Fiction: The Evil Possum vs. Baldy!

 So I quit a decade-long career this week, after spending two weeks looking at a doodle of a cartoon mouse. And this is the scene that started it, from the same storyline as the battle demo. Yeah, these characters were always like this.

It was a low, wide compound, which seemed to slouch across the ground. Its outer layers were razor wire, its middle tiers were brick and barred gates, and its heart was a concrete block with grudging entry points and vision blocks. All were now in flames, in a scene like the Hell of the elder gods of a forgotten race. From the midst came shots and screams, not the cries of men but the skirling squeals of rats in a trap.

In the midst of it, ten creatures darted inward. They ran on two legs, yet their gait was the skulking of creatures whose instinct was to crawl. They bore tails that swished behind them, just above the ground. What could be seen of their faces were shining eyes, gleaming teeth, and whiskers that glimmered in the flames. Two more figures approached. One was like themselves, the other was much shorter and very fat, wearing a squashed fur cap. The smaller creature moved with a loping gait, halfway between running and jumping. When it gave a skirling squeal, the others turned attentively, if only out of curiosity. Then they followed a pointing finger. As smoke cleared, they beheld the likeness of a VW Beetle without a rear windshield, next to a breached door. The rats squealed and scurried after the shorter figure as he bounded into battle.

Up close, the rotund creature was nearly hairless and exceptionally ugly, despite large eyes and rounded ears that vaguely suggested cuteness. They did not make up for his mottled, vein-streaked pink skin and wrinkled folds of fat, nor for his perpetually shifting eyes. “There’s his frinkin’ car!” he squealed in a high-pitched, whistling voice. “That means he’s already inside or he’s comin’ back! You three frinkers, come with me! The rest of you, hold the rear an’ don’t frinkin’ die!” He unlimbered the wire stock of a scaled Skorpion machine pistol. It was clear from his bare arms that what the insulating fat covered was solid muscle. Three of the rats lined up to follow. His tufted tail stuck out nearly rigid behind him. He made as if to leap, but tumbled and rolled through the door instead. The chattering of his gun rang out. The followers rushed in with a chorus of squeals, leaving their companions chittering outside. A moment later, a volley of automatic fire rang out.

The small creature peered out a vision block. The rats who had remained outside lay dead or dying. One who started to lift a weapon abruptly twitched and lay still. A huge silhouette loomed over it, a third again the height of the tallest of the rodents and far more massive. “Frink of a frinkin’ frink,” he said.

“Altimus and his son are dead, as are his Second and his chief guards,” the figure outside called out in a nasal but commanding voice. “I breached his bunker with Panzerfaust and collapsed the escape tunnel with multiple timed demolition charges. The Revenants are no more.”

“Yeah?” the much smaller creature called out. “Why are you frinkin’ telling us?”

“I am giving you an opportunity to consider your position,” the giant said patiently. “You know who you face: No-Hands, El Diablo Sin Mano Derecho, Archididelphis invicta, the Unconquered King. 100 of the slaves and debtors of Altimus pooled their wealth for 10,000 dinars to free themselves from his bondage. Because the Revenants were pledged to avenge anyone who took the life of one of their own, it was necessary to strike while you were together. If you renounce your pledge, I may consider allowing you to leave.”

“Well, frink you, Iron Nuts!” the hairless creature called out.

Saucer-like ears rose, and a mane bristled upon a high brow. “Baldur Thorndyke?” No-Hands called out.

“Yeah,” the one unavoidably known as Baldy answered. “Small frinking world.”

“Yes,” No-Hands said. His lips curled, revealing the saw-edged teeth of a possum. “This is the second time we have met since we parted ways. Surely you have considered, there are ways to stay out of each other’s way.” Two of the rats abruptly rose up, straight into three blasts of a shotgun.

“I was the frinkin’ chief guard,” Baldy said. “Altimus pulled me off duty when I told him what his frinkin’ chances were.”

“Unfortunate for him; less so for you,” No-Hands said. “You are quite good at what you do. A creature of your talents should have no trouble finding another line of work, or an employer who would not come to my attention.”

“I’m the frinkin’ top-dollar talent,” Baldy answered. “I go where the frinkin’ money is. People who don’t worry about you don’t pay my frinkin’ going rates.”

“But you have nothing to spend your money on,” the possum said in irritation. “You have no family, no lovers, and no vices to speak of. Neither do I, of course, but all know that money is not the reason I do what I do. So why do you insist on risking your life for wretched beings you would kill for free if they did not pay you?”

“Because I’m the frinking best!” Baldy shrieked. He fired a full magazine at No-Hands, then rolled for the door. No-Hands switched his shotgun for a freshly loaded PPSh-41. He fired short bursts at a target that came bouncing like a lone photon in a hall of mirrors. Baldy answered with a semi-random volley that seemed to propel his globular body one way and then the other. Several times, his shots struck the chest of his foe, only to ricochet off what appeared to be a vest of rattlesnake skin inside No-Hands’ mink coat. Finally, Baldy launched himself straight at the possum, twice his height and nearly 10 times his mass. At the last moment, No-Hands swung his head forward, and Baldy bounced right off his skull. The mouse tumbled into the dark with a squeal of pain, and the possum staggered back against his car with a rumbling call of displeasure. He refocused his crossed eyes as the final rat reared up. He stepped forward and took aim, only to topple as a shotgun blast caught him in the chest.

