Ann Dowd as Ann and Leslie Odom Jr. as Victor Fielding, The Exorcist: Believer
Director: David Gordon Green Writer: Peter Sattler, David Gordon Green (screenplay) Scott Teems, Danny McBride, David Gordon Green (story) Producer: Jason Blum, David C. Robinson, James G. Robinson Starring: Leslie Odom Jr., Ann Dowd, Jennifer Nettles, Norbert Leo Butz, Lidya Jewett, Olivia Marcum, Ellen Burstyn Released: 6th October 2023 Trailer
Though this is published much later, I write this only a half hour after having seen the film. It is fresh in my mind, as is Mark Kermode’s eight minute roasting of the film. He makes his feelings clear on the matter, and though I have repeatedly gone to him throughout the course of this series as the expert on the franchise in general, I find myself in disagreement with him… But also in agreement. Let me explain.
David Gordon Green has, of late, made a career of the legacy sequel. In 2018, he directed the not-bad-actually Halloween, and followed it up with the less good Halloween Kills and controversial Halloween Ends in 2021 and 2022 respectively. A year later, we get his take on another horror classic in its 50th anniversary year with The Exorcist: Believer. In the same way he brought back Jamie Lee Curtis, this time he brings back Ellen Burstyn (one hopes for a lot of money). There are other visual references throughout the film, including: the subliminal demonic images which are somewhat spoiled by the sharp stings to make sure you noticed them, rather than the silence in the original to cause you to doubt; the fighting dogs; the neck-twisting; floaty girls… The film is showing its influences for all to see, desperate to convince you that yes, this is part of the Exorcist films you all like so much!
Ironically, this I think was the weakest aspect of the film. Poor Ellen Burstyn barely has a line that isn’t some form of expository monologue, and she does the best with what she’s given. But it all feels so forced, as if the filmmakers couldn’t figure out a way to bring in the ‘legacy’ element of the legacy sequel, so repeated the Halloween trick. It’s especially telling that Chris MacNeil’s character arc is almost lifted beat for beat from the much better season 1 of The Exorcist series, down to the book about her experience pushing Regan away and a tearful reunion after years apart. There’s also elements of Laurie Strode from the recent Halloween trilogy. The original Exorcist was about Chris to an extent, but the focus was mostly on Karras and his faith (and not the patriarchy, as the film patronisingly suggests). Chris and Regan were victims in the film, and though the end of the Version You’ve Never Seen! hints at Chris’s faith at the film’s close, she mostly has been a non-believer up until that point. This time round, Chris believes, she still believes, she loses her eyes, and then she believes some more. When the film plays up being part of The Exorcist‘s legacy, it only reminds you how good the original is.
Green has clearly studied the original though. There are some interesting choices made throughout, as there is very little music with in-camera zooms used a few times, which went out of vogue years ago. But where the original played subtle, this has jump scares. With one or two exceptions, jump scares should play no part in any Exorcist movie, which should be contemplative and slow burn overall. There is blood here, yet I always think of The Exorcist (and the original Halloween for that matter) as almost completely bloodless. The horror isn’t from getting your eyes stabbed by a crucifix; the horror is the desecration of innocence in the eyes of Christ, when faith seems to have failed you in your time of need.
Where the movie is at its best is when it stops trying to be an Exorcist movie and instead tries to be an exorcism movie. Leslie Odom Jr., Victor Fielding and father to one of the possessed girls, has a relatively much meatier role than Burstyn had in the original. The prospect of choice between the two possessed girls is an interesting one, one that is not nearly exploited enough for the film. It is the only new idea in the film, but the exorcism genre isn’t exactly a genre bursting with new ideas at most points in its history. The choice between the two possessed girls at least gives you a sense of the evil the demons enjoy playing with.
But even then, the originality lets it down in the close. The Exorcist builds and builds to the entrance of Father Merrin, and it is fundamentally about the exorcists and their faith. This is called The Exorcist, and there isn’t actually an exorcist. Sure, lots of characters step up to the plate, but if anyone can have a go at this exorcism lark, including a failed nun, a baptist just improvising and a fairly undefined ritual lady, then what threat is there from the demons? Or, what threat from the ‘exorcists’ actually exists when the demons do what they want to do anyway, and win? The ending is played hopeful, despite one girl literally dead and tortured in Hell. But even with that in consideration, the one of the film is in no way as harsh or cruel as the original, coming off as rather toothless.
The film tries to claim that it is about ‘faith in each other,’ if the monologue that drags on at the end is anything to go by. But that just exists to paper over cracks of the film – the film is a hollow vessel, possessed by nothing. There is not a shred of an original idea in its approach to the original’s themes. It pays lips service to the idea of faith, in much the same way it pays lip service to the original, but it doesn’t do or say anything with that idea. It just piles on more and more people who express faith without actually saying anything about them. Victor’s late game twist haunts him in the moment of the exorcism, but doesn’t seem to inform his character at all. And so little time is given to him, partly because the time that I think the filmmakers felt they owed to Burstyn and by the fact that with so many characters, no one comes out of the film with much beyond verbally stated character traits, if they’re lucky to say much at all.
Had this film been made without the tag of The Exorcist, I think it would be thought of better. My initial feelings was that Kermode had been harsh in his review, in criticising it for essentially not being The Exorcist. Yet he is right in that film doesn’t work, not because it is trying to be The Exorcist, but because by placing itself in the original’s legacy it cannot escape the shadow of Friedkin’s original film. Cut out Burstyn and the references to the original, give that screentime over to developing the new characters and there might have been something more interesting as an exorcism film rather than an Exorcist film.
From what I’ve read, it seems like we’ll be getting the rest of the trilogy regardless of how this one performs, whether we like it or not. Judging from everything I’ve seen so far, this is very much a case of ‘not.’
Some may notice that the release date on the poster differs to the actual release date. This is due to the release of Taylor Swift’s concert film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour being announced for that date, forcing Blumhouse to release a week earlier than planned. Such is the power of Taylor Swift over the devil.
‘At bottom, you see, we are not Homo Sapiens at all. Our core is madness. The prime directive is murder. What Darwin was too polite to say, my friend, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle. And that is what the Pulse exposed five days ago.’
Stephen King, Cell
Though the main area for interest of my blog is my ongoing Stephen King bibliography trawl, there are other aspects to this site you should perhaps check out. I have my soon to be completed Exorcist series and, most relevant to this essay, a trawl through the history of the zombie genre through George Romero movies. Go have a look, I’ll wait.
Stephen and George have been friends for decades. King wrote about the ferociously brilliant Night of the Living Dead in Danse Macabre, and I imagine a friendship sprouted not long after, with them collaborating to make Creepshow in 1982. They remained friends, with King contributing the story Home Delivery to a zombie anthology called Book of the Dead in 1989 before it was collected in Nightmares & Dreamscapes, and Romero adapted (or nearly adapting) some of King’s books. In my Romero series, I note that 28 days later, Shaun of the Dead and Dawn of the Dead (2004) heralded a golden age, or glut for the less generous, of zombie films in the mid- to late aughts. Regardless of the book’s final quality, Cell absolutely fits within that rich time of zombie media.
It also is an important book for me personally. Though I had been reading Stephen King already by this point, Cell was the first new Stephen King book I read. I had already read a number of his classics, but this was fresh and just released! Though I have no idea where my probably first edition hardback has ended up after a few house moves, it would be impossible for me not to have a degree of fondness for the book. Especially as, and this was something I had forgotten until I read it again, my first and last name match two of the characters in this book.
The fondness for it in that sense does make me slightly more forgiving, but it is undeniable the book does not entirely work. It has a strong start, and the energy of those opening few chapters immediately after the Pulse is enough to sustain the book for quite a portion of the book. But in redoing The Stand for modern times, it’s clear when King runs out of steam – two explosions get the plot moving again, and the non-ending that many Constant Readers dislike can really end the book on a sour note for some.
Which is a shame as there are some great things going on in here. In the context of King’s bibliography, this is the first book of his in a while that is explicitly set Now. The Colorado Kid and From a Buick 8 are both mostly tellings of past events, and between those two King was dealing with the end of All-World in the Dark Tower. As such, the book is at pains to set itself in times we would recognise as contemporaneous for 2006, making reference to Axel F and Crazy Frog (NSFL) for example, something I haven’t thought about in years. This deliberate setting, as well as the use of phones at the viral delivery method, may make it seem a bit like an Old Man Yells at Cloud novel, deriding the present and looking back with fondness when times were simpler before all this gosh durned phones everywhere.
Though that is certainly a reading of the novel, I don’t think that’s really fair to King. He’s a man who has adopted modern e-publishing before it become the juggernaut it is today, embraced audiobooks and e-books, is willing to try things out. I don’t think he’s doing a version of Black Mirror before there even was a Black Mirror; rather, he is observing the world around him to make comment about the world’s dependence on phones. Nearly twenty years later, that has only become more true.
I think it’s much more likely to and apropos to think of this as King’s first book to deal with his feelings and fears following 9/11. There has been some minor references in his previous books, and Dreamcatcher was eerily prescient considering it was published before that date. But the moment the Pulse strikes seems like King’s depiction of the immediate aftermath after the planes hit the towers. Confusion, rage, madness and fear that your town or city would be next. Though the Pulse could have any source, it seems pretty clear that everyone thinks it is terrorist attack of some kind.
Rather than thinking about the novel in terms of technology then, it is more interesting to think about it in terms of 9/11. The phoners are reminiscent of Richard Matheson’s vampires from I Am Legend, and at times can elicit some sympathy, being as they are victims of circumstances beyond their control too. King references Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, another story that deliberately invokes that fear of American weakness in the wake of 9/11 to tell its story. Cell exists in the weird time where Americans avoided outright addressing their national trauma of 9/11, only doing so through fiction. Technology and modernity cannot be relied upon and in fact brought down the world; religion can’t save, and serve to make those paranoid even more so; gun ownership doesn’t save you, and if anything actively makes the world more dangerous. There was a real feeling that the façade of society and democracy had cracked, and as a result the social contract was broken. It’s one of King’s regular themes, but it really takes a beating here too: about the only thing you can rely on is your bond with your fellow man (or phoner) to get you through, and even then you have to be careful.
There are numerous Dark Tower allusions throughout the book (see below), and I think King recognises that the world he lives in is different to the ones he writes about. He discusses the idea in depth in The Colorado Kid, but it works just as well here; that the real world, its mysteries and coincidences and all its messiness, does not need to fit within the confines of a story. But a book still has to be narratively satisfying, at least to an extent, because that’s just how a good story is supposed to work. The ‘War on Terror’ began in earnest in 2003, and by 2004 when King started writing the book Iraq and Afghanistan had been invaded. There are a couple references to Muslim suicide bombers in the book, something that plays into the title of the book. Placing this in the context of some epic quest a la Dark Tower can be uncomfortable, especially when considering the characters who are supposed to be our heroes kill on a large scale, just as Robert Neville did in I Am Legend. In reality, that would be ethically dubious – the existence of the Raggedy Man simplifies it to a much easier Good vs Evil, even if that at times is still questioned. It’s all a little gung-ho and too messy to satisfy.
Cell obviously refers to cellphones, but there are other meanings that help unlock the book further. There are the cells found in your body, and the flocking phones evolve throughout the book to become a new collective organism, with the Raggedy Man being the representative cell. But I think more likely is the consideration of terrorist cells. Our lead characters, rather than a ka-tet or fellowship, would be much more accurately described as a cell who resort to extreme measures against something they perceived as evil. It’s not as explicit, but Cell could be argued to playing with similar ideas as The Dead Zone about perceptions of good and bad, seeing who our are ostensibly our heroes as a terrorist cell. But a more metaphorical reading of the roles the phones and our protagonists are far murkier to delineate. I think this is less deliberate and more not thought through.
Cell struggles to fully reconcile those themes satisfactorily, as there is still the plot going, but the book itself exists as an interesting time capsule of the feeling of America at this time. Because the war was ongoing, as well as America itself not being at ease with itself, I don’t know if this book was possible to succeed. It fails in the same way The Tommyknockers or Dreamcatcher did, in that the author had something to say, but wasn’t exactly sure what it was. In uncertain times, I think King was writing to find out for himself what he thought and, much like the overall ending, could not find an easy answer.
Observations and Connections
Clay, the main character, is working on a comic book called The Dark Wanderer about an apocalyptic cowboy with the initials RD, which sounds very much like a version Roland and The Dark Tower. There is Sorcerer John, the Wizard Flak, Frank and the Posse Boys, Sleepy Gene, Poison Sally, Lily Astolet, Blue Witch and Ray Damon. Have fun drawing parallels between the character names presented above and the Dark Tower books.
In another Tower reference, the group passes a playground which has a Charlie the Choo-Choo ride. Charlie first appeared in The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, as well as its own book later. Draped across it is the body of the Raggedy Man in his red hoody, who may well have been an incarnation of Randall Flagg. The number Clay calls to activate the bomb is 207-919-9811. The sum of the middle three digits and last four digits total 19, and at least the first three make up nine.
Those explicit references suggest other Tower links. Maybe the Pulse that started the virus was caused by a beam collapse? Or maybe it’s a modern version Captain Trips with a different kind of virus? But at the very least it’s another Apocalypse World. Yet maybe not totally. King made a comment clarifying the ending, which you can find here if you were so inclined.
There is the briefest of mentions of Juniper Hill, which was first introduced back in It where Henry Bowers had ended up. Kashwak, where the ending of the novel takes place, is in the TR-90, an unincorporated part of Maine which is where Bag of Bones was set. Considering the Dark Tower references, I imagine this was deliberate.
There was a competition that came alongside the publication of this book. More details here.
The book maintains the Romero tradition of never actually calling them zombies, instead referring to them as ‘phoners.’
UP NEXT: The book that broke my first King habit – Lisey’s Story.
When I covered the evolution of the zombie sub-genre through the lens of George Romero’s Dead series, it was very much with the understanding that zombies were not limited to those films. There were zombie films before Night of the Living Dead, and there were zombie films of many types afterwards. But so far as I can tell with The Exorcist, that really was the first. Even if it wasn’t, much like Night of the Living Dead, it’s the one for whom everyone followed. What did possession movies look like after The Exorcist?
Before The Exorcist, the only films I can find that broach the same subject is Ken Russell’s The Devils and a Polish art film called Mother Joan of the Angels, both of which were inspired by the Loudon possessions. The Devils paved the way at least in the mainstream West (despite WB’s attempts to bury the film), but once The Exorcist was released it opened the floodgates for everyone to have a go. Naturally, the first to exploit the idea of possession and exorcism were the Italians. The Eerie Midnight Show was released a year after the original Exorcist, alongside the obvious porn version Sexorcist (SFW – IMDB link). But it seems that the genre wasn’t yet fully exploitable.
Perhaps what limited the scope of similar possession films was the Italian film Beyond the Door. The film was first released in 1974, but released in America in 1975. Warner Brothers didn’t take to it very well, filing a lawsuit against the film for infringing against The Exorcist. WB won, receiving a cash settlement and a portion of future revenue from the film, which may have put a dampener on anyone else wanting to cash in the success of the original. This didn’t stop there being sequels to Beyond the Door being released – I hesitate to say made – but the formula of a young possessed woman seems to be generally ignored for the time being.
The 70s did see the rise of a sort-of similar possession film. The Amityville Horror, which spawned an unbelieveable amount of vaguely related sequels, has as part of its backstory the DeFeo murders perpetrated by Ronald DeFeo. DeFeo claimed that ‘the devil made him do it’ as part of his legal defence. Rather than a person though, it is a house that is possessed (which would form part of the much better Poltergeist plot a few years later). Despite its inanimate subject, it does feature some of those features introduced by The Exorcist. There are vile liquids of various descriptions, violent messages and a priest who tries to exorcise the place. Rather than an exploration of faith though, this instead explores fears of homeownership and economic uncertainty. It’s also a bit rubbish. However, the concept is an interesting one; vaguely a development of the ghost story genre, swapping out ghosts for demons for more violently scary opportunities.
The next prominent example of demonic possession of an individual comes from The Evil Dead in 1981. In its way, the deadites of the film combine the idea of demon possession with zombies to create their own unique mythology. Though it may not seem obvious, the tropes established by The Exorcist are very much in play with Sam Raimi’s take on the concept. We have the foul language, the floating, impossible body contortions, the rituals to banish demons, the screeching voices… What’s lacking is the religious element that makes The Exorcist compelling. Instead, The Evil Dead replaces it with a unique mythology that owes something to Lovecraft and the Three Stooges in equal measure. As a fan of both Exorcist and Evil Dead, it seems strange even to myself to put both films in the same sentence, bearing in mind their wildly different tonal approaches to possession, but they absolutely belong to the same conversation. Where The Exorcist is subtle and thoughtful, The Evil Dead is out to scare you as relentlessly as it can, and where you aren’t scared you should be laughing at its deliberate absurdity. It shows the versatility of using possession as a device to power your plot, and though not scary in the same way The Exorcist is, The Evil Dead and subsequent entries in the series (a far more consistent horror series than perhaps any other) are the most fun you’ll have getting scared by demons.
Possession is rarely the centrepiece of horror however, and exorcism even less so. The other major possession in film during the 80s was the Ghostbuster films, which I think are more representative for how possession is used in a film as a threat to a character rather than the centrepiece of a film. This is not to denigrate any of those films! Only that possession becomes an element as part of other things rather than a thriving sub-genre of its own. It shows the impact of The Exorcist that such devices don’t require any form of explanation, but there aren’t really any films about it. The Exorcist itself is so thorough in its examination of exorcism, what else was there to say? Also, that time WB won a lawsuit because someone had the temerity to make a film similar to their one.
There are a smattering of possession movies, mostly in foreign markets away from WB, in the 80s and 90s. Maybe the brilliance of The Exorcist and subsequent failures of The Exorcist II and III put filmmakers off the idea of doing films in the same genre. This seems odd to me. The idea of an exorcism is quite a cheap one, similar to how the zombie genre is a cheap horror film. Perhaps even more so; an exorcist movie requires a cassock or two and a sexy girl (in Ghostbusters, Rick Moranis’ possession is played for laughs versus sexy Sigourney Weaver’s possession). But the idea was present in the mainstream. If you wanted to do a horror film about an exorcism or possession, The Exorcist had set the precedent for what those films entail, and so invoking those words meant your audience knew what you were doing. Blatty and Friedkin had done the hard work, you don’t need to explain the rules anymore.
It seems that possession films didn’t really take off until the 00s, and partially as part of another sub-genre of horror. There were the two prequels to The Exorcist, but most people rightly ignored them. The first major one that seemed to get people talking was The Exorcism of Emily Rose. It took as its inspiration the unfortunate case of Anneliese Michel, and combines the exorcism with legal drama for a surprising twist on the genre that also puts some distance between it and The Exorcist. Though not to my personal taste, the film won lots of fans at the time of its release, bringing the idea of possession more immediately to people’s minds. It’s an interesting film, similar to The Exorcist in its attempts to ground the horror within the real world rather than spinning off into some other wild story. It also reminds us of the religious element, if not explored in the same way Blatty did.
But the film that really did the business in making possession a thing and brought it back into the fore was the Paranormal Activity series (a film series for which I have a soft spot), first released in 2007. Excellently marketed and cheaply made, it made a lot of profit as a result and signalled to studios that this was something that could be exploited. Yet despite everything, it doesn’t actually use many of the things that were established in The Exorcist. There isn’t even a priest, though the role is fulfilled by a psychic, which future possession films will begin to use instead. Though it hasn’t got the thematic depth, it arguably plays a far more subtle game in its depiction of possession. It’s the lowest of the low budgets, but the terror instilled by nighttime voyeurism and a broken picture frame speak volumes about the horror the concept can still hold in the right hands, even if it is exploited for six more films.
The other possession film from 2007 was the sublime [•REC], which mixes in elements of the rabid possessed seen in The Evil Dead, the religious iconography of The Exorcist and the pulse-pounding intensity of found footage. Religion is treated not as a pure shield to defend against evil, but almost like a weird cult investigating the power of evil. This was something expanded upon, particular in the first sequel, and gives the film a very different flavour. The Catholic Church, once unimpeachable, has rightfully been criticised a lot over the years, notably for their abuse of children, and so giving them a more ambiguous role in possession films still rooted in Christian iconography is suddenly much more interesting. Arguably, the desecration that was so intense in The Exorcist struggles to carry the same weight today, and so [•REC] wisely dispatches with the vulgarity for fastpaced violence instead, partially as part of the fast running zombie trend popular at the time too. The one-two punch of [•REC] and Paranormal Activity, particularly as continuing series in their own right, gave rise to other possession films, including the likes of the underrated The Last Exorcism (and it’s much less good sequel), Unfriended, and Jennifer’s Body, amongst many others. Some would hew closer to the model established by The Exorcist (e.g. The Rite), others doing their own take on possession.
