Plot: What’s it about?
When Stephen King puts out a novel you can pretty much bank on the fact that it will eventually be made into a movie. Maybe not a theatrical release and maybe not the greatest movie ever made, but 99% of the time some sort of on-screen adaptation is created and more often than not they don’t translate very well. Now don’t get me wrong, there are some definite classics that have come from Stephen King’s work, The Shining, Carrie, IT, and Misery come to mind, but for every good one it seems like there is at least a bad one (Thinner and Dreamcatcher come to mind). With that being said let’s get into this box set, which isn’t half bad. I say half bad because 2 of the movies are pretty good, whereas the other 2, not so much. The set contains the special editions of The Dead Zone and Pet Semetary, the classics, and barebones versions of Silver Bullet and Graveyard Shift, the not-so classics.
The Dead Zone stars Christopher Walken as Johnny Smith a man who, after being struck by a tanker and comatose for 5 years has awaken only to discover that he has the ability to see the future. However, he is only able to see if someone is going to die, if nothing is going to happen to a person in the future, he cannot see anything. He first realizes his abilities immediately after he is awoken from his coma.
He touches the nurse that is taking care of him and sees her daughter being engulfed in flames. After warning her of what’s happening she immediately heads home to find her house on fire, but her daughter is safe. After word gets out that there is a murderer in the small town killing innocent women, Johnny is asked by the police to see if he can see anything. The first few bodies reveal nothing to him and the police begin to think they shouldn’t have believed him in the first place. But the next body reveals everything the police need to visit the home of one of the local residents. After arriving at the house the police find their suspect has killed himself in a very interesting manner. As the movie progresses he sees more and more people that are going to die or do something horrible, which is the idea behind the last half of the movie. Martin Sheen plays Greg Stillson, a politician that is campaigning in the small town with high hopes of one day becoming President of the United States. Upon shaking the man’s hand, Johnny is taken into the future where he witnesses Stillson as President using his power for evil. This leaves Johnny with a question, “If you could go back in time and kill Hitler knowing what you know now, would you?”
Pet Semetary is the 2nd “classic” Stephen King movie this set includes. If you ask anyone to name 3 Stephen King movies, I’m sure 9 times out of 10 this will be one of them, along with IT. Louis (Dale Midkiff) and Rachel Creed (Denise Crosby) have just moved into a new house in the country. Louis has taken a new job as the doctor at the local university so the family had to move. The house is a very large victorian style house with lots of land in a peaceful area, except for the road that runs along the property. The neighbor across the street Jud Crandall (Fred Gwynne, Herman Munster) is introduced as he saves the Creed’s little boy as he narrowly escapes getting run over by an 18-wheeler that comes barreling down the road. While all this is happening the Creed’s daughter Ellie is exploring the property and finds a narrow path that leads back into the woods. Jud explains that it is a Pet Semetary and that pets do turn up dead quite a bit due to the trucks coming down the road, but that isn’t the important part of the cemetary. During thanksgiving, Rachel and the kids go up to her parents house for the holiday, they don’t really like Louis, so he stays at the house by himself. One night after looking for his daughter’s cat, Jud calls him over to his property. And lying there on the grass is the dead cat. Knowing that Ellie is going to be heartbroken, Jud informs Louis of a place where you can bury the dead and they will return to life, although not quite as you remember them.
Louis decides to bury the cat there and sure enough it returns to his doorstep that very night, although somehow different, almost evil. The rest of the family returns after the holiday and doesn’t notice anything different about the cat. A few days pass and the family decides to goto the park/field and have a nice little picnic. After losing the kite he was flying, the Creed’s son wanders towards the road, trying to catch it. By the time Louis realizes his son is getting to close to the road it’s too late. Unable to deal with the loss of his son, Louis digs up the body and buries it behind the pet semetary, hoping that he comes back exactly how he was before, but he is very wrong.
