Roadwork, Richard, & Running

I finished Roadwork last night. I would say that I don’t have a lot to say about it, but it seems that every time I do say that I end up having a post a mile long. So instead I’ll just say I don’t know how much I’ll end up saying and leave it at that.

 

If you’ve never read Roadwork before, allow me to give you the briefest overview of what the book is about. The book follows a man by the name of Barton Dawes. The city where Bart lives has decided to add an extension to the freeway which will go right though Bart’s neighborhood. As a result, Bart (and the rest of his neighbors and several businesses, including the one where Bart works) is forced to relocate. Bart, however, does not accept this very well, and the book is about his slow mental breakdown as he struggles to keep his house.

Struggles is not really the right word though. What he really does is just flat out deny the reality of what is happening. He goes about his life pretending to everyone around him that he is doing what he is supposed to be doing. He tells his wife that he is looking into new houses, but always comes up with some excuse as to why he isn’t buying one yet (termites, not a good deal, etc.). He tells his boss that he is working on signing a new lease for their business to move into a new building, giving excuses as to why he is delaying and waiting until their option from the city runs out. But, the reality is that Bart is doing nothing. He is not looking at houses; he has no intention of that. He is not going to sign the new lease; he has no intention of that. In fact, it comes across that Bart really has no intention of doing anything. Well, eventually he has intentions of doing “something”, but I’ll let you read and discover what that is on your own. I will tell you this though, Bart’s inaction eventually cost him his job, his marriage, and one might say even his sanity (though one might also say that his sanity was gone to begin with, which is why he failed to act in the first place).

As always, I’ll get to my thoughts on the book closer to the end of my post, but first, here are a few things I found interesting about the book.

The first thing is that we don’t actually learn Bart’s name until page 19 of the book. For the first several pages, he is only referred to as “he” during the narrative sections of the book. I found this to be somewhat interesting. Reading so far into a book and getting somewhat “invested” is a little odd when you don’t even know the name of the person you are supposed to be invested in. I don’t know that this really had any overall effect on anything; I just found it to be interesting.

The second thing is we never actually find out where this story takes place. The name of the city is never mentioned, and neither is the name of the state. There are some implications as to this being somewhere probably in the middle of the country, but nothing is ever stated specifically. That being said, this marks the second book not to take place in Maine. However, Maine is mentioned a couple times, so the prize for the first book to not mention Maine at all is still up for grabs (yep, even Danse Macabre mentioned Maine, more than once. Danse doesn’t qualify as “not taking place” in Maine since it was non-fiction and didn’t really take place anywhere, but since it did mention Maine a couple times, I thought I’d share that with you).

Next up on the interesting list, Bart works in an industrial laundry. There is one point in the book where there is a brief mention of the folding machine nicknamed “The Mangler” (so called because of what it would do to you if you got caught in it). And of course, this is interesting because King wrote a short story called The Mangler about just such a machine (you can view my post about that story here if you need a refresher).

In relation to where Bart works, there comes a point in the story where Bart is told that had he not sabotaged his career he would have been on track for an executive vice president position which would have paid $35,000 a year. I only bring this up because I always find it fascinating to read older books and think about just how much has changed since the time they were written. Here we are with a guy potentially being offered an executive position with a salary that is smaller than what some people make in their starting positions now. And ultimately, this book isn’t even that old yet. Granted, it takes place a few years before it was actually published, but not that many. It’s just amazing to me sometimes how much in our society has changed so quickly.

The last thing I want to talk about that I found interesting is actually something I’ve talked about before. If you’ll remember from my post on Cujo, I talked about how the main character made a comment that if her situation had taken place in a book, someone would have come along to have helped them (which, and I didn’t mention this before as I only just thought of it, is a little ironical because the fact that it is a book is probably the only reason that all of the events that needed to happen actually did happen to leave her in that position….but I digress). Anyway, this book also pulled the “let’s specifically say something to try and make this more real only to call more attention to the fact that this really is a book” card. Twice!

The first was early on in the book when Bart is talking to someone and says something that didn’t quite come out the way he wanted it to and he makes the comment (or thought) that it’s “only in books that people say everything right the first time”. To which I make the same comment as I did before – that it’s only in books (or so it seems) that people make the comments about what only happens in books.

