Summer of Stephen
Title: Pet Sematary
Publishing Date: 1982 Length: 374 pages Start Date: June 27, 2018 End Date: July 9, 2018 If you read my post about Cujo, then you already know I’m not a big animal person. So I went into Pet Sematary assuming that I would be kind of indifferent to it. Instead, I absolutely loved it. This is one of my favorite King novels so far. To summarize (with spoilers): Pet Sematary is the story of Dr. Louis Creed and his family. They move to a small town in Maine and quickly become friends with their elderly neighbor, Jud. Jud warns Louis to be careful of the road that runs between their houses, as vehicles rarely slow down driving through. While Louis’s wife and kids are visiting her parents, the family’s beloved cat, Church, is run over. Jud takes Louis and Church to the “pet cemetery” that lies up the hill from the Creed home and instructs Louis to bury Church. He does so, assuming the old man has gone crazy. But the next day, Church shows up, very much alive but acting a little off. Several months later, Louis’s 2-year-old son, Gage, is hit by a truck and dies. In a fit of grief, Louis sends his wife and daughter to stay with her parents again, leaving himself alone to carry out his plan of digging up Gage’s body and reburying him in the pet cemetery, despite Jud’s warnings to leave the boy alone. Louis’s plan succeeds, but the Gage who returns is basically a murderous little demon. He kills Jud and his own mother before Louis manages to re-kill his son. Louis takes his wife’s body to the pet cemetery, hoping that burying her there immediately, instead of days later, will allow her to come back more normally. The book ends with her walking up behind him and placing her cold hand on his shoulder. I loved this book for three main reasons. 1. The way Stephen King writes about grief in this book is absolutely spot on. If I had read this before the death of my niece, I don’t know if it would have had the same impact on me. But reading it while struggling with my own grief allowed me to really connect with the Creeds after the loss of their son. 2. The scene involving Louis digging up his son’s grave was so stressful that it gave me a stomach ache. That might seem like a weird reason to like something, but I love when writing is so suspenseful it makes me want to vomit. 3. The end of this book is perfect! King doesn’t always do a great job with endings, which is mostly due to his tendency to overwrite. But in the case of Pet Sematary, he ends it at the exact right moment. As I’m still only in the 80s, it’s possible I’ll read more King books that I like more than this one, but for the moment, Pet Sematary is easily one of my favorites.
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Title: Creepshow
Release Date: 1982 Length: 2 hours Start Date: May 31, 2018 End Date: May 31, 2018 Director: George A. Romero Starring: Hal Holbrook, Leslie Nielsen, Stephen King This is one of the few times I’m going to give this advice, so listen (or read) carefully: Skip the book and just watch the movie. If you read my post about the comic book version of Creepshow, then you already know I was less than impressed with King’s over narration of what we could see in the pictures on the page. The movie version, however, really isn’t too bad. A bit cheesy at times, but it was the 80s, so it’s forgivable. Like the comic, the Creepshow movie is divided into several smaller stories, some of which are way better than others. Instead of ranking them, though (which we all know I love to do), I’m just going to discuss them in their order of appearance. 1. “Father’s Day” A group of siblings is gathered, waiting for their aunt to show up. She’s gone a little loopy ever since the tragic death of her father, so they’re all talking about how crazy she is. When the aunt shows up, she goes to visit her father’s grave and he rises from the dead, looking for the Father’s Day cake she didn’t give him on the day he died. He kills her and then makes his way to the house to kill the others. While the graphics were a little cringy, the jump scares in this one were decent. And the shot of the decapitated head atop the Father’s Day cake was pretty great. 2. “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” The titular character, played by Stephen King himself, sees a meteor land in his backyard, but pours water over it when it’s too hot to touch. It cracks open and Jordy touches the weird liquid inside, which then causes him to start growing some type of plant-like substance all over his body. Jordy spreads these weeds to everything he touches and water seems to accelerate the process. This one ends with him finally grabbing a shotgun and shooting himself, though that doesn’t guarantee that the plants will die with him. The story of this one is okay, but the way King portrayed Jordy gave me secondhand embarrassment for him. Maybe that’s just me. I don’t know. 3. “Something to Tide You Over” A wealthy man lures his wife’s lover to his house and forces him at gunpoint to accompany him down to the beach. He buries the man in the sand up to his neck and warns that the tide is coming in soon. The young man learns that the wealthy man has already done this to his unfaithful wife, killing her earlier in the day. The wealthy man returns to his house, watching the young man’s death through the camera he’d set up at the beach to record the ordeal. Just when the man believes he’s rid of his problem, the two lovers show up at his house, undead and covered in seaweed. They take him to the beach, bury him up to his neck in the sand, and then walk away together just as the tide starts to come back in. I loved this one! The acting was good, the story moved at a quick pace, and they didn’t have to rely on graphics or jump scares to make the viewer stay interested. 4. “The Crate” I’ve already written about the plot of the short story version of “The Crate,” so I won’t repeat all of the here, because the movie version follows it almost exactly. The only difference is that the end of the movie implies that the monster may have escaped the crate after it’s dumped in the water. This one was okay, but definitely not great. The main problem for me in this part of the movie was the acting. Everyone was a little too over the top and it made it feel more ridiculous than exciting or creepy. 5. “They’re Creeping Up On You” A very rich man is hanging out in his apartment, yelling at everyone from his employees to his building maintenance man, because no one can do anything right in his opinion. Then his pristine apartment becomes overrun by cockroaches. The bugs continue to ruin his life up until the point where the man has a heart attack and more cockroaches burst out of him mouth. I hated this one! It was well-acted and everything looked good, but I hated every second of it. I’m not particularly grossed out by bugs, but I am a slight germaphobe. So watching someone have bugs crawling all over them and into their mouth kind of made me want to vomit. Overall, this movie is solidly okay. If you’re looking for something that doesn’t require much concentration and is more humorous than scary, then check out Creepshow. Title: The Breathing Method
Publishing Date: 1982 Length: 62 pages Start Date: May 29, 2018 End Date: May 30, 2018 I really liked half of The Breathing Method. The other half I found completely unnecessary. Let me start with the part I wasn’t a big fan of. This novella is told in the story-within-a-story format. Normally, I love that type of thing. But in this case, it just didn’t work for me. It’s set up as a type of “old boys’ club,” where several gentlemen gather in this secret club and tell each other stories, many of which are dark, macabre stories. The set-up just didn’t flow naturally, though, and kind of slowed down the story, which is what I didn’t like about it. The story within the story was pretty great, though. It’s told by a doctor who taught a pregnant patient a new breathing method (title drop!) to help her through the pains of labor. She’s carrying an illegitimate child and is worried about financial and societal pressures, but is determined to have her baby anyway. Warning: Spoilers ahead! The woman goes into labor on an icy night in the middle of winter, but manages to find a taxi to take her to the hospital, where the doctor has promised to meet her. Unfortunately, as they reach the hospital, the taxi hits a patch of ice, spins out of control, and crashes. The woman is thrown from the car and decapitated. When the doctor gets to her body, he discovers her lungs are still pumping air and her mouth is still blowing out in the doctor’s special breathing method. He delivers a healthy baby, and then her body and head both die. See?! That part is way more interesting than a bunch of old rich dudes sitting around in a cloud of cigar smoke, congratulating themselves on being masters of the universe! (Sorry. Didn’t mean to throw in a Titanic reference there.) This is one of the few times where I wish King (or any writer) would scrap the frame story format and just stick with the internal story. That would have helped the story to flow a lot better. |
Jacinta M. CarterProfessional Book Nerd Archives
July 2019
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