Stalker (1979): Co-written and directed by Andrei Tarkovsky: [Cast and Crew]: The great Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky's follow-up to his elliptical Solaris (the original, not the Clooney debacle) is the even-more elliptical Stalker, based on Roadside Picnic, a novel I haven't read by Soviet science-fiction legends the Strugatsky Brothers. It's also a clear influence on Jeff Vandermeer's recent Southern Reach Trilogy, adapted by Alex Garland as Annihilation. Except Stalker actually is a philosophical puzzle.
It's also one of the slowest movies ever made. Strap in and feel the lack of gees! Three Soviet men venture into The Zone, a mysterious area created by a mysterious something that may or may not be from outer space. Only a Stalker can navigate the shifting, dangerous landscape of the Zone to reach the center, where a person's wishes can be granted by yet another mysterious something.
The movie consists primarily of the three men trekking through forest land littered with industrial garbage, rotting houses and warehouses and factories, tunnels, and many other seemingly mundane things. They all talk a lot about life, the universe, and everything. There are many startling visuals created by Tarkovsky's skill at making the mundane seem peculiar and even numinous.
By the end, one is left with a science-fiction movie about mysteries and Mystery itself. It's certainly not for everyone, but I found its cumulative effect to be haunting, lingering long after the final, mysterious scene that seems like a prelude to some sort of crazy, languorous Soviet X-Men movie. Highly recommended.
'Salem's Lot: adapted from the Stephen King novel by Paul Monash; directed by Tobe Hooper; starring David Soul (Ben Mears), James Mason (Straker), Lance Kerwin (Mark Petrie), Bonnie Bedelia (Susan Norton), Ed Flanders (Dr. Norton), Lew Ayres (Jason Burke), and Reggie Nalder (Barlow):
The first miniseries adaptation of a novel by Stephen King, and still among the two or three best. There are necessary condensations and eliminations from King's giant cast of small-town Maine residents whose town is about to get vampirized. The reduced role of Father Callahan is probably the most keenly felt -- he's got two scenes and then he's gone. Oh, well.
David Soul is solid as writer Ben Mears, returning to the home of his childhood and discovering it both unaltered and about to be severely altered. Bonnie Bedelia and Lance Kerwin do nice work as well. James Mason dominates the miniseries. Not as the vampire Barlow, though, but as his majordomo Straker.
This is really the major change from the novel: Barlow the vampire doesn't speak at all, though he does hiss a lot. Straker speaks a lot, to the extent that one starts to wonder why the screenwriters didn't just have James Mason play the vampire. Barlow's make-up and prosthetics make him an homage to the vampire in F.W. Murnau's seminal vampire movie Nosferatu (1922) much different a creature than the smooth-talking Dracula figure of King's novel.
Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist) directs ably. The horror effects of vampires floating outside the windows of their prey is surprisingly spooky. Hooper also has a solid touch with the actors. His experience with Texas Chainsaw Massacre in terms of implying but not actually showing horrible images comes in handy on a project that must pass the network censors. All this and Fred Willard in his underwear being threatened with a shotgun! Recommended.
Lair by James Herbert (1979): Late, prolific English horror novelist James Herbert really had a gift for blending left-leaning social commentary into his blood-spattered works. Lair, the second novel in his Rats trilogy, isn't quite as agit-proppy as The Rats or Domain. Nonetheless, it takes a lot of shots at upper-class twits, self-serving politicians, and money-grubbing corporate types.
The two co-dependent sub-species of giant rats that brought London to its knees in The Rats seem to have been vanquished when this novel opens. Four years have passed. But in the idyllic private forest of Epping Wood, a protected green space just a few miles from the centre of London, England, something is stirring. The two-foot-long black rats and their two-headed, nearly immobile overlords have adapted to life in the forest. And boy, are they hungry!
This time around, a plucky male biologist who works for the world's biggest rat-catching corporation (the Rat Invasion of London created some great business opportunities) and a plucky female forest guide are our main protagonists. This is an early James Herbert novel, so be assured that they will engage in a graphic five-page-long sex scene before the story's over.
The super-rats soon create lots of mayhem and a lot of headless bodies stripped of all flesh. As a second book in a trilogy, Lair is a bit more restrained than the first and third novels. The action stays confined to the forest. Really, it's a pastoral from Hell.
The gruesome scenes are very gruesome and quite inventive. The bureaucrats and politicians are dangerous idiots. The adaptation of the super-rats seems logical and well-thought-out, as do the social frictions between the two sub-species of super-rats. There's trouble in Rat Paradise! But they're still super-hungry! And, in what I think is a first for Herbert, the supporting pervert character doesn't die. Or does he? In any case, Herbert really didn't like Phys. Ed. teachers. Recommended.
Shadows 2: edited by Charles L. Grant (1979; this edition 1984) containing the following stories:
Saturday's Shadow by William F. Nolan
Night Visions by Jack Dann
The Spring by Manly Wade Wellman
Valentine by Janet Fox
Mackintosh Willy by Ramsey Campbell
Dragon Sunday by Ruth Berman
The White King's Dream by Elizabeth A. Lynn
The Chair by Alan Dean Foster and Jane Cozart
Clocks by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini
Holly, Don't Tell by Juleen Brantingham
The Old Man's Will by Lee Wells
The Closing Off of Old Doors by Peter D. Pautz
Dead End by Richard Christian Matheson
Seasons of Belief by Michael Bishop
Petey by T. E. D. Klein
The late Charles L. Grant was both a talented writer and one of the four or five finest anthologists the horror genre has had. His original anthology series -- Shadows -- was a high point for horror short fiction in the late 1970's and early 1980's, sometimes reading more like a 'Best of' than anything else. Most stories in Shadows are contemporary in setting, as the mandate seemed to focus thereon, but beyond that, anything seemed to go.
There isn't a clunker in the bunch in Shadows 2. Moreover, there are at least two all-timers that appeared here for the first time: Ramsey Campbell's unnerving tale of childhood horror, "Mackintosh Willy", and T.E.D. Klein's "Petey," a novella about a house-warming party that plays enjoyably as both social satire and a Lovecraft-infused horror of suggestion and accumulation of detail. Entries by Michael Bishop and William F. Nolan are also excellent, and the whole anthology is well worth the read. Highly recommended.