Filmmakers began to realise the fun they could have with the genre. The lockdown movie Host is a great example, as is Deadstream and The Cleansing Hour. Possession formed an important subplot of American Horror Story: Asylum too, and when a horror idea hits AHS you know it’s a common trope now. Even The Exorcist TV series is more in keeping with modern possession and exorcism stories, only with the patina of Blatty’s similar thematic obsessions. Possession stories are back fully, with everyone doing them in their own style.
The most popular films about exorcism are The Conjuring horror films about Ed and Lorraine Warren, arguably the second most successful cinematic universe after the MCU. Tangentially related to the story behind what would become The Amityville Horror, the recent Conjuring films make the Warrens out to be essentially Christian superheroes. The Conjuring series returns the idea of exorcism to its Christian core, and the faith the Warrens show is integral to their characters. These are the films that probably most utilise the tropes established by The Exorcist, especially the use of religious iconography to defeat those pesky demons. Faith is back in a big way. However, more important is their faith in each other as a married couple: they are primarily horror films about love. The spin-off films (Annabelle and The Nun films) are similarly about demonic possession and the chicanery those naughty demon boys get up to. What they lack however is the deeper foundation of faith that The Exorcist put forward back in its original incarnations. The Warrens may be Christian, but the films themselves are not.
Exorcism and possession movies can still be scary, but operate on a Hollywood version of what exorcism is rather than the grounding Blatty worked so hard to achieve with his story. Many modern possession stories, if they don’t follow The Evil Dead approach, are more likely to have religion be a tool in the film’s approach, as that’s how things should be done. Thematically, they tend to be more about family or abuse rather than faith. More often now, priests are replaced by psychics or demonologists. Possession as allegory for other forms of trauma are welcome, but what gave The Exorcist a lot of its power was its grounding in a world of science and faith. A film like Paranormal Activity or The Conjuring is scary because of its grounding in domestic life, and something like The Last Exorcism or The Devil Within use religion as the necessary tool to get rid of a demon. It just hasn’t got the same impact as The Exorcist, and your mileage may vary for how scary that is. It seems as though something is in air though, with both Immaculate and the surprisingly good The First Omen coming out within weeks of each other, both films being heavy on the terror of Catholicism. The recent Late Night with the Devil is another fun example of the genre, playing with form to produce something interesting, if not exactly scary.
This is not to say that there are not good examples still from the genre. Though there are ones I like within the it, there are few that try to match The Exorcist and even fewer that succeed. In fact, I would argue there is one true possession story since The Exorcist that truly matches it for horror. Though not interested in the theology that Blatty was interested in exploring, Ari Aster’s 2018 film Hereditary explores grief, generational trauma as well as demon possession in one of the scariest films I’ve been lucky enough to see in the cinema. That Bit (if you’ve seen the film, you know what I’m talking about) was enough to silence an audience into trauma, and makes Hereditary probably the only film since The Exorcist to really attack an audience’s sense of wellbeing in order to horrify it. Critics may quibble which is better, but in the storied history of the genre, Hereditary is the only film to match The Exorcist in terms of tone and horror, and frankly deserving of its own essay.
Having spoken of exorcism movies losing touch with the foundations of Christianity, how were actual exorcists affected by The Exorcist? In the real world, exorcism seemed to have a resurgence because of The Exorcist. Prior to the film’s release, cases were generally on the downturn, and the Catholic Church tried to downplay the existence of exorcisms within the Church. Following the film, it became more popular as a cry for attention for people who probably needed more medically sound methods of help. And yet, they continue. The real Ed Warren performed exorcisms as part of his demon hunting, but there were others too. Ronald DeFeo murdered his family in 1974 on the devil’s instructions, nearly a full year after The Exorcist‘s release; the exorcism of Anneliese Michel occurred during the mid-70s, though she was showing problems as early as 1970; Father Gabriele Amorth claimed that by 2013 he had performed over 160,000 exorcisms, as well as that yoga was satanic and Harry Potter was the King of Darkness. Still, Russell Crowe played him in the recent film, The Pope’s Exorcist, so there’s that going for him. But unlike the case that inspired the book, this was well-known by the general public too. Exorcism was known and mainstream knowledge.
Exorcism in the real world also cannot escape the Hollywood touch. In the early 2010s, the so-called Teen Exorcists became well-known. Brynne Larson and Tess and Savannah Scherkenback were three young women who believed that sin allowed a demon to take up residence in a human host. That three, young, attractive women were performing exorcisms can’t have hurt their popularity, as there were numerous articles from around 2013 about them, including a BBC documentary. They also are not fans of Harry Potter either, and I am absolutely certain they are not being exploited at all by Bob Larson, who goes by @therealexorcist on Instagram. A far cry from the haunting private diaries of a priest to YouTube exorcism videos. Having the exorcist equivalent of Charlie’s Angels attend your exorcism does not carry with it the same weight or gravitas as Father Merrin.
The Exorcist was a deeply spiritual tale, using (and often creating) the tropes of horror to tell an actual tale of faith and doubt that was deeply personal to Blatty. The popular conception of it has meant that those that have come in the wake of the original will find it hard to match. Ironically, the further away you get from the original (The Evil Dead, The Exorcism of Emily Rose or [•REC] for example) the more success you may be able to find in carving out your own niche. But how will that distance within the genre affect the return of The Exorcist to cinema screens?
“… On the subject of the Colorado Kid I’m a little like the Virgin Mary, after she gave birth to Jesus. The Bible says something like, ‘But Mary kept silent, and pondered these things in her heart.’ Sometimes, with mysteries, that’s best.”
It came at just the right time. It seems funny to consider, after King has published nearly 80 books and still going, that just after book 50 King was seriously considering retiring. He had threatened to do so before. In 1987, after the publication of The Tommyknockers, he announced he was taking a break, ostensibly to get sober and in case he could never write again. It didn’t take. The accident in 1999 nearly enforced a retirement upon him. Didn’t take. Having completed his Dark Tower series, King announced he was going to try again.
We know it didn’t take. Or it did, and he’s spent his retirement writing books. But as much as King was into his Bonus Round, it did indicate a certain feeling towards his own work. Head down in the trenches, completing the final Tower books, unlike his previous spaced out efforts, was like sprinting the last third of a marathon. He was tired. He needed to do something to make it interesting for him, and a crime novel offered a chance to make it fun and exciting again. Especially considering the way he tackles the self-made opportunity.
King is often criticised for his endings, wrongly I believe, and this is one which I bet many readers hate this book for the lack of conclusion that it offers. This is not a new thing for King – famously, the ending of The Mist is far more ambiguous than the film version, and other stories leave readers to draw their own conclusions. Rarely does a story end badly (Secret Window, Secret Garden being the only one that sticks out in my memory). King does not offer a solution here which for many would be frustrating, but he has promised no solution at all throughout the entire telling of The Colorado Kid. That’s the whole point of the book. The mysteries of life are sometimes resolved, but mostly we have to live with them because there is shit to do.
Though I am obviously eager to be the one who finally solves it, I am also at least a reader enough to know that’s not the point. When writers introduce unsolved mysteries into their stories, I’m always interested to know if they have a solution. I’m not necessarily interested in V’s secret identity from V for Vendetta, but I am interested if Alan Moore has an answer. From the clues noted below, there is a sense that King has a solution in mind – but to reveal it defeats the point of the book entirely.
There are subtle hints at something not right with the mystery, the impossibility of it, which can lead the reader down some interesting thoughts to explore and explain the central mystery. Instead, the story is about Stephanie McCann’s acceptance into the Maine life, the small world newspaper and the mysteries inherent to being there. Her story is contrasted heavily with the apprentice detective in the story, highlighting the point of passing the torch onto the next generation. This isn’t a mystery to solve – this is a mystery to share, to speculate over, to bond over answers that can never be confirmed. The book itself is like a Christmas cracker joke – to unite the people against the mystery present in the story means that King has still got what he wanted from you, Constant Reader. He wants you to think about what’s going on, and an unsolved mystery is the perfect sort of mind virus to achieve that.
If there is a problem with he novel, is that it is quite short. I’m not sure how Haven squeezed out five seasons from the premise (see below), but that is both a bug and a feature. A bug, in that we enjoy out time spent with Dave Bowie and Vince Teague, just like Stephanie does, that after not even two hundred pages we’d happily spend more time with them. A feature, in that a mystery without resolution cannot possibly sustain much longer of a book. There is an emotional core, but not exactly something that works over hundreds of pages without proper resolution.
Compare this to From a Buick 8, which I think this novel is its closest antecedent. Both are unsolved mysteries that drive their respective novels, but the emotional core of Buick 8 is the death of a parent; here, it’s a young woman getting a job. But Colorado Kid isn’t designed to be a novel in that sense. Its publication under Hard Case Crime imprint is signal enough that this is meant to be a relative disposable and quick read. It may have come from the pen of Stephen King, but that makes it no less true of the old hard boiled dime novels of old that King is writing for.
That’s what you ultimately get from this book. Something that can be read quickly in one or two sittings, on a train or on a beach, rolled up in your back pocket. The mystery may plague you for a while, but ultimately it’s all about how much fun you have getting there.
Observations and Connections
Hard Case Crime has a huge range of republished and original stories worth checking out. Unsurprisingly, King’s books are amongst the most popular published, though the range in general is great. The covers in particular are beautiful.
Starbucks didn’t exist in 1980 in Denver. King claims this is less a mistake and more a clue, possibly as a link with the Dark Tower. How much of this is actually a clue or how much is King covering his ass is up to you. There is also no Russian coin for ten roubles in 1980 either. And Blockbuster didn’t rent videos until 1985, so how did they get From Russia With Love? If there is a Tower connection, one imagines it is to the same extent as From a Buick 8 (or Kingdom Hospital), which this book feels very similar to in many ways.
The book is light on references to other books, but did form the basis of a TV series called Haven, which ran for five seasons. The main difference in the adaptation is the change of location from Moose Lookit Island off the coast of Maine, similar to Dolores Claiborne or The Reach, to Haven which appeared in The Tommyknockers. The series expands upon the original story, but probably should not be considered canon to the novel.
Sometimes there’s no reason. Sometimes they just want to hurt something that’s good and pure.
Ben Daniels as Father Marcus Keane, episode 1, ‘Janus,’ The Exorcist
Created by: Jeremy Slater Producer: Jeremy Slater, Rolin Jones, Rupert Wyatt, James Robinson, David Robinson, Barbara Wall, Roy Lee, Sean Crouch Starring: Alfonso Herrera, Ben Daniels, Kurt Egyiawan, Li Jun Li, Brianna Hildebrand, Zuleikha Robinson and John Cho First Broadcast: 29th September – 15th December 2017 Teaser trailer
WARNING – Contains spoilers for series 1 and 2.
Having committed a full sequel to the original story in series 1, it’s interesting to see where a second series of The Exorcist could have gone. It starts in a way so far removed from the intentions of Blatty that you have to admire it really: an exorcism on the flatbed of a truck in the middle of a car chase is great fun to watch, and nothing like the quiet meditation of The Exorcist. If you want to be precious about that sort of thing, then be my guest. I’m quite happy with my weekly exorcisms.
The thing about the series is that two things can be true at once. This is a fun series, with a strong emotional core, fun spooky stuff and a ridiculous ongoing plot in the background that is great: it is also true that this has only a glancing reference to the truth of the original story in the slightest. Everything in this series is amped up. There is the aforementioned car chase exorcism, but there is a rather enjoyable nasty scene set in neonatal ward, and a scene of a sheep giving birth which from the moment I knew it was happening I was looking forward to – it did not disappoint in that regard. I loved that the series embraced a gnarlier attitude to horror, letting our characters suffer.
Freed from being a direct sequel like the first series, this time round the show is allowed to explore different things and ideas. The first series is a fun sequel, but at times feels constrained by the fact of it being a sequel. When playing with someone else’s characters, there can be a feeling of not wanting to break other people’s toys (see some of the creative stagnation in modern Star Wars). Apart from a couple brief references, the show doesn’t have almost a single thing in common with the original story.
This time, we follow Andy, played by John Cho, and his family of fostered children. Cho, alongside Verity played by Brianna Hildebrand, give the series its emotional core, making sure we feel what the characters are feeling in the moment, alongside the rest of the family who give life and distinct character to each. I did not expect to be crying at anything related to The Exorcist! Though the main plot is loosely plotted, it doesn’t have to be a Swiss watch, following the characters journey instead. Having said that, there is a neat mid-series twist I did not see coming, and rather than it being a twist for twist’s sake fuels the rest of the series. Our duo of Fathers continue in this series, Alfonso Herrera and Ben Daniels continuing their good work from the first series. The ending promises of more to come too, which we’ll get to in a moment.
The series also continues the demon invasion plot line introduced from the first series, mostly it seems to retain the use of Kurt Egyiawan as Father Bennett who continues his investigation into the Vatican. This is understandable, as Egyiawan is great and pretty much the only thing that keeps that plot line alive. It does lead to remarkable lines like, ‘The Vatican’s been compromised,’ which is a delight to hear. It’s over the top and ridiculous and I love how dumb that is. The series itself seems vaguely embarrassed with it, and as a subplot seems mostly there to set up another series with Father Bennett as a villain.
Though The Exorcist primarily concerns itself with religious faith, this is not what the series is interested in exploring. There is faith, but it is familial faith. Religious faith does play a role, not only with our lead priests but with Alex Barima’s Shelby, but it’s not the focus. This is where I really think the series distances itself from the original story. Some Exorcist fans I am willing to bet hate this, but it’s what makes this series so effective. Rather than the characters being used to explore ideas of faith, especially Blatty’s faith, the show has an emotional core. The demon possession of the Vatican is dumb and stupid, and I’m willing to bet the writers thought about making it a metaphor for some of those things the Catholic Church have been up to, but using the demon’s abuse as a safer way to explore the trauma of abuse is much more interesting.
The show places itself in a good position for a future series, setting up interesting character arcs for our recurring characters, and it’s sad to know that Disney’s purchase of Fox in 2017, coupled with low ratings (despite positive critic response), led to the series cancellation. Though it’s sad to see the series not reach a complete ending, there is enough satisfaction in how the series does end. Fans of The Exorcist shouldn’t expect a series adaptation, but a modern interpretation of the original material.
Notes
As in series 1, there are some elements that seem to be reworking or shoutouts to the original Blatty works. Aside from the original story being very much canon to the story, there are some other things going on too.
Much like the first episode of series 1, Tubular Bells gets an outing at the close of the episode, a more extended use than in the first series. The episode also closes with a dedication to William Peter Blatty, who had died earlier that year.
Episode 3 has a proper version of the pea green vomit, made famous in The Exorcist.
Towards the beginning of the episode 10, Andy says, ‘What a lovely day for an exorcism,’ an echo of the famous line from the original, ‘What an excellent day for an exorcism.’ There is also another spider-walk, again better than the original.
One of the final scene of the series is a recreation of the famous jumpscare from The Exorcist III. It’s not as effective as the original, but it’s a fun tribute. Apparently, the creators wished to adapt some elements from that film into a potential series 3, though this would never come to be.
Here they store what came before. Pain and suffering from days of yore. Before and after, tears and laughter. After comes before, before comes after. Past and future and then, hereafter. The naked and the dead, the young and the old. Their stories end here, their tales untold. Here sickness and death, have left their pages. Written in blood for all the ages. Someday, your story will be here, too.
Bill Meilen as Doctor Egas Gottreich, Kingdom Hospital
Director: Craig R. Baxley Writer: Stephen King (episodes 1-5, 9-10 12-13), Richard Dooling (episodes 5-8, 11) and Tabitha King (episode 10) Executive Producer: Stephen King, Mark Carliner, Lars von Trier Starring: Andrew McCarthy, Bruce Davison, Meagan Fay, Jack Coleman, Diane Ladd, Jodelle Micah Ferlund, Ed Begley Jr., Jamie Harold, Sherry Miller, Alison Hossack, William Wise, Julian Richings Released: 3rd March – 15th July 1999 Trailer
I’ll admit, I cheated a bit. Technically, this comes between Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower, but I don’t think anyone would begrudge me wanting to finish the Dark Tower series so close to the end instead of watching a one series wonder written (mostly) by Stephen King.
That being said, it’s interesting how this came about. It’s no secret that this was based on Lars von Trier’s series called The Kingdom. For various reasons, that series wasn’t able to complete its story until quite recently. King found the show whilst making his television adaptation of The Shining, and wanted to adapt it, making this an extremely rare case of King writing for something not his own, the closest prior being his episode of The X-Files.
Trier was very much inspired by Twin Peaks, an understandable source of inspiration considering it’s one of the greatest TV series ever made. As an adaptation, the mix of horror, comedy and surreal images feels like a direct pipeline from David Lynch’s brain. But where Lynch’s surrealism feels rooted in logic, even if it is Lynch’s own unique brand of it, it was tempered at all times by Mark Frost who grounded the series. That conflagration of talent led to the small town beauty of Twin Peaks. Stephen King I think is more the Mark Frost than David Lynch in terms of storytelling. Lynch operates on instinct when it comes to visual storytelling, something that King doesn’t often contend with; Frost has a rigid logic, even if he doesn’t always share it with the audience.
So when the anteater shows up, it feels like King trying a bit too hard.
It’s an interesting mix, but saddled by King’s usual issues he has with TV writing in that he takes too damn long to get going. This was a thirteen part series adapted from a five-part series, so there was naturally a fair bit of extra material this time around. Golden Years had a similar issue, though was far worse in terms of pacing, but where King’s slower pacing works for a novel in building an atmosphere, the slower pace for television isn’t quite the same. Even Twin Peaks starts with the dead girl wrapped in plastic, the best question to drive the series forward into mystery. Kingdom Hospital lacks the same engine, so I can understand why the audience dropped off quickly after the first episode (though scheduling inconsistency probably didn’t help).
It’s a shame, as once the series picks up and settles in, it does improve. King’s comedy has always been corny, but seeing a headless body search for its head to the song Where’s Your Head At by Basement Jaxx has a certain kind of mad charm. It never quite totally coheres, but I admire King’s approach, if the direction doesn’t quite keep up with the ambition of the story and script. How much of this can be laid at the feet of Baxley (who had directed King’s previous TV original series) and how much is the culture of how television was made in the early 2000s is hard to say. It’s certainly not the fault of the performers, who all put in a good job, especially Jodelle Micah Ferland as Mary, who wasn’t even ten at time of broadcast and carries much of the show’s emotional core.
It’s not a scary show, despite what the presence of ghosts may indicate. It’s more interested in playing with the metaphysics of the concepts baked into the show, which Twin Peaks did but was also horrifying at the same time. But those metaphysics are not fully explored, and considering this was intended to be a miniseries (though King had made plans for a second series), there is a lot left on the table left hanging or unexplored. Twin Peaks second series ending was because it was still an ongoing series. Kingdom Hospital was unlikely to have ever gotten that second series at all.
Despite all that, and the promise the series shows (as any first series will look shaky compared to what can come later), a second series never came. King had it plotted, but the network wasn’t interested. He had also sunk a lot of his own money into the series, and it is understandable why he stayed away from television for a couple of years. He wouldn’t stay away forever of course, but after the 90s proved to be somewhat of a golden age for King television adaptations, King seemed to cool towards the medium. With The Dark Tower now finished, King had earned a chance to slow down. Next year would see the release of only one book, which is a slow year for King.
As always, I return to the idea that King’s stories are best written down rather visual stories unless in the hands of someone with a keen visual eye and less slavish attitude to the material. King is ultimately quite a goofy guy, but the printed page is the great leveller. Without a firm hand on the tone, it can absolutely get away from you, which is what I think happened here. But then again, saying it isn’t as good as Twin Peaks begs the question – what is? It’s an interesting experiment, though by no means an essential addition to the King collection.
Observations and Connections and Notes
In episode 12, one character is making a potion using a recipe from a book called ‘Love potions, charms and spells’ written by Barlow and Straker, the vampires from ‘Salem’s Lot. In one of the episodes, Peter’s wife is reading Misery. Peter is also wearing a shirt with Little Tall written across it, which was the setting for Storm of the Century, Dolores Claiborne and Home Delivery.
Nozz-a-La is also drunk in this world, putting it somewhere within the worlds of the Dark Tower – until he final episode, when it is replaced with a Pepsi machine. Maybe the earthquakes are actually beam-quakes? After all, this technically comes between the final two Tower books. Speaking of the Tower, does the title card remind anyone else of that tall, dark place? Apparently, the anteater Antubis is an old trailmate of Roland. This is according Bev Vincent, though not found in any of King’s actual books. Bev is a very reliable source since he knows King personally (and one-time commenter here – hi, Bev!).
In the episode where the Robins lose the World Series, the commentator says, “It seems like something from a Stephen King horror story,” as part of those weird meta-textual references to himself King sometimes does. King makes his customary cameo in the final episode as the almost-always missing handyman. Finally, related to King, the opening car accident is based on King’s own experience.