The second event was later on in the story, and was a little… different in delivery than these other two examples. Bart is talking to someone about his life and how things are going and he makes the comment that “I get the feeling I’m a character in some bad writer’s book”. HA HA. So now, not only are we pulling the “this is real not a book” card, but were also commenting on the author. What makes this kind of extra funny is that this is one of the books that King originally published under the name of Richard Bachman (I may have forgotten to mention that earlier, so there we go). So is this perhaps some subtle comment by King that, “Yes, I know this isn’t the best book I’ve done, deal with it”? Probably not, but the line made me smile nonetheless.

 

So there we have it friends. That is Roadwork. It is definitely not the greatest book you’ll ever read (if you chose to do so), but it is by no means the worst one either (so why not give a try?). It’s by no means a bad read, and I’d recommend it if you’re a King fan or you want something quick and easy. But don’t expect anything big to come from it. The story is pretty simple and the character development is pretty basic (I know, pretty shocking for King, right? But then again, this is “Bachman”, so…). I got the feeling at times that some of the character “relationships” were just included because they would be expected to be. I didn’t get a lot out of the interactions between Bart and his wife. I suppose part of that is to show just how distant the two have grown. So I suppose in that sense things worked just how they should, because the interactions between them felt forced and unnatural. But they felt that way in a very simplistic way, not in the way that you could tell the author was really trying to convey a sense of distance between the two, but rather in a way that almost conveyed a sense of “I don’t know what to do with these two, but they have to interact, so here.”

One thing I did appreciate about the book is that a little bit of time was taken to explain some of the reason why Bart reacted the way he did. It seems for a while that he is just going crazy for absolutely no reason, but we eventually learn part of the cause and it actually does create a little bit of sympathy for him. A little bit. There still really is no excuse for his actions. But learning the why at least lets us feel a little sorry for the guy, but just a little.

Over all I did enjoy the book. It wasn’t exactly gripping in any way and as I mentioned, a lot of the relationships felt superficial and forced. The writing certainly wasn’t King’s greatest, but you have to keep in mind this was an early work of his and there is likely a reason why he published it under the Bachman name instead of his own (I mean, he could have chosen not to publish it at all, and that would have been a loss. A small one, but a loss nonetheless). That being said, the book was still fun and enjoyable for me, even the second time around. The best part was probably the short little epilogue at the end where we find out that (SPOILER, if you’re worried about that type of thing. It’s only slight and doesn’t ultimately affect the overall story, so you should be good) the highway extension wasn’t even necessary. The city simply had some extra money it had to spend on building roads and so it decided to use it (so it wouldn’t lose it next year). Thus, Bart’s whole livelihood ended up being ruined simply because of the government machine. HA.

 

And that’s about all I have for Roadwork. Up next is The Running Man, which is also a Richard Bachman book. It’s a little shorter than Roadwork, so I may be back pretty quickly. Or we might have a new baby soon, in which case who knows how long it will take me to get back. Either way, I will be back at some point.

 

As always, thanks for reading.

Danse, Deaths, & Dreams

I finished Danse Macabre last night.  And I must say; I am glad.  It’s not that the book is “bad” by any means.  I’m just not the biggest fan of non-fiction.  And so the book just wasn’t “fun” for me.  Not to say there weren’t things I enjoyed about the book, because there were.  I just definitely don’t see myself reading it again.  Twice is enough for me.

I don’t have a whole lot to actually say about the book, so I’ll just jump right in and say what I do have.

For those of you who don’t know what Danse Macabre is about, it is pretty much Stephen King taking a look and talking about the genre of horror.  But since that is a huge undertaking, he limits himself to just looking at the time frame of 1950 to 1980.  So it’s a look at 30 years of the horror genre.  King takes a look at all of the major distinctive mediums, radio, movies, television, and of course, books.

That being said, I won’t go into too much detail about what King talks about.  If you are really interested, I’ll let you read the book and hear it from King himself.  If you are not really interested, then you wouldn’t be interested in my talking about it either.  Besides, I’d most likely miss the essence of what King is trying to convey and end up doing him a disservice.  So what I will do is give you the briefest overviews of the parts I found interesting and then let you decide for yourself if you want to know more.

