Stepping away from obscure Stephen King movies, I'm turning my attention to some obscure King adaptation segments from various television shows of days gone by.
I'm not talking about Stephen King mini-series like The Tommyknockers, or The Stand, or his remake of The Shining. I'm talking about episodes from anthology series - regular horror, thriller, or suspense shows that at various points in random seasons adapted some of King's work along with other writers and such.
The new series Creepshow debuted on Shudder recently, which is fantastic. It made me wonder what else was out there in TV history - Kingwise. By the way, the first segment of the new Creepshow series, Grey Matter, is based on one of his short stories. It stars actress Adrienne Barbeau who also starred in the first Creepshow movie from 1982, in the story The Crate alongside Hal Holbrook and the late Fritz Weaver. Yeah! If you've seen it, she was the loud mouthed lady who ends up becoming "the crate's" victim. Oh, spoiler alert right there...sorry! Anyhow, I just wanted to get that observation out there.
I want to take a look at programs lost to obscurity to some degree or another. So, I'm not going to review anything current.
I hunted down some long forgotten episodes from T.V. shows no longer airing and tackled them one by one. It's all about the obscure! And I'm going to start with one of my favorite King short stories ever...
The Moving Finger (aired on Monsters season 3, episode 21 - 1991)
"You ever see something that wasn't there..."
Director
Ken Myers
Cast
Tom Noonan - Howard Mitla
Alice Playten - Violet Mitla
Sharon Cornell - Police Officer
This segment is the creepiest story I watched. I also read the short story it's based on, same title, found in King's short story collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes. It's one of my favorite short stories, and one of King's scariest stories in my opinion. It's simple, yet really cringy.
In this episode, Howard Mitla (Tom Noonan, The Monster Squad) finds himself alone in his apartment after his wife, Violet (Alice Playten), runs out for some ice cream.
While watching one of his favorite quiz shows, he hears scratching coming from the bathroom.
Howard goes to investigate thinking there's a mouse trapped in the bathtub. When he over-dramatically pulls back the shower curtain - no mouse! The scratching is coming from the bathroom sink.
When he peeks in, a finger is poking out of the drain scraping around.
Unsure whether to believe his own eyes, reality forces itself upon him. This happens when he gets up in the middle of the night to relieve himself. Howard peeks over the edge of the sink only to see an empty drain. He covers it with the sink's plug, but the finger wakes up, and flings the plug open. So, Howard turns the water on to submerge and hopefully drown it.
It thrashes a bit, but protrudes over the water's surface.The next day, as his wife is called in early for work, Howard pulls out the big guns - a super dissolving drain liquid.
He pours some in, and we're treated to a point of view from down the drain.
The acid smokes, eating away at all the other-worldly flesh and bone, and whatever gunk is down there. The finger then furiously thrusts out, long and snake-like.
As Howard falls back, the finger makes its way to the bathroom floor, weaving along like a snake, and grabs him by the ankle, pulling him closer and closer to the drain.
Howard manages to break from its grasp, and finds a small, electric weed trimmer. Meanwhile, his neighbor is yelling at him to keep the noise down.
When he goes back into the bathroom, the finger is looming from the drain over the sink as though its waiting for him.
He grabs it, and begins slicing piece after piece off - blood spraying all over the porcelain and bathroom tiles.
Soon after, some random cop burst in with gun drawn. I'm guessing the neighbor called the cops. That's the only logical reason why this random cop would just show up to Howard's apartment.
She makes her way into the bathroom (gun still drawn) to find Howard in the middle of a bloody mess.
The cop tries to question him, and is interrupted as the toilet seat is hit by something underneath it. She opens it like a moron, and we see just what that finger was attached to.
In The Moving Finger, the scariness is boiled down to a single finger. But it's were that finger is that's scary. (That's not meant to sound dirty.)
What we don't see is who's finger that belongs to as it winds its way through the vast intricacies of pipes and plumbing to protrude through the sink drain.
But what I find the most scary is just how this one appendage completely changes the main character's reality for the worse. Life was as it should be, until the finger appears.
Life now will never be the same. It's scarier than dealing with a maniac killer. With a maniac killer, you have to run like hell, but at least you know what your dealing with. You can survive. With something like a finger poking out of the drain, reality becomes twisted and you have no idea what you're dealing with. What does its existence means for all of reality - the world, nature and science. It's as though everything you thought you knew now ends with a question mark. That to me is scary.
The show is a little over the top, with annoying "scary" music constantly playing through the 20-minute program. It's distracting and silly.
There's green light always shining through the windows giving the production an almost comic book atmosphere.
The acting is below par. I'm in no way convinced Howard is terrified that a friggin' finger is coming up through the bathroom sink. He's more curious that afraid.
But the fun is in the gore and the creepiness. Had the series Monsters been more popular, I bet this episode would have been memorable.
In fact, if they made this into a more serious adaptation, it would be fantastic. I enjoyed it overall.
Gramma (aired on The Twilight Zone season 1, episode 18a - 1986)
"Please, God! Don't let her wake up 'till mom gets home."
Director
Bradford May
Cast
Barret Oliver - Georgie
Darlanne Fluegel - Mom
Frederick Long - Gramma
An episode of the 80s revival of The Twilight Zone adapted the King short story, Gramma, found in his 1985 collection Skeleton Crew.
I previously reviewed the movie Mercy which is based off of the same story.
