Thursday, December 3, 2009

Night Shift: Fun, Fun, and More Fun

These next five stories were so much fun. Some of them I had read before, but some I hadn't. I think that all but one of these five stories have been turned into either movies, shorts, or TV show episodes.

"The Boogeyman": I remember being a teenager, and thinking that it would be a good idea to read this story aloud to my 5 or 6 year old twin sisters as they went to bed. Boy, am I a stinker or what? This story still remains one of the creepier ones, even after having read it so many times. To me, there is just something really disturbing about infants being slaughtered by "the monster in the closet". I also like the fact that this story is really a morality tale about parenthood. The main character is a father whose negligence, stubbornness, and pride all seem to cause his children to be murdered. This all comes out in flashbacks as he unloads his conscious onto a psychiatrist. There is also a trick ending that is kind of hokey, but still makes me smile.

"Gray Matter": This story is another one that makes my skin crawl. It is all about a man who gets infested by some bacteria in his beer, that starts to take over his body. This story reminds me a lot of the story in the SK film, Creepshow, "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill". While the segment in the movie is about a man (played by SK himself) who gets infested by a bacteria from a meteor, and is really played more for laughs than anything else, this story is much darker and creepier.

"Battleground": This story is lots of fun, and is such an obvious homage to certain Richard Matheson stories. It is all about a hit man who receives a package in the mail that turns out to be an army of toy soldiers that wage war against the man in his apartment. It reminds me a lot of Matheson's segment in the 1975 movie, Trilogy of Terror, where a Zuni doll wages war against a woman in her apartment. It was recently made into an episode of the TV show Nightmares and Dreamscapes, which was a compilation of SK short stories made into TV episodes.

"Trucks": A very action packed story about a group of people who are held hostage in a truck stop when the world's trucks all of a sudden come alive and start to attack the human race. I found this story very scary, as it had a very bleak outlook. We create all of these mechanical devices to do things for us, and we hit them when they don't work, and run them until they die. It is interesting to see SK's vision of what would happen if one day they decided to hit back. SK wrote and directed (in his only directorial effort) the movie version, Maximum Overdrive in the 80's. I have not yet seen this movie, and I am curious to see what SK is like as a director. From what I hear, after watching the movie, I will understand why he has never been asked to direct another movie. I'll let you know what I think when I get there.

"Sometimes They Come Back": Ominous story about an English teacher who's dead childhood tormentors come back from the dead to cause him more trouble. This short story was one of the longer ones in this book, and I really liked the fact that it was. The story really had time to develop, and grow to it's climax. It also displays some interesting symbolic themes about how "demons" from your past can reappear. Or as SK puts it, "Sometimes they come back." There is also a TV movie version of this made in the 90's, and from what I understand, it is a decent one. I look forward to seeing that interpretation.

I'll check back in after the next five...

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