Even though King is limiting himself to the 30 years between 1950 and 1980, he does take some time before he starts to talk about what are probably the three most famous horror stories of all time.  Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  He does this because these three stories are actually the inspiration for several of the horror movies and books that came later, so it just wouldn’t be right to have any discussion about the genre without discussing them.  In fact, these three stories contain three of the main “devices” used in the horror genre (in the book King refers to them as “Cards”).  The Vampire (Dracula), the Werewolf (Jekyll and Hyde), and the Thing Without a Name (Frankenstein).  King makes it clear that these stories did not necessarily create these ideas, but they definitely made them famous and served as a marker that many other stories would try to emulate.  In fact, in some way or another, King is able to reference one of these three devices in just about every horror story since (there are of course many exceptions).  The one main device that is not included in these three stories that is used often in horror is the Haunted House.

The one interesting thing I found about King’s “cards” is that I had never really thought about Jekyll and Hyde being a werewolf story.  And, if you think of werewolf in its most common form, then no, it is not (Hyde is most certainly not an animal, per say).  However, if you think of the “Werewolf” as just being the idea of person who has two sides, one good one bad, then yes, yes it is.  It just so happens that when people think “Werewolf” they think of the bad side as being an actual wolf like creature.  But King takes it to be just that idea of duality and good/evil.  In that light, there are a lot of stories out there that fit into the “Werewolf” category quite nicely.

King’s discussion on radio is quite short.  As the art and medium of radio stories were starting to die out by the 50’s and 60’s, he did not have a lot of material to talk about given his constraints.  He was able to talk a little bit about his memories of listening to the radio while he was younger.  And of course, time period constraints or not, what discussion of radio horror would be complete without at least a brief mention of Orson Welles’ production of The War of the Worlds?  But overall, the radio section was quite short.

Short as it was, King points out that radio is, in some ways, a better medium for horror than the screen.  Because what we can imagine is always, always, worse than what we actually see.  King uses the example of people imagining something behind a door, and when the door opens they see a giant 10 foot bug monster behind it and respond “Oh, ok.  That’s bad, but at least it’s only 10 feet tall instead of 100 feet talk, that would have been awful.”  Later on he uses this example again, only the response is “Oh, ok.  That’s bad, but at least it’s only 100 feet tall.  I can handle that.  If it had been 1000 feet tall, that would have been awful”.  The point being that, no matter how scary the monster is, it’s always a relief of sorts when we actually see it because it’s never as worse as what we imagine it “could” have been.

That being said, the section about horror on Television is also quite short.  King points out that, because of the censors, horror on television was never able to gain a good foot hold.  It’s not an easy task to try and scare someone (which is of course the point of any good horror story) when you are restricted with how “scary” you are allowed to be (we can’t have anything too scary on TV, think of the kids).  So he mentions some of the classic shows, “The Outer Limits”, “The Twilight Zone”, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”, and then says that even though some of these shows at times tried to capture the essence of horror, they mostly ended up being about the “twist” and “surprise” at the end, rather than the “scare”.

The longest section in Danse Macabre is reserved for the medium that probably embraces horror the most.  Movies.  This is not because it’s always the best medium for the genre, but because it’s the easiest to get people to embrace.  And when doing horror, it can be fast, cheap, and bring in quite the profit.  Of course, that doesn’t mean all of it is good.  There are a lot of bad horror movies, and King makes sure to include these in the discussion as well.

There were two things I wanted to talk about concerning the movie section of the book.  The first being that horror, or at least what is most commonly thought of as horror, has changed a lot over the years.  In the early days of movies in the 30s and 40s (before King starts his analysis), it seems to me that many of the “horror” movies involved those classic creatures mentioned before: The vampire, the werewolf, and the unnamed monster.  Then around the time of the 50s and 60s, things shifted into a much more “science fiction” type of horror (although King goes through great lengths to say that true “science fiction” is different than what I am talking about when I talk about sci-fi horror, but I’ll let you read more on that yourself).  More alien movies (like, you know, Alien, maybe the movie that actually best blends true Science Fiction and Horror – although Alien was more into the 70s as well), and the classic “Big Bug” movies (seriously, think of any kind of bug you want, I’m sure there’s a movie with a gigantic version of it).  Then in the late 70s, and early 80s (right after King’s analysis ends) the “Slasher” genre took off.  Movies like Halloween, Friday the 13^th, and Nightmare on Elm Street, and of course the host of movies that were inspired by those.  King of course doesn’t get to talk much about these types of movies, as they came about after the publishing of his book (though, Halloween falls in his time frame, and he does talk about it a little bit).  And then there is Horror today.  I don’t really know what you would classify today’s horror under (I hate the term Torture Porn, regardless of how accurate a description it may be).  I don’t think horror today really has a definite style (unless “remake” is a style, because that seems to be about the only thing that Hollywood can do lately, horror or otherwise).  TP (If I don’t spell it out, I think I can stomach using the term just this once more) was big for a little while (Saw, Hostel, and the like), though I really hesitate to label them “horror”, but then that just gets us back into that whole “what is horror” discussion and I really don’t want to go there again.  And besides, if those aren’t considered horror movies, what are they?  (Because I sure don’t want to have to talk about TP as its own genre, then there would be no avoiding that term.)  I suppose, when it comes down to it, that you just can’t compare Saw with Dracula, which is why I think I hate to use the same genre to describe them (of course, when it comes to the Saw series… I really don’t even know if you can rightly compare Saw with Saw V, or Saw VI, or Saw VII, even among its own movies, that series changed a lot).  But then on the other hand, I hate to think of a movie like Knocked Up being put in the same category as something like Pretty Woman or While You Were Sleeping, yet those could all be considered “Romantic Comedies”.  That being said, I suppose you just have look at the movie itself to see where it falls and not compare it to the other movies already in the genre.