“Not so tough, are you?” the rat said. He pumped the shotgun as he advanced. “You’re bigger than us. They say you’re smarter than us. But you go down the same as us.”

Then both barrels of a shotgun fired from inside a boot that had replaced No-Hands’ right foot.

“Yes,” No-Hands said as he sat up. “I do.”

Fiction: The Evil Possum/ Beer War Battle Demo!

 I've ended up on a break from this blog that I was going to let go a bit longer, but I decided to come back with a repost of something I already tried and hilariously failed to plug on my beautiful, useless Wattpad page, a battle demo for a new adventure of the Evil Possum! This is, in fact, for the Beer War story line I already posted one demo for. If you read it, this might make slightly more sense. Maybe. And yeah, this is what No-Hands' enemies were always like...

The machine gun emplacement looked like an exploded egg. Its concrete shell was caved in and bowed out. Within was carnage, so blackened and charred that the organic could not be distinguished from the inorganic. The most misshapen form of all was what finally sat up. It was a possum, species Didelphis sapiens, by name Heinrich Hilfiger, 40 centimeters tall. Bloodshot eyes came wide open as he sat up and hissed. He shook off the soot and dust that covered him, revealing a gray and black pelt only somewhat charred. In a moment, his eyes fixed on a machine gun, miraculously intact. He looked at the end of a belt still in his hand, then he began to wind it around himself. Momentarily, he had a doubled bandoleer over his chest, a belt wrapped twice around his waist and a loose end thrown over his shoulder. He threw three drums into a shoulder bag, one as large as the other two together, and slammed another large drum into the gun. It was a total of 600 rounds, enough for 30 whole seconds of fire. For good measure, he stowed two spare barrels. He examined the gun, and found half the bipod missing. He hissed and knocked the remainder off with a sharp blow. Only then did he emerge, the gun at his hip. He saw a figure even taller than himself, already receding. He all but strangled his own words as he snarled, “Nicht est Konig!!!” Then he opened fire.

No-Hands turned his head before he heard the cry. There was just time enough to choose whether to run left or right. For better or worse, he ran right, toward a basement loading dock for the warehouse. He stayed just ahead as the adversary behind him fired a barely controlled stream of fire. A final volley knocked his prosthetic leg out from under him, and he tumbled and rolled where the ramp dropped below the level of the pavement. Hilfiger loaded and emptied another drum blindly, while No-Hands slid down the ramp toward the open loading door. Directly behind him, a half-second volley disintegrated one of the barrels lined up just inside, spilling beer across the floor. Hilfiger loaded a second drum. He finally leaned into view, peering over the rail. No-Hands returned fire with a rifle longer than he was tall. With both eyes, he might have felled his foe then and there, but his snapped shot merely tore through the railing. Heinrich dropped out of sight, while No-Hands retreated to what cover there was among the barrels.

At least two more gunmen added their own fire, driving him further down the ramp. However, only Hilfiger ventured to approach, firing a score of bullets at a time. He gave a snarl as he paused to replace not only the drum but the visibly glowing barrel. The latter ejected from an opening in the side of the perforated housing with a hard metallic clang. He allowed it to clatter to the pavement. Already, he had the replacement in hand and sliding in. No-Hands fired his revolver twice as the foe once again revealed himself. This time, Hilfiger confidently let fly, without slowing or hastening his descent down the ramp. Three more barrels burst apart on the loading dock floor. Behind them, two whole stacks came tumbling down as another volley cut through the middle tiers.  No-Hands retreated from the cascade, into a warehouse floor lined with racks of beer barrels three and four high.

An appreciable fraction of a centimeter of beer splashed underfoot as Heinrich Hilfiger stepped onto the warehouse floor. A leaking keg came rolling toward him, spilling beer behind it. He stopped it with his foot. Another came flying from the right. He blew it apart in mid-air. He leaned around the nearest rack of barrels and emptied the rest of his final drum in the direction from which the barrel had come. A dozen barrels and more trickled and poured, adding to the fluid. Hilfiger calmly pressed his back against the rack. He played out one end of the belt that wrapped his body before he loaded it into the machine gun with an audible “chunk” of the cocking handle. His ear twitched at a second metallic sound. He dropped to the floor just as No-Hands fired his rifle point-blank into the other end of the line of barrels behind him.

The first barrel burst in the center and at both ends, rupturing another barrel in the other half of the rack beside it. No-Hands gagged and coughed at the resulting spray of suds and splinters, so he could not have seen if there had been time the resulting trail of destruction. Another ruptured catastrophically. A third had one or both ends blown out. A fourth was left intact by a fluke as the bullet dropped below it and ricocheted off the metal frame of the rack. The projectile went on through three more barrels before it burst out the far end, straight over the foe’s head. Hilfiger spat out beer as he rose up on hands and knees, then squalled as more poured down on his head. He whirled and fired around the rack. Another barrel disintegrated on the far end of the next rack. Over his head, the leaking barrel burst, spilling what remained of its contents on Hilfiger’s head.

