Today is the last day of the month, and that also means it’s the last entry in The King of Wilmington. I must admit when Greg, the reader who requested this feature, asked me to do it I was hesitant. While I’ve read some King on and off through the years, I had mostly stayed away from the movies as they had a reputation for being uneven at best. So imagine my  surprise when after a month of King movies, I not only found myself wishing I had time to see more, but also picking up a novel or two to read as well. While the films I’ve viewed this month had various degrees of success achieving their cinematic goals, they all had a common thread, Stephen King’s storytelling. There’s no better example of this than today’s film, Cat’s Eye. While it was not the first of King’s stories to be shot in Wilmington (that distinction goes to Firestarter), it was the first produced by Dino De Laurentiis at the studio he had just built there after the success of the first Stephen King/ Drew Barrymore pairing.

That pairing also directly lead De Laurentiis to commission this film in the first place. In the commentary to Cat’s Eye, director Lewis Teague (who had previously adapted King’s work to the screen with Cujo) recounted how the producer asked King to write a film specifically as a vehicle for Barrymore. What King came up with combined an adaptation of two stories from his collection Night Shift along with one original story written specifically for the screen. Unlike most other anthology films, the stories would not be bridged by a “crypt keeper” type narrator, but rather by subtle appearances by Barrymore and the cat that was searching for her. Originally, the film began with a prologue that laid out the cat’s mission to begin that story arc, but in the final edit De Laurentiis and Teague determined that sequence to be too over-the-top and it was cut. Instead the movie begins with a couple of references to King’s other films with the cat evading a Cujo-like St. Bernard and almost getting run over by “Christine”. This sequence not only invites the viewer into King’s world, but it also sets the tone for the movie’s macabre humor.

The cat is soon caught by a man who takes it into a high rise building just as Dick Morrison (James Woods) is being dropped off by his friend at the door to Quitters, Inc. Morrison desperately wants to quit smoking, and his friend assures him that the company will do the job. What his friend didn’t tell him is that the company is lead by Dr. Vinny Donattii (Alan King), a mobster who takes the task of making smokers quit very seriously. Morrison soon finds himself in the program against his will, and Donattii makes the consequences of backsliding quite clear. First offence, they shock Morrison’s wife with an electrified floor while he watches. Second offence, it will be his daughter. Third offence means that his wife will be raped, and the fourth offence, well, it’s hard to keep smoking if you’re dead.

Quitters, Inc. has long been one of my favorite King short stories (Night Shift was the first King book I ever recall reading.), and as an ex-smoker, I am so glad that I just went cold turkey and didn’t get involved in a four step program where one of the steps is rape. The interplay in this story between Woods, always a favorite of mine, and comedian Alan King was priceless, and even the minor performances such as Tony Munafo (at the time one of Sly Stallone’s bodyguards) as Donattii’s henchman make Quitters Inc a solid opening. This section also features a couple of wonderful pop music cues, something I always find missing from King adaptations as pop and rock songs are so often referenced in his writing. The first of which, “Every Breath you Take”, fits in perfectly with the story’s anti-smoking theme. The song will strike most viewers as sounding a little strange. Unable to pay for the actual song by The Police, De Laurentiis paid for the publishing rights and hired a sound alike group to re-record the single. The second cue comes after Wood’s character slips for the first time. While his wife hops around on an electrified floor, the entirely incongruous song “99 Tears” by Question Mark and the Mysterions plays. This piece of 60’s pop both lightens the mood of what could be a very tense scene and at the same time gives it a sinister edge.

The next story, “The Ledge” is also culled from Night Shift, but before it begins, the cat, on the loose once again, sees Barrymore speak to it through a TV commercial for Gobbler’s cat food. From there the cat falls into the possession of Cressner (Kenneth McMillan), an Atlantic City millionaire and degenerate gambler. It seems that his wife is trying to run off with washed up tennis pro Johnny Norris (Robert Hays), and after Cressner has his goons shanghai Norris, he makes a bet with him. If Johnny can make his way around the 5 inch ledge of Cressner’s penthouse apartment, he gets money, his life, and Cressner’s wife. The alternative is falling to his death. Even though Norris worries that the millionaire will welsh on his bet, he has no choice but to accept the wager.

“The Ledge” is the shortest of the three tales in Cat’s Eye, and in my eyes, the weakest of the three. Teague did a good job of giving Norris’ predicament the proper suspense and tension creating a real sense of height within his Wilmington, N.C. studio, but the problem is that very little happens in the sequence. It seems far too predictable that Norris will make it around the ledge, and despite playing off of the fear of heights, this feeling of security for the character kind of defeats any tension that is built. The redeeming factor here is Robert Hays, who I always will associate with Airplane!, no matter where else he’s appeared.  Hayes and character actor McMillan give solid performances, but the story just doesn’t add up too much. There also was another inspired performance by a goon, this time by Sal Richards as Cressner’s right hand man Westlake, sporting a very small Donald Duck shirt.

