thus, my remarks here about Gremlins should not be construed as part of a pattern of denigrating what it is Steven Spielberg turns out. I offer the foregoing as credential in aid of establishing biases.
Harlan Ellison's Watching Page 25