With the exception of Thinner, I’ve liked most of the Stephen King movies I’ve seen.  My favorite is Storm of the Century, a Prime-Time Emmy Award winning made-for-tv mini-series that aired in 1999.  Every winter when a big blizzard is predicted in our corner of Ohio, we plan on being snowed in watching our Storm of the Century dvd.  It never happens though; I think it has to do with trying to watch a 240 minute movie that’s not for kids when we have 4 of them.  But anyway, if we ever get time to watch Storm of the Century in the near future, I’ll definitely blog more about it – it’s awesome!

One of Stephen King’s lesser known films, Sleepwalkers, is a movie I saw as a teenager.  I liked it back then, so when I happened to see the dvd on the library’s shelf the other day, that’s what I quickly picked up since I was in a hurry.  My husband and I watched it the other night, and we both had the same opinion.  A fun little horror film, nothing great but still entertaining.  It is Stephen King-creepy, as only he can do, and much of the movie’s creepiness has to do with the mother-son relationship; I won’t go into detail except to say that it’s extremely disturbing.  Brian Krause and Alice Krige play the mother and son monsters who need to feed on a human virgin in order to survive.  They morph into strange cat-like creatures, which is even more strange because cats are drawn to their house, yet deadly to the monsters at the same time.  The special effects are extremely cheesy by today’s standards and even laughable, but sometimes I’m a sucker for that kind of thing and really enjoy bad special effects – my favorite example of this is Jaws 3-D.

While we’re on the subject of Stephen King, as I mentioned, I like most of his movies that I’ve seen.  I tried to read the book Carrie a really long time ago, but I found it hard to follow, either because I was a teen or because of the religious ramblings inserted throughout the book which were done in such a way that it’s hard to follow because it’s depicting Carrie’s mother’s craziness.  But anyway, Stephen King is very talented, of course.  He has a gift of making movies extremely creepy without stooping as low as many of today’s horror movies do with the constant blood and gore.

An interesting event took place in his life that almost reads like one of his novels, well, actually it does since he wrote about it.  On June 19, 1999, his life was changed forever when he was hit by a car while walking down a Maine road.  There are two creepy coincidences about this incident.  First, earlier that year, King had finished most of From a Buick 8, a novel in which a character dies after getting struck by a car.  Second, the driver of the car, Bryan Smith, who was only 43, was found dead in his trailer just over a year later of an accidental overdose.  He was found dead on Stephen King’s birthday, September 21.  The accident was inspiration for the Dark Tower series of books, and King is in talks with Lost co-creator J.J. Abrams to do an adaption of the series.  Since I’m a fan of Lost and Stephen King, that might be something I’ll have to check out.  Until then, I’ll probably be planning another snowy viewing of Storm of the Century this winter that won’t come to fruition.

Is it just me or do some of the titles on my posts seem misleading. I am nothing if not creative.  Today, I escorted my mother to the eye doctor to have her eyes dilated.  Believe it or not there were some rather humorous moments waiting in the reception area.  There was a patient who must have been extremely bored as she got up, walked to the 12″ TV/VCR/DVD combo and attempted to get it to play something besides the Toshiba menu making its way across the screen.  Finally, she managed to start the disc playing.  She commented that it was the same disc that was playing the last time she was in the office (I sense a link coming up there… but hey, ya know).  The woman must be a regular.

The movie playing was Seabiscuit starring Tobey Maguire.  Since it has been a few years since I have seen the movie about the thoroughbred and his jockey, I cannot honestly give a full review but I remember that I did enjoy it.  I do recall that Maguire needed to lose a fair amount of weight after playing Spider-Man to portray Red Pollard.   Then after  filming was completed for Seabiscuit, he had to hit the gym again to bulk up to play the superhero a second time.  At least Maguire will not be typecast as a popcorn idol, summer blockbuster star as he has made several other films before and since which have been well received by critics and viewers (The Cider House Rules, The Ice Storm, and Pleasantville to name a few).  Additionally, he also served as Executive Producer for Seabiscuit.

Although it did get a bit boring once the television whiz got called for her appointment, there was an adorable 3 year-old girl who kept those of us waiting entertained by explaining the trials and tribble-ations of a child. Apparently, a scary monster hid under her bed one night causing her to run into her parents’ room to be consoled.  She was not exactly sure what the creature looked like  it was definately “big and UUUUUUGLY.” The monster “sure did” go away after the precocious tot told it to.

The colorful people waiting in the lobby kept the waiting to a minimum; however, next time I will have to remember to take a book of some kind…  hopefully a script.  It has been a few months since I have had one.  Perhaps by then I will begin to make my titles better fit the post… BUT I DOUBT IT!!!!!!  That would just be no fun.