Wednesday, October 6, 2021
31 Days of Horror 2021 Day 06 The Dead Zone
SOURCE-Stephen King Movie&TV Collection DVD from Paramount
Back in 2020 this DVD showed up cheap during the Black Friday sale. I looked at it and figured out I only owned two things on this. So for the 10 bucks it cost figured it was worth that to get 5 King movies/mini series I didn't own.
Woke up today to a surprise. Normally I know way in advance if I will have the house to myself. I woke up,after Maggie was howling at my door,to find out I was the only one here. So I hooked up the blu ray player in the living room and tossed in The Dead Zone.
Been trying to think which Cronenberg film is better known to the general public. Is it The Fly or is it The Dead Zone. I'm going with the Fly,but betting The Dead Zone is a close second.
Based on one of King's better novels this film was directed by David Cronenberg. We got Christopher Walken as Johnny Smith. A man that has a car accident. He ended up in a coma for 5 years. When he wakes up from the coma he now has the ability to see the future when he touches someone.
This new ability of his becomes known the to the general public and Sheriff asks for help solving a series of murders in a smallish town. Johnny finds out that the Sheriff's deputy is the killer. They,Johnny and the Sheriff,rush to the home the deputy shares with his mother and before they can arrest him,the deputy kills himself in a gruesome way.
This ,along with learning his girlfriend from before the coma has gotten married and had a kid,causes Johnny to become a recluse. During this time Johnny gets hired to tutor a rich kid. He sees that in the future the kid is gonna go thru the ice on a frozen pond and die. "THE ICE IS GONNA BREAK!" When the kid's father keeps his kid at home and the ice does break Johnny figures out that the futures he is seeing can be changed.
Johnny ends up going to a politcal rally for a third party candidate who is running for the Senate. Johnny shakes his hand and sees in the future this man will become President and start a nuclear war.
So the rest of the film is Johnny doing all he can to stop Greg Stilson from winning a seat in the Senate. After debating on if he should kill Stilson,Johnny decides to kill Stilson himself. He hides up in the balcony of a place Stilson is giving a speech. Johnny shoots but misses an Stilson grabs a kid and uses the kid as a human shield.Before Johnny can take another shot he is killed by one of Stilson's bodyguards. Stilson comes over to gloat about this. Smith grabs his hand and sees that the public will learn of Stilson's using a kid as a human shield and Stilson will not win. Johnny then dies knowing he has prevented the horrible future from happening.
Now I have read the book this is based on a few times. And honestly while the movie leaves out some stuff it is a great adaptation of this novel.
The cast is really good. Besides Walken as Johnny you got Martin Sheen as Greg Stilson. Sheen is great playing a politicion who only cares about himself and not the people he claims to be helping. The other stand out in the cast is Tom Skerritt as the Sheriff that asks Johnny to help him solve the murders.
I'm guessing the budget for this wasn't huge. Maybe 8 or 9 million.But it never looks cheap or low budget.
The DVD in this set is the same disc that was released years ago. You get all the special features from that old DVD. Most of which are not that long. Most feel like stuff you would see on HBO back in the 80s between the films they were airing. I do wish David Cronenberg had did a commentary for the film. Or hell get Walken to do one.
Overall this is a great film. And one of the better 80s adaptations of a Stephen King work to cinema.
The Dead Zone gets a A-.