King-Sized Halloween - The Mangler - Continuing The 'Industrial Hazard' Theme

 Okay, I think that's the last of the rat droppings cleaned up.

Welcome back, everyone. Sorry about the mess from last time, but October continues and so the King-sized Halloween rolls on and I continue to read and watch my way through Stephen King’s Night Shift.

As of last time you readers checked in, things were breaking even. A revisit to Jerusalem’s Lot put that story in a much better light than my first impressions went, which helped to make up for the disappointment that came from the well-intended but failed attempt to put Graveyard Shift on the big screen.

I would still recommend that story as a fun read, but I can’t really say I’d go out of the way for the movie.

Adaptation - you win some, you lose some.

We’re going to see how the next entry holds up shortly, but first, there’s a few more stories that Hollywood has not taken for a spin to crack into first.

So, before we start the movie, it’s time to hit the books again.

Night Surf

This is another story that played differently for me now compared to the first time. Part of that being the difference in age. Like I’ve said previously, the last time I read this collection was in my teenage years. A story about disaffected teenagers working their way through a world decimated by plague reads differently when you’re reading it at 14-15 compared to when you’re reading it at 41. Further, I had forgotten over the years the bleak note this tale ends on. Not a singularly grand gesture of bleakness as much as just the slowly growing realization that succumbing to the infamous Captain Trips is a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’.

Speaking of the good Captain, this is the other thing that hit me differently. Back when I first encountered this story, the only previous King I had read was The Shining. So, save for it existing, I had no knowledge of The Stand to realize King would be repurposing his plague from this story into that larger epic. So reading it with that in mind now added a moment of pondering how long he’d had this kernel of an idea rolling around in his head.

I can’t say I’m entirely shocked that Hollywood didn’t come calling on this one. It’s good, but it’s much more of a mood piece than a driven narrative. To give an idea, the biggest action of the story recounts our young survivors burning an infected person alive. It could make an effective short in the right hands, but as far as a feature goes, this is one where you’d have to strip this thing down to its foundations and rebuild it from scratch. In doing that, you risk turning it into an adaptation people look at and wonder why you didn’t just make it your own thing.

I Am the Doorway 

I was slightly nervous to revisit this one. For years, I remembered this as a story that, when I first read it, really got me hooked. As much as King is praised for his contributions to straight horror, this  The Jaunt (featured in his collection Skeleton Crew) also show some chops for science fiction as well with the right idea. 

Like The Jaunt, this mixes science fiction with a generous dash of ‘horror of the unknown.’ Told largely in recollections, we share the protagonist’s relatively limited understanding of what has happened to him following an experimental space flight. There is no single moment that makes what is befalling him all make sense. He has no ‘John Hurt with the alien egg’ incident to explain the strange sets of eyes and consciousness that are forming on his body. Like the title suggests, there’s even the possibility that they aren’t actually inside him, but simply using his body as a conduit into our world. It’s a simple but creepily effective concept handled very well, from its teasing set up to its grim finale.

As to the question of adaptation - I’d say it’s doable, but it would take someone really putting a lot of thought into how they want to do it. The story as it is is not enough on its own, but that could be addressed by expanding some of the beats - some more time on the mission, maybe a slower reveal of how it changes the protagonist, etc. The one thing I would have reservations about would be the instinct some filmmakers would have to want to give a concrete explanation and define the alien presence. The story works as well as it does with it as a vaguely defined malevolent force that this man is a reluctant vessel for. I wouldn’t automatically rule out a longer take, but I would be cautious until I heard more of how they were tackling it.

Okay, now we’re getting more King-sized with this. All this talk and we’re not even to the movie yet.

So, without further ado, let’s talk The Mangler!

(Okay, that’s one for sentences I never thought I’d ever say.)

With a body of work as extensive as Stephen King has, there’s no singular flavor that can encapsulate it all. Even within the confines of this anthology, there’s slow burn horror, higher concept sci-fi horror, and even a few more somber dramatic stories.