It almost feels perfunctory to note that this takes place in King’s Maine, referencing Castle Rock. It’s mentioned that Kingdom Hospital sits on uneasy ground, similar to the sour ground of Pet Sematary, as well as the odd places like Rose Red or Black House. Maybe it became a thinny?
Outside of King, the name of the painter ‘Peter Rickman’ is a reference to the painter ‘Richard Pickman’ from Pickman’s Model, a personal favourite of mine. The repetition of The Emperor of Ice-Cream by Wallace Steven’s may sound familiar to King fans, as it was used back in ‘Salem’s Lot. I also have to wonder if Dr Hook is any good on karaoke night, given his namesake.
Ben Daniels as Father Marcus Keane, episode 1, ‘Chapter One: And Let My Cry Come Unto Thee,’ The Exorcist
Created by: Jeremy Slater Producer: Jeremy Slater, Rolin Jones, Rupert Wyatt, James Robinson, David Robinson, Barbara Wall, Roy Lee, Sean Crouch Starring: Alfonso Herrera, Ben Daniels, Hannah Kalsulka, Brianne Howey, Kurt Egyiawan, Alan Ruck, Geena Davis First Broadcast: 23rd September – 16th December 2016 Trailer
WARNING – Contains spoilers for series 1. Spoilers are limited to one paragraph and the Notes section. You have been warned.
The Exorcist II acts as a sequel to the original. The Exorcist III ignores the second film, but acts as a sequel to the original. There are two alternativeprequels to the original that ignore each other. This series acts as a sequel to the original film. With the new trilogy underway, acting as a sequel to the original, it seems like only the Halloween or Terminator series rivals The Exorcist for tortuous continuity reboots attempting to capture the magic of the original and good ones. In each case, it’s probably easier just to take each entry on their own merits, or lack of, individually.
A series like this could easily fall into what I think of as ‘Surf Dracula’ problem that seems to plague a lot of modern television, but as a horror show this delivers a least one horrific moment per episode, and the main subject of the possession, Casey, is already showing signs in the first episode of demonic torment; by the end of the fourth, she’s at home, in her bedroom, getting the exorcised treatment. However, if the series had remained focused purely on Casey, it might well have felt drawn out, so the series wisely expands the storyline to include demon obsessed cults murdering en masse, an attempt on the Pope’s life and the original exorcism back in the 1970s.
If it sounds over the top, then you’re in the right place. The concept of possession is fundamentally ridiculous, and there lies the fun of the series. Arguably, this is what led to the decline in quality as seen in The Exorcist II and the prequel films. They were focused on being scary or taking themselves too seriously, lacking the glee of the Friedkin’s original. In addition, revisiting the story as a TV series, in the age of the streaming miniseries and binge watching, seems a logical step for the franchise. However, horror as an ongoing series is always going to struggle with attempting to emulate the same tension a horror film can mange. Put simply, there’s just too much space to fill, and constant scares are simply not sustainable. Ash Vs. The Evil Dead succeeded by having short episodes and being a comedy; American Horror Story got around this issue by not being concerned with things like ‘quality.’ This first series gets around the problem of sustaining horror over a series by taking a leaf out of William Peter Blatty’s book and looking at the wider effects something like this could have on a family and the world around them.
The horror of Casey’s possession is the focus of the series, but much like the original story the horror is also in how it affects everyone else. The series creates strong characters to build drama around, and twists its way through in a logical way. Blatty did this purely through the lens of faith, but the series isn’t as interested in theological depth as the original. In some ways, that means some of the texture of the original version is lost. Replacing it with generational family trauma means the show is doing something different. The demon of the series is used a metaphor vehicle for different things. It can be generational trauma, sexual abuse, fear of youth, drugs – whatever you want it to be. Blatty had a very set idea for his use of the demon in his novel, deliberately investigating the power of faith and doubt. The purity of intention is lost here, diluted to become more malleable. There is still a religious element – it would not be The Exorcist without it – but it is no longer central to the discussion, used more to expand the world.
The loss of the theological element to the horror means the horror has been replaced. The original story is about desecration in a religious sense. Though there is an element of that with the cult summoning demons, which I’m sure would upset Blatty if no one else, religion is not treated with some reverence that Blatty does in his work. Part of what makes the original so shocking is seeing as an offence to God. Masturbating with a crucifix is horrible for so many reasons, so much so because of its deliberate offensiveness borne from respect. Compared to Casey’s (unseen, it should be noted) masturbation with a curling wand, burning herself in the process. It absolutely sets the viewer on edge, but not in the same way a crucifix does. It is removed from being sacrilegious taboo into sexual taboo. Still horrifying, but in a different way. Exorcism and demons have become the monsters, not about what it says about Faith.
This all serves to remove itself from the core of the original Exorcist, treating it less like a theological horror and more a horror franchise. The series expansion to include religious cults and demon conspiracy is exactly the kind of thing a series with an eye on there being future seasons would do. But it isn’t The Exorcist, and is part of the reason (amongst others) why The Exorcist II failed so badly.
But the biggest way it chooses to expand the series (here come those spoilers…) is by it being a literal sequel to the original story, with the mid-season twist that Angela Rance is actually Regan MacNeil from the original story. This is exactly the kind of twist to be expected from the series, and is by no means a bad thing. It’s not much to say it’s a better sequel than The Exorcist II, though that isn’t exactly saying much. But again, this signifies a significant shift in how The Exorcist is treated. There is less thematic importance to the story, and it takes on the sequel job of expanding characters and forgoing the thematic purity of the original.
And yet, despite all that, it’s not a bad show. It is respectful of The Exorcist, but has to make changes in order to be a sustainable series. I can imagine Exorcist purists would object to the existence of the series, let alone what happens within. I have sympathy to that view to an extent, because the show lacks that theological depth and texture that still makes The Exorcist unique still in possession and demon movies to this day. This plays much more within the framework of a modern demon possession story with the accoutrement of The Exorcist as a garnish. It may lack the depth, but it is still a generally enjoyable show.
The ‘Surf Dracula’ problem is not just about the problem with a show delaying gratification until the last possible moment. It’s also about the elevation of some material that simply cannot sustain that kind of prestige. The Exorcist does not have those some pretensions, It knows that everyone is here to see Ooky Spooky Demon Shit (technical term), and the series delivers that at least once an episode. A Jaws series would probably adapt the dumb mafia subplot from the book, when all we want is a shark attack a week, thank you very much.
Where The Exorcist book and movie are more like satisfying meals (served with communion wine? I’ll see myself out) where the series is a juicy burger. Sometimes though, that burger just hits right.
Notes (contains spoiler speculation)
This is a sequel to The Exorcist, but which one? Because the book and film are so close in story, it almost doesn’t matter. Even the Bible inscription dated to 1974 could fit within the slight timeline differences between the movie and book. Here’s my take. I imagine due to Chris’ hard pivot into being religious after her avowed atheism is more in line with her accepting Karras’ St Christopher medallion from Father Dyer from the end of the book (and The Version You’ve Never Seen!). This doesn’t happen in the film version. So for my money, this is a sequel to the book rather than the film! Not that it makes any material difference really.
The hardest part I find to believe is how Angela/Regan is able to remove herself from her mother Chris. Chris was a well-known actress in the book and film, and it seems unlikely that Regan would be able to disappear as easily. Is the series an extended metaphor about the dangers of fame, with the demons a representation of the paparazzi? No. Though it is only a small element of the original, it still is present and odd for the series to generally ignore. Even though Chris basically stopped working, she would still be subject to tabloid interest – look at someone like Shelley Duvall for example.
There are some elements that seem to be reworking or shoutouts to the original Blatty works. Aside from the original story being very much canon to the series, there are some other things going on too.
Episode 1 has Angela muse on what motivates people to do things, in words that are very reminiscent of Kinderman’s similar musings.
The same episode ends with a musical quote of Tubular Bells, the iconic score from the original film.
Casey vomits in episode 2, having ingested holy water and what looks like split pea soup.
The reveal of the mentally disturbed colony living underground in episode 6 feels similar to the demon’s use of the catatonic in Legion. The spider-walk immediately after is definitely a shout out to the original, infamous scene and (controversial opinion) is done better here than in the film.
The demon’s use of ‘sow,’ to refer to Regan is the same as back during the original possession.
There’s a brief reference to Burke Dennings, the director, in a flashback during episode 8, which is why the head turning things appears at all. Chris in a flashback discusses a directing gig she has been offered, which wasn’t mentioned in the film at all but was in the book. The basement looks incredibly like the one from the film, but the visual design of Chris and Regan is almost switched over from how they appeared there.
The use of dogs to help locate demonic activity recalls the wild dogs from the beginning of Friedkin’s The Exorcist.
Randall Flagg, as illustrated in The Stand comic series.
I have stridden the fuming way of sun-hammered tracks and smashed cinders; I have ridden rail sand burned sterno in the gantry silence of hob jungles: I am a dark man.
Stephen King, The Dark Man
Fun trivia fact for King fans: when did Randall Flagg first appear? Most fans would point to The Stand, and that wold be his first major appearance. Some may point to The Eyes of the Dragon as his earliest chronological appearance. Some may even argue The Children of the Corn as his earliest published appearance, invoking He Who Walks Behind the Rows. But actually, Flagg dates back to some of King’s earliest published work with the poem, The Dark Man.
When at the University of Maine, King published a number of short stories and poems in the campus literary magazine Ubris. Other stories published in Ubris include Strawberry Spring, and Night Surf (an early precursor to The Stand) collected in Night Shift, and Here There be Tygers, and Cain Rose Up collected in Skeleton Crew. The Dark Man remains uncollected, though has been published by Cemetery Dance in 2004 with illustrations, and a collection of essays called Hearts in Suspension. I read it in Bev Vincent’s book Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of his Work, Life, and Influences.
The idea for Flagg popped into King’s head, and he wrote the poem on a napkin in the college restaurant. The style betrays those early student verbosity and predilection for purple description, but there is a horror in its description as well. The flowery language disguises the final act of rape, as such as the Dark Man admits to his crime, with a smile. In such early writing, King shows a a talent for true darkness that isn’t actually exercised too often in his main books, except a couple like Pet Sematary, Misery, or Desperation to pick three at random. I can understand that writing such things can be distasteful for the author to find within their imagination, but it makes for a fascinating and disturbing character, one ripe to revisit.
Though it would be impossible to identify Flagg at time of publication, the ingredients that would grow into Flagg we would come to know (and fear) are all there. The wandering outsider, the observations of cracked façades and evil behind closed doors, as well as the casual attitude to unspeakable acts of evil. When Flagg appears more fully formed in The Stand, we get the version who will remain constant in his villainy throughout his other appearances: his giggling, his ability to dim himself, his magical abilities, his ability to compel and convince others into following him, as well as his seemingly never-ending ability to go down like a punk.
Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s a great character and makes for a fascinating recurring villain in King’s books. Part of that is knowing King’s approach to Good and Evil. As bad as things usually get, Good usually triumphs over evil, and so when Flagg arrives on the scene we already know he’s going to lose. He may win for a while, and at the very least will put the good guy’s face out of line. But ultimately, he loses. King characterises evil as cruel and selfish, and it’s rare for any villain to work well with others. Even the Crimson King with his underlings rules by fear rather than co-operation – and Flagg never seems to learn this. He might understand intellectually that numbers will beat him and want to divide a group for those reasons, but his actual understanding of Good is non-existent.
Sometimes his appearance is more monstrous, as if his previous go around the wheel ended so disastrously he can only come back in some more elemental form. Though those who have read The Children of the Corn may doubt it as an appearance of Flagg, it is almost confirmed by his appearance in The Stand to be an incarnation of him. Similar is my theoretical appearance in The Talisman, where he is almost bestial in appearance. When he is more in control of himself, he loves to invoke and play upon the fears of those around him. The Stand is one such example, but his hinted appearance in Hearts in Atlantis chimes with Flagg’s reported involvement with the Patty Hearst kidnapping and the KKK. He preys on fear, those who fear their own loss of control, something it turns out he knows all too well.
In his appearance before he is killed in The Dark Tower, we learn a little of Flagg’s backstory. As a child, he left home and was raped by a fellow traveller. Rather than return home, he set forth into the universe, seeking revenge against it and wanting to control it for his own amusement it seems. With that in mind, it makes sense that Flagg is only ever interested in power. It’s seen as far back as in The Stand and consistently in his appearances he seeks it. What’s interesting, especially in The Stand and The Eyes of the Dragon, is how little he does with it when he attains it, however briefly. Is he seeking for power a way to fight against the trauma he endured at such a young age?
Flagg never succeeds, really and truly. One of the things that brings down King’s villains is their lack of imagination and arrogance. All they crave is power, and when they get it they can only cause mayhem and fear for a lack of anything better to do. The aims of the villains are pathetic, and it makes sense that their ends match that. Flagg’s ‘death’ in The Dark Tower shows what a pathetic creature he is, alongside every other King villain who went down like a punk.
But the thing with Flagg is, for him, death is only an inconvenience. He crops up again and again, and even his final death may not be the end.
There are other Flaggs than these.
List of Flagg appearances
Presented below are the list of possible Flagg appearances, small and large, throughout King’s bibliography in publication order, sometimes with notes. Some are speculation. Good luck trying to create a chronology for the universe jumping, time-hopping Wanderin’ Dude.
The Stand (first major appearance) identified as Randall Flagg, and also the Walkin’ Dude, the Midnight Rambler, the Adversary, Legion, Russell Faraday, amongst many, many others.
The Long Walksome fans identify the mysterious figure at the book’s end as Flagg, though I’m dubious about this one.
The Talismanidentified as Reuel Gardener (my speculation, based on his ability to ‘dim’ himself).
The Dark Tower, standing in a field of roses. Source. Available for purchase here.
I’d have you see them like this; I’d have you see them very well. Will you? They are clustered around Suzie’s Cruisin Trike, embracing in the aftermath of their victory. I’d have you see them this way not because they have won a great battle- they know better than that, every one of them – but because now they are ka-tet for the last time.
Stephen King, The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
So ends the journey of Roland and his ka-tet, and King’s journey to the Dark Tower (for now at least).
Having met the author in the previous book, it’s clear how much his voice has been guiding the series, aside from the fact his name is on the cover. The Wizard has been revealed behind the curtain, and as a result he feels a lot more comfortable guiding events along the course he (or ka) has designed.
In this way, the book completes the cycle begun back in the first book not in terms of plot or story but in voice. The first book, though it remains my personal favourite, is wildly at odds in terms of tone with almost everything else King has written. In his afterword, King says this is the fault of a young writer with pretensions and delusions, of grandeur and epic scale at the outset, but taken in terms of the series as a collective whole, the changing tone of the series represents not only King’s growing skills as a writer but Roland’s growing humanity. In the beginning he is cold and terse, and by the series end knows love and family again. He has found connection with humanity, which in itself should be the reward. The ending says otherwise, but we’ll return to that in a moment.
Storytelling has been an important recurring theme of the series as a whole. It is noted that it continues in this book, with Ted Brautigan telling his story before Hearts in Atlantis, the false tales of Rando Thoughtful/Austin Cornwall and Dandelo. The stories are told to build connections, and it becomes clear now at the end that this is what their purpose has been throughout. The power of stories lies in the creation of worlds, imagination, inspiring and scaring, and all those things that writers and critics like to talk about when it comes to the art of storytelling (I’ve certainly spilled enough words and spent enough time in my own way on the subject), but what comes first is connection. The ka-tet’s stories when they first meet Roland way back when are their attempts to build connections in a world strange and new, and in those moments they rebuild Roland’s humanity. It is reflected in the growing humanity in the prose as well, though Roland is bit pig-headed to recognise the growth. A bit like the reader, he is forever bent on the goal of the Tower. The storyteller has his tale, and there must always be an ending.
The storyteller who matters is King himself, and the connection he has is with his story and with his audience. He has sat with this story, on and off, since 19th June, 1970. His Constant Readers have borne the weight with him, and it makes sense that the authorial voice is a character in the book itself. Yes, King is a character in the book, but more importantly is his voice. At times he directly talks to the reader. Now that he has been revealed like the Wizard of Oz, he is more happy to speak out. It is hinted that Gan works through King (and maybe also the unknown Other from It while we’re at it). The final author’s note, where he warns against the reader continuing on, is his most direct interference in his storytelling. Compare this to the authorial voice in The Gunslinger, which is so far removed from King it may as well be Cormac McCarthy writing fantasy, if he had the imagination.
There are subtle hints that Roland and Stephen King look alike, and considering King’s usual writing approach is to let the story reveal itself to him as he writes, it mirrors Roland’s journey to the Tower. The humanity and truth of the story are gradually revealed to King as he writes across seven books, just as it is for Roland on his journey. Though fans may not like it, it makes sense of King going back to essentially re-draft the first book in order to make a more cohesive whole. At one point, he even hinted at a second draft of the whole thing (which may have led to less five-second foreshadowing in places), but is generally content to leave it be nowadays. Hardcore fans may even want to consider the new version of The Gunslinger a different go-round for Roland, where both books can be canon in their similarities and differences.
Which brings us to the endings. When I began the final three books, I noted that there was a definite sense that King was bringing the series in to land. The pace of The Song of Susannah alone is a rollercoaster. But they are still pieces of the journey. Here is journey’s end. Who amongst us, who have read all seven books, did not shed a tear at some point in the book? I get more emotional as I age, and so for every moment of ka-shume I wept: for Eddie, for Jake, for Susannah, for Oy, for those names cried before the Tower, and for Roland. There’s even a scene relatively early in the book where our ka-tet, sensing their imminent dissolution, share a moment of embrace that brought a tear to my eye. It would be nice if we got a jolly ending, where the intact ka-tet reach the Tower and find their own personal treasure. But that’s not what we get.
King is often given short shrift for his endings, and bar a couple of exceptions it’s not something I agree with. However, I can imagine the anger of fans when it is revealed that Gan loops Roland back to the Mohaine desert, seeking the man in black. But I think King delivers two, arguably three, perfect endings for the book. Had Roland called the names of those lost and entered the Tower, I would have been satisfied; had Susannah’s fate in New York been assured, I would have been satisfied; but Roland’s karmic return to the beginning of his journey is sublime.
Many characters meet their end in the book series. The villains will always meet sad pathetic ends. Every single one is introduced with such power, and each whimpers out. Here are just some: Blaine the Mono is defeated by bad jokes, Tick-Tock emasculated, the Wolves of the Calla shot down ini mere minutes, Mordred chewed out by Oy, the Crimson King reduced to hateful eyes… Even King’s ur-villain Flagg is done away with callously, quickly, and forgotten. But though we think of Roland as our hero, he is soaked in blood from the first. He killed his mother, murdered an entire town in Tull, killed Jake, dragged others into his addictive quest. For a hero, he has committed many acts that are unforgivable. We do, but the karmic balance is still out of whack. Were they justified? Did Roland do the right thing in the end?
Why did Roland want to climb the Tower in the first place? It is noted that he only saves the Beams because they will protect the Tower, and ultimately he is only interested in reaching the Tower and climbing to the top. It is almost a villainous deception, in that what noble purpose Roland could be said to have is muddied by personal goals. What does he expect to find there? My suggestion is that he suspects that Gan, is there, and he seeks forgiveness. But forgiveness comes not from Gan, but from within. Had Roland saved the Beam, lived with his ka-tet and Jake as his son, he may have saved himself the purgatorial repeat he finds instead.
That Gan sends Roland back to the start proves to the reader that though the Tower was vulnerable, it was not ever at risk. Roland always succeeds in saving the Tower, but does not save himself. He is, as I am sure Cort would agree, too stubborn and pig-ignorant to realise what he has learned over the course of seven books. The Tower earlier in the book served as a neat metaphor for addiction, but now it becomes sobriety, the forgiveness one must find within to grant him the serenity to accept the things he cannot change, the courage to change the things he can, and the wisdom to know the difference. He was so nearly clean and away, but just cannot quite bring himself to let the story end, even at the cost of everything dear to him. There is hope for redemption. He just needs to work on the wisdom bit. Gan is love, Gan is ka, but Gan is also cruel. It will repeat the punishment for Roland so long as there is space for him to learn from it.
It reminds me a little bit of Alan Moore’s conception of an afterlife in his novel Jerusalem. At its basic level, energy cannot be created or destroyed, and so while there may no be Heaven or Hell, there is the Heaven and Hell we create while we live. There are good times and bad, and we work towards them both. Our reward and punishment at the end of it is that we get to do it all again. Roland gets that very literally. He is, in effect, the architect of his own suffering and salvation.
What could a ‘happy’ ending for Roland look like? Would he cry off the Tower, leave the King imprisoned? Would he find a way to save Eddie and Jake, settle down to lead a life as a father? Or would he gain the Tower with his ka-tet around him? The Horn of Eld being in his possession suggests that things do change slowly for Roland, and maybe this time round on Ka’s wheel it will be different. Who can say?
Well, Sai King – but he has other interests these days.