All that to say, Horror on the big screen has come a long ways and has taken many different shapes over the years.

The other thing I wanted to talk about relating the movie section was a little test that King has for people who like to claim that they “don’t get scared” at horror movies.  Which, full disclosure, I am admittedly one of those people.  It’s always hard for me to answer the question “was it scary” when talking about a movie or a book, because they don’t typically affect me in that way.  But…

Ok, here’s the test:  King challenges his readers to watch a movie like Night of the Living Dead.  Then drive out to whatever is the equivalent of the “haunted house” in your area at night (King points out that just about every town has some sort of creepy run down old house somewhere near its borders).  Then make your way to the second floor (if possible) or find whatever is the biggest room near the middle of the house, and just sit there on the floor, in the dark, and listen to the sounds of the house.

Now, as I said before, I’m not one who usually “gets scared in movies”, but I’ll tell you this: There is no way, NO WAY, you could get me to ever do that.  Ever!  In fact, you probably couldn’t get me to do it even if I hadn’t watched Night of the Living Dead beforehand.  But if I had watched it, nuh uh.  Not a chance.  In fact, this reminds me of the one time I can actually recall getting a little creeped out while watching a movie.  I was working at Carmike at the time, and was previewing one of the new movies, The Skeleton Key (which, if you don’t know it, the movie centers around Voodoo and stuff, which is pretty much the one thing I don’t like to deal with in the movies I watch just because of the reality of the spiritual nature behind it, but I won’t go into that here.  I also didn’t know that about Skeleton Key going into it).  I was watching the movie by myself, after midnight.  And at one point (which happened to be one of the more intense Voodoo scenes… how does stuff always happen during the intense moments?) the other manager who was working started walking around upstairs.  So, I’m man enough to admit it, when I heard him walking around, I freaked out a little.  I’m pretty sure I remember jumping slightly and turning around in my chair.  Of course, I immediately realized what the noise was, and mentally chewed myself out for freaking out.  But needless to say, The Skeleton Key did its job that night with me.  Kudoos (I guess).

The last thing that King talks about, fittingly, is of course, the horror novel.  And ironically, this was my least favorite section of the whole book.  I’ll explain why in just a second.  First allow me a quick second to explain how king approaches talking about the horror novel.  First off, he quite clearly states that he is leaving his own works off limits.  He doesn’t feel it would be right for him to comment on them (and he’s probably right), though he does mention some of them a time or two in passing.  He then goes on to pick a handful of books, about 10 I believe it was, all by different authors.  And discuss how they influenced the genre.

The reason that I didn’t enjoy this section all that well is, King did a lot of communicating with the authors and got their input as well.  So a lot (a LOT) of this section was actually quotes and selections of other authors discussing their works.  I think I’ve already stated that I don’t like non-fiction.  However, King’s style of writing is one that I tend to enjoy regardless of the subject.  However, much of this section was not actually King’s writing.  And that is why I think I didn’t enjoy it.  It wasn’t necessarily a conscious thought while I was reading.  But when I finally finished this chapter and got into his closing chapter, I once again started enjoying it.  Coincidence?  Not likely.