The last story of the film “The General” was the portion which King penned specifically for Barrymore. The cat, having made its way from New York and Atlantic City, finally meets up with Barrymore’s character Amanda. She wants to take in the stray cat to protect her from nightmares she’s been having, but her mother (American Graffiti’s Candy Clark) forbids her to do so. Amanda’s father, Hugh (James Naughton), is more sympathetic and believes there might be something to the story of a troll who lives in his daughter’s wall. The only one who really believes her is the cat who Amanda names The General. However when the troll in the wall frames The General in the killing of the family’s bird Polly, Amanda’s mom packs the cat off to the animal shelter, leaving her daughter at the mercy of the child killing troll.

Cat’s Eye was Drew Barrymore’s seventh movie role, and for a ten year old actress, that is staying pretty busy. Barrymore still maintains a modicum of the cuteness she showed off in E.T. as Gertie, but her performance hints at the depths the actress would be able to plumb later in her career. (Apart from appearing in this last segment and as vision to the cat, Barrymore also appeared as James Wood’s daughter in "Quitters Inc." and as the first girl who gets menaced by the troll in the aborted prologue sequence.) De Laurentiis conceived of this project because he had a feeling that Barrymore would be a star, and I can’t say that I can fault his vision at all. While she is clearly still a child, there is a a poise to her performance that most kid actors don’t seem to grasp. Candy Clark and James Naughton turn in solid performances, but they are really merely background players in the story of Barrymore and The General.

This last sequence also features the most effects shots of the film. As Teague was working on a limited budget, everything that could be done as an in camera effect was. Under the guidance of special effects wizard Carlo Rambaldi (Deep Red, Dune), the combination of animatronics, makeup effects, and oversized set decorations gives the story both a sense of wonder and a firm enough foot in reality so as not to turn the story into a cartoon. I also want to take a moment to mention the cinematography in the entire film. Teague chose to work with legendary lensman Jack Cardiff (The Red Shoes, Rambo: First Blood Part 2), and one of the most important things in an anthology film is to give each story some originality but still maintain a narrative and visual thread. Thanks to King’s clever script, Teague’s careful direction, and Cardiff’s skill behind the camera, that is exactly what Cat’s Eye delivers.

Before I start wrapping this up, I need to take a moment for this features other namesake, Wilmington, N.C.  The story both begins and ends there, but in actuality it never leaves. Wilmington was made to double for New York in “Quitters Inc.” (which was primarily successful save for the bridge scene which looks like the Southern low country that it is) and for Atlantic City in “The Ledge” (though there are a few location shots involved here). Primarily most of the film was shot on Dino’s newly built Wilmington soundstages. Oddly, “The General”, the only story set in Wilmington, features the least outdoor locales and hence the least amount of Wilmington and the surrounding area. After watching five weeks of King films set in Wilmington, I’m starting to think that I need to make a trip there and see if I can spot any of the locations used in these films.

That brings us around to the conclusion of The King of Wilmington, and I once more would like to thank my reader, Greg, for throwing this suggestion out there. I hope he and the rest of you fine folks have enjoyed the past few weeks as much as I have, and I feel certain that this won’t be the last time we see Mr. King around the Lair. However, this coming month I have lots of great things lined up. For those of you that don’t know February is Women in Horror month, and I will be featuring a number of films that focus or feature some of my favorite horror actresses, and near the end of the month I have something really special planned. So I hope you come back and join me for all the fun in February. Until then I want to leave you with one of my favorite Stephen King quotes about horror, “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”

Hey folks. I was poking around for a short horror film to share with you folks when I ran across XYZfear. Apart from having a title that has nothing I can discern to do with the film, I found it to be a a pretty interesting short. The concept, a group of people scaring off patrons at their "haunted house", was both interesting and original, but after watching the video, I had to run it again because I was sure I missed something. Apparently what I missed was the two minutes they cut from the short to make it fit on YouTube. The two minutes that might have made the ending have some kind of logic to it.

So I decided to share it with you folks for two reasons. First off, I was entertained by the plot as well as the twist and better than average acting for a short. However secondly, I wanted to give film makers interested in sharing their short on-line this simple advice. Split your film up into two parts. Or three if you have to. If I can see the potential, but then get denied ten percent of the film's running time, it undoes all the fine work that went into your film. Still, XYZfear is still worth a look, and I do hope that someday I might stumble across the 12 minute version and figure out what in the world went on in the end of this thing.