Then you get a story like The Mangler. The Mangler is the kind of story I would categorize as, if I may be blunt, ‘delightfully batshit.’ The whole premise revolves around a giant industrial laundry machine that, through a series of very specific accidents, becomes possessed by a demonic force that gives it a taste for blood.

That’s it. That’s the premise. It’s also a pretty fun read, so don’t take this as knocking it. It’s an idea that works in part because King is aware how inherently outlandish the pitch is, and he’s not trying to make you take it too seriously, but also not being flippant about it. He even gives the idea some extra runway by working in that this is something that has happened with other appliances in the story (obviously without people connecting the dots that it was demons, just stumped by large machines that seem to develop murderous inclinations.)

It’s the kind of idea that it feels like a filmmaker would either look at and go “Okay, let’s get cracking” or “Okay, seriously, what’s the movie really about?”

I came to this movie with a mix of caution and also curiosity. There was a lot in here that could go spectacularly wrong. At the same time, a director like Tobe Hooper handling this gave it some potential, certainly putting this on firmer ground than Graveyard Shift.

So how did it do?

I’m gonna call this a break even. I can’t call The Mangler a good movie, for reasons I’ll get into shortly. It is, however, a much more interesting misfire of a movie than Graveyard Shift for a few reasons.

The first of these comes down to the previously mentioned hand of Tobe Hooper at the helm. Graveyard Shift was the first, and to date only film Ralph Singleton has directed. In fact, his only other directorial offerings were a couple of episodes of Cagney and Lacey, with a career more marked for producer work. I point this out mainly to contrast with Hooper, who was coming off of this movie on the heels of a career that included movies like the first two Texas Chain Saw Massacre films, Poltergeist (to what degree we can debate another time), The Funhouse, and Lifeforce. Partly, this is a reflection on Hooper’s experience, but also in the fact that he has an identifiable cinematic voice. Even in his misses, you can still see him in there.

In this case, that plays into the main change Hooper makes with the source material. As I said above, King presents the killer laundry machine as becoming evil by a series of coincidences - so much so that the big twist of the story (and one I was kind of surprised the movie kept) revolves around a single ingredient in medicine that fell into the machine unknown to the protagonists. Hooper does away with the element of chance, turning the story’s demonic presence into a Faustian arrangement, overseen by the laundry’s crooked owner, played by Robert Englund in old man make-up and a maniacal grin. This demonic deal, which it’s implied by the end has a reach beyond the laundry, is one in keeping with Hooper, tracking with his critiques of capitalism in films like Poltergeist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, presenting old, wealthy establishments sustaining themselves at the cost of those below them.

Sadly, that’s about the most this has in common with those earlier two movies. Trading the 'freak accident' element of the original story for a Faustian critique of capital is a good idea in paper, but the execution here doesn't come to the same level as Hooper's other offerings. Part of this comes from the fact that, in this case, that is embodied in Englund, whose performance plays somewhere between an aged Freddy Krueger and a caricature of George C. Scott. It makes for, admittedly, some of the most fun viewing of the whole movie, but it causes this to lose some of the impact Hooper has had in other offerings.

It's not just the look. Englund's voice even lapses into
Scott territory at times.

Thankfully, Englund isn't carrying the whole movie on his own. If I'm going to continue to compare this to our previous entry, I will say Ted Levine is a big trade up in a leading man compared to David Andrews. Even more impressive as Levine is cutting much less of a traditional protagonist, playing his detective figure with a mood that is varying degrees of unhappy from a baseline grumpiness to a genuine urge to throttle half the people around him. Not quite 'our hero' material, but Levine makes it engaging to watch all the same.

Of course, much like Hooper behind the camera, Levine and Englund (and, to be fair, the whole cast) find themselves caught up with a tricky balancing act that is, at its core, one of the biggest issues with this movie, one that will plague more than one movie in this line-up – the tone.

