More out of collector’s urge than because of the suspected merits of the film (will go down rather unnoticed even within Romero’s Oeuvre), and maybe inspired by the stories about the other pseudonym the King family is currently playing around with, Joe Hill, I decided to fill in a blank on second-grade films based on King books. Second-grade, indeed, even though one has to admit that the actor (Timothy Hutton, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000459/) isn’t half bad – and in particular when he is doing his Elvis-with-killer-instinct impersonation, that’s quite creepy.
The flaws of the book are still around: those stupid little sparrows, in particular, that do not make for Hitchcockian thrill or Jacksonian chill – but just a bit of birdshit all over the story. It comes down to the fact that when authors want to tell a story that is too much interwoven with their real life, I usually bet money on the result being a bit … dull. That applies to the book and the film, with particular shortcomings in the film in the area of the make up artists, who supposedly just re-animated (haha…) the narrator skeleton from "Skeleton Crew" for the final scene in which the sparrows do away with the villain. The question of how to make good films from Stephen King’s books remains an enigma to the Los Angeles producers, but watching this one helps a good way to explain that enigma.
thomas4cinema 