With Horror Fans rushing out to see a new Stephen King adaptation this weekend, let's look back at an earlier version.
In this case, there's only one...and it's not an official release.
In 1982, Stephen King sold the rights to adapt his Story for $1 (the legal requirement) to a young filmmaker.
In 1994, it got a VHS release as part of the Nightshift Collection (as both Shorts were based on Stories from the Book of the same name).
To see what someone did with little money and alot of initiative, read on...
It's his son!
Two hours later, he's interrogated by Police about it.
They question him about the time gap (in the Story, he went to a Diner to recover his wits) and he doesn't have a great answer.
For the rest of the Film (it is around 20 minutes in total), he is talking to a Therapist about 2 weeks later.
His family is seemingly cursed, having already lost 2 young children to 'crib death' and other such accidents that make the cop suspicious.
Their eldest Son can't sleep and has to be calmed down.
As time goes on, things get weirder and more dreamlike.
He explains that kid keeps crying out about the Boogeyman in the nights leading up to the incident.
He's understandably frazzled and begins to think that our childhood fears might be more real than we thought.
He's told to come see the Doctor later in the week, talking to the Receptionist on the way out.
She's not there, however, so he goes back...and finds the Doctor in the Closet.
It (sort of) pulls off the face of the Doctor as a mask (remember, no Budget) and things flash before the guy dies. Dun dun dun!
The End.
A decent attempt, really just held back by the usual culprit- money. Admittedly, I am watching a VHS rip (as there is no DVD one), so that doesn't help too.
The idea here is certainly strong. I can see both why it bears an adaptation AND why it hasn't gotten one until now.
To put it simply, it deals with kids being killed. It doesn't revel in it or use it for exploitation, but it is still a sore subject for many. Kill 20 people- no problem. Kill one kid- riots!
This one seems to be a pretty straight adaptation- so probably no need for a Fiction vs. Fiction- and covers all of the same story beats. The Ending is not executed all that well, to be honest.
It's kind of a shame, but oh well. Seeing how much this adaptation coming out differs from the original Story, I'm hoping that they still get to do something similar.
For Horror Fans in general, there's not much to see here. For fans of rare Films and the like, it's worth a look at about 20 minutes long.
I guess we'll see how the new one ends up.
No comments:
Post a Comment