When Emily from the Deadly Doll’s House of Horror Nonsense chose this month’s movie swap for me, I hope she was just adding another Stephen King title to my already King heavy month and not giving me a hint. Just like about everyone else I know, I always feel like I’m carrying around a few extra pounds that I could stand to lose. Over the years I’ve tried a few different diets, promised to exercise (I can’t even pretend to have done that.), and thought long and hard about changing my eating habits. A few years back I even managed to stick to it long enough to drop thirty pounds, but since then, still some twenty or more pounds from my ultimate goal, I’ve reverted to bags of Doritos, Reece’s Cups, and, my one holdover from weight loss, twelve packs of Diet Dr. Pepper replacing my good old full sugar soda. What I never did was look for an easy way to lose weight. I didn’t try diet pills or crazy vibrating belts or gypsy curses. Did I say gypsy curses? Yep, I sure did because today’s film tells the tale of a man who follows that weight loss plan, and he drops those few extra pounds…then a few more… then a few more.

Practicing her pose for future roller coaster pictures.

Thinner was first published in 1984 under King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman. It would be the last book King published under the name until 1996, and it was the only Bachman book to feature an author’s picture on the back cover (in actuality it is a picture of King’s agent’s insurance salesman Richard Manuel). The same year “Bachman” came back with the novel The Regulators, Thinner was finally adapted to the big screen. Robert John Burke starred as Billy Halleck, an obese defense attorney who works the good old boy system for all it’s worth. On his way home from dinner with his wife, she tries to convince Billy there’s other things to life than just eating. Things like getting oral sex while you’re driving. Billy, in his clearly distracted state, runs down an old gypsy crossing the street. Colluding with his legal buddies, the lawyer shoulders to blame for what is deemed an “accidental” death, but the gypsy’s ancient father, Tadzu Lemke (Michael Constantine) curses him with a single word, “thinner”. At first, he loses about two pounds a day, but soon his weight starts falling more rapidly. The curse leaves Billy wasting away to his death, and his only hope is to use any means to get Lemke to remove the curse.

It's alright Jiminy, Joe Mantegna is here.

Thinner is one of the few Stephen King books I’ve read more than once. I have something of a fascination with the novels he wrote under the Richard Bachman name stemming from my love for The Running Man. While the movie stays fairly true to the book (save for the ending), there is something lost in the translation here. I think it all started falling apart for me in the beginning, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Robert John Burke’s portly lawyer looked a hell of a lot like Martin Short when he donned a fat suit to play Hollywood mench Jiminy Glick. Burke, who is an actor I love from his time on Oz and Law & Order, plays the part well enough, but until the pounds and prosthetics begin to fade, it is hard to take the character and his troubles seriously at all. It doesn’t help that Billy Halleck is never a sympathetic character. Even as he wastes away, he allows his mobbed up friend Richie (Joe Mantegna phoning it in and doing the broadest Italian performance I’ve ever seen) to terrorize the gypsy camp. Halleck learns nothing from his ordeal, and the ending to the movie just reinforces that fact. The book, having the benefit of fleshing out motivations and ideas, leaves the reader in a very different place.

Hey Kari, it was a joke. You're a great actress!

That’s not to say there are not things I like about the cinematic translation of Thinner. As Billy gets thinner, the effects and makeup work are stupendous. The special makeup effects were handled by Greg Cannom (Dreamscape, Nightmare on Elm Street 3, and coincidentally Big Mama’s House), and while I didn’t like fat Billy, the thinner the character gets the more impressive the visual effect was. I also liked Kari Wuhrer as the granddaughter of Lemke. Ok. Let’s be honest. I like it that she flashed her panties. I know it’s crass, but it’s true. Other than that, I have no idea why she was there. The gypsies themselves were played as terrible stereotypes, which admittedly were what they were in the book, and in a way I kept waiting on Drag Me to Hell to crossover at any moment. There’s also a very nice little appearance by Peter Maloney, George Benning in Carpenter’s The Thing, and Stephen King shows up as a pharmacist by the name of Mr. Bangor. (Bangor being the Maine town where King has long made his home.)

There's a good reason you shouldn't mess with Arlo Guthrie.