In any case, the neat thing about the ending is King has built into the series a canonical reason to start the series again from the beginning!
King describes The Dark Tower series as his magnum opus, and though I don’t necessarily agree, it is an impressive piece of work. It’s stretch over time, from 1970 to 2004, encapsulates many of the changes found in King himself, as a writer, storyteller and human being. Though it is good to see the series finished (mostly), it would have been interesting to see how King would have wrangled the series under the relaxed release schedule he had previously. But this is a fitting end to an important chapter of King’s life. It has been a pleasure to share in that journey with him.
As part of the Dark Tower series, I won’t make note of references to previous books, unless it feels relevant to highlight. Which includes the return of Sheemie from Mejis! He appeared way back in Wizard and Glass, and it’s nice to have him back, however briefly.
The skölpadda of the Turtle is dropped early on into the book and disappears from the story, and reference is made within the text to this being similar to the paper boat from the opening of It. Also similar to It, we are made aware of an Other presence in the book, which is hinted to be Gan of the White (in itself, presumably a reference to Gandalf). Would make sense for that to be King, though Maturin is also a candidate. Maturin is mentioned a fair bit, and that’s not the only It reference. There is the robot Stuttering Bill, the same name as the leader of the Losers from that book, as well as Dandelo who feeds on laughter rather than fear, but is very much of the same or similar species to Pennywise the Clown, amongst a few others.
King’s home by the lake is called Cara Laughs, the twin to Sara Laughs from Bag of Bones. The book retroactively becomes closer to the Tower series, with the nightmare of doors and Mike Noonan being very much King’s twinner. Maybe Mike’s immovable writer’s block in that book is due to the ‘death’ of King in 1999. The dates almost match up, if you squint a bit.
We meet the a couple of breakers, the idea of which was first introduced in Hearts in Atlantis. Returning from that book is Ted Brautigan (who at first mistakes Jake for Bobby Garfield from the same book), and in addition is Dinky Earnshaw who appeared in the short story Everything’s Eventual from the same titled collection. We see some the effects of Black House in this book and their successful attack to rescue the breakers and stop the Crimson King. It’s a wonder that King didn’t include cameos from other characters with similar abilities – Danny Torrence, Charlie McGee, or even alternate versions of characters like Carrie or Johnny Smith.
Patrick Danville is introduced properly, having been mentioned way back as a child in Insomnia as playing a very important role in the downfall of the Crimson King. He essentially provides a rubber (eraser, for American readers).
There are also plenty of minor ones too. Nigel the robot, as he slowly deactivates, mentions that he is reading The Dead Zone, and mentions Greg Stillson by name. Good choice of final book to read. That book was the first appearance of 19 on the Wheel of Fortune, and Johnny has his accident on Flagg Street. Interesting. Nigel has a collection of King books up to and including Hearts in Atlantis. Nigel, Stuttering Bill and Andy are all Asimov robots, named for Isaac Asimov the renowned science-fiction author who created the three Laws of Robotics. When describing Flagg’s past, The Stand is directly alluded to. Walter’s thinking cap he wears to face Mordred came from the Black House from Black House.
Some quick ones:
Bryan Smith, after hitting King, refers to the Cujo film and It miniseries, which is a great gag.
Dinky refers to Carrie at the prom, but it’s unclear if it is as the book/film, or as a person he has heard about. She would have been a powerful breaker, had she lived.
Carrie is also referenced more subtly just before Susannah and Roland’s confrontation with Dandelo, where she recalls having her period during gym and her classmates shout ‘plug it up!’ at her.
Insomnia the book is an object, but in Keystone Earth differs from the book in our reality. Perhaps Roland’s actions changed how that book turned out.
Shortly after meeting Rando Thoughtful/Austin Cornwall, there is a direct quote from The Shining‘s repeated refrain, ‘the Red Death holds sway over all,’ itself a Poe reference.
Speaking of Rando, his death by crows felt very reminiscent of George Stark’s death by sparrow in The Dark Half.
Susannah’s dreams has a voice say to her, ‘this is NINETEEN! All your friends are dead!’ This almost the same as the ghostly voice on the phone in 1408.
The Crimson King’s screams are the same as the mad waiter in Lunch at the Gotham Café. I wonder if he was an agent sent mad by the King. Similarly, I wonder if From a Buick 8 is a Low Man abandoning his post after what happened here.
It’s worth noting how often something of some significance happens in a sub-chapter 19.
There are a number of characters left at the end without endings, to an extent. Ted Brautigan, Dinky Earnshaw, Dani Rostov, and Patrick Danville are all characters who it would be interesting to see what happens next to them.
2 Hammarskjold Plaza is a real place in New York! It’s not quite a Dark Tower, but you can see why King was drawn to it. Maybe Ben Hanscom from It had a hand in the design?
One last observation – there is something pleasing in having the Dark Tower surrounded by a field of roses, and the Rose in New York surrounded by towers.
Finally, a couple bonuses. You’ve come this far, why not enjoy a few more?
Where in the Worlds? – a explanation, or sorts, of the Stephen King multiverse (or at least how I see things).
The Dark Man – though this book sees the end of Randall Flagg (for now), let’s return to his very beginning.
So you want to read the Dark Tower – having read the series to its original ending, my take on what you need to read for the series (also paired with The Gunslinger)
We all must make our little deals with the devil, Merrin.
Julian Wadham as Major Granville, Exorcist: Prequel to the Exorcist
Director: Paul Schrader Writer: William Wisher, Caleb Carr Producer: James G. Robinson Starring: Stellan Skarsgård, Gabriel Mann, Clara Bellar, Billy Crawford Released: 20th May 2005 Trailer
The making of this film has already been covered to an extent in the previous essay. However, it is worth mentioning that this is the original prequel, and Schrader saw The Beginning with Blatty on opening weekend. Blatty was embarrassed by what he saw, and Schrader said, ‘This is really bad. If it stays this bad, I bet there’s a chance I can get mine resurrected.‘ And lo, so it came to be.
I wonder if Schrader regretted it at all though. He was brought back with a meagre budget to finish off his film, scrabbling to get some form of score together and, lacking his cinematographer, having to colour time the film himself. There was no ability to reshoot or pick up shots that may have helped the film, nor much chance to do a proper attempt at special effects. But still, Schrader was triumphantly brought back and able to deliver his vision of the film to a wildly muted response.
In fairness, everyone agrees that this was a better prequel attempt than The Beginning. It’s fascinating watching the two back to back and seeing just how much of a marked improvement this is in almost every respect, even just down to the fact that Stellan Skarsgård appears to give a shit this time around with his performance. But the more remarkable thing is how much it is better than The Beginning. The story isn’t very different, but it is the telling of the story that is so much better. Though not in the same style of The Exorcist, it feels at least related to it, unlike the attempts at shock and gore shown The Beginning. Don’t get me wrong – this is not a great film (third best by my ranking at time of writing, but being better than Exorcist II and The Beginning is damming with faint praise), but these two in tandem should be studied by film students in how to make a good film. In fact, I would recommend only watching The Beginning so long as you watched this one first, but only if you wanted to study the differences. It’s a truly fascinating experience. The special effects are worse, but given the circumstances that’s forgivable.
The film also does a lot of work in explaining the thinking behind certain beats in from The Beginning. Early on in both films, a worker faints from the heat and seizes on the floor. In The Beginning, this is treated as a moment, forgotten and mostly ignored. In Dominion, it is used as character point, to demonstrate Merrin’s coldness and single-mindedness unbefitting someone of the faith. Rather than being told about Merrin’s loss of faith, we see it. Similarly, a birth gone wrong that has little plot relevance in The Beginning is actually done far more effectively here, even if the sequence is using broadly the same shots. The flashbacks used previously this time form a prologue, and much better inform the character.
The original casting is generally better too. Izabella Scorupco played the thankless Sarah in The Beginning, and it is notable how often the director in his commentary or how the behind the scenes sections would comment on her beauty, as if there wasn’t much else to go on. Clara Bellar as Rachel gives a much more warm performance, less purely a presence for the eye and something that serves the film as a whole. Though playing differently named characters, they are essentially the same, sharing backstories and occasionally even the same lines with each other. But with the space this film has to breathe, the assumption of a motherly character with Sarah is actually demonstrated with Rachel.
Stellan Skarsgård’s Merrin is also much more true to the priest he will become in The Exorcist, as well as giving a performance that at times is removed from the people, but never quite removed from his empathetic, priestly origins. There is charm, a sense of humour, but still a sense of loss. Gone are the indications of an Indiana Jones-type character. Merrin barely wears a hat, and is more inclined to wear shorts that Harrison Ford wouldn’t be seen dead in. His arc from loss of faith to believer is just more effective in every sense.
But even on a plot level, everything is just so much more clearly defined, such as the conflicts between the religious dig and the locals. Exposition is more elegant, almost as if The Beginning had assumed you had seen this version already and just take things as read they would be similar. At the same time, it’s less gross. I don’t mind horror being gross. But there’s an extremely rapey, nasty character in The Beginning who is coded as evil in every scene he appears. He is played with aplomb by Alan Ford, but the evil in this film is far more subtle, the racism present but taken as part of what the British are capable of as a whole, rather than one disgusting individual. Major Granville’s descent in madness is much more logical, lacking as it does the threatening butterflies.
Yes, it’s not as good as The Exorcist. That’s an impossible bar to reach. But at least feels like a more respectful take on the material. The main criticism I can level at it is that, as a prequel, it struggles to say anything new that The Exorcist hasn’t already said. Merrin’s road to belief mirrors Karras’s in the original, but since we know Merrin’s destination it can’t innovate too much. The Star Wars Prequel trilogy took advantage of our knowledge of Darth Vader by making Anakin’s story a tragedy, playing on the audiences’s expectations. This can’t quite achieve the same thing, and as such the film is still unnecessary.
This does at least try to say some interesting things about the evils of colonialism, with the demon possession of Cheche (Billy Crawford) acting as metaphor for colonisation. As the demon colonises the body of Cheche, he stands to profit bodily in the same way the British Empire benefitted from the colonisation of the world. It’s not quite the exploration of faith Blatty was perennially interested in, but at least the film is trying to say something new.
Where the film falls down is when it tries to be scary. This may be due to the effects available to Schrader in delivering his vision under strained circumstances, but Cheche’s reaction to a cross being placed on his head is a ridiculous, with gravelly bass voice and glowing bright red eyes. The possession is bad, and is at odds with the subtlety the film is otherwise mostly going for. Even Blatty, for all his meditating on faith, ended his story with a violent clash between good and evil. Here, Merrin confronts a fully possessed Cheche who appears as some sort of floating white figure and has an artistic conversation with Merrin. Cheche is freaky looking in this form, don’t get me wrong, but an exorcism movie has to deliver on some of the things expected from what that means, even if you want to avoid the tropes of head spinning and green vomit. But the red eyes were a bad choice, even if trying to do an inverse of how Regan appeared when possessed is an interesting way to tackle the possession in this film. And the dream sequence is impenetrable, with the woman’s identity a mystery even to Schrader.
It’s not actively bad, like Exorcist II or Exorcist: The Beginning, but nor is it as good as Exorcist III. It just about gets by with what it has, but in no way could it be considered essential to The Exoricst experience. But considering the process by which the film even saw a form of release, that should be considered a miracle.
Notes
As a prequel, the references are present to help tie the film into the original film, though this time around they do serve the movie better.
Captain Howdy is more visibly prominent resembling their design from the original film. A statue outside, I’m guessing showing the ArchAngel Michael holding Lucifer at spear point, has a face that also resembles Captain Howdy.
The statue below the buried Church is designed to resemble the statue of Pazuzu found in Iraq in the original film.
Cheche temporarily morphs his face to resemble Captain Howdy’s during the exorcism.
In general though, the film wisely avoids quoting the original too much in favour of creating its own voice.
If you were to stay until the end of the credits, you get to hear Cheche saying ‘I am Perfection,’ which seems like tempting fate somewhat.
It is notable that neither prequel actually jibes with what we know of Merrin’s exorcism, which is supposed to have taken place over the course of a couple months and nearly killed him, not the twenty minutes as shown in both of these films.
‘This might not seem like such a big deal to me, except we’ve been haunted by books, haven’t we? The Dogan. The Wizard of Oz. Charlie the Choo-Choo. Even Jake’s Final Essay. And now ‘Salem’s Lot. I think that if this Stephen King is real-‘
Stephen King, The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah
Including the Bachman books as individual releases but not the compilation, plus his non-fiction entries, his short story and novella collections, this is King’s 50th book published – it’s about time he turned up to take some responsibility for everything he’s done! With that in mind, the theme of King’s series is made absolutely clear with a visit to grand story maker himself on Turtleback Lane.
The novel takes place over nearly the shortest period of time any King book has ever taken – only Cujo, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and Gerald’s Game are comparable, and only Dolores Claiborne over a shorter span of time. The pace of the series to reach the final instalment reaches breakneck speed, and there is a certain level of skill it takes for King to still cram in a whole lot of plot, character and action whilst simultaneously setting the stage for the final show. When King is writing less from the hip and puts the work into structure (as he did in It for example), the man really shows the skill he has available to him.
It would be easy for a work like this to lose itself and what made the earlier instalments so captivating in this rush and pace, but King manages to revisit the theme and ensure it is still present in the book. There is Mia telling Susannah (and Detta, who makes a welcome return in her way) of her origins and backstory, as well as John Cullum introducing Stephen King to Roland and Eddie. It is an important motif in the series. The heroes, or those who have lost their way like Mia or Roland, will tell the personal stories, revealing themselves and their nature. Compare this to someone like Flagg, who hides his story away behind universal exposition back in the first book, or the numerous other villains who care not to open themselves to such inspection. To tell stories is to open yourself up to judgement, to be honest and true, and the villains of the series never seem to be able to open themselves to that criticism, truth or vulnerability. Their bravado is what will kill them in the end.
And nowhere is this more evident than with Stephen King’s presence within the fabric of his own series. I have to admit, introducing yourself as a character in your own self-described magnum opus takes balls. Most times I’ve seen it happen previously, regardless of genre, it is more often a self-deprecating cameo intended to poke fun at themselves, just a bit. Though there is an element of that here too, King still does position himself as the saviour of the multiverse! But not without flaws – he is open to his drinking problem, and the ‘journal’ that acts as an epilogue is actually a surprisingly blunt exploration of King’s personal alcoholism and sobriety. It’s not the book’s focus, but that King is so honest and open about it makes for fascinating reading in the context of an ongoing look at his works.
As much as Flagg’s reveal at the end of Wizard and Glass was a Wizard of Oz allusion, I think in retrospect we can see this as metaphorical reveal of the intentions of Flagg, the Crimson King and of Discordia (or is it the Random?) itself. Flagg impersonates the Wizard, revealing himself to be the one behind so much of what has happened throughout the series. And though that remains true, he is not the true author of what has happened, rather adopting others work as his own. He has consistently failed at stopping Roland along the path of the Beam, instead using Roland as his way of clearing his own path to the Dark Tower. Taking credit for others’ work without revealing himself is what will ultimately doom him. Flagg is like a child who when asked what he wants to be when he grows up answers ‘famous,’ without the work, effort or responsibility that comes with it.
Instead, the true author of the series is plainly obvious. After all, his name has been on the cover since the beginning! Within the fiction of the book, Steve King is the actual author of what has happened, for good or for ill. He is a servant of Gan (or maybe the Purpose?), chronicling the tales of the ka-tet in his novels. His death could mean the author’s villainous creations can act with their own agency, instead of the guiding principles and responsibility of ka. There is an argument to be made that this makes the villains more sympathetic in their desire to control their own destiny, if it wasn’t for all the child murder and stuff they’re responsible for. Instead, Roland honouring the will of ka/King is far more honourable, even if it dooms him, because he accepts the responsibility of his task.
King’s appearance is therefore the ultimate expression of the themes of the Dark Tower and himself. In those terms, it’s a bit easier to see why he calls it his magnum opus. The series is about the power of storytelling, examining the tension between order (sobriety, structure, plot, confession, Purpose) and discord (addiction, improvisation, digression, deception, Random) which are summed up in the life of Stephen King, at least as depicted in Song of Susannah. King can be the hero because he chooses and acts accordingly, much like the ka-tet. Yes, these final three novels are ones that exist because the fear King had of leaving the series unfinished after his accident in 1999 (in a way, shirking the responsibility!), but part of what made the series interesting in the first four novels was seeing the evolution of King’s ability each time he would revisit the series and reflect on what was going on at the time. This gets lost somewhat in the mad rush of the final three books, but it is still integral to the series as a whole.
There are many other aspects of the book to enjoy as well – it’s not all thematic ideas, there are fun story things too! King’s allusion to 9/11 is darkly humorous, especially considering this book came out only two years after and must therefore have been written around the time it happened. I can’t imagine what the reaction was like at the time. The Dixie Pig delivers on the horror that has been somewhat lacking at times in the series (those older vampires feeding on the baby are nasty). Splitting the ka-tet after having them so united just a book before adds to the urgency of the events.
The book ends on a cliffhanger, not as large as the one that ended The Waste Lands, but even if it were, the final book of the series was released only a few months later.
Come. Soon we reach the end of the Beam.
Long days and pleasant nights.
Observations and Connections
As part of the Dark Tower series, I won’t make note of references to previous books, unless it feels relevant to highlight.
At this point, we know that the vampires originally appeared in ‘Salem’s Lot, amongst other stories, and the Low Men (and Women, now) first appeared in Hearts in Atlantis. Callahan also appeared first in ‘Salem’s Lot. The concept of beams were first mentioned in Hearts in Atlantis, and explored extensively in Black House. I won’t mention them again – promise.
The Masque of the Red Death is referenced as a disease that possibly originated from the Crimson King. This story was referenced extensively back in The Shining. Speaking of the disease, beam collapse is implied to have caused the disease, which would help explain Flagg’s presence in The Stand (not that it required explaining) as an agent of the Crimson King. And speaking of Beams, the little ceramic turtle is called Maturin, who we are told is dead back in It, but may have got better since his Beam is still up.
There is an oblique reference to The Eyes of the Dragon, which took place before or during Roland’s grandfather’s time.
Eddie compares himself to a couple of young actors contemporaneous to his time, including Emilio Estevez, who starred in King’s film Maximum Overdrive.
The concept of a dogan is more fully explored in this book, and reminds very much of a similar idea explored in Dreamcatcher, with it being some interior space in the mind you can retreat to in case of an invader. Mia in general is very similar to the process of mind invasion from that book, though certainly not the same species at all.
The magic doors have a technological equivalent. I wonder if the transport device The Jaunt is the same thing. Would explain everyone’s waking reaction to it if you did travel through Todash.
King is marked with a faint death bag, the concept of which was introduced in Insomnia.
In King’s ‘journal,’ he references a number of his books throughout his career including: The Stand (first appearance of Flagg), The Dead Zone (the first appearance of 19), a Bachman book in 1983 which is probably The Running Man, Rose Madder (which bombed apparently, but I liked it!), Hearts in Atlantis (first appearance of Low Men and Breakers), Storm of the Century, Rose Red, Kingdom Hospital, On Writing and ‘Salem’s Lot. When Roland and Eddie meet Stephen, he talks about possibly writing a book about his process… Which he will, with On Writing.
Some other thoughts. Bango Skank has some graffiti, which is such a unique thing I thought it had to be a reference to something. Yet it didn’t ring any bells, not even as some stray graffiti from All That You Love Will Be Carried Away, where Bango would fit right in. According to Bev Vincent, Bango was originally intended to be in The Talisman, before Straub and King cut back on the outline. Straub used him in a story called The Buffalo Hunter. Apparently, King says Bango graffiti crops up elsewhere.
Sometimes I think the best view of God is from Hell.
Izabella Scorupco as Sarah Novak, Exorcist: The Beginning
Director: Renny Harlin Writer: Alexi Hawley (story by William Wisher and Caleb Carr) Producer: James G. Robinson Starring: Stellan Skarsgård, Izabella Scorupco, James D’Arcy Released: 20th August 2004 Trailer
The hell of production on this prequel, as well as the next prequel, are well known, often overshadowing the films themselves. Without dwelling upon it too much, there had been an idea of a prequel floating around for a long while, with even the first sequel touching upon the idea. Dominion was filmed first, and when the studio saw a low key, slow paced horror film that didn’t deliver many scares, they hated it. They fired the director, Paul Schrader, and hired Renny Harlin to come in and ‘rescue’ the film in 10 months, including rewriting the script. He scrapped pretty much everything except the casting of Stellan Skarsgård and started from scratch, delivering instead, Exorcist: The Beginning. Such was the result of this, that the studio released the original prequel a year later.
This should give some indication as to the quality of the film.