The final chapter was actually quite interesting as well.  So interesting that I stayed up considerably past my bedtime to finish it (or maybe I just wanted to finish it so I could move on… or maybe both).  It starts out with a bunch of quick sections going back and forth describing an interview King had once about why he writes what he writes and why people read horror in the first place, and describing individual instances of people performing atrocious acts that were somehow related to either a book or movie (one was about a woman who burned her baby because it wouldn’t stop crying and she thought it was possessed – a la The Exorcist).  Very quickly you can see that King is getting ready to comment on the idea that many people blame the authors of these stories for providing people with ideas (the whole argument has of course been around I’m sure for ages, and most recently has surfaced in the blaming of violent actions by kids on the video games they play).  I think King makes one of the best comments about this subject I have ever heard.  He is talking about another story of a young lady whose car ran out of gas.  She walked to the gas station, filled up her gas can, and while walking back to her car was attacked by a group of boys who poured the gas all over her and lit her on fire (she ended up dying a few days later).  When asked about where they got such a horrific idea, the boys replied “from the ABC weekly movie”.  King comments that while he has no doubt that the particular method those boys used was gained from that movie, he points out that if the movie had not been aired that week, he is sure that the boys would merely have come up with a more normal and less “exciting” way to kill that young lady.  The point being that the “action” was already there in those boys.  You can’t blame the movie for the girl’s death.  They most likely would have killed her regardless.

I could probably go on and on about this subject for a long time.  But that would be getting slightly off topic, and I don’t want to turn this into a rant.  I’m sure you can already get the feeling of which side of the fence I stand on here, so I’ll just leave it at that.

And that, my friends, is what I have to say about Danse Macabre.  I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to anyone, unless you have a really big interest in not just the horror genre, but the horror genre as it existed from the 50s to the 80s.  I will say this though; I would love to see what King has to say about the horror genre from the 80s to now.  Perhaps maybe, Danse Macabre 2?  Everyone else is doing sequels these days right?  But seriously, I wouldn’t read Danse Macabre again because not only have I read it twice now and know what it says, but because it’s about a bunch of horror movies and books from a time well before I was born.  So a lot of the “title dropping” that King did went right over my head because I’d never heard of 95% of the works he talked about.  That being said, while I’m not a huge horror connoisseur by any means, I would be very interested to see what King had to say about horror from a time period that I actually would recognize some of the titles.

Now, before I end this post.  I’ve actually got one more treat for you.  In my last post, I talked about how I had my own little “if my life were a movie” thoughts recently and I promised to share them with you.  I had planned on sharing them in this post because I wasn’t planning on having a lot to say about Danse.  But, it turns out I had more to say than I thought I did.  However, I had already mentally prepared myself to share the story now, and in fact had already crafted the title of this post around that.  So, you get another long post from me today, I hope you don’t mind.

Ok, so my thoughts go a little something like this.

I’ve been looking at my blog stats lately and I have been very surprised to see that not only do I have people out there reading this who are not my wife, my mother, my sister, my aunt, or my friends.  But I’ve had visit from all over the globe.  Apparently I’m doing something right.

Also, my wife has been watching Ellen pretty consistently lately and it’s always on when I get home.  And I always get home around the time when Ellen has whichever guest she has on that day.  A lot of the times they are celebrities.  But occasionally (and by occasionally I mean quite a bit) it’s someone who she’s either seen on YouTube, or maybe they’ve been in her audience, or something, and she really likes them so she has them on the show and what not.  And she usually ends up surprising them with some really cool gift or something like that.

So I started day dreaming the other day and got to thinking.  What if someone like Ellen stumbled across my blog and liked it and then had me on the show to talk about it.  And then like the surprise would be an autographed book from Stephen King himself or something like that.  And that got me thinking into all kinds of crazy scenarios and stuff.  My biggest thought of course was the whole “if this was movie” thought.  And I was thinking that, if this was a movie of course, someone would discover my blog (maybe Ellen, maybe some publisher) and would want me to write something professionally or something like that, and then I would go on to be this big shot writer or something, and it would have all been started because I just wanted to blog about Stephen King.  And of course, since it’s a movie, my story would be inspirational to countless others out there and blah blah blah….  You’ve all seen the movie(s) I’m talking about, so you know how the story ends.