While reading Thinner, one of King’s (pun intended) leaner books, the story seems like it would make an incredible movie, and there are flashes of it here. However, director Tom Holland has made some great films (Fright Night, Child’s Play) and some real duds (Stephen King’s The Langoliers) in his career. Unfortunately, I think this one falls into the later category with his other King adaptation. Thinner is not a terrible movie. I mean it wouldn’t put me off my lunch, but it did teach me two very important lessons. First off, a gypsy curse will probably never catch on as a diet craze (though if any of you have done Atkins you’ll know what I mean when I say it feels awful similar.). Then secondly, Thinner will make me much more careful. Not about how I drive, but rather which pies I choose to eat. You never know what might be in them.

When I was pondering exactly what film to cover for my Hitch on the Hump guest post, I was thinking of going with something that I hadn't seen that's available on Netflix instant magic. Sounded like a good plan, that is, until I opened my phone late one night to see a reminder that said no more than, Rear Window. Now, that certainly seems a bit ambiguous because you weren't the one who put that reminder in my phone. It was me, and I instantly knew what the title Rear Window was doing on my calendar. It was meant to remind me that, the very next afternoon, one of my local theaters would be showing Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window on the big screen. Specifically on a Sunday, exactly one hour after I was to be done with my workday. I don't think I could have been more excited to have something as cool as that fall into place the way that it did, but in my up-too-late thought process, I knew that the film I would be talking about today, would be 1954's, Rear Window.

Stepping into the quant, cozy little theater, it didn't take long to notice that I was probably the youngest person there…by at least 30 years. I stood out a bit, though, I was naked from the nipples down, so that could have been a factor too. Anyway, as I sat down with a Milk Dud stuffed smile on my face, the film began with an introduction to a cast of characters that will remain nearly anonymous, yet become so familiar, in what is a multitude of gorgeous panning shots spanning the encased backyard of an apartment complex. Enclosed with no more than a four-foot view into the ever so fascinating world outside, Jeff (James Stewart) stares on with a look of sheer boredom. His only entertainment comes from watching his unsuspecting neighbors and the mundaneness that comes from their day-to-day lives.

Injured on a job assignment, Jeff is left in a wheelchair with two broken legs and no choice but to sit and observe. Along with Jeff, the audience is given the chance to look in on the lush and complex world that moves constantly outside of his window. A central hub where all of these characters live and breathe a life that is seemingly meant to be a form of entertainment for Jeff (as well as the viewer). Something that curbs his intense boredom. Jeff's only break from his living, breathing reality show are the visits from his wise yet quirky nurse, Stella (Thelma Ritter) and his fiancé Lisa (Grace Kelly). Through theses interactions the audience is given insight into Jeff's life and his sort of jaded view of the world. Specifically his feelings towards marriage.

Early on Jeff expresses fears and almost annoyance that his wife to be is too perfect for a meat and taters guy such as himself. His fear of rational commitment is confounding at first, specifically because there are very few that could not be infected by the beauty of Grace Jones. Wait, I mean Kelly. The moment Lisa is introduced, the spine chills as her presence immediately takes all points of focus away from the rest of the world that came up until that point. Her radiancy is only matched by her kindness and personality, which really makes one wonder what in the world is wrong with Jeff? It's impossible to fathom that he wouldn't be head over heels for this woman. Regardless, this plays to what is a lovely evolution in their relationship that carries on throughout the film.

The voyeuristic channel surfing that Jeff partakes in, on a day-to-day basis, suddenly turns into something sinister as he witnesses what he believes to be a murder in an adjacent apartment. Jeff knows these people and their patterns well, and also knows that it is very odd that Mr. Thorwald (Raymond Burr), briefcase in tow, leaves his apartment three times over the course of one night. His thoughts of deviance are only impacted when there are sure fire signs that Mr. Thornwald's bedridden wife, Emma, is suddenly nowhere to be seen. Jeff becomes instantly obsessed with trying to crack the case from his stationary position, and he obtains all the help he can get from his nurse, Lisa and an old war buddy turned cop.

There are many incredible aspects of Rear Window. The wonderful voyeuristic cinematography provides a clear view into the lives of Jeff's surroundings. The scene setting music – that is often brilliantly put forth by having one of the tenants be a musician - fills the night sky with a natural score. But what specifics that stand out most are the humor, as well as the budding romance between Jeff and Lisa. Now, many will claim that Jeff finally becoming re-smitten by Lisa comes to him in how the lives of his various neighbors unfold. Granted, there is much to that thought (and the neighbor’s collective relationships certainly mirror his thoughts and feelings), but I like to think that it comes down to the fact that Jeff is actually given the chance to see just the kind of person Lisa truly is. She wins him over with her beauty, charm, quirky-wit and for the love she shows for him.