When embarking on a prequel, it is always difficult to find something new to say that enhances the original and says something new about what the first film said. In order to be able to discuss thematic resonances and subtextual reading, one hopes that the story being told should at least work on such basic levels as ‘plot,’ and ‘character,’ both of which are sorely lacking here. The original was a deep meditation on faith, an intimate story about the nature of evil in the fight for good within the framework of something horrific. This pays lip service to those ideas, but is far more interested in being much more explicitly a horror film to scare you. As a result, it fails at the first hurdle, as the scares of the original film are derived from the richness of its themes. It doesn’t help that it doesn’t make a lick of sense either.
Things wrong with this film are at a fundamental level. There are other things you could pick issue with. The special effects are not great, but given the production and the year of release, I don’t really want to pick too much at something like that. More unforgivable is the generally flat performances from everyone, even the usually reliable Stellan Skarsgård. In a sense, we do get the sense he has lost his faith, just in the film in general rather than the character’s loss of religious faith. There seems to barely a reaction to any of the horrific events happening on screen, just the reaction of someone ground down by production. David Bradley shows up for a scene as a priest who, after one of his patients has cut a swastika into his chest and sliced his throat open, crosses himself and seemingly just gets on with his life. A behind-the-scenes documentary shows the actors who can barely summon the enthusiasm to talk up the film while seemingly in the middle of shooting it. Bearing in mind the script they are working with, it’s not surprising.
The plot is incoherent, and I think partially suffers from the same edict that hamstrung The Exorcist III with its tacked on exorcism. There are two plots going on: the first is the excavation of a hidden church where Lucifer himself is said to have landed when expelled from Heaven. Also, Izabella Scorupco’s Sarah Novak is possessed at some point, which is revealed as a late twist with little if any foreshadowing. The first plot feels biblical if nonsensical, the second tacked on. It just lands in the film with a sickening thud, like a turd on the dinner table. Neither fit in with what we know about Merrin, considering the prequel is supposed to be built around Merrin’s exorcism in Africa ten or twelve years before the original. Instead, Merrin is treated almost like some kind of archeologist action hero who has to remind everyone he is a retired priest.
But even on a micro level of plotting, the film fails. Merrin cuts his hand early in the film, but no consequences arise from it; the child who is ripped apart by hyenas is almost entirely forgotten once he is literally dragged out of the film; the sanatorium sequence is there purely to deliver a ‘scare,’ and has no real ramifications (or actual explanation) with regards to the plot. There are never any consequences. Even the choice to have Merrin’s backstory revealed fully in flashback isn’t dealt with in the present of the story. A nasty pregnancy exists purely to shock. One of the few times something is set up is the Major Granville’s interest in collecting butterflies, which pays off later when they seemingly come back to life and he shoots himself in the mouth. It doesn’t make any more sense in context. And how are there crows in a church buried underground for thousands of years? The original played with ambiguity of whether the possession was real – this simply just fails to engage with the rules of plotting a story.
There’s not much point in going through the film scene by scene to highlight where the film fails. The film is renowned for being bad, and adding more to its woes is less like shooting fish in a barrel and more like shooting fish in a bucket. The problem is poor plotting that infects the rest of the film on every other level, as well as a failure to understand what makes the original so effective. The Exorcist was about faith, God, Good and Evil; The Exorcist: Beginning is about being an Exorcist film and the money that can be made off the back of it.
Notes
In the film’s attempt to play the prequel aspect, there are numerous references to the original film to try make you feel like you are watching an Exorcist film.
The scene set in Egypt has men working in a blacksmiths hitting a piece of metal reminiscent of those in the opening of the original’s prologue set in Iraq.
Shortly after, Merrin is offered a drink, which he accepts in a line reminiscent of how he accepts a drink in the original film.
A shot flying over the valley reminds me of some of the arial photography from Exorcist II, which is not something you necessarily want to be reminded of.
The wild dogs, in this case hyenas, are back to signify evil.
During Merrin’s rather violent reaction a flashback, he smashes into a mirror, which if you go frame by frame will reveal the distorted face of Captain Howdy.
There is a visit to a sanatorium, which is probably a reference to Karras’ visiting his mother. It’s shot similarly, but more likely is just invoking stock horror cliches.
A sound clip from the original of Regan shouting for Merrin when he arrives at the house seems to have been used during the final exorcism.
Incidentally, this DVD has simultaneously the worst and funniest menus, where the options are not visible until you press the directional buttons for the different stations of the cross.
UP NEXT: Another prequel to the original film starring Stellan Skarsgård – no, it isn’t Hell, it’s Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist.
Turtle Bay in New York, where Calvin Tower’s Restaurant of the Mind can be found.
‘Is it another tale? If so, I’d hear.’
Of course he would. The man was a glutton for stories.
Stephen King, The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
Typical. You wait for one Dark Tower book to come out and then three come along at once.
It’s an interesting position for the Dark Tower series as a whole to be in. Most authors of an ongoing series make said series to be their main focus of work, bringing out each book of the series without much care or concern for other stories to tell. George RR Martin is perhaps the one main exception I can think to this, besides King, and that’s mostly due to the length of time it takes to write one of his books. But take your average author of an ongoing series; they try to push a new one out with annual regularity. King has no such pressure with his, previously having released another book in the series whenever he fancied, or the fan mail demand became too much.
But after King’s accident, the idea of his mortality became suddenly very real. Robert Jordan famously never finished his Wheel of Time series; Douglas Adams was in the midst of writing a new Hitchhiker’s book when he died far too young of a heart attack; Dickens leaves behind the Mystery of Edwin Drood forever. King did not want to put his readers in the same position, and so powered through the final three books of his planned Dark Tower series. The irony is that he is still pumping out at least a book a year since for over twenty years, and had he kept to his pattern of original releases would probably would be finishing up the series around now!
The latter half of the Tower series tends to divide people, at least from what I’ve seen. Unlike the change in tone from book one to two, which is stark for even the most casual of readers, the shift here is more subtle. King is bringing things in for a landing, and with great haste. The first four books were very much about invention and exploration of Mid-World. There were references to previous events in other King books, but much more felt new. Here, references become more insular. One gets the feeling King is beginning to tie off loose threads as much as possible, moving the story overall on but with an end in sight. Despite the book’s length (judging by the spine, this is the longest of the Tower books) this book retains a focused momentum throughout its weighty page count. King is very much aiming for the end of the Beam now, with the Dark Tower itself dead ahead.
But King hasn’t forgotten the themes that power the series on. This is still a series that is about the power of stories. This book takes an interesting approach when compared to other books. Though there are stories told throughout, most notably that of Callahan and Jaffords, this deals with the idea of stories in a much more meta-textual way.
We see this in Calvin Tower’s almost worship of the books in his shop. The ka-tet think of him as a guardian of the Tower, but his bookshop in Turtle Bay and the unique first editions he is intent on preserving also make him a keeper of stories too. He has dual importance to the saga of the Tower, in that he protects the Tower (or more accurately the Rose) and the legends that surround it. The presence of the book The Dogan and ‘Salem’s Lot (more on that twist below) hint that though he may not be fully aware of their importance, Calvin knows that these books carry some importance. There is power in stories, feeding back into the meta-textual narrative of the series overall.
The Wolves provide a differing approach to the theme of the series. Their descriptions make it clear, and Eddie and Jake make it obvious in the closing pages of the book. The Wolves look like Doctor Doom of Marvel riding horseback, wielding a Star Wars lightsaber and a snitch from Harry Potter (though I prefer to think of the orbs from Phantasm these days). There is also the clear iconography referencing your classic conception of what a Western should be, or the samurai films of Japan, of which the book as a whole is clearly riffing on. Going back as far as Shardik, there has been this recurring idea of fiction leaking, either from in or out of our world, or maybe even both. Rather than employing obscure literary references this time, King has fun playing with modern pop culture references, making them very much his own but with the gallons of blood. They are fierce predators in the world of the Calla, but for a casual observer from our world there has to be a double take seeing Doctor Doom with a lightsaber moments before your head separates from your body.
By putting them into the story and making them so explicitly a product of may influences, it calls into question the idea of Mid-World at all. Is it real, or a land of fiction, where echoes of its existence leaks into our reality? I think more interesting is that the reveal of their robotic nature shows them to be hollow, acting out their role in the story (much like Andy also) because that is their role in the story. There is ka, but who guides ka in the end with these mindless metal machines? They are literally plot devices. Contrast this our ka-tet, who shares stories of things we are already privy too, are arguably not the same storytellers they were in the previous four books. They are flesh and blood, can change and adapt and grow, but are still slaves to ka.
And yet, I don’t believe that’s what’s going on here. These are no longer characters telling stories, but making stories now, making legends of themselves. In this world, Gunslingers are already the stuff of legend, but that is fading as the world moves on. The ka-tet establish themselves as living legends, with their story being told forever in the Calla long after they leave. They aren’t part of other people’s stories. They aren’t part of someone else’s legend. They make their own. They are their own authors now.
Or are they? Returning to the presence of Callahan in the book is interesting. A fun surprise, for certain, for Constant Readers, as his presence conceals the deeper meta-textual level at play here. Noted below is King’s initial ideas for a ‘Salem’s Lot sequel, but King has been making references to other stories of his for decades at this point. These easter eggs are to be expected, even within the Tower series itself which is set in another universe. But in Calvin Tower’s collection of books, Callahan finds a copy of ‘Salem’s Lot – the actual novel that Callahan appeared in first. At the moment when the ka-tet seem to be in control of their own destiny, leading with the legends they make for themselves, ka comes along and quickly dissuades them of that concept. They may be authors of their legend in the books, but not necessarily out of them. If Ka wills it, there will be water. Of if the plot requires it, there will be stakes raised.
The promise at the end of the book is a truly mind-boggling twist, and demonstrates the sheer confidence King has in his story that is even hinted at is a wild direction to go in. With the knowledge that the next book would only be released a few short months later, I can only imagine what fan speculation would have been like in those early days of the internet. Lucky for them, they would not have to wait long to find out what happens next.
Long days and pleasant nights.
Observations and Connections
As part of the Dark Tower series, I won’t make note of references to previous books, unless it feels relevant to highlight.
Perhaps the most surprising thing is the introduction of Stephen King as a character. Stephen King, if you didn’t know, is a well-known horror writer known for many books such as Carrie, The Shining and It. He has published many books, including the previous fifty or so I’ve covered in this essay series. If you didn’t know.
The major return is that of Father, now Pere, Callahan, the alcoholic priest from ‘Salem’s Lot. King had long considered a sequel to that book, but used much of his ideas here instead, making that possibility unlikely now. Interestingly, the adaptation in 2004 starring Rob Lowe uses some of these ideas for Callahan, though not linked with the Dark Tower otherwise. Callahan’s presence means we also get some closure from that book overall – we learn that Ben Mears has died, and Mark Petrie survived at least to adulthood, meaning they had some success in defeating the vampires back at the Lot (even if One for the Road suggests they didn’t quite get all of them). In addition, considering what we learn about the vampires in this novel, it perhaps might be interesting to reconsider what or who the sacrifice in the original book was for.
As Callahan goes on the run, he encounters other aspects of King’s universe, knitting the worlds together that much closer. His first stop out of the Lot is Hartford, which was the whispered word of sanctuary from The Mist. Maybe he should have stuck around. As well as vampires, Callahan is being hunted by Low Men in yellow coats, who were first introduced in Hearts in Atlantis. They are also called regulators, marking the villains of The Regulators for grander motives. Maybe Seth from that book was a breaker, and the regulators wanted to get him for the Crimson King (who is also mentioned, having been first introduced in Insomnia and appeared a few times otherwise). Big Coffin Hunters are also linked with this group, having been introduced in the previous Tower book. The way Callahan flips between universes at times is similar to how Jack flips in The Talisman and Black House.
A major concept introduced in this book is going ‘Todash,’ describing the space between worlds and yet another way for people to travel between universes or times. Pennywise from It may have come from there, as well as the creatures from The Mist; Mike possibly went through there back in Bag of Bones.
The twins who are kidnapped are used to create ‘brainfood’ for the breakers. Breakers as a concept are intrinsic to the threat the Dark Tower faces from the Crimson King, but was actually introduced in Hearts in Atlantis and fleshed out further in Black House. The twins themselves seem to have a shine to them, though it is called the touch here.
The Vagrant Dead is an amazing description for ghosts, and sounds very similar to the dead as presented in The Shining. I’m not sure it’s exactly the same, as the Overlook is such a fundamentally evil place that I don’t think the dead have a chance to escape. Eddie compares them to George Romero’s dead, which is a fun shout out for King’s friend.
The number 19 is introduced (or reintroduced, depending on which version of The Gunslinger you read, though had appeared a few times before) and it is abundantly made clear to be a number of power. It’s not exactly clear why the number is important, only that it is. In fact, King missed a trick not titling this one The Wolves of the Calla. One of 19’s manifestations is the changing author of Charlie the Choo-Choo, from Beryl Evans to Claudia Inez y Bachman, widow of Richard Bachman. Bachman, as fans must now, was King’s pseudonym he killed off in the 80s, though he occasionally comes back every now and then.
The word ‘opoponax’ is used to describe a feather by the Jaffords, which first made an impact in Black House. This is not the only reference, as there is a fleeting reference to the climax of that book where four men face off against a monster with one eye. How the word as it is used here relates to actual opoponax remains a mystery to me.
A couple of minor ones. Eddie thinks about the magazine The Inside View, which was mentioned way back in The Dead Zone, as well as Bag of Bones and a few short stories from Nightmares & Dreamscapes. The group that faces the Wolves are numbered seven, a number of power thinks Roland. We know this to be true, as that was the number of ‘losers’ in the Losers Club from It. And truly the most obscure references is to President Chadborne. Further information can be found here.
Finally, with the return of Father Callahan, I’ve been considering who else might have made for an interesting alternate returning character in Wolves of the Calla. My main two candidates have been Dick Halloran from The Shining and Nick Andros from The Stand.
“Break it off!” he warned, “before it leads to some greater catastrophe; before things get even much worse, much worse! We don’t want any more desecrations now, Damien, do we?”
William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist 40th Anniversary Edition
George Lucas has a lot to answer for.
In 1997, George Lucas released the original Star Wars trilogy into cinemas. This was partly to ready audiences for the upcoming prequel trilogy, but also to take advantage of modern technology now available that wasn’t twenty years before. This involved cleaned up of picture and sound, which in itself is not a bad thing. Film restoration is important, and preserving film for future generations to enjoy in the highest possible quality is to be lauded. What is less forgivable is the many changes Lucas made to the original films, using computer generated imagery to change the intent of scenes. The most controversial of these is the ‘Han Shot First,’ which fans argue changes the trajectory of Han Solo’s character arc within the film, as well as being poorly done. At least one defence I have heard of that change was to help the original movie preserve its family friendly age certification. Whatever the case may be, Lucas has relentlessly tinkered with the film until he sold Lucasfilm in 2010. In fact, Star Wars remains the only film requested for the National Film Registry that, so far as I’m aware, hasn’t yet been donated as Lucas only wished to offer the 1997 special edition rather than the original theatrical release. Contrast this to Lucas’ good friend Steven Spielberg who, barring a blip with E.T., refuses to record DVD commentaries so as not to compromise the quality of the film, and you can understand why these changes can be controversial.
This is not necessarily a new phenomenon. Comic reprints will sometimes cut or trim panel art to avoid controversy, usually when a piece gets a lot of attention, is republished by new owners or recolouring the original art to something more palatable to modern readers. Stephen King did it with The Stand and The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger, and though the originals can still be found on the secondary market, a new version will be essentially the “Author’s Cut” of the text. William Shakespeare had multiple versions of Hamlet, with key differences that scholars have been arguing over for literal centuries, but no one argues with Shakespeare’s genius.
Blatty and Friedkin are following in this same controversial tradition. At various times since The Exorcist III, the original creators have returned to their creations to tinker with them, with varying results. In tracking the legacy of The Exorcist, it is important to consider these as part of the legacy, but also separate from the original releases. It seems obvious to say, but these would not exist without the original movie’s impact.
Presented below are the three major works and their revisions, presented not in their release order but in order of original release. With regards to the films, there are usually videos online of comparing and contrasting the differences that exist between versions.
On a side note, Mark Kermode reports that there are numerous different cuts of Blatty’s other film, The Ninth Configuration. I have only watched the one release, but take Kermode’s description at his word. It does fit in with the general feeling of Blatty’s approach to his work.
Cover to the 40th anniversary edition.
The Exorcist: 40th Anniversary Edition Released: 4th October 2011
In his introduction to the book, Blatty explains quite clearly the circumstances under which he wrote the book. He was a comedy scriptwriter who encountered a dry spell in his career, and decided to dig up an idea that had been floating around in his head. Originally a non-fiction account of the exorcism of Roland Doe, it became what we know to be The Exorcist. However, towards the end of writing the book, he got an offer to write a screenplay. As such, he rushed the ending of the book, and despite some editorial changes he made, let the book be published pretty much as is.
In revisiting the book, Blatty describes the changes as being mostly cosmetic, tweaking sentences, clarifying points that he felt were clunky. Those are changes that unless you were going through the book line by line would be invisible, and thoughts about which was superior being a matter of taste, mostly.
However, he does list one significant change. Late in the book, an exhausted Father Karras falls asleep and seems to awake to find the mysterious Father Lucas in the room. As the scene continues, we realise this Father Lucas is not who he appears to be; instead a demon sent to scare Karras away from his destiny in Georgetown. Lucas uses crutches, which he got in a fall, and the more Karras studies Lucas’ visage, the more marks appear until we know who we are dealing with.
Though it is open for interpretation, the choice of name Lucas is Latin form of the Greek name, meaning “bringer of light.” Coupled with his mention of a fall, I think it is clear that Blatty hints that Lucifer the Fallen Angel, the Bringer of Light, has paid Karras a house call. This arguably forms a stronger link between The Exorcist and Legion, which implies the many voices within Karras’ body include Lucifer out for revenge.
It is a nifty, creepy little scene. It doesn’t necessarily add a lot to the book, but implies that greater forces are at work than the human characters are necessarily aware of.
Re-release poster to The Exorcist, barely differing from the iconic original.
The Exorcist: The Version You’ve Never Seen! Director: William Friedkin Writer: William Peter Blatty Producer: William Peter Blatty Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Winn, Jack McGowran, Jason Miller, Linda Blair and Mercedes McCambridge Released: 22nd September 2000 Teaser (beware flashing imagery)
A short, moody pre-prologue of Georgetown prior to the Iraq prologue to help set the mood.
Regan’s earlier medical tests are included, most importantly the inclusion of being given Ritalin. This helped address a minor plot hole from the original, where the pills are mentioned at the party, despite not having been mentioned at all previously.
Extra flashing images throughout, including:
Captain Howdy during Regan’s medical examination.
The same face on the extractor fan hood when the electricity flashes on and off.
The statue Pazuzu as Chris opens the door to Regan’s room and again when she leaves in a barely visible shadow.
Regan gets a touch of digital make-up before she attacks the doctor when undergoing hypnosis.
The face of Karras’ mother appears in the window before he throws himself through it.
The addition of the infamous ‘spider-walk’ scene, with updated effects to remove visible wires.
A scene with Karras listening to a recording of a conversation between Regan and Chris. Though not explained in the film, it is in the book. It is part of Karras’ investigation to identify if Regan is putting on a voice.
A short scene between Merrin and Chris, where Merrin asks Regan’s middle name.
An additional scene between Karras and Merrin that asks the questions ‘Why Regan?’
Father Dyer returns Karras’ St Christopher to Chris, bringing it more in line with the book.
An extended ending between Father Dyer and Detective Kinderman, showing the beginning of their friendship more fully explored in The Exorcist III.
Trims and extensions too numerous to mention.
There are more music cues present, and the sound in general seems to be louder and more violent to heighten the atmosphere.
Friedkin had hoped for even more footage to be added, but some of this was impossible due to sound issues. One interesting potential addition was for an extended epilogue scene where Dyer would see an angelic Karras, but WB did not want to supply the money for it to be shot, a wise decision.
Though this version is now Friedkin’s preferred version, I think this is a version that falls under the Lucas problem of making changes for the sake of making changes. The heightened sound work does serve to make the film a more intense experience, and the additional music score is mostly unobtrusive, generally making the film feel more modern. Both are unnecessary however, and a preference is up the viewer.
Most of the visual additions only serve to slow the film down, and the additions of Captain Howdy though fun add little to the film. The spider-walk scene in particular is a shock scene that I think actually actively harms the film, escalating the scare at too early a point in the film and diminishes what comes after. Though not a horror scene, Regan’s early medical examinations harm the film in the same way.
The change from Chris rejecting the St Christopher to accepting it, though more faithful to the book, I think loses some of Chris’ ambivalence to belief that made the first version interesting by comparison to the religious win of the book. It’s only a small change, but has larger implications for the character that aren’t as interesting as the original. Too much of Blatty’s own feelings influencing the cut of the film. The melancholic ending is now more optimistic, settling the audience before they head out of the screen. The meet cute between Dyer and Kinderman I think is problematic, in that an audience shouldn’t walk away from a horror film, especially this one, feeling settled. Considering everything the film has done so far, I shouldn’t feel comfortable. Good wins in the end, but we are reminded that evil really does exist in the world.