I reiterate what I said before – on paper, The Mangler is a really silly concept, that is pulled off in a very engaging way. On the printed page, that silliness is afforded an extra level of forgiveness that isn't afforded in the visual medium of film. One example coming to mind in this case coming from a scene used in this movie to try and tie in a thread from the original story about a possessed refrigerator. In the original story, it's recounted by other characters and that allows it some safety to maintain a degree of malevolence. In the film, it leads to Levine angrily beating on a prop refrigerator until it vomits up demonic energy in an effects display that calls attention to the fact that this movie was made on shoestring and a prayer.

I can't pretend I wasn't tempted to just clip the whole scene
of Ted Levine wailing on this thing with a sledgehammer.

This is one of several scenes where the movie seems to be trying to determine if it wants to try and lean into the full comedy or still maintain some semblance of a straight horror movie – in all fairness, Hooper has been able to play both sides of that line well in the past (as demonstrated by his two Texas Chain Saw entries.) Unfortunately, this time the balance never quite seems to land properly in either camp – it lacks the real bite in its attempts at horror, and what bits of humor there are are two scattered and uneven to really make this an especially fun movie.

If you have to see this for any reason, I'd say it's either as a completist (be it for Hooper, Englund, King, Levine or whatever thread this lands in for you) or simply as a 'seeing is believing.' The last may be the one reason I would ever try to seek out the sequels.

Yes. Sequels. Plural.

No, those will not be part of this line-up. We came here for the original Mangler story, and the original Mangler (or its nearest equivalent) we have covered.

Of course, there are still more stories to cover, so it is time we close the laundry down and move on.

Next entry won't be quite as long as this. Thanks to the way the stories shake out, we're down to a single story and movie, this time coming to something more recent and higher profile.

So be sure to come along as we take a break from the 90s era of King movies for a foray into the current wave of Stephen King filmmaking with the 2023 adaptation of The Boogeyman.

Till then.

King-Sized Halloween – Graveyard Shift (1990) - This Episode Was NOT Endorsed by OSHA

I warned you this joke would be coming back.

Welcome back for the first entry in this October's curated run – the 1990 movie Graveyard Shift, adapted from the story of the same name.

But first, a prelude.

After all, Night Shift is a collection of twenty stories, only about half of which have graced feature films. I don't wish to do a disservice to those that haven't made the proverbial big leagues (and in some of these cases, now want to seek out the Dollar Baby adaptations for later.) Plus, I'm already committed to rereading the whole collection anyway, so before we dive into the movie, let's have a quick discussion of the story that came before it, Jerusalem's Lot.

[A note before we go any further – I'm angling to run this month in the order the stories are featured in the collection. As some of you may already be aware, this will create a discrepancy down the line thanks to an anthology movie double dipping. I will be breaking from the order for that point, but otherwise, I'm sticking to the order as arranged.]

Jerusalem's Lot – Let me start this with an admission – at the time I first read this book, I was around 14 years old. I put this out there as my way of saying that, at that time, I really hadn't come across anything in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft's work. As a result, this story hit and slid off of me the first time out. Between the mythos, the journal narratives and the heavy emphasis on the creeping dread and mystery, I really didn't vibe with this as much as what came after. Revisiting it, I've come around to it a lot more. Looking at this one in the theme of feature adaptations, this is a story that feels like it has enough meat on its bones to make a solid 90-100 minute film without needing too much padding or extrapolation. It makes me both curious and apprehensive knowing they instead turned this into a television series (Chapelwaite). I might give that a shot at some point, but for now, I'll leave it as this story was a pleasant surprise on this revisit. A heavily atmospheric slow-burn with its roots in Lovecraft, that, this time around, came out as one of my favorites. 

Now then, on to our main title for this entry - Graveyard Shift.