This adaptation stars former child star and former child Barret Oliver (The NeverEnding Story, Cocoon, D.A.R.Y.L.) as Georgie who's left to care for his bed-ridden grandmother while his mom visits his brother in the hospital suffering from a busted ankle he received while playing baseball.
Georgie is afraid of his grandma, but braves the seclusion.
Once grandma (who reminds me of a Muppet from The Dark Crystal) starts calling for her tea, we can hear both Georgie's thoughts, as well as the audible memories of the turmoil grandma's presence in the house has caused the family.
When Georgie enters her room, she scares him causing him to drop her tea.
He finds some of her old books, which he takes to the kitchen to read through.
One of those books happens to be the Lovecraftian horror "best seller", the Necronomicon (Book of the Dead). Yeah....just like in the Evil Dead movies.
Georgie figures out that his grandma is actually a witch, and that's when all hell breaks lose. She calls out to him from the bedroom in demonic voice that is rather unsettling. And Georgie finally realizes just how demented Gramma really is.
The segment seemed rather scatterbrained to me, but Barret Oliver really put all he had into this small role. Bravo!
Most of the dialogue is Georgie's thoughts, composed of much exposition. It's exactly what I expected an 80s revival episode of The Twilight Zone to be - a quick "BOO! Scared you!" kind of entertainment, with a cliffhanger ending that the audience will never get a resolution to.
Word Processor of the Gods (aired on Tales from the Darkside season 1, episode 8 - 1984)
Michael Gornick
Cast
Bruce Davison - Richard Hagstrom
Karen Shallo - Lina Hagstrom
Patrick Piccininni - Seth Robert Hagstrom
Michael Gornick, the director of Creepshow 2, also directed this forgotten sparkle of a Stephen King adaptation.
The plot of this segment, adapted from King's story of the same name first published in a 1983 edition of Playboy Magazine, then later published in his book Skeleton Crew is a story kind of similar to another King story, Umney's Last Case.
I can't critique how dated this segment is. I can only critique its entertainment value and quality.
This segment stars a young Bruce Davison, who's gone on to appear in some big movie titles (X-Men, Bender, The Crucible).
Davison plays writer Richard Hagstrom who receives a word processor from his nephew Johnathan for his birthday. It's hilarious seeing this dinosaur of a computer with its floppy disks, and "execute" key, and dot matrix printer.
Hagstrom's family is such a stereotypical family. He's the quintessential aloof father. His wife, Karen, is the overweight cynical wife who watches her husband with a judgy eye. And their son, Seth, is the rebel kid, playing his rock music loud, and dismissing his parents demands with the typical teenage "whatever!"
Literally, as soon as he starts typing away at his present, Bruce discovers whatever he types becomes reality.
If he types in something that's true, and hits "delete," then that thing will be deleted from existence.
The more he does this, the more overworked his word processor becomes. But, he manages to change his family to something more desirable right in the nick of time before the computer overheats and bursts into flames.
There really is nothing scary, creepy, or disturbing about this segment. I kept waiting for that trope where whatever you wish for has a catch - a price the victim must pay. But, nothing like that happened. Richard found something that changes reality, he went along with it, and changed things to his liking. The end!
It was a really rushed segment that didn't amount to much more than being 20 minutes of mindless entertainment.
Having a word processor, or computer, or whatever, that would change reality at your command is a cool and interesting story idea to run with. This segment only had a few minutes to play with it before the credits. Given more time, I'm sure a much better story could be told.
Sorry, Right Number (aired on Tales from the Darkside season 4, episode 9 - 1987)
John Harrison (as John Sutherland)
Cast
Deborah Harmon - Katie Weiderman
Arthur Taxier - Bill Weiderman
Remember in the movie Back to the Future, at the very beginning as the camera pans through a variety of clocks in Doc Brown's place, we catch a glimpse of a news anchor reporting on a case of missing plutonium? Well, that news caster (Deborah Harmon) is in this segment. Neat, huh!
Anyways, director John Harrison went on the direct the movie version of Tales from the Darkside in 1990. He also directed some episodes of the new series Creepshow currently airing on Shudder. So, he's experienced with King.
This segment was written as a teleplay by King for this series. The story was later included in Nightmares and Dreamscapes.
Katie (Deborah Harmon) receives a call one night from an unknown women who's frantically crying over the phone. The phone cuts out before Katie can determine who's on the other end. She panics, and calls various family members to see if they're the caller and to make sure they're alright.
Her writer husband (writer....in a King story?) tells her to relax and they both try to figure out who called.
Everyone she suspects and contacts clearly didn't call her.
Later in the night, Katie finds her husband dead in the living room, having suffered a heart attack.
The story then pans to years later on her daughter's wedding day.
After a heart-felt talk with her daughter, she begins to reminisce about Bill, and begins to cry pretty hard.
She then recalls that when Bill died, he had been complaining of headaches and other symptoms that were clearly warning signs of a bigger, more serious health issue. Had she not ignored them and they had gone to the hospital, he could still be alive.
Katie then, in some kind of daze, picks of the phone and dials their old number. You probably know where this is going.
This segment was rather simple, and suspenseful. Though the outcome was predictable, it still made for something entertaining and intriguing. All she had to do was take her husband to the hospital. She learned that after the fact.
It was an entertaining segment.
Obscure Stephen King
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