One change I did appreciate was the additional scene between Karras and Merrin in how it plays to Karras’ lack of faith. If he had believed sooner, could things have gone differently? It also serves to highlight the reason for the demonic possession (better than the one supplied in The Exorcist II, though that’s not saying much), strengthening the themes of the film in general.
In general, though the additions are interesting, it is best treated almost like a bonus feature to the original. Most of the changes are obtrusive when compared to the subtle, enigmatic original. A restoration that merely included the new sound mix might have got away with it, but additions like the spider-walk sequence are unnecessary, pandering to fan interest. It is not bad by any means, but the classic remains the version you want to see.
Shout Factory’s frankly awful cover tor the release of The Exorcist III/Legion. The Arrow release is far better.
Legion Director: William Peter Blatty Writer: William Peter Blatty Producer: Carter DeHaven Starring: George C. Scott, Ed Flanders, Brad Dourif, Scott Wilson Released: 25th October 2016 (home release)
Finally, we have Blatty’s less compromised vision for The Exorcist III, bringing it more in line with his original vision for the film. Unlike the changes Friedkin made to The Exorcist, the changes here are more in-depth and harder to make a simple list of as above. Luckily, someone has gone to all that hard work for me, so you can read about the extensive changes made here. Sadly, the new material is sourced from poor quality video tape, meaning Blatty’s vision will always remain, to an extent, compromised.
One of the more effective things the film achieves is simply by the act of retitling the film from The Exorcist III to Legion. Regardless of my feelings to the novel on which the film it is based, titling this film The Exorcist III brings with it expectations that harmed the film upon release. The associations with the sour taste of The Exorcist II probably turned people away from the film, and with that title the studio demanded that an exorcism be included. Had it been called Legion, it may have avoided that fate. Calling it Legion removes the film somewhat from those expectations, and allowing it to stand more confidently as its own story; linked, but ultimately separate.
The prime change comes in two ways. The first is losing Jason Miller, purely using Brad Dourif’s original performance. Miller was filmed in reshoots, and Dourif’s performance refilmed to maintain continuity when the cell set was redesigned. Dourif gave an amazing performance in the original film, but his original performance somehow manages to be more of everything. The decline in audio quality doesn’t help, but it gives a good idea of what could have been.
The ending is more true to the novel’s original ending. Rather than a huge exorcism scene involving a character who shows up deus ex machina style to deliver on the promise of there being an exorcism, there is the far more low-key and abrupt ending. It is better than the novel’s “Dad’s dead, I guess I’ll just die then,” ending for the Gemini Killer. But it’s not much better, and frankly the studio made the right call to reshoot something more grandiose, and I think the original highlights a failing in Blatty’s imagination to not better integrate the exorcism into the finale of the film. There are even other priest characters in the film who could have taken up the role the otherwise anomalous Father Morning fulfils.
One part that remains deleted is a prologue to the film, where Kinderman sees the body of Karras, now played by Brad Dourif. This helps better link the recasting of Karras and possession by the Gemini, and establish the relationship between Karras and Kinderman. It does spoil the appearance of Karras later, but your mileage may vary for important that is.
It’s a mixed bag, and the quality of the available footage harms what could have been an interesting film in its own right. As it is, it remains an interesting curio for fans who always wondered what could have been.
***
These three projects show a couple things. Firstly, that Blatty couldn’t quite leave The Exorcist alone, returning to the story (or pushing Friedkin to do so) in three separate versions. But more importantly, that he was able to do this shows that despite The Exorcist II and the general failure of The Exorcist III, there was still an interest in The Exorcist. The reputation of the original had grown in the years (due in part to Britain’s Video Nasty moral panic), a reignited interest thanks to The Version You’ve Never Seen, as well as the early days of the Platinum Dunes horror remakes (amongst other successful remakes such as Thirteen Ghosts, The Ring and The Mummy) meant that there was a will and a way to dive once more into the world of The Exorcist.
UP NEXT: It’s time to go back to the beginning of The Exorcist with the creatively titled,Exorcist: The Beginning.
But then, there have always been two sorts of people in the world. Curt was of the sort who believed satisfaction actually did bring felines back from the other side of the great divide.
Stephen King, From a Buick 8
Prior to reading this book, this was one I was aware of but one that I had heard had not the greatest reputation. As such, it was not necessarily one I was looking forward to, especially with the Dark Tower itself in sight. But I was pleasantly surprised and charmed by the book. Yes, it is linked ever so slightly with the Dark Tower series, but in a way that is very easy to miss. It doesn’t effect your enjoyment of it at all, and in fact, it’s tiny connection to the Tower speaks to the central idea of life in the face of the unknown.
I’ve outlined below in more detail the links with the Tower, but it doesn’t take away from the central interpretive utility of the Buick at the story’s core. King has written about spooky cars more times than most writers even think about, the most obvious one being Christine. It’s easy to mock him for doing so, but in having read them all now it’s interesting to see how they can play out with different meanings or purposes, sometimes within the same story. Trucks invited many interpretations, where Uncle Otto’s Truck is more simply a revenge story. Christine has a dark sexual power contained within, but the Buick of this story most closely resembles that of death.
King had started writing this story before his accident (it was mentioned a few times as in progress in On Writing), but the the Buick is a delivery method of death. The accident described in the story is coloured with details King had acute experiences, but the very fact that the car itself delivers death from it’s diabolical trunk makes it impossible not to draw some kind of link between King and his accident, even if it is only the lightest of touches. It sits in the story, within Shed B, as some great unknowable thing the characters try, and fail, to comprehend fully. Sandy Dearborn’s near death experience gives him the briefest of glimpses of the great beyond, but barely the framework with which to understand it.
It’s a very interesting choice for King to do that. It borders on Lovecraft. similar to Crouch End of The Mist before it. In his stories, King will invent long and complex histories for not just his characters, but the thing that they face in the story. This is not a criticism by the way. The history of the Overlook in The Shining or the arrival of Pennywise in It (as well as all those interludes) give those stories weight, both literally and metaphorically. Sometimes the history is the accumulation of many stories, like Flagg’s since his introduction in The Stand. Yet King, apart from subtle hints for fans, refuses at all to offer any true explanation for the story he is telling. The Buick just is. It is a fact of the world.
I understand that for some readers this may prove frustrating. King rarely indulges in deliberate obtuseness, preferring plain speaking and clarity, But with From a Buick 8, the whole point of it is that there are things that are incomprehensible, but life still continues for most everyone. Without that lack of explanation, Ned Wilcox would learn something about something, as opposed to something from nothing.
King’s efforts in the book is to draw equivalence between death, the undiscovered country, and the Buick, to make death strange again. Ned’s father died in a drink driving accident, an insensible way to die. Ned as a young man just wants to make sense of why Dad isn’t at home anymore. The Buick, his father’s obsession before him, perhaps can give him some clue as to why, and his frustration grows as the answers never seem to come. Sandy as well as the other cops are at greats pains to explain what can’t be explained, that sometimes life is just an unknowable series of events where trying to find a reason is a fool’s game. This can be a criticism levelled at the book, but to do so I think misses the fundamental point.
The book even outright says not to expect a neat ending. King is often criticised for his endings (though Secret Window, Secret Garden aside, I’m usually okay with them), and highlighting this aspect almost makes its lack of ending immune to criticism. Shit happens, and death has unknowable edges. The only guarantee is that it happens. Once you notice that every time a minor cop gets introduced, only to be killed off a couple lines later, it becomes clear the point that King is driving home.
The book is good, but doesn’t quite deliver on the emotional promise of its concept. Cops have to deal with death semi-regularly, that they become inured to it. It confirms the themes of the book, that the unknowable is something you have to live with, but we rarely get an insight into Ned’s feelings except through the lens of Sandy’s observations. It might have given the final ‘attack’ from the Buick a bit more heft had we got inside Ned’s head a bit more. Like I say, the ending is almost immune to criticism. I wouldn’t put it as a top tier King, but it’s certainly better than some of the stories of his I’ve read. But overall, it’s an enjoyable yarn well told, that has some things to say about death, grief, and all the days they stay dead.
Observations and Connections
This is technically related to the Dark Tower, but only in the most tangential way. If you have no knowledge of the world of the Tower, then you aren’t going to be lost in references as you would be reading Black House, for example. For a Constant Reader, there are some fun links to be made.
The Buick itself is a car for a can-toi, aka Low Man. The Low Men and their cars first appeared in Hearts in Atlantis, and the cars themselves are made out to be just as dangerous as those that ‘drive’ them. I speculated in the Hearts in Atlantis essay that the titular Christine may have once been a Low Car, and though the description of the Buick doesn’t exactly match, there are elements (the self-repair of each car, both stories are set in Pennsylvania) that at least makes a link plausible. That Christine serves to help Pennywise in It by transporting Henry Bowers makes sense, as the Beam Guardian and Pennywise’s enemy is the Turtle, which aligns with the Crimson King’s schemes. In fact, any odd car in a King story may have been one abandoned by a Low Man, such as Uncle Otto’s Truck or Mrs’s Todd’s Shortcut. Maybe in one universe the Low Cars spread like a virus to all cars, which leads to the events of Trucks?
Speaking of Low Men, the driver who disappears from the story is almost certainly a Low Man. He’s described as dressing in a black coat as opposed to yellow, which has lead some to speculate this may be another incarnation of Randall Flagg. I think this connection is unlikely.
The creatures that come from the Buick are very much like those described in The Mist, suggesting that the Buick has a universal portal, similar to the other ways we’ve seen travel between different universes in numerous other books. In addition, the creatures tend not to do well in our world, perhaps meaning the mist creates an atmosphere conducive to their being alive. The world we glimpse is like nothing we’ve seen before in King’s descriptions, except maybe Altair IV from The Tommyknockers.
The main character is called Sandy Dearborn, matching Roland’s alias Will Dearborn that he uses in The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass. Similarly, there is a book mentioned written by John H. Maturin, Maturin being the name of the Turtle that appears in It as well as being one of the Beam Guardians of the Tower. I think both are simply easter eggs, alerting the keen reader to the Dark Tower connections.
The title of the novel comes from a Bob Dylan song called From a Buick 6.
UP NEXT: After a long gap, it’s a sprint to the Tower beginning with Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
Director: Bob Logan Writer: Bob Logan Producer: Steve Wizan, Mario Kassar Starring: Linda Blair, Ned Beatty, Leslie Nielsen, Anthony Starke Released: 14th September 1990 Trailer
Long before the Scary Movie franchise and the litany of sketch parody films it inspired, there was Leslie Nielsen. Nielsen got his start doing serious roles, most notably Forbidden Planet. His performance in Creepshow is genuinely chilling and hilarious at the same time, showing that when the material was there he could bring something special to the table. But it was the 1980 classic Airplane! that would put him on the path that would define the rest of his career. His finest comic work was in Airplane! and The Naked Gun series, pitch perfect parodies of the genres they mocked as well as slapstick tour de forces held together by a deadpan Nielsen. Then there are the other comic parodies that star Nielsen, films like Spy Hard, Dracula: Dead and Loving It or 2001: A Space Travesty, which indulge in his predilection for fart humour and jokes that amount to recognising they’re doing the thing. Repossessed falls into the latter category.
In an odd way, this forms a parallel trilogy of Exorcist films alongside William Peter Blatty’s more dignified Trilogy of Faith. This time round, it’s the ‘Linda Blair Vomits on Things’ trilogy. Though Linda Blair is a fine actress and has never really been without work for too long, the late 80s saw a decline in the quality of the work of which she was a part of. She has never escaped the shadow of The Exorcist, and probably gets a question about it every day of her life despite it being over fifty years since she was in it. She remained a Scream Queen, but has tried hard to to disassociate herself from the original, whether that be the controversial Born Innocent, a roller rink musical with Roller Boogie, or her animal rights activism. It’s no wonder that she tried a more head on attempt to exorcising her past with this.
In Repossessed, she plays Nancy (a reference to former First Lady and throat goat Nancy Regan – it’s the best joke in the film) who is possessed after watching a prosperity gospel TV show. She requires the help of Leslie Nielsen as Father Mayii (pronounced May I?) to exorcise her, which he eventually does through a rock number where Nielsen dresses up as Michael Jackson. Just written down it sounds awful, imagine having to watch it.
This is not to say it’s all bad. Linda Blair reminds us that she should have been a big star with her performance, as well as clearly having a ball parodying her old performance. Leslie Nielsen, when performing lines, reminds us why he is so funny. But the film struggles under the weight having to be a motion picture length, having to indulge in extended training montages of Nielsen exercising to 1989’s unrelated Belgian techno-anthem, Pump Up The Jam to get to a decent run time. It has nothing to say, except ‘Hey, do you remember The Exorcist?’
Though the film is not officially part of The Exorcist franchise, it does represent a watershed moment for the franchise in general. Horror franchises always start scary, and at a certain point devolve into parody, going into space, going meta, killing teenagers in ironic ways with a quip before it gets rebooted. At its base – it stops being scary. The Exorcist III was great, but in the minds of the general public the familiarity of the original in public consciousness made it too familiar. Split-pea vomit was repulsive in the original – and here it is a wink-to-the-audience punchline. Friedkin wisely never returned to The Exorcist (at least, for now), and Blatty and Blair both felt the need to kill off The Exorcist in their own way, with The Exorcist III and Repossessed respectively. That they came out within a month of each other only emphasises that the series should perhaps have been left alone.
Notes
There are many other Exorcist parodies, though this one remains probably the most notable. However, Scary Movie 2 has an extended parody scene, where James Woods, Trump supporter and out-of-work actor, humps a young Natasha Lyonne and spews vomit for presumably comic effect. The Simpsons has inevitably done an Treehouse of Horror parody called The Exor-Sis a short forty-four years after the original film. Unbelievably, there is a Shrek parody called The Shreksorcist involving a possessed Pinocchio. Even more unbelievably, it’s not bad,
The film was not successful upon release. As badly as The Exorcist III did, this did much worse, and is normally forgotten except in extended conversations about The Exorcist, like this essay series. Let us never speak of it again.
UP NEXT: They couldn’t let it alone. A look at the changes that came from The Exorcist: The Version You’ve Never Seen!, The Exorcist 40th Anniversary and The Exorcist: Legion.
Presented here, story by story, is a quick review of each, any connections to the wider Stephen King mythos and more general observations. A basic understanding of the stories is assumed, and spoilers freely discussed.
Autopsy Room Four
Though not nearly as grim as Survivor Type, this put me in the same mind in that King is clearly cackling like a loon as he is writing the story, especially as he reaches the punchlines. King openly admits to this being his version of an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode called Breakdown. This story truly is a fun little tale, slight but tense and funny in equal measure. Due to King’s method of ordering his stories this time around, we break with the tradition established in Skeleton Crew by not opening with the longest story. This is actually one of the shorter stories present in the collection! If anything, I think this works to the collection’s favour. The Mist is a fantastic piece, but Dolan’s Cadillac dragged on and lacked the same tension. Here, we are eased in with a quick kiss of a story into the rest of the collection.
The story is set in Derry, which first appeared in It as well as numerous stories afterwards. When I first read this, I had read It, and was confused – didn’t that town get destroyed? In any case, though first published in 1997, the main story is set in 1994, probably after the events of Insomnia. The main character, Howard Cottrell, is noted as living in Mary Mead, a place that split off from Derry at some point. Speaking of Howard, this is a truly deep cut reference (and maybe a coincidence), but there was a character by the same name in The Shining, who appeared briefly to give Halloran some mittens. Is it the same character, or is it a Patrick Hocksetter situation again? There’s no evidence to suggest either way, but it’s fun to think about at least.
The Man in the Black Suit
After the black humour of the previous story, this is a fairy tale to chill the bones. This is genuinely a scary little tale, and one that has lived in my my memory years since having read it. The image of the Man swallowing and cooking a trout in his mouth has lived on so much so that that I feel I could have done a fairly decent job of writing this story again, beat for beat, from memory.
The story itself feels like a true example of American horror. The folky manner in which it is told, like a warning around the camp fire adds to the atmosphere, and the religious undertones make it especially powerful. It’s a story about mortality, coming as Gary still grieves over his brother’s senseless death and fears the coming of the Man in the Black Suit once again as his own time draws to an end. There is hope, but it seems like it is losing out to the fear and panic that draws in on the last days of a very old man. There is not a note wrong in this story. Even the ‘biiiiig fiiiish,’ which could so easily slip into parody, amps up the horror. King is firing on all cylinders with this one, which is reflected not only its publication in The New Yorker, but also winning a prestigious O. Henry Award too.
Our lead character is a writer, probably a columnist, having written for Castle Rock’s Call for many years. Though the story is set in a place called Motton, we are in the vicinity of Castle Rock, which was first introduced in The Dead Zone before being King’s most visited fictional location.
The Man in the Black Suit is definitley supposed to be the devil, and I am happy to accept that, but there is a fun in speculation. Preying on children, seemingly feeding on fear and a imperfect shape sounds similar to Pennywise. The year 1914 doesn’t fit with the patten of Pennywise’s waking periods, the closest being 1906 when the Kitchener Ironworks exploded. It could also be Flagg, the Walkin’ Dude, in one of his nastier forms. It may even be Gaunt from Needful Things, come to scope the town out before he settles for a spell in the aforementioned book. Gaunt was actually intended to be the devil, so it would make sesne that way.
All That You Love Will Be Carried Away
One of King’s non-horror efforts, and more literary, which may give someone pause if they were to read it. But like the previous stories, this is one that forever changed how I think. Whenever I need to go to a public toilet, I always take note of the graffiti around me, noting how someone has spent the time to sometimes write witty, sometimes gross, sometimes sexual, sometimes racist, sometimes glorious things on the wall of a toilet stall. Pointless things that in a small way prove that once upon a time, a person existed here and they made their mark.
In a way, I this story is King mourning a type of American living that he grew up with. The main character, Alfie Zimmer, is a travelling salesman, and I don’t really know how much that exists anymore. Even an Avon lady puts a note through the door so you can contact her separately, and the internet has all but killed that kind of selling. Whether it is better or not is immaterial. Instead, I think he is mourning a type or person who, much like the notes scrawled on a tile of a public toilet, makes a brief impact on the world, registers a presence with a person, and then is gone again. Alfie is a ghost of a way America used to be, and even the ghost will soon be gone.
The distant farmhouse is interesting, almost like the light at the end of the pier in The Great Gatsby, representing a distant beacon and at the same time a modernity that Alfie isn’t sure he can be part of. Yes, it is a farmhouse, but the family in there is microwaving a meal, the boy plays on his GameCube, the daughter reading a modern children’s author. The world has moved on. Is this salvation, or another piece of damnation?
It recalls some of his earlier stories in tone, including most notably Roadwork, especially the implication that he has been depressed for quite a while and suffering in silence. The ambiguity of his suicidal thoughts, being eked out of a world that no longer requires him, is one of great melancholy, and I think King mourns that world too. I hope Alfie is okay.
The Death of Jack Hamilton
Different and yet similar to the previous story, this one also is about the death of a kind of America. Criminals used to be romanticised, like Robin Hoods of America. The truth is often far more grimy and nasty, but then those kind of stories don’t make myths. King has long been fascinated by criminals and the mafia, going as far back as The Shining, but this time with the iconic and very real John Dillenger. It’s bordering on fan fiction, especially when taking King’s note at the end of the story into account. It’s a fun tale that does exactly as the title promises, and King again mourning a little piece of America that really has disappeared except from the history books.
In the Deathroom
A real throwback of a story for King – this would not have been out of place in Night Shift alongside the likes of The Ledge or Battleground. It certainly would have been published in something like Cavalier to say the least. It’s the kind of hard boiled men’s fiction that I think King, to an extent, wishes he could write all the time. It’s fun and slight, lacking the historical myth-making and heart the previous story. It won’t linger in the memory however.
It is notable that this was first published as an audio only story alongside two other stories in this collection, 1408 and Lunch at the Gotham Café. They were all read by King for an audio collection called Blood and Smoke, where each story was about blood, naturally, and smoking, hence the importance the smoking plays within this story.
The Little Sisters of Eluria
I’ll admit, when I read this back when I was younger, I had no idea who Roland was or what the Dark Tower was, and it left me a little cold. Revisiting the story this time around (and especially with the weight of four Dark Tower books, not to mention all the connected stories), I enjoyed it a lot more and can appreciate the little slice of Dark Tower on its lonesome. For readers unfamiliar with the Tower series but with designs on reading them, I wouldn’t suggest starting with this story before anything else; The Gunslinger is still the place to start. It’s more of an extra, outside of the core seven novels, much like the later released interquel The Wind Through the Keyhole. Considering the references within, it’s probably best enjoyed after book four.