I know marketing tends to favor hype over fact
But damn, that tagline is writing a REALLY big check to cash.

As I stated above, I can see the makings of a feature movie in Jerusalem's Lot. I had a much harder time of thinking the same for Graveyard Shift.

Don't get me wrong - this isn't a bad story. I enjoyed it as a good down-and-dirty early King short. But it's also one that it's hard to picture someone reading and coming away from thinking “There's a great picture in this!” Save for the fact this was made at the time where Stephen King's name alone was a selling point, anyway.  

For those not familiar, the story concerns a group of luckless workers tasked with cleaning out the subterranean levels of a textile mill over a holiday weekend. What starts as a miserable slog hosing down water rotted supplies and all manner of decay takes a turn as they descend lower and discover the assorted vermin that have made this their home. To just call them rats is a touch misleading.

In some respects, this has similar elements to Jerusalem's Lot - a small cast, a fixed location, and a heavy sense of atmosphere. It's where the two go from there that differs, however. Jerusalem's Lot has its story in how deep the narrative rabbit hole goes for its protagonist as he uncovers the troubled past of his ancestral home. By comparison, the cleanup crew of Graveyard Shift just venture deeper into subterranean decay and the mutated creatures therein..

In the right hands, this would have the potential to make an awesome short film played to the page. A solid, atmospheric, mean-spirited dive into deeper and deeper dark, both in the building itself and in our protagonist's nature. As a feature length endeavor, it calls for a lot of extrapolation to get it up to a marketable run time.

In that regard, I give Ralph Singleton's 1990 adaptation this - it has good instincts in what areas to build out the story. He chooses to expand on things like establishing the not-your-typical rodent infestation early on, the overall corrupt nature of the mill's manager, and further establishing the protagonist as an outsider with all the hostility that brings with it.

On paper, these are good directions to want to go in. Sadly, they don't pan out in the actual execution.

If I had to sum up the biggest problem in this movie in a single word, it would be ‘forgettable.’ It's not an especially egregious watch - I didn't come away from it feeling like I had wasted my time or was angry with the poor quality. Which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that the movie didn't really leave me feeling much of anything for the bulk of its runtime.

To be fair and try to highlight some good, there are some bits I would consider as making some impact, if not for the reasons they hoped for. 

Though if I'm being completely fair,
Brad Dourif is one of those actors who could make
reading the phone book an interesting experience.

At the top of that list is Brad Dourif - a supporting actor here but easily the biggest star power - as an exterminator written just for the movie. The character on its own isn't an especially fleshed out or engaging figure. In fact, the role is an almost cartoonish cliche that would have been an embarrassment with a lesser actor. Instead, Dourif takes this exterminator whose basically your over the top unstable Vietnam vet stereotype and makes it watchable by playing it at a constant 11.

As fun as Dourif is, most of the rest of the cast leave nowhere near the same impression, sadly. The one other who comes coming close is Stephen Macht, whose corrupt manager has one finger constantly twirling his mustache with every single line read. It kind of makes me feel bad for David Andrew's stoic protagonist, who simply blends in, lacking either the darkness of his original character or a heroic appeal of a more traditional movie lead.

You know what? I take it back.
He doesn't need the finger twirling it,
with some of his line reads, this stache twirls itself.

Which ultimately undercuts the potential in the idea of expanded story - the elements used to make those expansions don't really leave you wanting more of this world. In fact, the actual work under the mill that is the focus of the story is relegated to the final third, making it an utter slog to get there.

As much as I want to say patience is rewarded, even after getting through said slog, the payoff is unrewarding. On page, the descent into the mill is dark, dank, and the increasingly more primal, both in terms of the location and the mutated rodents that reside there. King paint a picture that you can imagine to the point of almost envisioning touch and small in how damp and gruesome it is. In the finished film, it all just feels dimly lit and cheap. That goes for both the set design and the creature work

Reading up on the production of this just adds to the frustration. There were a few attempts at this film starting from initially getting the rights from King on the set of Maximum Overdrive (which, given the allegations of King's state while filming, doesn't speak well for that greenlight.) The first attempt fell through and it led to a next attempt building on the old script and a sense of the budget being whittled down with each go. That there was an initial attempt at this with effects work by Tom Savini makes the unremarkable creature work in the finished version even more of a let down.