So there you go, there’s my little story.  I hope you enjoyed it 🙂  Thanks for putting up with my little dip into fantasy land there.  Obviously that would only happen in a movie because I have no desire whatsoever to write in any way shape or form for a living.  However, I sure wouldn’t mind it if someone famous stumbled upon my blog and liked it.  I suppose my ultimate fantasy would be for Stephen King himself to stumble upon my blog and be impressed by it.  Maybe even so impressed that he’d help me finish my first edition collection….. Hey, a guy can dream can’t he?

Well, that’s all I’ve got for you today.  I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I’ve enjoyed writing.  Up next will be Roadwork which is another Richard Bachman story.  Not sure how long it will take me, but I don’t think it’s a very long one.  And I’ll be glad to be reading an actually “story” again, so I may get though it pretty quickly.  We shall see.

As always, thanks for reading.

Cujo, Complaints, & Comparisons

I finally got myself to sit down and watch Cujo after having the disc for over a week and a half. For some reason I just could never convince myself to watch it. I’m not sure if it’s because I’d seen it before, or if I’m just tired of “old” movies, or if I wasn’t looking forward to watching another movie with a little kid as one of the main characters, or some other reason altogether. Whatever it was, there was definitely some kind of mental block that was just making me not want to watch it. Part of it may be that, since I’m still only halfway through Danse Macabre, and the next book I’m reading also doesn’t have a movie associated with it, there just wasn’t any sense of urgency involved.

Whatever the reason might have been, I finally pushed through it this weekend and watched it. I don’t have a lot of thoughts to share, but I do have some. The few I have though might result in some long winded (worded) tangents though, so at this point there is no telling how short or not short this post is going to be. Also my thoughts are not really all that organized, so I’m sure this post will be jumbled. But hey, you should be used to that by now, so hopefully you won’t mind.

Here we go.

Cujo (1983)

First off, the movie followed the book fairly well. There was really only one major difference (which I’ll get to later) and a few minor differences. The first notable difference is that the movie opens up with the scene of Cujo chasing the rabbit, getting stuck in the cave, and getting bit (not scratched) by the rabid bat. This scene didn’t occur in the book until a little ways into the story. You might recall that I mentioned in the book that King made sure to develop Cujo as a character, a nice dog, before he contracted rabies. That doesn’t happen in the movie. Right away we are aware that Cujo has been bitten. Not to mention that, before Cujo even begins to turn, every time he appears on screen the music turns very “menacing”. It was a little disheartening to see Cujo portrayed and depicted as the evil villain right off the bat. But alas, that’s what horror movies do I suppose.

My next comment might sound familiar to those of you who have been following my blog since the beginning. Yet, at the risk of starting to sound like a broken record, I feel I must point it out. The movie did follow the book very well, but it still missed the essence of what made the book so good. Once again, it seemed like the move was including certain aspects because “they were in the book”, but didn’t develop them enough to actually make them mean anything on screen. The affair was included, but it didn’t seem to add anything to the story. It felt forced almost. Part of this could just be that the character development wasn’t there in the movie. I didn’t find myself caring for any of these people, so I certainly didn’t care that Donna was having an affair. The same thing could be said about “The Monster Words”. They were also included in the movie, but they were just suddenly there and being used and for someone who hadn’t read the book it would certainly have to come across as odd. And the whole lottery winning thing was also rushed and forced. Of course, this wasn’t something that could have been left out, as it was necessary in order to have the Cambers be gone when Donna and Tad come to drop the car off. But it sure felt unnatural in the way it was presented. Once again, not having the character development was part of the down fall. When Mrs. Camber told Joe that she bought him a present, now he needed to give her one, it just didn’t really make any sort of sense at all without knowing all of the background information from the book. The line, which worked very well in the book, actually sounded quite dumb to me in the movie (and I even knew said background information). It seems like the screenwriter just used whatever he could from the book to make his job easier, instead of developing a screen-worthy script that could have actually done the book justice.

Which brings me to probably my biggest issue with the movie compared to the book, the character’s thoughts. Much of what happens in the book, and much of the information that makes you care about the characters is given to us by allowing us to see into their thoughts. Now, obviously this can’t be done in a movie (without being cheesy), so I understand that this isn’t something that could easily be fixed. Especially when it comes to the instances when we get to see into Cujo’s thoughts in the book. There really is no way that this could be done in a movie, no matter how good the screen writer was or how hard he tried. And to be honest, if they did find a way to do it, I’m not sure it would be something that would be enjoyable to watch (again, the cheesiness factor), so I’m not putting the movie down “per say” for lacking this. What I am saying is that what made the book so good was the insight into the characters thoughts. Knowing what they were thinking and feeling about all of the situations is what made you care for them and root for (or against) them as the action played out. However, just seeing the action play out without knowing any of the thoughts simply makes for a ho-hum movie. This isn’t anything the movie necessarily did wrong, it’s just a plain and simple fact (well, more of an opinion I guess) as to why the movie simply wasn’t as captivating.