What makes Rear Window such a fine piece of cinema is how well Hitchcock mixes genres together. It's like being pulled through a comedy laced battlefield by way of a thriller story line, only to step on a love story filled landmine. Wow, that's the stupidest thing I have ever written. Either way, what I'm saying is Hitchcock hits on a multitude of emotional levels and does so seamlessly, without ever feeling like one outweighs the other. Top that off with fabulous acting, filmmaking, music, dialogue and Grace Kelly, and you have yourself a time very-well spent. And by the time I exited the darkened theater and made my way into the brightness of the still lingering daylight hours, a blanket of happiness suddenly came over me. A happiness that comes from being able to spend an afternoon in a theater watching a film that, in the truest sense, is a classic, which is a thought that will always sit comfortably in the back of my memories.

So far our talks about The King of Wilmington have included killer trucks, werewolves, and flame throwing little girls. It stands to reason that the next thing to check off the list would be vampires. King’s history with creatures of the night goes all the way back to his 1975 novel Salem’s Lot (which was turned into a miniseries four years after publication), but he wouldn’t broach the subject again until his short story "The Night Flier" was published in the horror anthology Prime Evil in 1988. There, alongside stories by Clive Barker and Peter Straub, King spun a tale of an aeronautical bloodsucker and the writer on his trail. Five years later King reprinted his story as part of his Nightmares and Dreamscapes collection, and then just like Salem’s Lot, four years passed before it came to life on the screen. Co-produced by American company New Amsterdam Entertainment (which would put up the bucks in 2004 for Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead) and the Italian company Medusa Film (the company famously responsible for films like Don’t Torture a Duckling and Cannibal Ferox), The Night Flier was the last King film to be shot in and around Wilmington, NC.

The Night Flier stars Miguel Ferrer as Richard Deez, the top reporter for sleazy tabloid Inside View (an amalgamation of The Weekly World News and National Enquirer). Deez is renowned for going to any lengths to get a story no matter how grim or grisly. That makes him perfect for investigating a string of gory murders at remote airports in the Maine area. In each case, a black plane comes in overnight, and by the morning, bodies are found drained of blood. Deez reluctantly takes the story, but soon finds himself starting to believe that it’s more than a psycho with a pilot’s license he’s tracking. Competing against new reporter Katherine (Julie Entwisle) for the scoop, Deez continues to get deeper into the twisted tale, and if he’s not careful, he runs the risk of being the headline himself.

Before I started The King of Wilmington I knew or had heard of almost all the films I was going to be profiling, the one exception to that was The Night Flier. While I had read the story years back in Prime Evil, I had no idea it had a cinematic translation. Directed by Mark Pavia, The Night Flier marked his one and only feature film credit. (There have been rumblings that he’s trying to get a Holiday horror film, Sick Nick, off the ground.) I don’t know how Pavia came to be connected with the project, but he does an impressive job filming both the flying sequences and capturing the gore filled scenes of violence. Of course some of the credit for the gore has to go to the folks at K.N.B Efx Group, the legendary special effects company who’ve worked on everything from 1989’s Intruder to the recent Walking Dead TV series. Pavia also packed the film with references to King's other works, and the sharp-eyed viewer will spy references to Thinner, Needful Things, and many of King's other works on the covers of Inside View.

The film’s production value doesn’t always hold steady throughout the production, but what certainly does is its star, Miguel Ferrera. The actor was no stranger to Stephen King’s work having played Lloyd Henreid in the 1994 TV adaptation of The Stand, and he really nailed the part of Richard Deez. (Coincidentally, Deez was also no stranger to King. He also appeared as the reporter interviewing Johnny Smith in the novel The Dead Zone.) Deez is characterized a hard edged, no holds barred kind of journalist who is not afraid to spice up a story if he has too. In fact at one point the gives Julie Entwisle’s young reporter the advice, “Never print what you believe and never believe what you print.” Throughout the film Deez is shown as such an asshole that he seems unredeemable, and in the end, he might well have been. Without giving too much away, I have to say that his ultimate fate is just deserts of the O. Henry variety. There are precious few other characters in the film that rise beyond passing character performances, and this includes Julie Entwisle who should have been able to infuse her green reporter with a little more verve.

