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.