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42) Stephen King Goes to the Movies: Picked up in the airport on the way back from a conference, this is a collection of 5 short stories that got turned into films. 1408 was very good, and struck me as a wonderful color piece for a CoC game, since the evil force was so malevolant and inexplicable - it made me want to see the move. The Mangler was a silly little bit about an industral washing machine getting possessed by the devil, with the classic shock ending. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshenk Redemption was very good, more complicated than the film and made Andy into a more nuanced, less angelic character - not really ain improvement, but a good companion to the movie. Children of the Corn was a straightforward horror story, but King's introduction was priceless: "The movie version is a kind of avatar of '70s horror movies -- even the spilled blood looks ready to snort coke and disco at the drop of a BeeGees tune....The only [sequel] I was really rooting for was Children of the Corn Meets Leprechaun. I wanted to hear the little leprechaun guy shouting "Give me back me corn!" in his cute little Irish accent
The final story was Low Men in Yellow Coats, which at 345 pages isn't really a short story at all. It was the basis for the movie Hearts in Atlantis, and I don't see how that would have worked considering that much of the motivation of the central character comes from back story contained in King's Dark Tower series, which wasn't referenced in the film and was hardly touched on in the short story. This is not to say that it was a bad read - it was a very good read. But how did they ever film it? I am also left wondering how much of an impact the story had on Stolze's creation of Unknown Armies, as the Low Men In Yellow Coats storuck me as being archtypical UA enemies, and perhaps the origins of the Sleepers. Does anyone know if this connection has any validity?
The final story was Low Men in Yellow Coats, which at 345 pages isn't really a short story at all. It was the basis for the movie Hearts in Atlantis, and I don't see how that would have worked considering that much of the motivation of the central character comes from back story contained in King's Dark Tower series, which wasn't referenced in the film and was hardly touched on in the short story. This is not to say that it was a bad read - it was a very good read. But how did they ever film it? I am also left wondering how much of an impact the story had on Stolze's creation of Unknown Armies, as the Low Men In Yellow Coats storuck me as being archtypical UA enemies, and perhaps the origins of the Sleepers. Does anyone know if this connection has any validity?