Silver Bullet is a very straight up werewolf movie which isn’t the typical Stephen King plot. Most of his books have some sort of twist at the end that made things previously seem relavant. The movie is narrated by Jane (Megan Follows) but mainly follows her brother Marty (Corey Haim of Lost Boys) as he tries to convince his uncle that there is a real life werewolf terrorizing the town. The town is aware that there is something out there that has been killing people, but they are unsure of what it is. Marty is paralyzed from the waist down and relies on a wheelchare to get him around, although it’s not quite a normal wheelchair. His uncle Red (Gary Busey) has created a motorcycle type wheelchair called The Silver Bullet for him, which will be of great use to him in the future. After the town cancels the 4th of July fireworks, Marty is pretty bummed out so he decides to sneak out and go light off his own fireworks late one night. Of course while he is out he is visted by the werewolf. With nothing to protect himself with, he fires a rocket at the creature, striking it in it’s eye, giving Marty enough time to turn around and get out of there. The next day he informs his sister of what happened and although she doesn’t want to believe him there is something about the way he told her that made her believe, so she sets out going door to door collecting cans for a church fundraiser. Although what she is really doing is looking for any resident who may be missing an eye due to Marty shooting a rocket at the werewolf. Eventually she discovers who the werewolf is and now the hard part is convincing their uncle to help them out. I don’t want to give too much away with this one although it’s a little obvious who it is. This movie also has Terry O’Quinn in it as the Sheriff, you may remember him as John Locke from LOST, I always find it interesting when you see actors/actresses in their earlier work.
Graveyard shift is one of those bad Stephen King movies I mentioned at the beginning. I remember seeing this one in high school and I think we only rented it because the tagline and cover were so ridiculous we knew it would be bad. David Andrews plays John Hall, a guy trying to start a new life in a new town. A job has recently opened up at the local textile mill due to an accident with a former employee. Stephen Macht plays Warwick the head of the mill. After being visited by the health department Warwick is forced to clean out the rat infestation in the basement or be forced to shut down. With the textile mill being the only thing keeping the small town alive, it needs to get done.
Shortly after starting his job running one of the machines on the graveyard shift, John is nominated to be part of the clean-up crew. So over the 4th of July week when the mill is normally closed, a group of about a half a dozen workers begin their work cleaning out the basement. After discovering a hatch that was covered up by junk, they determing that the rat infestation must be coming from down there, but upon entering the sub-basement they realize their problems are far worse than a few small rats. Apparently over the years a large rat/bat-like creature has evolved the mill and is quite hungry.
So in this collection, as you can see, there are a few of the really good Stephen King movies and a few of the not so good ones. Overall, for the cost, I would recommend picking this up if your a fan of his writing and the adaptation to the screen.
Video: How does it look?
All 4 movies are presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and all look very good. I was actually surprised at how good they look after seeing what year some of these were made. Going as far back as 1983 with The Dead Zone, you would never be able to tell. The blacks are almost perfect, never saw any artifacting and very, very little noise, if any on all of the movies. And this is important because a lot of Stephen King’s work takes place at night. Out of all of the movies I would say Graveyard Shift had the worst quality, but it is by no means bad. Just a bit more noise in the blacks than the others.
Audio: How does it sound?
My only question with the audio is why they didn’t put a 5.1 dolby track with Silver Bullet and it only got a mono track. Out of all of them I would think Graveyard Shift would have gotten the least attention, but maybe they had their reasons. As for the audio in general, it was pretty good. The Dead Zone might have been a little soft on the dialogue or too loud with the soundtrack, I had to turn down some parts. Pet Semetary sounded very good overall as did Graveyard Shift. Silver Bullet did alright considering it was only supplied with a mono track. There were a few instances where I had to play with the volume, but everything was pretty clear and crisp.
Supplements: What are the extras?
To start off with, Graveyard Shift and Silver Bullet are as barebones as you can get. No extras at all on these 2 discs. The Dead Zone is obviously the special edition so it contains 4 features which are all just behind the scenes/cast interviews. They are entitled Memories From The Dead Zone, The Look of The Dead Zone, Visions and Horror From The Dead Zone, and The Politics of The Dead Zone, and overall run just shy of an hour. Pet Semetary contains a commentary track from the director as well as 3 featurettes. Stephen King Territory which talks about Stephen King’s works, The Characters which obviously goes into the characters in the film and what the actors thought about them, and Filming the Horror is kind of a behind the scenes look at the movie and the filming. Both The Dead Zone and Pet Semetary also contain trailers.