I keep telling myself to judge the movie for what it is,
not what I want it to be. But man, for a design was already
underwhelmed by, knowing we could have had Savini
creatures is just insult to injury.

A let down. As much as I feel bad using that term here, it's really the one that feels the most appropriate here. As I said before, I didn't come away from this amused or even angry as much as just…there.
Not the most thrilling way to start things up, I admit. At least I was pleasantly surprised by the revisit to Jerusalem's Lot, and the original story for Graveyard Shift was enjoyable.

I promise, the films will overall pick up from here. This next one is…I'm not gonna claim great, but it's certainly going to be more interesting.
Plus, the next slate includes a story I am pleased to say is still a favorite in this collection.
Till then.

New Year, New October, New Spin on the Horror Dive

Holy shit, this place is dusty.

Pardon my language. I know, that's on me for leaving things untouched here for so long.

In any case, it's October, and after taking last year off, I'll admit it – I've missed this.

So, once again, I'm turning the lights back on and getting ready for another Halloween horror deep dive.

I suppose you're wondering, what franchise will it be this year?

About that...

I'd been thinking that over this summer. There's a few I've been circling for years now to varying degrees of interest or availability (one of these years, I will pull the pin on Argento's Three Mothers, but not this time around.)

After turning over a few have toyed with before, a thought occurred to me to try something a little different this time.

Let me start by saying this has been a surprisingly good year for Stephen King movies. Four movies lined up for major theatrical releases, three have already opened to, if not major box offices, generally good critical response and word of mouth, most recently with the long awaited adaptation of The Long Walk.

So, my brain has already been percolating on King adaptations, and an idea began to form.

If you're reading this and thinking Children of the Corn? Partial credit, though I don't think I have it in me to go all the way down that hole. I powered through all of Hellraiser, but even I have my limits.

But don't worry - those murderous children will be crossing the feed this month in their own time, even if not for the full limelight. Rather than doing a franchise proper, I'm going on a curated dive into the cinematic works taken from King's short story collection, Night Shift.

 

 Yeah, the first edition was kind of understated,
but, as they say, don't judge it by its cover.

I had weighed between this and Skeleton Crew initially. Skeleton Crew was particularly tempting for the one-two punch of The Mist and The Monkey. But, if I'm being honest, Night Shift was among the first King I ever read, so in a way it only felt right.

So, this October, we're going into the weird, wild, wonderful world of the various directors who have taken on the stories in the Night Shift collection, including King himself (that's right – Maximum Overdrive is on the table!)

Just as a final note – this obviously won't cover every story in the collection. As fun as it would be to take on the various stories that have been adapted for short form of television or dollar babies*, I feel like I would bite off more than I could chew. So this will be limited to feature length adaptations, though I will be offering thoughts on the other stories in the collection along the way.

*For those not familiar with this term, King has long had a program in place called the Dollar Baby program he offers to aspiring filmmakers. Through this, they can by the rights to make an adaptation of one of his stories that hasn't been optioned for the low cost of a dollar. As fun as the idea of using those to fill in is, that would require successfully finding them all, and some of these mainly only play festivals, which puts me at a disadvantage with the space of a month.

So, hopefully you'll be coming along for some or all of the ride. Cause it's gonna be a King-sized Halloween here at the Third Row.

Yes, I was able to hold off a whole page before making that joke. No, it won't be the last time. In fact, that's probably now the name of this run.

So, until next time when we kick things off by getting down and dirty in the 1990 movie Graveyard Shift.

 

 Till then.