For a brief excursion back into the world of the Tower, it’s interesting to read this as it is so wildly different in tone to the rest of King’s stories contained, feeling more alike to The Gunslinger even than later Tower books. As someone who’s favourite Tower book is still that first one, it was quite nice to dive back into that style in addition to that world. It expands the world, and gives a bit more insight into Roland, especially coming after Wizard and Glass. He’s not quite the cold and ruthless man who stopped awhile in Tull, but it’s a man who has weathered a lot.
Naturally as a Dark Tower story, this has obvious links to the series. It’s a prequel to the main series, set before The Gunslinger but after the flashback sequence from Wizard and Glass. He mentions needing to buy another horse, or maybe even a mule, which explicitly ties this to the opening of The Gunslinger where he does indeed have a mule. The Slow Mutants in this story are the same kind that plagued Roland and Jake beneath the mountains in the first book.
In addition, the Little Sisters and their tent-hospital appeared previously in Black House. Technically, Little Sisters was published beforeBlack House, but was collected here afterwards. Depending on the order you read them, their appearance in Black House is either foreshadowing or a fun reference. Or if you never read this, completely anomalous. King’s notes suggest a link to The Talisman and the pavilion where Jack sees the Queen of the Territories. If it’s the same set of tents, it further cements the link between All-World and the Territories.
Finally, the Little Doctors are also referred to as the can-tam, which recalls the term can-to used to describe the Low Men in Hearts in Atlantis. The term was first used in Desperation.
Everything’s Eventual
First published in 1997, the story was republished in the year 2000 in one of the most interesting ways. Though there is very little of Stephen King in the world of video games, the year 2000 saw the release of Stephen King’s F13, in an attempt to make the function keys on your keyboard spooky I guess. There is very little to recommend it, as it mostly consists of screensavers or casual games more suited to mobile games or web browsers. This trailer is probably as much as you want to explore. However, it did also bundle in a digital copy of this novella, so that’s fun. Though if you want a Stephen King video game, it’s best just to play something like Alan Wake or Control.
With regards to the story itself, it’s one of those interesting little tales that you’ll never quite predict what’s going to happen. Dinky Earnshaw is really interesting, quietly happy for so long and not realising the life he and freedom he has lost in exchange for the use of his powers. Sure he has a home and his needs are taken care of, but he has no real life except what he scratches out for himself. In this regard, it could be read as a metaphor for military service, when so many young people are preyed upon when their prospects aren’t too good.
At one point, Mr Sharpton calls Dinky a ‘tranny,’ in reference to him working for the Trans Corporation, but this does open it up to a Queer reading, even if King didn’t necessarily intend it. Having an older man and substitute father figure essentially groom a younger man into his service and trapping you in a life that is not yours to lead, keeping your transness quiet. His training in Peoria sounds a lot like they’re trying to do a bit of gay conversion therapy on him. Is Dinky trans? He might at least be genderqueer, and the text would certainly support the reading if you so wished. Either way, the section where Dinky is repeatedly referred to as a tranny becomes much funnier in the year of our lord 2024 than it was probably back in 1997.
Mr Sharpton is quite mysterious, and could be a representative of many different agencies. He claims the Trans Corporation, but that could just be a front. One of the more likely ones to link to within King’s universe is The Shop, which hasn’t appeared since Golden Years, but first appeared fully in Firestarter. However, the method by which Sharpton describes finding Dinky sounds like he’s using Low Men, which could tie Dinky into the Dark Tower. His powers are really unique, and remind me of the symbols used by the Low Men in Hearts in Atlantis. I wonder if there is any link there. Maybe he is a Breaker of some sort.
Also, there is a direct reference to King’s TV show Golden Years as a TV show within the fiction of the story, another one of King’s oddly meta references to himself that occasionally crop up.
L.T.’s Theory of Pets
When I first read this as a young teenager, I was somewhat mystified by this one. Older and hopefully wiser (taller, at least), I appreciate this one a bit more, especially as I write about this one with my wife asleep in bed next to me. It’s disguised as a funny monologue about pets and their owners, in fact concealing a melancholy tale about the breakdown of marriage and communication between two people. From the perspective of L.T., he really does seem to have loved his wife, though we never get to hear Lulubelle’s take on events. There’s an element about how men relate their emotional state, how they’ll make a joke of it rather than talk about they need help.
King performs this one live, and an audiobook version that exists is, rather bizarrely I think, a live recording. I prefer the ability to read at my own pace, doing my own voices and such, the ability to go back and check on something. Having said that, this is perhaps a story that might be better experienced with the author himself taking you through the story. The audience plays along gamely, and it brings the story to life that a page, I am willing to admit here, cannot quite capture.
In his notes to the story, King says Tabitha gifted him a Pembroke Welsh Corgi who he has grown quite fond of. Marlowe was the corgi at the time, but since 2014 has another corgi called Molly. Molly is a menace, and must be stopped.
The Road Virus Heads North
King’s short stories give him a good opportunity to write a story that has a simple scary idea at its core and further opportunity to melt the main character by its end. This is one of those stories, and an excellent example of it. The sharpened teeth and inevitability of the story gives a thrilling edge, but the whole conceit is ingenious. A slow chase where you get regular updates on your pursuers progress via a painting that shouldn’t move. In a way, it recalls HP Lovecraft’s Pickman’s Model or MR James’s Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook, where the horrific pictures are drawn from the life.
The idea of moving pictures is one King has explored in Rose Madder. In a fleeting reference, Richard Kennel is an author who is from Derry, which has a ridiculously high number of authors come from within that town’s borders.
The inspiration for this story comes from a real painting Tabitha gave Stephen for a birthday of Christmas (pairing it nicely with the previous story’s inspiration). His kids apparently hated it, claiming the driver’s eyes followed them around the room. So far as I can tell, King hasn’t shown what this picture looks like. Anyone who has a line of contact to King should get him to show it off. I’d love to see it.
Lunch at the Gotham Café
This is an interesting story, and on a first reading the most memorable thing is the encounter at the end with the insane maître d’ and the depiction of madness that comes with it. But reading the story now, it’s interesting the contrast between the maître d’ and his final descent into irretrievable madness to Steven’s almost total incomprehension at the end of his marriage. Steven’s final utterance of ‘eeeee’ is almost like him trying on madness as a solution to a world that seems to hate him. Madness is inevitable in a world that hates you, specifically.
It was originally published alongside In the Deathroom, and the prominence of cigarettes are important to note this time around too. King contrasts the failure of the marriage with Steven’s withdrawal from smoking. But after the maître d’s rampage, he is able to break both habits – the woman whom he still loved exposes herself to be quite vindictive, as well as the final rejection of his smoking addiction. In a way, he does break free (and there are hints in the story that Steven doesn’t descend into madness, at least not immediately). The positive spin is a bit of a reach, I admit, but I do admire how mean this story is. It’s similar to stories like The Raft or Children of the Corn in just how nasty the characters are to each other. It’s a bit American Psycho in that sense.
If there is a weakness, it could be argued that the portrayal of Diane is really nasty. The hatred she shows towards Steve leaves a sour taste in the mouth, and comes across really as hateful. But at the same time, the story is very much told from Steven’s point of view. Realism isn’t the reason for the season here, more a heightened unreality throughout the story that builds and builds to its creeeeescendo. We don’t get an insight at all of Diane’s perspective, a deliberate choice as we are trying to get a view on what drives this man to the brink of insanity. It’s an interesting character study of Steve for as much as it says about him within the story as much as it doesn’t say.
There was an adaptation made in 2005, which has a unique cast including Stephen King (as Mr Ring), Mick Garris and Steve Wozniak. It hasn’t seen an official release, but it sounds very interesting.
That Feeling, You Can Only Say What Is In French
Hell is what you make of it.
King is surprisingly sanguine about the story’s meaning in his notes, though he does offer his interpretation that Hell is in the repetition. I don’t disagree with him, but considering some of the other stories it’s interesting the marriage aspect is so much in play. There’s also the element where Carol is constantly on the verge of disaster, and every time is pulled back from the full horror of her fate to experience the mundanity. And there’s the guilt Carol feels over her abortion, and maybe feels like this is the Hell she deserves for the life she’s led.
It’s a really interesting story, and King gets to play with the actual writing with the repetition and variations. The funny thing, considering the story’s French feeling, was that I had no recollection of the story, and title doesn’t exactly scream about what the story contains. But as I was reading it, I literally got that feeling and it all come flooding back, which certainly gave the story a different flavour!
1408
There are elements of King’s writing that are arguable repeats. Christine is not King’s only Spooky Car story, and some may look at 1408 as King revisiting the concept previously explored in The Shining. But though the Overlook Hotel was evil, it was populated by ghosts. 1408 is more simply a very evil room, with no cause or reason for why it does what it does. It just is nasty, a bit like Crouch End and its thin places. I particularly like the madness mantras chanted by the phone, which defy any sort of rational explanation. What’s especially fun is how King is purely here for a good, scary time. The movie version expands upon the original, and though there is much to enjoy about the film I admire the purity found within this story.
One of the interesting aspects of this story is that we have actually seen an early draft of this story appear in On Writing. King didn’t necessarily intend to finish it, but enjoyed what he had written so much he felt compelled to finish it. It does provide an interesting and rare insight into King’s process.
Riding the Bullet
In his introduction, King recalls an earlier effort of his that covered a similar theme of grief in a story called The Woman in the Room from Night Shift. I would also draw attention to the Bachman novel Roadwork. The key difference with this story is that this one explicitly has a supernatural element.
King has wrestled with his guilt over his mother’s death it seems for a long time, though the poverty he was experiencing is more than enough reason for why he couldn’t help as much as he could. The guilty party is the health care system, but that doesn’t really do much to assuage King’s guilt. It’s especially interesting, as despite George’s choice, his mother still lives a long life. Yes she does die – but so do we all eventually. I really enjoyed this as a choice from King. It gives the story an interesting (and from George’s persepctve, tortuous) ambiguity about how much of a role her played in his mother’s death. It plays with the idea of the classic Hitchhiking Ghost story, but instead of coming home to a death comes to a very much alive mother. King is having a bit of fun with the expectations, which elevate what could otherwise be a fairly rote story.
One of the interesting questions the story doesn’t ask, but is in a way implied, is the mother’s perspective. If she was asked who should take the ‘death ride’ between her and her son, I think a motherly instinct would kick in.
This story is an interesting twin to the unfinished The Plant, in that both were early experiments in e-publishing. This one came first, but this was released by the publisher instead, meaning they got a slice of the takings. The Plant was King on his lonesome, and received the lion’s share. An interesting historical note for the story, but doesn’t affect it in any material way.
Luckey Quarter
A very short to finish the collection, the barest hint of supernatural happenings. I feel like it’s one that I’m missing something, and because of King’s method arranging the stories, it ends the collection in a less than substantial way. It’s placement perhaps giving it more weight than it necessarily deserves. I don’t hate it, but it didn’t really do anything for me. It’s not out of place in general with the collection, but not a strong ending overall.
I mean, come on here, ladies and gentlemen, whom can I possibly kid at this late date, except maybe myself? I sold my first story when I was twenty-one and a junior in college. I’m now fifty-four, and have run a lot of language through the 2.2-pound organic computer/word processor I hang my Red Sox hat on.
Stephen King, Everything’s Eventual‘s introduction
It’s interesting, this collection. Firstly, it’s been a while since this happened, but this is a chance to revisit a book I had read long before I had started doing my marathon of reading Stephen King’s bibliography. In fact, Dark Tower books aside, this is the first fiction book I have reread since Misery. Secondly, since Nightmares & Dreamscapes (his last collection) cleared the decks, this is a collection made out of material only published since 1994, arguably presenting a better insight into King’s state of mind during the 90s than his last collection and having more in common with his first two collections.
In his introduction, King discusses the fact that he has been writing for a long time by this point, and that writing short stories are hard and not necessarily that rewarding, beyond sharpening the skills of a writer. He goes on to discuss the methods by which he tries to keep writing alive for him, making it new and interesting, which when looking at the output throughout the 90s, are much more experimental for King.
Here are some of the ways King innovated his publication methods in the 90s. 1408 and In The Deathroom first started as audio only stories, and were at first intended to remain that way before being collected here. Riding the Bullet was first released as an e-book, like a more successful version of The Plant. Little Sister of Eluria was published as part of a collection of stories where authors wrote stories set in their created worlds, alongside the likes of Ursula K. LeGuin and Terry Pratchett, which delights me no end. Perhaps most bizarrely, the novella Everything’s Eventual was released as part of the ‘video game’ Stephen King’s F13 (though had been published a couple years before that). King also managed to get four stories in The New Yorker: The Man in the Black Suit, All That You Love Will Be Taken Away, The Death of Jack Hamilton and That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French, which by contrast is a very traditional form of publishing.
Think of this in the context of his writing during this time, including trilogy of strong women characters (Gerald’s Game, Dolores Claiborne, and Rose Madder), older protagonists (Insomnia) or unique publishing approach (The Green Mile, The Regulators and Desperation); even his Dark Tower entry at this time was a radical departure to what had come before. In that way, it does reflect King’s interest in the 90s of reinventing himself. It probably helped his sobriety during that difficult time.
But what about the content of the stories themselves?
I made no secret that I was rather cool towards King’s last collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes, despite containing some very fine stories indeed. It may be the rose-tinted spectacles, but Everything’s Eventual is a far more cohesive collection overall, slightly let down in the manner in which King arranged the stories. By randomly dealing the stories out, we lose the big opener like The Mist or Dolan’s Cadillac, and the collection itself ends with the rather damp squib Luckey Quarter. But the stories are stronger, perhaps freed from the ‘clearing out the decks’ approach of Nightmares & Dreamscapes.
There is no story older than 1994 present, covering the relatively brief period of eight years. Taken in that context, I believe they only further my suspicion that this was period where King was enjoying being adventurous and experimental. As well as the consideration for how they were published, there is the stories themselves. There is experimentation in King’s form, with the most first person stories yet, experiments in genre (Riding the Bullet, L.T.’s Theory of Pets), form (That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French) and some beautiful little character studies (All That You Love Will Be Carried Away, L.T.’s Theory of Pets again). There are also some of King’s scariest short stories ever included, (1408, The Main in the Black Suit, The Road Virus Heads North, amongst others).
But what I enjoyed this time around especially is that the stories do share a thematic link. There are some references to the wider King universe, especially for a collection that contains Dark Tower prequel, but in general it’s light on those references. The stories contained tend to stand more on their own. Instead, this collection feels like most of the characters contained within are very much on the brink of certain disaster.
There is King’s horror typical on the edge of Death that you can expect. Autopsy Room 4 is possibly the closest any character of King’s has got to death and still survived, but the protagonists of of The Road Virus Heads North, 1408 and That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French feature characters who are on the brink of everything being lost. Not quite horror (though related at least), there is also In The Deathroom and The Little Sister of Eluria, where a character has to fight for his life. And at the same time, there is the melancholic haunting of Riding the Bullet, which contemplates being on the brink of death in a different way. In those moments, we get to see characters at their most vulnerable. Weakness or strength is revealed in these baptisms of fire (literally, in the case of 1408), living or dying by the choices they make. King is always interested in melting his characters, but usually the characters are a part of motivated circumstances, and the focus here is more on the characters against forces. Not always – but enough that it becomes apparent that King is shifting the focus in his stories.
It’s not all doom – there’s gloom too. Marriages and relationships tend not to do well in this collection, with L.T.’s Theory of Pets, That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French and Lunch at the Gotham Café confronting this most explicitly. There is hatred and spite and resentment, and the feeling that maybe there should be something beter out there. That Feeling… could almost be a metaphor for being trapped in a toxic relationship, where Lunch at the Gotham Café is the moment you snap back to the reality of what killed a relationship in the first place. L.T. is perhaps one the saddest one of all, structured like a joke throughout until the punchline leaves you (and it’s main character) bereft of closure. There are even small moments, like the quick relationship that came out of Autopsy Room 4, the fling of Roland’s from Little Sisters of Eluria and the quick mention of friendly divorce in 1408. One hopes that everything was all right in the King household during this time.
There is also the brink of success. Everything Eventual has a young man who finally finds a use for his talent, only to realise the pain he’s inflicting. He makes the brave choice to stop, do something else. In this context, even Luckey Quarter has a woman who seems to constantly live on the brink of disaster getting her lucky break, completely turning it around – possibly. It’s still not the greatest story, but that reading does help it a little bit.
The constant teetering on the brink forces the characters to reflect on themselves. Maybe King is in a reflective mood. The publication in 2002 could tempt one to think it’s a reaction to his accident a couple of years ago, but it is important to note that a lot of these stories come during King’s early sobriety. Those are difficult times for anyone, forcing a person to confront parts of themselves they may never have felt comfortable confronting before. King’s characters are so much on the brink of failure throughout, sometimes falling, sometimes flying, depending on how they deal with their circumstances.
It comes back to the title of the collection, which disguises but perfectly sums up the theme of the collection – Everything’s Eventual just means inevitable. Death comes for everyone, all relationships hit their tough stretches, and everyone has their highs and lows when they think about they’re doing with their lives. It’s what happens. The stories in this collection accept that this things may well be inevitable – but what are you going to do about it?
The whole world is a homicide victim, Father. Would a God who is good invent something like that? Plainly speaking, it’s a lousy idea. It’s not popular. It’s not a winner.
George C. Scott as Lt. William Kinderman, The Exorcist III
Director: William Peter Blatty Writer: William Peter Blatty Producer: Carter DeHaven Starring: George C. Scott, Ed Flanders, Jason Miller, Brad Dourif, Scott Wilson, Nicol Williamson Released: 17th August 1990 Trailer (features clips of the infamous face morphing effect)
Despite the dreadful The Exorcist II, the legacy of the original movie was still strong enough that a second sequel was commissioned. Quietly, the novel’s original author had been expanding the world of the The Exorcist in the interim. Firstly, there was a reworking of the novel Twinkle, Twinkle ‘Killer’ Kane! to what would eventually become The Ninth Configuration, expanding on a minor character from the book into a radically different story. Blatty then followed this up with semi-sequel/spin-off novel, Legion, a few years later. Following a period of development hell, the film came out just in time for Repossessed – but we’ll get to that later.
The original novel played more as a detective story with horror elements, and doesn’t even feature an exorcism of any kind, ending with a more thoughtful, contemplative mood. This was something that clearly had to change for the movie version. But with Blatty in charge, the transfer from page to screen would at least be more respectful to the original than whatever was going on in The Exorcist II. Legion dealt with questions about a God creating and allowing a cruel universe, but its central ideas were unrefined, rushed and thematically messy, as well as hammered home at every opportunity. The Exorcist III offered Blatty a chance to refine the story, focusing the novel into a workable film. Gone were the extended monologues and subplots involving ghost tapes – it was time to bring in Brad Dourif.
The theatrical version, compromised though it may be (see Notes below), does a lot to streamline the novel. The Gemini Killer is introduced much earlier, the Dr Amfortas subplot is lost entirely, as well as some other small changes to heighten moments of horror. The most notable and important changes are to do with the nature of the Gemini Killer’s possession and the loss of Kinderman’s monologues. Also, there was the addition of an exorcism, which whilst included against Blatty’s wishes I think is probably a good addition in general.
The Gemini Killer in the novel is introduced relatively late to the story, having few scenes that mostly act as exposition. Here, he is introduced earlier and threaded through better than the novel, and the visual language of the film allows for some play with the identity of the killer, flipping between Karras and Brad Dourif’s James Venamun. Jason Miller looks tired, suffering from his alcoholism. In some ways, it plays into the story of Karras’ spirit trapped within a body being piloted by the Gemini Killer. Karras is tired of being brought out and paraded, wishing he was just dead instead. His entire performance is predicated on the idea that he just wants to move on. Brad Dourif on the other hand is an electric presence on screen, a barely restrained performance of evil. The demon (unnamed Pazuzu, though hinted at being Satan at one point) seeks revenge on Karras, and having Karras be a presence, even a feeble one, moves the conversation onto the legacy of evil rather than the source of evil in the universe. The loss of Kinderman’s digressional monologues on the nature of evil allows the movie to engage with the more interesting idea of the legacy of The Exorcist as a whole.
Blatty refuses to offer more of the same as the original, barely referencing the original exorcism case except to link it current events. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is a legacy sequel like the recent Halloween trilogy, amongst others, but it is in part dealing with legacy of The Exorcist. Rather than rehashing Regan’s possession, the demon works with the Gemini Killer to continue the legacy of their murders, endlessly repeating the same murder to shame their evangelist father. It’s definitely a reach, but a fun one, to read this as a comment on the idea of sequels retreading the same steps as an original without any innovation, except in the methods of kills. Coming as this film did at the end of the 80s, the age of endless horror sequels, it’s funny to think of this as Blatty’s comment on The Exorcist‘s legacy. Blatty is well-known to loathe The Exorcist II, so though not nearly as exploited as other horror franchises (by this point there had been eight Friday 13ths, five Halloweens, five Nightmare on Elm Streets, etc.), it was something that lost touch with what made the original so great and terrifying in the first place, as well as Blatty’s very personal themes.