The only other character worth talking about is The Night Flier himself, but I don’t think I can really speak on him without getting into spoiler territory so read ahead at your own risk or skip on to the next paragraph. The vampire, who signs himself into airports under the name Dwight Renfield (a compounding of Dwight Frye and his famous Dracula character), is never portrayed as a romanticized character. Though his background is briefly and cleverly touched on when Deez finds the vamp’s photo album, his origins remain unknown. When he is seen, his face is distorted beyond that of the Nosferatu. With a gaping maw containing one giant tooth and a face only a zombie mother could love, the Flier won’t be keeping Rob Pattinson up nights, but this outer ugliness is extremely vital for the film. There is a direct correlation between Deez and the vamp. Both garner their existence from blood, both have no mercy for their victims, and both consider themselves above the rules. While Deez doesn’t have to commit the murders himself, his exploitation of tragedy makes him just as culpable. The vampire feeds off the blood to get life while Deez feeds off of death to make a living, but while the vampire is revolting to look at, Deez hides his unseemly ways under a friendly face.

I’m not sure how The Night Flier escaped my attention for all these years. As far as Stephen King adaptations go, this is one of the most underrated I have seen. With a well hewn plot that both entertains on a surface level and deeper, The Night Flier is sure to please the casual viewer as well as those who tend to dig deeper. To get it back to this feature, the film does contain many shots of rural airports (I suspect one rural airport redressed) as well as other exteriors from Wilmington, NC which double as the countryside of Maine. While this was the last film of King’s to be shot in the Wilmington area, it isn’t the last we’ll see of this feature. I’ve got one more week to go, and I’ve saved the first of his films to be shot there for last. So next week come on back then when I conclude The King of Wilmington with the anthology Cat’s Eye, and join us back here Wednesday for a special Hitch on the Hump guest post from Chuck Norris Ate My Baby’s Matt-Suzaka. 

I've rounded up yet another batch of trailers that will make your head spin, and you'll want it to keep spinning until it flies off into the air and goes into orbit around the Earth. Why would you want that? Easy, because then you won't care there's such as thing as Mean Girls 2.


Taking over for Mark Waters who directed Mean Girls from the script by Tina Fey is Melanie Mayron, perhaps better known for her appearances in the show thirtysomething and the film My Blue Heaven, than her  twenty plus years directing on television. I suppose having directed several episodes of In Treatment (which I assume involves setting up 2 locked off cameras and watching Gabriel Byrne reacting to other characters crying) she will be ready to be put away on a funny farm for directing this mess.While the first installment had the script from Tina Fey to fall back on, this time the biggest name among the writers is Elana Lesser who penned greats like Holly Hobby and Friends: Marvelous Makeover  (Really? Holly Hobby got tarted up?) and Charlotte's Web 2 (How is that even possible?) In fact the only person I see returning for a second helping of Mean Girls is Tim Meadows. I like money as much as the next guy, but so not fetch, Tim. Before it plops onto DVD Feb. 1, you can check it out tonight as a double feature along with the original Mean Girls. So if you hate yourself, go for it.

Next up, keeping on the track of films tangentially related to Lindsey Lohan, here's the follow-up from the "makers of" I Know Who Killed Me, The Absent.

One of the main features of so many Hitchcock movies is the “wrong man“. By that I mean the average Joe, Richard Haney in The 39 Steps or Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Knew Too Much, gets pulled into a world of murder, spies or intrigue where he soon becomes a target like Cary Grant in North by Northwest. So it should come as no little surprise that when Hitch read a story of a real life “wrong man”, he would be attracted to the story. The article that caught the Master of Suspense’s eye appeared in a 1953 Life magazine written by journalist and crime fiction author Herbert Brean and detailed the false arrest of jazz musician Manny Balestrero and his eventual vindication. After fictionalizing so many “wrong men” adventures, it seemed natural to Hitchcock to get involved in bringing it to screen with his picture The Wrong Man.

Maxwell Anderson

Paramount, who held his contract, was not all that interested in the project, but it just so happened that Hitch still owed one more film to Warner Brothers. So after waiving his directing fee, Warners happily signed on the project. Not everyone was happy though. John Michael Hayes, the writer who had penned Hitch’s previous four films, had gone through quite a falling out with the director after demanding sole billing for 1956’s The Man Who Knew Too Much. When the director demanded Hayes work with slighted British scribe Angus MacPhail who had been taken off of Rear Window’s credits telling Hitchcock made it plain to Hayes that, “If you don’t come to Warner Brothers with me, I’ll never speak to you again.” Hayes declines, and Hitchcock made good on his promise. In his place, Hitch brought in playwright, poet, and occasional screenwriter Maxwell Anderson who had written the play on which 1948’s Joan of Arc with Ingrid Bergman was based as well as the script for the original stage version of The Bad Seed. (He would later pen a rejected version of Vertigo, entitled Listen, Darkling, from an adaptation of Narcejac’s novel D’Entre les Morts.) Together with producer Herbert Coleman, the writers were tasked with remaining as true to life as possible and even retraced the steps of their very real “wrong man” before producing the script which would become The Wrong Man.