Ok, enough comparisons to the book (for now, I’ve still got one more big one for later), let’s just talk about the movie on its own for a minute.

Let’s revisit the affair plot point for just a minute. I pointed out that it felt a little forced, and just didn’t seem to add anything to the movie, and I still stand by that. Sure, it added some tension between Donna and Vic later on, but I don’t think the movie would have been any worse off if that tension hadn’t been there (the book might have, but we aren’t comparing for now, remember). The only thing that would have been an issue would be that there would have been no police investigation at the Trenton’s house and so that would have caused some problems with getting the police, and eventually Vic, out to the Camber’s farm. However, a little bit of work with the script could have created something I’m sure. This is starting to sound like comparing again, so I’d better get back to my point. Which is this, even though two of the characters were having an affair, we didn’t have to actually see any sex scenes or nudity. My wife pointed out that, see, it is quite possible for a movie to imply sex (which the movie most certainly did) without having to show it in detail (which this movie did not). So if there is any place where Cujo scores some points, it would be in this area 🙂

The only other thing I really have to say about the movie directly is that, despite their attempts to make the dog appear brutal and mean (and their attempts were good, the make up on the dog was truly very well done), one thing you can’t disguise is a dog’s eyes. In many scenes, even though the dog is “growling” and has foam coming out of his mouth and is covered in blood and mud, you can still see that the dog’s eyes are quite peaceful and happy. Now, I can’t say that I’ve ever actually seen a rabid dog before, or even a dog that was truly mad and angry and attacking, so I’m not sure exactly what a dog’s eyes would look like in that situation. What I do know though, from experience with my own dog, is that I can usually read my dogs emotions pretty well from his eyes (or at least I like to think I do). It is usually pretty clear when my dog is happy, or tired, or irritated, or exasperated (yes, I do believe that sometimes my dog gets exasperated with me), or just plain in a loving mood. His eyes speak volumes. And so did Cujo’s eyes in the movie. As my wife pointed out, “His eyes never looked mean”.

Going along with that, there were a few instances when Cujo was about to “attack” someone and the camera wasn’t quite positioned right, or they didn’t edit the scene properly, and you could clearly see Cujo’s tail wagging. Again, not necessarily something you would picture happening in a dog about to bite someone’s throat out, but rather the action of a dog that is “doing what I’m being told to do”. Later on, it seemed that the director must have noticed the dog was wagging its tail a little too much, because in some scenes the tail was tucked between the back legs and didn’t move at all (you know, kind of like what a tail would do if it was tied down…).

Well, I think that’s just about all I have to say about Cujo the movie. Except, I do believe I promised you earlier one last comparison to the book that was a major difference. So this would be the part where I yell “Spoiler Alert”, for both book and movie. In the book, despite Donna’s heroic effort at the end to kill Cujo and save Tad, it is all just a little too late. Tad has already died of dehydration. In the movie, after killing Cujo, Donna carried Tad into the house, splashed his face with water, performs mouth to mouth, and successfully brings Tad back from the brink of death. Apparently the young boy dying at the end was just a little too bleak even for this horror movie. And what makes this difference even more interesting is that, Stephen King himself was offered to work on the screenplay for the movie, but he turned it down because he felt it would have been too tempting of an opportunity to change everything he felt he got wrong in the book (and for someone who has no memory of writing the book, you can imagine there might be quite a bit to “fix” in his mind). And yet, even though King didn’t want to give in to the temptation to “fix” the story… Whoever ended up writing the screenplay still felt that the ending needed to be fixed…

 

And that really is all I have to say about Cujo. The movie as a whole wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t fantastic by any means. If I had to rate it, I’d say it was “just ok”. The book, on the other hand, was “really good”.

 

Well, that’s all I have for now. I mentioned before that I was about half way through Danse Macabre, so just take how long it has been since my review of Cujo, the book, and that is about how long it will be from now (approximately) until I’m back.

 

As always, thanks for reading.