Book Review: Dr Sleep, by Stephen King

Since I can't seem to work on my novel, I'll come on here and talk about someone else's.

I'll be honest: before I heard about Dr Sleep, all I knew about The Shining was from snippets of the Kubrik film. That's right, I've never seen the damned movie all the way through and after reading the book and what Stephen King thinks about it, I'm glad I haven't. That's right. I said it.

Nothing against Stanley Kubrik, but I'm of the opinion that if you're going to base your movie on a book, you should probably, oh I dunno, base the damned thing on the book. The only thing the Kubrik film takes from the book is the names of the characters and the base plot. Jack Nicholson, though a great actor, plays Jack Torrance as crazy from the get go. Of course, look at Jack Nicholson: mofo looks crazy at the best of times, I don't believe him as a good guy driven insane by alcoholism and ghosts.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, back to our regularly scheduled program.

I read The Shining in preparation for Dr Sleep and I'm glad I did, because without it, I would have been completely fucking lost. Sure, I would have understood the story; they explain enough about the shining itself and what happened to Danny and Wendy to get the point across. But just understanding the plot and point really isn't enough, especially with a King novel. One must understand the subtext, the little references and nods to other things, and there are plenty of nods to The Shining that I would have missed had I not read it.

Dr Sleep is, of course, the sequel to The Shining, and follows Danny Torrance after that fateful winter in The Overlook Hotel. Danny, when we meet him, is an alcoholic, following in his father's footsteps, with a temper to match Jack blow for blow. We see him hit rock bottom and begin the laborious climb back up with the help of AA. Danny is an orderly at a hospice and has discovered that his shining can ease the patient's passing, earning him the nickname Dr Sleep.

During the course of years over which this book takes place, Dan makes contact, at first through the shining, then email and finally in person, with a girl named Abra Stone, a girl whose talent makes Dan's look like a flashlight compared to a lighthouse. Abra has gotten on the wrong side of a group of vampire-like entities called The True Knot. The Knot feed off the essence of children with the shining, which they call steam. Abra oversees them killing a boy for his steam and eventually The Knot starts gunning for her.

I really don't want to say any more. This book is amazing, King truly at the height of his power. I bought it on Thursday and was done on the next Monday. If you're a King fan, like I am, read this book, but I do recommend reading or re-reading The Shining first. If you've just seen Kubrik's film, definitely read The Shining first.

Vlog: The Hobbit or Why the fuck is this movie longer than the audiobook.

Words cannot describe this movie. Even my video devolves into rambling nonsense.

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter

I apologize for the low volume; didn't know I was speaking that softly.

Nightmare on Elm Street: A Fanboy's Retrospective.

I love the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. It has always been my favorite movie series, probably because the movies always frightened the FUCK out of me. As a kid, I had a lot of nightmares, so when I got a little older and watched Freddy Krueger murdering teenagers in their nightmares, it really resonated with me. I watched the remake last night and I thought I'd come on here and give my thoughts on the series as a whole. This isn't going to be a plot synopsis, but just what I thought about the movies.

A Nightmare on Elm Street:

The original. Without this one, none of the others would have been made, and it's still the best. Heather Langenkamp as Nancy is believable as a protagonist, and while the others are completely disposable, they play their roles. It's worth noting that this movies is Johnny Depp's first role in a movie. Who knew that this kid who got yanked into the bed in a horror film would actually turn into a world famous actor?

Being the movie that started it all, it's not nearly as campy or humorous as later films would be, its much darker and it still holds up after all these years.

Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge

I hate this movie. I really cannot explain why, but I really hate it. I cannot say more about this one.

Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

Hell yes. To me, this is really where the series got good. It's also where it started to get really campy but I can overlook that. Heather Langenkamp coming back as Nancy was awesome again, and I loved the dream powers of all of the kids. This movie was one of my favorites until I saw some of the later movies.

Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Master

Yet another great movie, in the same vein as Dream Warriors. It brings back 3 of the characters from the previous movie and adds its own cast of teenagers for Freddy to kill. It's a little more campy and over the top, but I don't mind that. Alice's own dream power of absorbing the powers of her friends, making her into the Dream Master, makes her a foe that Freddy hasn't seen since Nancy. A great movie, surpassed in my eyes by only the next in the series.

Nightmare on Elm Street 5: Dream Child

This, in my eyes, is the best of the series, combining the surreal images of the dream world with a premise that's quite original. Freddy using the dreams of Alice's own child to get at her friends is a great idea, that could have been terrifying if they hadn't kept up the camp factor. By using Amanda Krueger to put an end to her undead son, I feel that it put an end to the series better than the next movie.

Nightmare on Elm Street 6: Freddy's Dead, The Final Nightmare

Another movie that I fucking hate. Even taking away the insipid 3D factor, the movie sucks hard. It starts with the humor and doesn't let up. It's completely idiotic, and I don't even bother with this one when I watch the whole series.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare

Ah the New Nightmare. I used to loathe this movie. I guess I just didn't understand the point of it, but I get it now that I'm older. It's a great movie, but I hardly expect anything less from Wes Craven.

Freddy Vs Jason

Yet another idiotic movie. The premise is stupid, the whole thing is a typical new type slasher movie: set up a bunch of stereotypes that everybody in the audience will hate and want to die. That is not scary. It's scary when we see characters we care about  in danger. Cheering on the killer is not scary, its pointless, gory idiocy.