Hilfiger held his fire. The sound of leaking barrels and sloshing beer came from all around. Then there was a louder splash as No-Hands loped deeper into the warehouse, past one line of racks to a third and final one. Hilfiger ran after him, through beer that had reached his ankles. No-Hands’ own saucer-like ears swiveled, triangulating the path of his pursuer. For a moment, he leaned around the rack he had just reached, his rifle at ready. Then he hissed and retreated yet again, just before two scores of bullets chewed into the rack. Hilfiger continued firing as he made his way down the line. No-Hands managed to fire one shot. The barrel it struck burst. Hilfiger jerked his head back just as the far end of the one beside it blew out still intact. Yet again, he took a spray of suds to the face. The bullet ricocheted off the next rack. Hilfiger dropped to a crouch as the unseen projectile went winging through the warehouse, finally bursting a keg on the far side of the floor.

Heinrich Hilfiger reached the far end of the floor, wading through beer halfway to his knees. By then, half the belt at his waist and the bandoleer over his left shoulder had disappeared. His tail swished behind him, stirring up a trail of ripples. He squalled in triumph at the sight of the door to a loading dock, closed and securely locked. He took a position directly in front of the door, next to a column of stacked barrels. He looked one way and then the other, but there was no sight nor sound of his opponent. He hissed and gripped the shroud of the gun. He squalled and drew back his hand. He cursed as he hastily ejected the overheated barrel, tossing it behind him. He turned, befuddled, at a splash and simultaneous metallic clang. No-Hands stood at point-blank range, holding the barrel in the pincer that served as his right hand.

Both possums dropped their jaws as they roared. No-Hands swung the glowing barrel. Hilfiger staggered from the blow, his face scalded by the heat. He countered with the replacement barrel in his hand, catching No-Hands on the tufted flanges of his chin. The only known specimen of Archididelphis invicta took a step back as he raised the revolver already in his hand. Hilfiger’s tail wrapped around his massive wrist like a whip, deflecting two shots into a barrel. Hilfiger slammed the barrel into his gun as No-Hands rushed to close the distance, with a third again the mass of his wiry frame. Another round from the revolver destroyed the padlock on the loading gate. Hilfiger’s tail lashed for No-Hands’ throat. Then Hilfiger screeched in triumph as the barrel went home with a ching. He promptly fired a volley into a barrel behind him. Three more came tumbling down. No-Hands’ raised arm somewhat reduced the force of a barrel that bounced off his high brow. With his pincer, he flung open the gate… revealing a trailer full of barrels backed up to the gate. That was when Hilfiger opened fire.

A veritable avalanche of barrels rained down on both combatants. No-Hands managed to retreat while Hilfiger took the brunt of the downpour. He paused to open his revolver for reloading. A wild volley blew the weapon out of his mechanical hand. He turned to see Hilfiger scramble out from under the barrels, even as more came tumbling down. He ran once more, and Hilfiger finally held his fire as he pursued, instead playing out more of the belt. The pursuer fired a short volley before No-Hands disappeared between two racks. He zagged left and then right, just ahead of a score and half a score of bullets. Directly ahead lay a third gate, a counterpart to the one through which he had entered. A volley from behind was cut short. A single shot from the rifle blew it halfway open. A swing of the rifle butt backed by No-Hands’ momentum knocked the left door off its hinges. “Linkshander!” Hilfiger called out. No-Hands turned back, to see his foe load the other end of a broken belt into his weapon. Simultaneously, he loaded another round into his rifle and fired.

It was an incendiary round.

No-Hands grabbed the bottom rung of a guard rail to haul himself up, ahead of the wall of blue flame that erupted through the loading gate. He vaulted over and dropped to the pavement as the barrels that had not been destroyed burst or burned, prolonging what would otherwise have been a short and relatively cool blaze. Only then did something else rush up the loading dock. It was a nearly unrecognizable form awash in flame, racing blindly forward. As it ran, it cast aside a weapon and a belt of ammo that already popped like a chain of fire crackers. No-Hands only shook his head as he tracked the figure toward its clear objective, a polluted sluice pond. It became all too clear how ill-considered it was when Heinrich Hilfiger dived straight into the deepest part. The surface of the pond itself lit up in a sheet of admittedly short-lived flame.

“You were never my equal, Hilfiger,” No-Hands said, “only my opposite. You still came closer than most.” Then he picked up the machine gun and slung it over his back.

Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Giant patchisaurs!!!

 

So it's the last night of the year, and I've gone two months without a blog post, and you might think I would just bow out, but I decided it wasn't too late for a dino blog. It just happens I have something very special I've been sitting on, two specimens of the patchisaurs that started this whole thing. To dive right in, here's possibly the first patchi whose origin is entirely accounted for!

So, for the backstory, I have been seeing unusually large patchisaurs for quite a while now, and finally decided to sample a few. This particular guy came in a pair with a smallish generic rubber dragon creature pictured above, clearly an extra-large version of a patchi with whiskers or mandibles believed to have inspired the Dungeons And Dragons Umberhulk. This is a true hulk indeed, well over 4 inches tall. Soon after I got it, I ran down a lead at a blog called Fantasy Toy Soldiers which confirmed that the small price I paid was almost certainly too much. As it turns out, this was made for a playset laughably called Medieval Times from a company with the only slightly less questionable name Awesome Kids, from what I can tell sometime after 2000. Complete sets, which I found for under $30, contain 4 of these. So where did they come from? Did someone simply copy and enlarge the patchisaur? Did they find original molds to work from? Or did someone actually unearth a vintage patchisaur that even the people who actually had the owlbear had forgotten about? As usual, the chances of an answer are less than zero, but at least, for once, we have a name and a date that is within a decade. Now, behold the glory of the hulk, newish and old!

"I once ate a bus that was this big..."

And here is the other, a big version of one I've come to call Flattop, as it turns out not so flat. This is also featured on the linked blog, though that dedicated thing-finder knew no better than I where it came from or who made it. One marginally useful clue is that it bears a script of Hong Kong, which means it must have been made before China took the island back. The further patina and overall look seem about right for the 1970s or '80s at the latest, so it just might be from the people who made the originals. If it wasn't, there's enough additional detail to suggest a source better than the usual 1980s/ '90s copies. He's a modest size, probably 3 1/2 inches, but pretty bulky. Here's pics of the big guy and the original.

Ask not what they were smoking. Ask what they were NOT smoking.

So, how many more of these are there? I saw a specimen for sale of the semi-sane rhino-lizard, featured on the blog, made maybe twice or maybe only half again the size of the one I have. There are also pics of the Rust Monster in two sizes, though as far as I can tell the one I have from back when is in fact one of the "big" ones. I could also swear that a while ago I saw the chupacabra-creature in a spectacular size, but I don't seem to have saved any pics to prove it. I have confirmed and been amazed to see old versions of that malign little beast with a full array of spines on his back. They look more solid, but they do not appear substantially larger as such. I will probably get one sooner or later, and I just might find a large version again. In the meantime, let's wind this up with a pic with Sidekick Carl. I said that guy is big!

So that's it for another year. It's been good to take a break, but I'm definitely not ready to call it quits yet. As always, it's the dinos that keep me coming back, and at this rate, I'll be seeing the patchisaurs waiting for me at The Furthest Shore. And heck, here's another of the dragon creature!

That's all for now, more to come!

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs Halloween special: Scary cute stego!

 

It's Halloween night and I've done a lot less than I used to but a lot more than I have in a while. To round things out, I obviously had to do a dino post. It happened I already had a perfect specimen for a quick post from a trip to an old stomping ground. Here he is in full glory on The Couch Mark 2.

Now for the story, I made this acquisition late last month at the Arizona Museum of Natural History, which I volunteered at back when it had the much cooler name Mesa Southwest Museum. Of course, I had a long history here. This is where I picked up the actually good Prehistoric Panorama Cambrian creatures, an okay pachycephalosaur I can't confirm I featured before, and my second worst dinobot. This little guy was part of a lot that appears to have flooded the shop, with several whole boxes discretely positioned under shelves and tables. His tag identifies him as made by the prolific company Aurora (maker of my first and only Valentine's Day gift), per the data entirely from recycled bottles. He's obviously a cute little guy, and pretty soft. Here's a few closeups.

"I'm innocent and adorable. But I'm still judging you."

So that's enough for a quick post. As usual, this feature is always worth the time, and finds like this make things easy when I'm in a hurry. I definitely expect a longer installment soon. And here's some more pics from the trip...

"Resistance is futile..."

Spinosaur flashback!

The Schleich vs Safari war is heating up.

"We will have our revenge when the school bully sees you with the pack..."

And why not one more in the bag?

Adaptation Insanity: The one that's the best Stephen King adaptation

 

Title: Misery

What Year?: 1990

Classification: Mashup

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

As I write this, I’m in an unplanned breather from my Halloween lineup, and the big change this time around is that I haven’t been leaning on movie reviews to fill it out. Now, I’m ready to get out one more, and I decided to go with more movies based on the works of Stephen King. And there was no better place to start than my pick for the best one of all. I speak of none other than Misery, as at a minimum the one that does the most to improve on the book.

Our story begins with a writer named Paul finishing his latest novel at an isolated cabin. He starts for home to a jaunty musical number, only to take a tumble on an icy mountain road. He wakes up to find himself being looked after by a matron named Annie who introduces herself as a nurse and his biggest fan. She assures him that the proper authorities and his agent have been notified, but proves evasive as he asks how soon they will come to pick him up. Soon enough, she lays out the truth: She has kept his rescue secret, while the wider world thinks he is dead. Annie wants Paul to herself, and when she finds out he has killed off the character that made him rich, she demands that he write a new adventure to bring her back. The author must write his own escape plan, if the nosey sheriff doesn’t get to him first- but the nurse is even deadlier than she seems!

Misery was a 1990 psychological horror film directed by Rob Reiner, based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. It was the 17^th theatrical film based on King’s work, though only the 7^th based on one of his full-length novels. Development reportedly began after producer Andrew Scheiman personally recommended the book to Reiner. William Goldman, a veteran screenwriter and the author of The Princess Bride, wrote the final script. The late James Caan was cast as Paul Sheldon and Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes, after the roles were offered to actors including Warren Beatty and Bette Midler respectively. The soundtrack was composed by Marc Shaiman. Few changes were made to the story, the most significant being the addition of the sheriff Buster played by Richard Farnsworth (d. 2000) and (spoiler…) the removal of an arc in which Paul publishes the final Misery novel after destroying a fake manuscript. Several early advertisements referenced a scene in which Annie severs Paul’s foot, which was altered in the final film. The film was a financial and critical success, earning over $60 million against a $20M budget, and won a Best Actress Oscar for Bates. James Caan died in June 2022 at age 82.

For my experiences, this is one where I’m foggier than usual. I distinctly recall seeing this movie on network television, and I can remember reading bits of the novel in the early 2000s, but I’m not quite certain which one came first. What I do recall is that I read the novel much later, somewhere in the 2015-2016 window, and very quickly concluded that the movie was if anything a substantial improvement. Sure, the book isn’t “bad”, but under scrutiny, it’s one of his more self-indulgent experiments, with a lot of on-the-nose venting that often seems to be at other writers’ expense. (Apart from anything else, Stephen King still hasn’t done a “real” sequel outside of the Dark Tower series…) By comparison, the movie improves as much as its medium can improve on a literary source, greatly aided by two superb actors. (And I meant to say a lot more about the soundtrack...) The one thing missing is the author’s searing hatred for his own character, which the novel transforms into revealed hypocrisy, but the difficulty of conveying that on-screen is obvious enough that the effective omissions of the ending are understandable.

Moving forward, I’m already feeling like this is a case in point of a movie “too good” for me to review in my usual format. What I find most worthy of comment is how easy it is to underestimate the rest of the cast in the face of Bates’ performance. Caan/ Paul himself is effectively turned into a supporting player, in itself a perversely effective subversion of the “damsel in distress” and the gender-role baggage that goes with it. That, in turn, pays off with real growth as the victim recovers and begins to develop his own plans. The big surprise is Farnsworth, whose only counterpart in the book is a nameless casualty of Annie’s wrath. He becomes an effective third player in the story, in the process adding a police-procedural element to the genre mix. It’s most intriguing to see his outside view of Paul Sheldon’s works. Finally, as with a number of things, his abrupt end is in its own way at least as brutal as anything in the book. (And dear Logos, I think I must have heard of the lawnmower scene when the movie was in theaters…)

Then, of course, there is Annie. What’s most striking is how easy it would have been for the filmmakers to compromise with an attractive or even “Hollywood unattractive” actress. Instead, we get a performer every bit as ungainly as King’s descriptions, without the script and cameras going into “fat-shaming” either.  We simply have a plus-size, middle-aged performer playing a character we could pity under any other circumstance. That is only the bedrock of her performance, which somehow gets more disturbing the more we can laugh. Then what I find most interesting is that her character becomes more sympathetic than the character in the original, and I have never been satisfied that this is simply because her bloodiest acts are removed or (arguably…) toned down. The screen version of Annie certainly tends to be absent-minded rather than actively sadistic, yet this is not played into a redeeming quality. It merely makes her less like Sid from Toy Story and more like Elmyra from Tiny Toons; she may not intend evil, but she is no less destructive for it. (Now I’m getting anger flashbacks to those idiot kids in ET…) To me, the difference is that it makes her more believable, and by implication not so different from any of us. And that brings me to a thought I had on my very first viewing, that her character would have been more disturbing and ultimately more frightening if the “backstory” had been cut entirely. All she needed to be was an outlier of toxic fandom that the wider world was still oblivious to. Portraying her otherwise was pretty much the same as making the big reveal in The Shining that Jack was a murderous wifebeater all along.

And that gets to the “one scene”, and there’s one that always stood out in the movie and the book. After Paul’s first attempt to revive Misery on demand, by rewriting the final scenes of his book, Annie simply says it’s “all wrong”. Paul is polite in asking for her input, with a level of returning assurance that will grow. To illustrate, she goes into a story of her childhood (which Paul questions in the book) of going to the serials, and an especially contrived resolution of a cliffhanger. Bates delivers it in top form, if anything with surprising restraint. She concludes, in a line that seems to be unique to the film, “Misery was buried in the ground at the end, Paul, so you’ll have to start there.” It’s all great, and it not only checks all the boxes of “AU” and “canon” that I can now hate that I know but does sound very much like me on one of my rants. This is what fandom is and was like, though I maintain that even then, we still understood that the point was to have fun. And I can give no better defense of the critique I laid out above than this, that if this sequence was the only time we learned anything about Annie’s past, the story wouldn’t be the least bit worse for it.

In closing, what I come back to is what I really think of Stephen King. I’ve been very sparing in covering his work, but I have still covered a good sample: Creepshow, Maximum Overdrive, Sleepwalkers and most recently Trucks. (See also The Signal, kiiind of...) These definitely give a representative sample of what I find good in Mr. King’s work. I can add that what I find bad, I cannot find in any story or book I have read through. My overall policy with King has been to sample cautiously, and either read what engages with me or respectfully set aside what doesn’t. The end result is that I have read some of what is agreed to be his best work, skipped a number of his “classics” and come to greatly appreciate some of his works that remain decidedly offbeat. (Again, how in Cocytus did we not get a Rose Madder movie?) The present film similarly shows how to get a good movie out of King’s material: Don’t worry about what’s most popular, or his “best”, but just run with something that’s different. It’s a lesson Hollywood may not learn anytime soon, yet there are enough quirky projects out there to have hope for the future. For now, we can appreciate what we’ve got. “Isn’t that an oogie mess…”

Fiction: The Adventures of Princess Sarah, Part 2!

Filling out another week while it's still the weekend, didn't have anything better to work with than a second chapter of the adventure of Princess Sarah, the spin-off to my retro gaming parody novel (which I just dumped on a free platform I probably should have been using all along). This has what's already my best gag, and as a bonus, I worked in the original owlbears!

Sarah’s first sensation was falling. The next was landing on her face. She skinned her knees in gravel, and one of her teeth came out against the rock. She started to cry, before she remembered she was a big girl now. She raised her head, and found Prince Robert looking down at her, his frog pack on his back and his beloved toy Frog Frog in hand.

“Sarah fall down,” he said. “Sarah ow ow?”

“Oh,” said a distant, murmuring voice, “look at them!”

“Oh, don’t talk like a baby,” Sarah said. She scrambled to her feet, briefly looking left and right. There was another murmur, as if one voice pressed another to be silent. They were in what was clearly a streambed, empty but still damp. Her River Cow bag had landed in a murky puddle beside her. She snatched it up and absentmindedly used her skirt to wipe it off. “Oh, poor Missus Cow… I mean, I hope it’s not wet.” She reached into an outer pouch and pulled out a jar of salve. Robert helped rub it on her knees.

“Ooh,” came the distant voice. “Look, the little one’s helping the big one!” The other voice rumbled louder than before.

“Well,” Sarah said, “we must have opened a magic door. Father said that was how he met Mother.” She smiled at Robert. “It will be an adventure, just like in the Guidebook! Ooh! I hope it didn’t get wet!”

She pulled out the book, and sighed in relief to find it dry. Indeed, she could feel no dampness at all on the inside of the bag. That was because it was, in fact, lined with real Water Cow hide, something Mother and Father had so far neglected to explain. She half-spoke the table of contents: Cartography, Topography, Geology, Botany, Zoology, Ethnography, Diplomacy, Polity. She flipped to the second chapter, then the third.

“`In your surroundings, you can see the past, present and future,`” she read. “`If there is a clamshell in desert sand, then it must once have been an ocean. If there is a tree or the cornerstone of a house still rooted in a riverbank, it must once have been dry ground. If there are stones that look round and smooth, then they must have been worn down by slow and gentle currents water or other elements. If there is gravel and large stones with sharp edges, then stronger forces may be in effect…’”

She looked up and down the channel. There were indeed a number of angular rocks. Then, half-buried in the gravel, there was the keel of a capsized boat. “Oh, dear,” she said. “`…If you see evidence of floods or falls of rock, vacate to higher ground as quickly as possible.’”

“Frog,” Robert said. He pointed to a purple toad with oddly long legs. It was struggling to climb up the steep edge of the bank, without appreciable success.

They quickly scrambled up the streambed. “Aren’t they adorable?” said the distant voice. “I just want to hold them! Those packs! Aww, look at the little boots! Really, can’t we help them?”

“Now, now,” came the lower voice. “We can’t interfere. Besides, if they have our smell, their parents may not take them back…”

 

They reached a hilltop where a tree grew from an outcropping. Sarah declared they would have lunch. She poured them each a glass out of Dink. She took out a safety knife and cut up the roll. She tried spreading the pomegranate jelly on a small piece, but she spat it out as soon as she tasted it with the hard and sour bread. Instead, she cut up the cheese and half of the sausage and served them on the bread. “`A lady in the wilderness should encourage the gentlemen with food prepared well and served with aesthetics and good cheer,’” she recited from memory. She offered the stacked slices to Robert.

“Frog,” he said. He opened Frog Frog, and the purple toad hopped out.

“Robert, Mummy and Mother told you, you can’t take anything real for your collection,” Sara said. The Prince offered a crumb of the bread to the creature, which showed no interest.

“Help frog,” he said. He tried again with a sliver of sausage, which the toad swallowed.

“Oh, he is kind!” cooed the voice. “And so brave!”

As the Princess and Prince ate, the sky grew overcast. Before they had finished, it began to rain. Robert opened the umbrella to deflect what the branches of the tree did not. The toad hopped about on the dry ground, which it evidently preferred to the rain. Sarah flipped open Dink’s top and leaned out, collecting a smattering of rainwater. When she looked downhill, she saw that the streambed was already half full. She again took out the Guide, and opened it to the fourth part.

“`To travel and survive in an unfamiliar land, the first priority must be to identify and harvest edible plants,’” she read. “`There is no better preparation than learning the flora of the known realms, yet this is but the first step. It is essential above all not to let familiar appearances lead to false conclusions. Even the most learned and experienced have perished because they took a deadly plant for an edible one, or disregarded a source of valuable nutrition because it resembled a noxious weed…’”

She flipped through a series of illustrations that filled a good part of the guide, pausing occasionally to consider the plants around them. None of them looked familiar or welcoming in the first place, and several that had looked at least vaguely similar to ones in the book proved to be among the strangest of them all. She reached out and pulled down one of the very branches overhead. The leaves, on examination, were strings of separate fronds. What looked like a single flower was similarly a cluster of tiny blossoms. She examined one of number of white globes that she had taken for fruit. Its surface proved papery and translucent. She found that it had no stem, but bulged directly from the branch. At a gentle poke, it split, revealing a pallid worm that hissed at her. She squealed and let go of the branch. As it snapped upward, the grub went flying.

“Let’s go,” Sarah said as soon as the rain cleared. “We need to find a safe place.” Robert shrugged and shouldered his pack. The long-legged toad clung to one strap. His sister read as they walked from an earlier chapter. “`When possible, follow waterways. They will lead to centers of agriculture, population and even government…’” When they reached the streambed, now full of coursing, muddy water, she turned upstream.

“Oh, no,” said the distant voice. “We can’t let them go that way…”

“Now, dear,” rumbled the answering voice, already grudgingly, “it’s going to be a bother…”

 

Sarah tramped along the bank, Robert following behind her. Something almost but not quite like reeds grew along the edges, sometimes well back and sometimes so far forward they had to push through it. Ahead was a stand of trees like the one they had sat under. She read aloud from the fifth part of the Explorer’s Guide, on zoology. “`The next and most vital step in understanding an unknown land is to catalog its animal life,’” she said. “`Consider the size, shape and habits of each creature. Does it consume plants, meat or a combination of both? Is it alone, or does it gather and travel in groups? Are its colors and mode of life a match for its surroundings, or could it be a traveler from elsewhere like yourself?” As she spoke, she took a closer look at the strange toad. They were mere Cubits from the edge of the trees when the creature stepped into their path.

It was three Cubits high and utterly massive. It had scales on its belly and limbs, and long, fibrous quills on its back. It seemed to have no neck, only a massive head that protruded from between its hunchbacked shoulders. Its face was dominated by a long, stout beak, a helmet-like carapace and two red eyes.

“Please,” she said, carefully enunciating, “you must go back. I will show you…”

Sarah froze and stared. Robert huddled behind her. The squawking cries hurt her ears. It was like the roar of one of the engines Father’s craftsmen wouldn’t stop tinkering with, drawing out every note with prolonged reverberations. But what she found most disconcerting was that its cries sounded almost like words. She hastily consulted the Guide.

“`If intelligence is unknown, treat a creature as you would a strange dog or a menagerie beast outside its cage,’” she quavered. “`Maintain an upright posture, firm eye contact, and an authoritative voice. If possible, withdraw deferentially, without haste or any sign of panic…’”

As she edged deeper into the almost-reeds, she straightened and called out, “Leave us alone, we don’t want trouble!” She added, “I’m a princess, not a little girl! I’m six, almost six and a half!”

Suddenly, a second and even larger creature burst out of the trees, as tall as the armoire. “No, no!” he bellowed. “Stay away, see!”

Sarah and Robert both shrieked, and immediately turned and ran. The girl took her brother’s hands, though within moments, it was he who pulled her forward. As they disappeared, the larger creature embraced his mate. He groomed her mane as she shook with honking sobs. “Ohh,” she said, “did we have to do that?”

“There, there, he said. “I’m sure they’ll be all right…” He gave a honk that made the children run faster still.

Adaptation Insanity: The one that readapted Maximum Overdrive

 

Title: Trucks

What Year?: 1997

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: Ow, My Brain!!! (Unrated/ NR)

 

As I write this, I’m trying to scrape together a lineup for Halloween, and that brought me back to this so far barely started feature on adaptations. That, in turn, brought me to a whole lot of maybe pile material from everyone’s “favorite” author, Stephen King. (See Sleepwalkers, fungghh.) As I surveyed the material at hand, one stood out that would otherwise have gone under my even more abortive feature on TV movies. It’s one King adaptation that has stayed obscure even though it’s been readily available for a very long time, and as a bonus, it’s based on the same source material as the only film the author directed. So do we have undiscovered gold, or a buried cat spoor? Would I be writing about it if it was that simple? Here’s Trucks, a made-for-TV film that has just a little more under the hood than one might think.

Our story begins with an old jalopy that takes out its owner. We then move to a little townlet with a truck stop and a lodge for a sightseeing tour, where a man and his son, a veteran and his spunky daughter and a vaguely mysterious lady guide meet up. While the domestic awkwardness unfolds, they notice several vehicles moving around strangely, with no explanation or context beyond vague official broadcasts about chemical spills in the area. They soon find themselves under siege by trucks that have no drivers, seemingly led by a meat truck that locked its driver in the freezer. The dad becomes the leader of our little band as they plan to fight back. But soon it becomes clear that the machines don’t just want the humans dead- they want to be their masters!