Eschewing his usual cameo appearance, Hitchcock is the first person to appear in The Wrong Man, and coincidentally it was the first time the director spoke in any of his films. He appears here to assure the audience that the story they are about to see is indeed based on true events.  It is the story of Manny Balestrero (Henry Fonda), a mild mannered bassist in a jazz combo and father to two little boys. Trying to make ends meet and get the dental work his wife (Vera Miles) needs done, he takes in her insurance policy to see what they could borrow against it. The clerks at the insurance company tell him, but they also phone the police and identify him as the man who held them up on three occasions. Manny is picked up by the police, and then continually misidentified as the hold up man by witnesses. Thrown into jail, he finally makes the astronomical bail, but then finds there is little way to prove his innocence. His wife Rose begins to crack under the strain and must be institutionalized as Manny begins to accept his fate as an innocent wrongly accused.

From all accounts, The Wrong Man stays very true to the story of Manny Balestrero even using some of the locations and actual people involved in the case. While it is fascinating that Hitchcock would so studiously bring this real story to the screen, it is also the film’s greatest hindrance. As Hitch would say later when interviewed by Francois Truffaut, “I was too concerned with veracity to take the sufficient dramatic license.” This concern for true to life events may have sprouted from Hitchcock’s admiration of the new Italian neo-realist films such as De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief. However while Hitchcock remained true as possible to the story, he still infused the film with his own particular brand of film fantasy with swooping fluid camera work where he allows the lens to tell the story more than the characters and their actions. He was assisted on grafting his style into this true to life tale by cinematographer Robert Burks, Hitchcock’s collaborator behind the camera from 1951’s Strangers on a Train to 1964’s Marnie, twelve films in total spanning a large chunk of Hitchcock’s catalog.

From the start, The Wrong Man was a film tailor made for Henry Fonda and Vera Miles. The forever-earnest Fonda had been on Hitchcock’s leading man list ever since he tried to cast him in Foreign Correspondent and Saboteur. Fonda gives a measured performance, nailing the material, but never really driving home the emotion. For his part, Fonda was very pleased with working for Hitchcock saying, “He was funny all the time. Hitch would come in and tell a funny story just before he would say ‘Roll ‘em’ into a serous scene.” Miles, however, became the subject of the Hitchcock treatment. Even before the production, he controlled all aspects of her wardrobe dressing her in whites, blacks, and grays because he felt Miles wore too much color and it did not favor her (this also contributed to his choice to film in black and white). He ran the actress through the emotional ringer while filming her character’s breakdown scenes, and it is said that the actress resented Hitchcock’s micro-management though her performance is thoroughly compelling.

While the true to life story was something of a departure for Hitchcock, The Wrong Man also marks a departure for Bernard Herrmann. Having seen the other seven films that Herrmann scored for Hitchcock, I have come to expect rich string arrangements and dynamic orchestral numbers. While there are some of the strings on display in The Wrong Man, Herrmann made a departure as a nod to the main character’s profession, jazzman. Throughout the film, there are nods to swing and bop deftly woven into the musical tapestry. These moments give The Wrong Man both a driving force and some much-needed tension, but also it makes it feel more personal. The story of Manny Balestrero begins with him playing jazz, so it really brings the film together to continue that thread throughout.

In Truffaut’s talk with Hitchcock about The Wrong Man, Hitchcock concludes that it is “among the indifferent Hitchcock’s”. Truffaut, somewhat disappointed, seems to want the director to defend his movie, but the Master of Suspense goes on to say, “Impossible, I don’t feel strongly about it.” While this was true in the aftermath of the film, certainly Hitch, willing to wave his directing fee, had strong feelings about it before the project was filmed. In many ways, this was an experimental film for Hitchcock, a director who was forever experimenting and innovating. I think it is quite telling that he followed up this film with Vertigo, a film that revels in impressionistic wonder. The Wrong Man is a film that firmly fits in Hitchcock’s catalog, and though it might be “indifferent” to the Master of Suspense, it’s a must for Hitchcock fans.

When I hear the words silver bullet, one thing comes to mind immediately, Coors. Strangely, it’s also the first thing that comes to mind if you say those words to Gary Busey as well, even though he starred in a movie of that name. Being a horror fan, the first thing that should come to my mind is werewolves, and that’s the topic of tonight’s non-beer related film Silver Bullet. The basis for the film, the King’s Cycle of the Werewolf, was originally conceived as a short story cycle that would accompany a werewolf themed calendar. However, King, never one to turn down a few thousand words, ballooned the project far beyond its original scope and it came to life first as limited edition 1983 novella with illustrations by Swamp Thing artist Bernie Wrightson. (The same year the movie was released it finally made its way to trade paperback courtesy of Signet books.) King adapted his novella for the screen, and it became Silver Bullet, the third King story filmed in the Wilmington area and the third entry into my feature The King of Wilmington.li.