Nightmare on Elm Street (Remake)

Initially I did not want to see this movie. I saw it as a pointless remake, and it is. But let's face it, all remakes are pointless.

I'm going to get this out of the way right now: this movie was fucking awesome. I've heard that the kids were all disposable. In what Nightmare movie were the kids not disposable? Here, I saw character even in the obviously dead characters. Nancy in this was a quiet, introverted loner, instead of the center of a large group of friends, and I dug that. I was the same way in school, and I thought that the actress pulled off the sleep deprivation well. Some have said she didn't have the charisma or personality that Heather Langenkamp had, but I disagree. Not taking anything away from Heather, but this girl acted like someone who'd been up for several days would; I know from experience.

Jackie Earl Haley was great as Freddy. He seemed more physically imposing that Robert Englund and the fidgeting with the blades on his hand really drove home, to me at least, that these things are deadly. I didn't mind him roughening up his voice, not unlike Christian Bale as Batman, and it makes sense that he would sound like that, due to smoke and heat damage to his throat. I thought the make up was ridiculous, he looked like Voldemort's Asian cousin, but honestly, that was the only problem I had with the remake. I thought it reused certain scenes from the original to decent enough effect, except when Freddy comes out of the wall. That bit of CG sucked, to the point that I actually laughed and commented that it looked better in the original. Most of the others were well used; when Nancy sees Chris in the body bag at school, it really drives home just how sleep deprived she is, showing that she's started to dream while she's awake.

Despite my misgivings, the remake of Nightmare was very well done, it brought Freddy back to his darker roots, and even added some of Wes Craven's original ideas back into the movie. Very well done.

So that's my thoughts about the Nightmare on Elm Street series. Sure it's campy at times, ridiculously stupid at others, but scared the fuck out of me as a kid and will always hold a special place on my movie shelf.

Stephen King's IT

Last week, the Nostalgia Critic did a review of this movie. He hammed it up, turning it into a Stephen King drinking game. Look, I have no issue with the NC doing this, it's his job to nitpick and go over-the-top for laughs, and the problems he pointed out with the movie are legitimate. But let's be fair to the movie: it was made for tv in 1990, so not only are the effects not going to be that good, but the story is going to have to be butchered. Not to say they did a bad job with the story, they hit the main points of the book and captured the atmosphere of Derry.

I'm going to compare/contrast events in the book and movie and explain a logical reason why they were changed.

Sightings of It


Almost all of the seven Losers' first sighting of It was changed from book to movie, but the changes make sense when you take into account budget and whatnot.

Ben: In the book, Ben saw It as the mummy while walking home from school in the winter. The movie was probably shot in the spring/summer and they couldn't afford to draw out the shooting long enough to actually shoot in the dead of winter. Also, Ben saw the creature on the frozen over Canal, a channel that keeps the Kenduskeag river flowing through downtown Derry. I don't know of any town in America that has something like this and it would have been to expensive to create some kind of analogue and so, Ben's sighting was changed to seeing It as his father in the Barrens.

Bill and Bev were unchanged.

Eddie: Eddie saw It as a leper under the porch of 29 Neibolt street. This would have introduced several plot threads into the movie that would have made it probably made it 2 hours longer, so it was changed for time.

Richie: Richie saw It as a moving Paul Bunyon statue. Let's face it; the computer technology that tv studios had to work with even now could not make a 30 foot Paul Bunyon statue look anything but fake. Back then, it would have been worse. This one goes to tech and budget.

Stan: Stan saw dead boys in the Standpipe. Once again, we deal with location and budget. What town has something like the Standpipe?

Mike: Mike saw a giant bird at the ruins of the Kitchener Ironworks. Once again location and budget. They would have had to create a field full of detritus from the exploded ironworks and on top of that make a giant bird chase a small boy. No way they could have done that on a tv budget in 1990.

So we can understand why these changes were made. Other changes were mostly for time; they left out the Neibolt street stuff and the children facing down the giant spider.

Another thing the Critic complained about was the flashbacks; and he's right to complain about that. Half of the story is told through flashbacks, both in the movie and the book. The thing is, in the book they make sense. The adults forgot everything about that summer and the phone call from Mike triggers their memories and they start to remember things that happened. As they remember, we learn what happened.  This isn't really explained in the movie and the flashbacks get kind of annoying.

I think the movie was made for fans of the book, who can kind of plug in the missing sequences from the book to make the movie that much better.

God I don't want to talk about what I'm about to, but it's all the people who trash on this book seem to focus on: the sex scene in the sewers between Beverly and the boys. Look, I know it sounds bad, especially when you take into account the kids are 12 but damnit, it's not the point of the book! First of all, did you pay attention to this book? Supernatural forces were keeping the kids bound together as one force to kill It. When they were leaving the sewers, the bond began to break down and they got lost. Bev used sex as a way to bind them together forever. IT MAKES SENSE WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE BOOK!

Besides, it's not like its written in disgusting detail like a Penthouse Forum letter; its very downplayed and sweet, not to mention vague. This is sex from the point of view of a kid who's just starting puberty. If you let something like this, which amounts to maybe 20 pages in a 1104 page book, hey, too bad for you. IT is one of Stephen King's best. The man not only knows what scares us, but how to write it.