Trucks was a 1997 made-for-television movie aired by the USA cable network. It was the second adaptation of Stephen King’s short story of the same name, following the 1986 theatrical  film Maximum Overdrive directed by King. The film was produced by Trimark Pictures, a company also responsible for distributing Dead Alive, with New Zealand film maker Chris Thomson as director. King and screenwriter Brian Taggert (see… Of Unknown Origin???) shared credit for the script. The cast was led by TV/ character actor Timothy Busfield as the dad Ray and Brenda Bakke as the guide Hope. Unusually, the film was rated by the MPAA, which gave it PG-13. The movie was released on VHS. It is currently available for free streaming on Tubi and Amazon Prime.

For my experiences, I watched this one as a video rental around 2005, after reading the story but before watching Maximum Overdrive. At the time, I regarded it positively, even finding favorable comparisons to the theatrical film once I had seen both. Since then, I have come back to both at irregular intervals, and what I have come to see is equal and opposite extremes. Maximum Overdrive was an exercise in big-budget 1980s excess, exacerbated by a creator with no experience and unlimited creative control. The present film, on the other hand, is a clearly competent production restrained for better or worse by sub-B production values and “mainstream” network sensibilities. In many ways, the most appropriate frame of reference is the remake of Night of the Living Dead, which can only highlight the futility of comparison. What we have is truly a case of two films with nothing in common except source material, and it’s impressive enough that both have retained some measure of relevance.

Moving forward, the most significant further comparison between Maximum Overdrive and Trucks is that the former was action/ adventure where the latter is unequivocally horror. By any appraisal, what modest merit the present film has is owed to this decision. There is no vision of a wider apocalypse here; indeed, from what we do know, the authorities of the wider world are either unaware of the unfolding situation or so far able to contain it. This allows the focus to remain even more than in the original story on characters in isolation and growing despair. What’s different is that the individual buildings are not particularly claustrophobic. Space is ample, and there are windows that give a good view of the surroundings. On the other hand, the structures are so old and dilapidated that the trucks easily smash through whenever they try, quickly removing any appearance of safety. The key ingredient, of course, is human characters we can like or at least find believable. In those terms, this comes close to trying too hard. The characters are more fleshed out then the ciphers of the story, yet the drawn-out backstories do not make them any more vivid or sympathetic than the rogues’ gallery of Maximum Overdrive. On the balance, we at least have competent actors delivering decent dialogue, greatly helped by Busfield. I have to give a particular shoutout for his performance in the final shot of the film (definitely up for the “one scene”). In a more routine film, the unsurprising reveal could have led to a freeze frame of a shrieking scream queen; from our lead, we do not see fear or even surprise, only resignation.

Then, of course, there are the machines, and this is where the most definite improvements emerge. The goofy gimmick of the goblin truck is replaced by ordinary, working machines that are vastly more frightening. One can draw some sense of personality out of the individual machines, strikingly varied in size, age and roles, though none can match the sheer malevolence of the beat-up old clunker in Duel. It’s most intriguing to see the group playing literal cat and mouse. The usual trade-off is that it quickly becomes obvious when the machines are just messing with someone they have no intention of killing, and the cop-outs avoid the kind of gore that might push the limits of television. (And this was cable, dammit…) By my long-running rant, however, the nuance of a “monster” is potentially unnerving in itself, and the payoff here is better than usual as their ultimate plan becomes clear. Then there are moments of pure brutality, egregiously the surreal attack of a toy dump truck on a mailman (yes, you read that right) and a final kill where the lead truck wipes out a building as collateral damage. We get one more inscrutable moment in the finale when the same machine tries to wipe out the protagonists for no strategic reason, as if willing to destroy out of pure spite. This is what you get when variable behavior is used for more than plot armor.

Now it’s time for the one scene, and this is where I’ll mention that I went through a whole viewing in the course of this review just to stick to my own rules. Right about the middle, I was actually waiting for the sequence that was always going to be here, and still taken a little by surprise. We see two cannon-fodder government types who have already popped in and out, on their way to a chemical spill that might otherwise be written off as a cover story. One decides to put on his hazmat suit, a piece of gear that looks for all the world like a human-shaped padded envelope, leaving his companion in the cab. As the other guy finishes some inconsequential task, a second suit starts to inflate. Sure enough, when fully inflated, the suit starts to move of its own volition. The guy in the cab doesn’t seem to notice, until he sees his colleague outside. There’s just a moment to be surprised before the animated suit strikes with an axe already on hand. We then cut to the suited goon as he returns to the rear of the truck. He looks up at the bloody apparition, and promptly asks what he is doing. Of course, he gets the axe, and there’s a certain impressiveness as the phantom dispatches him, with far more force than strictly needed yet no sign of savagery or sadism. And then the suit returns to its place. Even compared to Maximum Overdrive, it’s a bizarre and totally random moment, neither foreshadowed nor figuring in any subsequent event, which is exactly how a movie like this stays in your memory two decades later.

In closing, I come to the rating. What it really comes down to is that this is one I would simply ignore under normal circumstances, especially in a feature with my “revised” rating scale in effect. Even with the points I have laid out in its favor, this is just plain cheap. On top of that, its greatest significance in genre history is to show just how far feature-length TV movies had fallen after peaks as recent as 12:01. Yet, as I postulated at the beginning, it still manages to be just a little more than it should have been, and it is clear that I’m not the only one who remembers it. For that, I can give it my attention and just a little respect. Forward until dawn!