The exorcism at the end, though brilliant and done in a huge way, becomes a joke within this reading. The exorcism in The Exorcist was the right method in that case, but here it becomes a ludicrous, over the top attempt to top the original – and it is unsuccessful! The film in its own way is saying it cannot beat the original, but can offer something different. The solution presented and enacted by Kinderman is to kill the past and move on to something new. This is exemplified in Kinderman’s relationships within the film.
The film does some work to retroactively make it that Karras and Kinderman were close friends, when in The Exorcist they barely interact beyond some short scenes (slightly more in the novel, but not much). The friendship between Dyer and Kinderman is as believable, and perhaps more because of the performances between George C. Scott and Ed Flanders, who perfectly underplay Blatty’s witty dialogue. Together, they sell the idea of a friendship forged in the wake of their mutual loss of Karras. Scott plays the grief and rage of Kinderman at Dyer’s death in a way some might seem exaggerated, but I think helps propel the second half of the film. In this reading, Kinderman’s rage at being dragged back into the past neatly dovetails with what Blatty’s own feelings towards the legacy of The Exorcist on what his own career may have been. In any case, it’s not like a horror film should strive for naturalism anyway.
I don’t think this is the intended message or subtext of the film. The book version, Legion, arguably fits in better thematically concerning the idea of faith alongside The Exorcist and The Ninth Configuration, but The Exorcist III as a story and horror film works better than the novel. It is more refined, scarier, and has something different to say, as well as trying to put an end to the legacy of The Exorcist itself.
Depending on how you look at it, something was to come along only a month later that would kill it off for a long, long while.
Notes
The original film The Exorcist had a rough production, but ended up making a great movie. The Exorcist III has a similarly rough production, but Blatty’s final cut was compromised and in the view of many led to a compromised final product. Rumours circulated for years of lost footage, some of which is evidenced in the trailer, and a director’s cut was long wanted by fans. Over time, the footage was found and though not in the best condition led to a release of a director’s cut, or as close to, in 2016. This will be covered in a separate essay.
There are other changes from the novel that work better in the film. The ending of the film was a last minute addition. There was meant to be no exorcism, bringing it more in line with the original novel. The novel ends with Tommy Sunlight, aka the Gemini Killer (the name Tommy Sunlight is not used at all in the film) willing himself to death, having found out his father died. In the film, his father was one of his first victims. The autopsy shears were meant to be used to kill Kinderman’s daughter; in the book, Tommy Sunlight basically doesn’t bother to do so, whereas the film has a more nail-biting and satisfying payoff to that particular part of the plot. Though I do not wish to go through every change from page to screen, it is interesting that Blatty chose to heighten the horror where he could.
There is a St Christopher medallion present in the film, but only in a minor way. As Kinderman’s dream sequence begins, he dreams of a crucifix attached to what appears to be a St Christopher fall into the black, showing Kinderman the way to the heavenly train station. It’s a small symbol, but it links neatly with The Exorcist and The Ninth Configuration in this way.
The film was not successful upon release. Though there were a few positive write ups, the horror genre as a while was on a downswing at this point in time until Scream brought it back to popularity. In addition, there was the lingering reputation of The Exorcist II to contend with. Blatty tried to have the film avoid a numerical designation, but was overruled. When the film flopped, one person commented to Blatty that the film’s lack of success was probably due to The Exorcist II. Go figure.
Speaking of The Exorcist II, this film refuses to acknowledge the existence of that movie, completely ignoring it. Ironically, this means it does nothing to contradict it either, meaning that it could conceivably remain in canon. I would still advise skipping that though.
UP NEXT: Leslie Nielson has a crack at being an exorcist in Repossessed.
Houses…are alive. This is something we know. News from our nerve endings. If we’re quiet, if we listen, we can hear houses breath. Sometimes, in the depth of the night, you can even hear them groan. It’s as if they were having bad dreams. A good house cradles and comforts, a bad one fills us with instinctive unease. Bad houses hate our warmth and our human-ness. That blind hate of our humanity is what we mean when we use the word ‘haunted’.
Nancy Travis as Dr. Joyce Reardon, Rose Red
Director: Craig R. Baxley Writer: Stephen King Producer: Thomas H. Brodek, Robert F. Phillips Starring: Nancy Travis, Matt Keeslar, Julian Sands, Kimberly J. Brown, David Dukes, Judith Ivey, Melanie Lynskey, Matt Ross, Kevin Tighe, Julia Campbell, Emily Deschanel, Laura Kenny, Tsidii Le Loka, Yvonne Sciò, Jimmi Simpson Released: 27-29th January 2002 Trailer
When The Talisman was released, Steven Spielberg had already bought up the rights and then never adapted it. It’s part of the reason King has quite strict rules for selling the rights to his work nowadays, insisting that the adaptation must start within a set amount of time. Still, the Duffer Brothers are working on it now, so there may be a release in the future. But Rose Red is the other time that King and Spielberg have gotten close to working together on a project. King pitched a loose remake of The Haunting, based on a local haunting in Durham, Maine, but the two disagreed on how the project should proceed: King wanted more scares, Spielberg more thrills. They agreed to leave it, and King returned to it at a later date, turning the film into a miniseries script.
This is another project, like Dreamcatcher, that suffered from King’s accident in 2001, and also help rehabilitate him afterwards. It was during his recovery that he turned the script from film to TV, which is where the problems inherent to the show lie. Firstly, it is shot like it belongs on TV, with the musical score in particular a TV audience friendly twinkle that does nothing to build atmosphere or tension. But the main problem is that it is too damn long. Episode 1 unites the characters and gets them to Rose Red, which should not be the entirety of the story for a single episode. It’s not quite the Surf Dracula problem, but it comes close, to the point where I don’t think anything of substance would have been lost if you watched the prologue in episode 1, then just skipped right to episode 2. It saves about an hour and a quarter of King introducing and noodling around with his characters, when what we all want to see really is the promised haunted house. A faster pace might have also done something to help explain why everyone stuck around in a place that was clearly not sane.
Some critics point out that the story itself is highly derivative, and I don’t think this is something King would deny. The series openly references Shirley Jackson by name, including her famous Hill House. This is very much King’s version of Hill House. King isn’t trying for the same subtleties that Jackson was however, treating this more like William Castle’s version of The Haunting of Hill House. The goofiness is apparent once the characters actually make their way into Red Rose, which makes up for the lack of any real scares. The flashbacks into the glory days of Red Rose are fun vignettes that, if we’re being honest, probably should have been cut, as they get in the way of story currently being told. By contrast, look at how mysterious the ghosts are in Mike Flanagan’s Haunting of Hill House or even Kubrick’s The Shining, to see how the unknown and unexplained presence of ghosts can amp up the horror. If anything, this is the film the Haunted Mansionshould be. Rose Red itself is a great design throughout, and a great haunted house in general.
That is, until the plot becomes too complicated in the third act/part. With so many characters to juggle, following the story becomes tricky. This is made especially difficult when so many lack in any real development. Some of the peformances are fun, but are struggling with material that doesn’t give them too many levels on which to play. Matt Ross as Emery Waterman could have played character like Harold Laudner from The Stand, but is only ever given petulance to play, even though he arguably plays the most interesting character in the series. A young Emily Deschanel is good, as is Kimberly J. Brown as Annie Wheaton, but nothing stands out. Fewer characters might have given everyone a bit more breathing room, even if it does cut down on the potential bodycount and scares as a result.
There are some interesting aspects though. The series has a queer subtext between Ellen Rimbauer and Sukeena, made explicit for the tie in book. It was unlikely to have been made explicit for broadcast television at the time, but it’s interesting that King would have put that in. He was probably following the Jackson formula from Hill House, Following on from the likes of Chinga and The Regulators, he again has a spooky autistic child with special powers in Annie, and King is subject to the same issues as he had in those previous depictions of autism. Having said that, Kimberly J. Brown gives a good performance in the role, which does a lot to knock the edges off. But without the depth King usually has with prose, along with managing two parallel storylines and a large cast of characters within a set runtime, these aren’t given the time needed to be fully-fleshed out.
It adds more to my general feeling that King is at his scariest in the written form, and that when he writes scripts they tend to the schlock horror he enjoyed so much as a child. King wouldn’t want to write an ‘elevated horror’ script if he could help it. He wants everyone to have fun and upon broadcast, this would have been a fine way to pass three evenings. But ultimately, that is also the biggest criticism I can level at Rose Red – it’s basically fine. Inessential, not scary, and almost certainly more effective in every way were it about two hours shorter.
Observations and Connections and Notes
Rose Red the house was actually referenced previously to its debut here in Black House as another location where ‘slippage,’ occurs.
There is speculation is that Annie Wheaton who appears here and has telekinetic powers similar to Carrie White. In Carrie, in the epilogue of sorts, there is a letter that mentions a little girl called Annie who is displaying similar powers to Carrie, suggesting the cycle will start again. Then again, the letter is from Amelia Jenks, not Wheaton. But the rocks raining from the sky is from Carrie (as well as The Haunting of Hill House), so maybe it’s a soft retcon on King’s part. The dates (remember, Carrie is set in the future from when it was published) would roughly line up, if one were so inclined.
There are other characters present who share similarities with previous King characters. Nick Hardaway is similar to Nick Hopewell from The Langoliers; Deanna Petrie shares her name with Mark Petrie from ‘Salem’s Lot; Emery Waterman shares a name with Harold Emery Lauder from The Stand. It’s unlikely there are any links, but it’s worth noting.
A book was released to tie in and expand the series called The Diary of Ellen Rimbaur: My Life at Rose Red. The book was written by Ridley Pearson. It sold well, though reviews appear to be mixed. It formed the basis of a prequel film, with a shorter title, and though many of the cast did return, King had no involvement in the film.
Stephen King makes his customary cameo, this time as the pizza delivery man in episode 2.
For a more general overview of King’s approach to disability, click here.
Mosaic of the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac from the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. The Bible story it depicts is where the novel takes its name and epigraph.
‘How could God let such horror go on? It’s such a mystery.’ He looked up. ‘Don’t you think about such things? Does it anger you?’
William Peter Blatty, Legion
For a while, this was Blatty’s last book, putting an end to his own Trilogy of Faith books that included The Exorcist, The Ninth Configuration (reworked from an earlier novel) and finally Legion. It’s interesting that despite The Exorcist‘s reputation as a horror work and that each novel shares thematic similarities is how different they are in genre. The Exorcist is religious horror (and spawning the possession genre within film); The Ninth Configuration is a farce that becomes drama; Legion, despite being closer in terms of links with The Exorcist, is more like a Thomas Harris detective novel.
This time round, Detective Kinderman (following in the footsteps of Karras and Kane) returns as the main character, having previously appeared in The Exorcist in a minor role investigating the murder of Burke Dennings. Since then, he has formed a close friendship with Father Dyer, has problems with a carp in the bathtub, and the return of a serial killer seemingly back from the grave. Along the way, he muses on the nature and source of evil in the universe. He has theories. Lots of them. And you’re gonna hear all about them. The Gemini Killer, modelled in part on the Zodiac Killer (see below for some more extended notes), is back, possessing the body of Karras (amongst others) to embarrass his evangelical father. The book is ostensibly a horror detective novel, but instead exists mostly to give space for Kinderman, and by extension Blatty himself, to explore his thoughts on Faith and Evil in this book.
Reading Blatty is interesting from the perspective who holds no religious faith. Each story of the Faith Trilogy asks its audience a question: The Exorcist questions the requirements of Faith itself; The Ninth Configuration questions the nature of redemption; Legion delves into the idea of Evil itself, something the previous two books touch on but not at the depth presented here. Where The Exorcist played a more subtle game, Kinderman’s extensive monologues are less effective but more explicit in exploring his thoughts and ideas. Kinderman constantly wrestles with the question of how any loving God can allow there to exist evil and pain in the world.
Kinderman comes to believe that we as a world are evolving to be better, and partially as a result of his theory that we are all pieces of Lucifer Morningstar, the Big Bang being the Fall, that are slowly coming back together. Blatty discusses that the biological imperative is for selfishness to win, and yet humanity on the whole aims for better. Blatty is more morally inclined towards a religious answer, putting faith in God that pain is a result of a universe coming together again. Though it can be hard to write about ineffable God and its inscrutable Plan, I think the subtlety of interpretation worked better in The Exorcist than here. Having said that, it is interesting to wrestle with my own views on the questions Blatty asks throughout the book, even if I disagree on a fundamental level. Much of the discussion comes from conversations between Kinderman (a Jew) and Father Dyer (Christian Jesuit) or Kinderman and Atkins, an underling who humours the elderly Kinderman. Having Kinderman engage in discussion of his ideas with a character who more fully interrogated them might have made for a more interesting final summation.
This is not to say the book is bad, by any stretch. The ideas are interesting and worth exploring from a religious point of view, and doing so in a horror novel is, well, novel. But it seems at odds with the murder investigation that leads to Tommy Sunlight, aka The Gemini Killer in the body of Father Karras. It’s like a Weekend at Pazuzu’s with this guy.
Thomas Harris is well-known for his creation Hannibal Lector and, though Red Dragon was only published shortly before Legion, this book does share certain plot elements, being an investigation into symbolic murders and long monologues. Red Dragon spends a good chunk of the book delving into the actual murderer present in that book, and we get a good sense of their psychology and ideology. Tommy Sunlight is introduced late in the book, and bar a short description of his childhood to give him a Freudian excuse, there is not a real sense of his presence until his final rushed confession. Kinderman is a fun character, but seeing the avuncular Kinderman turned into a terse and violent cop in the face of who is hinted at to be the actual devil this time round is where the book is at its strongest. More of that please.
Tommy Sunlight, aka Father Karras’ shell hosting Legion, aka the Gemini Killer, aka James Vennamun as the villain of the book, is an interesting character. His actual murders are brief and little seen, but there are some interesting implications. Tommy Sunlight has a name similar enough to Lucifer Morningstar that, coupled with his seeming control over the bulbs in the hospital and his earlier predilection for following the light, implies that this time Kinderman is not merely up against a lower demon but maybe Lucifer themself. Tommy’s defeat comes not at the hands of Kinderman, but resignation after his father dies of a stroke. If read in a metaphorical way, Tommy’s actions are meant to embarrass his father, much as I am sure that Lucifer’s embarrasses God. When his father dies, Tommy essentially kills himself, seeing no more point to anything if his father isn’t there. Extending that metaphorical reading, does that mean God is dead, in a way?
It’s a reach. Tommy has a Freudian excuse of a cruel father (which Old Testament God sorta was), but it’s only really a minor part of the novel as a whole, which I think speaks to the wider problem of the novel is its lack of cohesion. Take Dr Amfortas as another example. His wife died, and ever since he has taken to recording silence and hearing on the recordings the voices of the dead. His name comes from the legend of the Fisher King, an Arthurian legend that tells of the last British King guarding the Holy Grail. If that has resonances within the book, I’m not sure where, and besides having a creepy scene with Amfortas’ doppelgänger towards the close of the book this subplot doesn’t really add much to the book thematically or for plot. It’s not a surprise that these are moments excised from the film version.
There are plenty of great moments. The description of the purgatorial hospital is solemn and eerie, and Kinderman is a great Columbo-type detective who has witty dialogue throughout. The murder scenes, when they are described, are haunting and brutal. But it doesn’t work or cohere, and reads more like an exploration of ideas concerning the nature of evil with a story tacked on, rather than a story exploring ideas of faith. After The Ninth Configuration, I am less concerned about maintaining the same tone, but a cohesion of plot and theme, especially considering how elegant and subtle The Exorcist could be, is sorely lacking from this effort. There is something to be had from this story, but as it stands it just falls short of being good.
Observations and Connections
The Gemini Killer of the book is clearly modelled, at least in name, on the Zodiac Killer. The Zodiac Killer, who’s identity is still unknown to this day, would target victims seemingly at random, and the Zodiac letters are similar in tone to how the Gemini Killer speaks in this book. In a grimly ironic way, Jeffrey Dahmer (aka the Milwaukee Cannibal) greatly identified with the Gemini Killer from the film version of Legion, even reportedly showing it to his victims before he would murder them. At the same time, he was also a great fan of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, particularly the Emperor, so don’t judge this any harsher for its associations.
“Because sometimes little boys get lost in the fog,” he says, looking out into the white yard.
Stephen King and Peter Straub, Black House
Those reading this book expecting a sequel to King and Straub’s previous collaboration, The Talisman, might be surprised at how much the book is deeply tied into King’s ongoing (and soon to be completed) Dark Tower series. From all accounts, so was King; it was Straub himself who suggested that Jack Sawyer’s next adventure link the Territories in with Roland’s All-World. Though some (including Straub) might argue that the Dark Tower elements are really only a small part of the book as a whole, I do wonder how much sense this made to someone only familiar with The Talisman – or even someone who comes to the book as a whole with no prior context.
With that said, I come to it having read everything King has written up to this point, so I carry with it an understanding of all the references (noted below) and the wider implications of the Crimson King, Breakers and All-World. Knowing this, it gives the book a wider sense of scale, like Insomnia and Hearts in Atlantis before. I suppose another reader unfamiliar with the Dark Tower books would look at all the extended references to a wider world as similar to the wider references in fantasy books in general. Not knowing what happened to the Entwives, who Tom Bombadil is or lacking a direct confrontation with Sauron does not affect our enjoyment of TheLord of the Rings. I hope a reader might enjoy this book on those terms.
With that all said, I enjoyed this book, far more than I enjoyed The Talisman. My problems with The Talisman mainly involve how meandering it felt, which reflects King and Straub having to cut their initial plan for the book short. By contrast, besides about hundred pages of waffle at the start that needed a more unkind editor to take a run at it, this feels a lot more focused. At times, the present tense writing, especially in those first hundred pages, can be annoying. It feels like a script, where every action is painfully described in real time, but also gives the book urgency later on. On balance, it works out, and I am sucker for horrible murderers and nastiness in general. The Fisherman’s rampage later in the book through the nursing home was a particular delight, and invoking real serial killer Albert Fish heightens the threat he poses.
The characters are rich and interesting. Jack Sawyer returns, and though most other characters reactions are fawning adoration of the man, he doesn’t really come off as dull. He has enough reluctance and makes enough mistakes that I am forgiving of the character, who in lesser hands could come off as sanctimonious. He may always be right, but that doesn’t make things easy for him. Similarly, Henry Leydon was a great character, and though his blindness does have some plot relevance, it doesn’t feel convenient to the plot. Beezer was an unexpected dark horse, a great combination of biker who brews beer, knows his Jung and grieving his daughter. Far more interesting than Dale, who Straub and King wisely ditch except when needed for plot reasons. Wendell Green was hateful character, who I cheered every time he got bopped in the head, which was frequent.
But these are all features of the book that I think has something more important to say that The Talisman. Jack Sawyer has been lumbered with responsibility since he was 12 years old, and by the beginning of this book is done with the whole idea. At age 31, he has already retired as a police officer (or coppiceman) and wants to retire to a quiet life in French Landing. Even when Dale begs for help, Jack refuses the call. This has features of the Hero’s Journey, but I think it speaks to the wider theme of the book about responsibility, as well as the flaw that dooms Jack from the beginning.
This puts Jack into the same category of characters like Spider-Man. Jack’s refusal of the call arguably leads to the death of children. He is pulled into circumstances, because though he does not want to admit it, he has a responsibility to others around him. He withdrew to French Landing, away from LA, in an attempt to hide away. But you cannot hide away from your responsibilities.
Jack is the most obvious example, but it’s interesting to think about other characters from this perspective. Wendell Green has responsibilities as a journalist that he utterly ignores, the same as Maxwell Chipper who has responsibilities to the elderly in his care. Both take advantage of their situation, and though Wendell Green does not have a final comeuppance, both are punished for their lack of responsibility. By contrast, Beezer fully accepts his responsibility throughout the book and comes through the other end happy and healthy. His friend Doc has avoided responsibility due to guilt, but redeems himself with Mouse and the end of the book.
It all comes to a head in the final pages of the book, where Jack realises that with great power there must also come great responsibility. Upon rescuing Tyler from the clutches of Mr Munshun, when it would be so easy to walk away from his responsibility as he did before, Jack forces Tyler to break out the Breakers trapped within the Big Combination. It would have been easy for them to walk away, but Jack recognises the responsibility he has with the power at his disposal. He becomes the hero everyone has seen him as throughout the book, and gets the reward befitting the man.
Then he gets shot multiple times in the chest.
Yes, Jack did ultimately do the right thing, but it is very much the case that though the first Fisherman murder was going to happen, Jack’s refusal of the call to help Dale led to other children’s deaths. As such, though he did redeem himself, he is both punished and rewarded with a life banished to the Territories. Yes, he has someone he loves, but he is away from the world of his mother and his friends. