"Good Stuff Cheap"

Needful Things (1993)
Dir. Fraser C. Heston
New Line Cinema & Castle Rock Entertainment
Rating: B-

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Thai Food: The Motion Picture

    Stephen King is infamously washy as far as film adaptations go. This is entirely due to his writing style. The main draw of King's books is his prose and often exceptional extended internal monologues that his characters go on. His actual stories bereft of this individual artistic touch tend to hover around the same level of narrative nuance as the '50s EC Comics horror pulps that inspired them. It's for this reason that even his legitimate must-read novels (The Shining, Pet Sematary) don't really lend themselves to good screenplays since what makes them work as books is very hard to portray in visual shorthand and ninety-eight percent of the folks heading Stephen King adaptations aren't named Brian De Palma or Stanley Kubrick. Hell, even a director like Tobe Hooper whom most people would concur is rather good at his job had one hit and one miss taking a crack at the King.

That and it's really hard to adapt his books completely faithfully when about a third of them (the novel this movie is based on included) go on uncomfortably detailed tangents about the sexual proclivities of preteens. I'd ask what the hell is mentally wrong with this man but I've seen his Twitter. I've got a good enough idea.

As delightfully sad as it would be to spend the first day of the new year sitting at my computer and slagging off one of my former heroes, I chose to review this film because it's marvelously amusing and nobody seems to have ever acknowledged that. Because of the difficulty curve inherent to the source material they're working with, the most entertaining film adaptations of Stephen King's work just kinda do their own thing. They pull a Stone Cold Steve Austin: go out there with a fishbone; crowd brawl to pad the runtime; boom boom boom; stunner; thank you for the money, I'm gonna go home and beat my wife now. Today's picture, starring Ed Harris, follows that formula to a T.

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    Our story is set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine, which features in several King books and is indeed the exact same fictional town after which this film's production company Castle Rock Entertainment is named for. Not willing to let such a magnificent bit of serendipity fall by the wayside, the film takes advantage of this by including the lighthouse shown in the production logo both as part of the city's "Welcome To" sign and as a location in the town. I got nothin'. That's actually pretty cool.

Castle Rock is a quaint little New England coastal town filled with the usual array of sardonic policemen who wish they were doing something else for a living, corrupt businessmen with gambling problems, surly uneducated turkey farmers, balding alcoholics feuding with inanimate objects, one token crippled person working a low paying job, lowkey sexually deviant Baptist ministers (but I repeat myself) embattled with Catholic priests who conflate physical aesthetics with spiritual worth (but I repeat myself), baseball obsessed nine year-old boys running paper routes like they just stepped out of a time warp from 1952, and no black people that tend to inhabit Stephen King's version of reality. Having finally been up to New England this winter I can confirm that there is some basis in truth to all of this. Needs more Koreans, though.

This idyllic (?) little town is turned on its ear when Leland Gaunt (Max von Sydow) rolls into town in his big black car and sets up a curio shop called Needful Things. Max von Sydow is the only reason to watch this movie for the first hour of it. While we get passable performances from Ed Harris as the no-nonsense big city Sheriff Al come down in search of an easier life and Amanda Plummer as Nattie, the dog-loving and severely socially awkward introvert of the neighborhood, they're just not on the same level as a perfectly cast Max von Sydow.

We quickly learn that the stock Leland Gaunt pushes on the Castle Rock citizens for low, low prices are in fact useless junk he has magically manifested from thin air that he uses to bewitch the buyer into committing evil acts in exchange for. Because this movie is from 1993 and subtlety is dead we convey this to the audience via the items in question GIVING OFF EVIL MAGICAL SPARKS THE SECOND GAUNT HANDS THEM OVER TO YOU.

This is exactly what it's like shopping at Ollie's

Now, call me crazy (or stupid), but I was expecting something just a touch more nuanced.

Maybe a play on the already timeworn "this uptight town with no smiles is about to learn a heartwarming lesson when this kooky stranger with magic powers shows up and teaches them all how to dance!" inspirational movie plot where the second half sees everything fall to hell because - surprise! - our kooky stranger is in fact evil. I did not get that. In fact, it took me about another half hour to realize that this movie has zero intent of being clever or quiet about what it is. Any pretense that this movie was gonna be anything other than schlock is a failure on part of the audience to understand the bit.

And yanno what? Soon as I accepted that fact... this movie became amazing.

Gaunt goes about peddling crap to the Castle Rockites in exchange for favors. Little pranks, he calls them. Something to liven the town up a bit. They start out impish enough with petty vandalism but gradually turn into outright horrific acts of violence such as when the town drunk Hugh Priest (Duncan Fraser) is commanded to flay Nattie's dog alive with a pocket knife and truss it up like a roast turkey. This causes Nattie to get into an over-the-top mutually fatal knife duel (set to 'Ave Maria') with local crazed turkey farmer (rancher?) Wilma (Valri Bromfeld). The slippery slope is real. 

This of course happens after a montage of people buying items from Needful Things. The most realistic part of this whole movie comes when the Catholic priest character, Father Meehan (W. Morgan Sheppard), not only completely falls for Gaunt's schtick but does so off-screen for a stupid looking cup.

Kitsch, I've been told, is a legitimate artform

The movie, as you may have guessed, is not a particularly effective horror film. It does however excel at being a mean spirited black comedy and your mileage is gonna vary depending upon how much enjoyment you can derive from that. I, for my sins, found it hilarious. Almost everything Gaunt says in the second half of this movie is a stitch and I'm gonna have to restrain myself from including all of it in the quotes section.

One part of the story that doesn't really go anywhere in this version is Gaunt giving a cursed necklace to Sheriff Al's fiancée Polly (Bonnie Bedelia) to help with her crippling arthritis. All it serves to do is cause some surface tension between Al and Polly while reminding us of what a sadistic, opportunistic, and surprisingly horny prick Gaunt is. Doesn't really play into the finale. Unfortunate 'cause Bonnie Bedelia gives a rather good performance with that little she's given.

Almost exactly at the one hour mark this movie begins to pick up.

Sheriff Al finally gets on Gaunt's case when he tracks down neighborhood kid Brian Rusk (Shane Meier) and questions him on the events leading up to the double homicide that took place the day prior. Brian pretty much tells Al the whole plot of the movie and then WHIPS OUT A GUN THE SIZE OF HIS HEAD from his waistband (which Gaunt presumably gave him) and tries to blow his own head off out of shame. He somehow fails to off himself and ends up in the hospital. Seeing as how he succesfully manages to kill himself in the book and is never seen again in the movie it's safe to say the lines about him surviving were thrown in during reshoots.

The exact moment I realized I had to do a blog post about this movie

Gaunt doesn't waste his time and gets right to monologuing the rest of his evil plan to the audience (and the town drunk) afterwards. He's actually an immortal demon wizard, possibly even Satan himself, and he's been doing this for millenia. He goes from town to town cutting deals for souls and setting everyone against his neighbors. Then he sells them weapons. He always sells weapons. Things rather quickly turn into full scale violence afterwards. That's just the way it goes.

Gaunt's most fun minion is local corrupt used yahct salesman, embezzler, and gambling addict Danforth Keeton III (J.T. Walsh), a man so rich he can afford a double "e" in his family name. He almost steals the movie from under van Sydow's nose by hamming it up like crazy in the last third as he loses what little sanity he has left as he murders his wife Myrtle (Gillian Barber) and is pushed by Gaunt to go on a mad bombing / sniping run while the town burns around him. His scenery chewing is magnificent.

Sheriff Al makes his first mistake of the movie when he goes to Father Meehan's cathedral and tries to get a straight answer about the nature of evil from a Catholic priest. We're spared a seventeen minute conversation that ends with a shoulder pat when THE CATHEDRAL BLOWS UP thanks to Danforth's bombs. Then it comedically BLOWS UP AGAIN thanks to Gaunt's demon magic bullshit. Father Meehan swears vengeance upon his Baptist rival, Reverned Willie Rose (Don S. Davis), and we get a PRIEST FIIIIIIGHT in the middle of the street between the two middle-aged men as the city burns around them. 

It will do at least one of my friends good to know that the priest totally sweeps the reverend in a hand-to-hand encounter.

Sheriff Al has enough of this nonsense and empties his clip into the air before cutting a promo on what a shitass Gaunt is and how he caused all of this craziness to happen... but only because the people of Castle Rock allowed him to do so. They ultimately took his deals and followed through on their ends of the bargain despite knowing in their hearts that only ruin would follow from it. They allowed evil to flower. And for what? A buncha useless tat. The town then performs a communal act of confession by admitting all of their misgivings against one another while Gaunt fruitlessly taunts them, slowly being driven out. Lookit that. I slagged Catholics off this whole review only for one of their rites to save the day. Albeit in that roundabout, cynical Stephen King way where he goes seven miles off the path so as not to attribute any moral authority to organized religion and instead ends up having AN AGENT OF THE STATE be the one sane man and voice of reason.

Honestly, the signs of Stephen King being a bootlicker were always there.

All looks to be going well until Danforth shows up again and shoots Sheriff Al in the shoulder. Danforth has wired himself with an explosive vest and is planning to religion-of-peace the entire town square. Hell, he almost goes through with it... except Gaunt pushes him a little too far and it backfires on him. Danforth tackles Gaunt into Needful Things and the whole building goes up in a fireball. Whoosh.

Another thing about Stephen King is that he has, by his own admission, spent his entire life attempting to write his own version of The Lord of the Rings and the motifs of anticlimax and evil being its own undoing are a feature of his stories.

That Stephen King completely fails to understand why Tolkien ended The Lord of the Rings the way he did and thus all of King's anticlimaxes symbolize no greater meaning to anyone other than smoked out lefty Boomer agnostics like him who have no real understanding of the universe other than the vague notion that "creating things good, destroying things bad" is also integral to his identity. 

Either way this movie ends on a rather fun note as GAUNT NO-SELLS GETTING BLOWN THE FUCK UP and casually walks out of his ruined store, mildly annoyed by the whole affair not going his way. He then all but confirms he is the Devil when he tells Sheriff Al and Polly (she's still in this movie, remember?) that they've won this round but he's gonna meet up with their grandson. His name will be Bob. He's gonna meet him in Jakarta. August 14th, 2053. Ten in the morning. They're gonna have lots of fun together. 'Til then, toodles.

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The ending of the movie is totally different from (and in my opinion an improvement upon) the book but what I said about King's constant anticlimax endings remains true.

F.C. Heston's directing is solid but unremarkable. The most interesting thing about him is that he's Charlton Heston's son. He didn't really direct many movies aside from this one and Alaska (1996) which starred - you guessed it - Charlton Heston. Ain't meritocracy grand?

The screenplay is by W.D. Richter and it's also fairly decent on the whole. Big surprise, the man who wrote Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) has some decent comedic bones. He also ended his writing career with had his writing career ended by Stealth (2005), which I wish that Michael Bay had taken the bait and directed because it bombed so hard it would have spared humanity from his Transformers movies ever being made. Good guy W.D. Richter trying to save the future.

Patrick Doyle's score is good. It's a little overwrought but once I accepted that the movie was in fact a comedy it all fit together.

Ed Harris and the ensemble cast is good but this is functionally a one man show. Whenever Max von Sydow is on the screen, the movie is great. Whenever he is not on screen it is merely okay.

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FAVORITE QUOTES:

GAUNT: [rolls up a statuette for a customer an old newspaper proclaiming the deaths of hundreds of people in a flood] Brown paper packages tied up with strings... these are a few of my favorite things.

[Nattie and Wilma murder one another in a knife duel, busting through a second story window as they tumble to their doom. Cut to Gaunt checking their names off on his business ledger]

GAUNT: There's nothing quite so invigorating as a crisp fall day in New England, don't you agree?

BRIAN: Mickey Mantle sucks! [tries to blow his own brains out with a handgun twice the size of his head]

HUGH: [upon listening to Gaunt's villain speech] Oh, Jesus.

GAUNT: The young carpenter from Nazareth? I know him well. Promising young man. He died badly.

MYRTLE: Danforth? What's wrong?

DANFORTH: [soaked to the bone, nose bleeding, handcuffed to a car door] Oh, nothing's wrong. Things are better than they've been in years. I just, uh, need a little help. That's all.

MYRTLE: Danforth, you're handcuffed to the door.

DANFORTH: Well, aren't you the fucking genius? [dry laugh] Gimmie that hacksaw, will ya?

MYRTLE: What did you do?

DANFORTH: Forget the hacksaw. Get me that, uh, hammer and the big screwdriver.

DANFORTH: I killed my wife. Is that wrong? I didn't mean to.

GAUNT: Hey, these things happen. Did she deserve it?

GAUNT: [while Sheriff Al has his gun pointed at the brawling priest and minister] Kill 'em all! Let God sort them out!

GAUNT: [casually walking out of the ruins of his burning shop, completely no-selling having just been blown up; not even pretending to be human anymore] Ugh. There are days where I really hate this job. This is not my best work.

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TTFN

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