There seems to be a killer on the loose in Tarker’s Mill. A vicious brutal murderer capable of tearing people apart from limb to limb, but only Marty (Corey Haim), a young wheelchair bound kid, suspects the truth that the killer is a werewolf. After finally seeing the monster in the flesh, he convinces his sister Jane (Megan Follows) that what he saw was real. Now all they have to do is convince an adult to help them, and the only place to turn is to Uncle Red (Gary Busey), their mother’s oft-divorced frequently drunk brother, who fashioned Marty’s custom wheelchair, the Silver Bullet. However now they need a real silver bullet, the only thing that will put a stop to the murders in Tarker’s Mill.

This was the feature debut of director Daniel Attias, but it’s not as if he didn’t come with some heavy hitting recommendations. Having been assistant director for Sam Fuller (White Dog), Stephen Spielberg (E.T.), Joe Dante (Twilight Zone: The Movie), Francis Ford Coppola (One from the Heart), and Wim Wenders (Hammett), Attias was no slouch. It seems clear that Attias took some inspiration from Spielberg trying to channel same kind of Middle American family sentiment. Marty’s parents (not to mention his Uncle) are flawed average people who understandably keep a close eye on their paraplegic son even at the expense of Marty’s older sister. While objectively the story is about a supernatural menace, when it comes down to it the main theme is family and the trials and secrets in life that bind brothers and sisters together.

This was the first movie that Cory Haim took on a lead role (his previous two films Firstborn and Secret Admirer found him in a supporting role), and the young actor shows here much more promise and range than one would imagine from the future star of Snowboard Academy. Haim plays his part perfectly including a very nuanced portrayal of a paraplegic, something I’ve often seen many older actors play unconvincingly. Haim also has great chemistry with Megan Follows (best known as the title character in the Anne of Green Gables TV movies) which totally makes the arc of their brother/sister relationship to be the grounding force in the film. There is also a good performance by future Lost star Terry O’Quinn as the local sheriff, and I’m always happy to see Lawrence Tierney in anything and he steals a couple of scenes here as the hard-ass bartender Owen.

There are two characters that I haven’t talked about yet, and though Haim might be the star of the show, Silver Bullet couldn’t have been the same without them. First off, there’s Gary Busey. Even though this was a few years before Busey was absolute bats hit crazy, he gives an incredibly inspired performance here mugging for the camera in that way that only Busey can. Everyone has that nutty Uncle that people say isn’t quite right, and Gary rolls up all the not “quite right” of every uncle everywhere for his character. Also he throws down with the other interregnal character, the werewolf. If there’s a place that Silver Bullet falls short and becomes a shadow of what might have been, it’s when the wolf takes the screen. Looking a far cry from something Rick “American Werewolf” Baker might have cooked up, there werewolf looks more akin to a Big Bad Wolf who might have appeared on Fairy Tale Theater.

The less than scary wolf is indicative of Silver Bullet’s biggest problem. While it landed a ‘R’ rating by the MPAA for “intense, graphic horror violence/gore, some language and alcohol/smoking used”, I think most horror fans, King readers, and general older folk will find the ”intense graphic horror violence” more than a little tame. When I was young and saw this flick, it was perfect for me, but now some fifteen or twenty years later, I found myself chuckling at Busey being thrown around a room by Big Bad more than being tense. With just a few trims, Silver Bullet could have perfectly fit in with Gremlins and Goonies as a movie that could have become an ‘80’s classic for folks like me who are now in their thirties. I still found the film enjoyable, but I did feel like it needed to make a movement into either youth or adult territory to have really been a success.

That wraps it up for The King of Wilmington for this week. Next week I’m going to look at the last of King’s films made in the area with The Night Flyer, and then the following week I’ll wrap it up with the first, Cat’s Eye. Until then I’ll see you folks Wednesday for another edition of Hitch on the Hump

Hey everyone, and welcome to C'Mon Trailers. a new feature I'm starting to augment Buggin' On Shorts. The way I see it lots of folks post trailers of films they want to see and talk about how much they anticipate seeing the film. As for me, I like to be contrary. So C'Mon Trailers isn't about what I want to see, but rather a rather suspect collection of coming attractions. That being said is there anyplace better to start than Big Mamas: Like Father, Like Son?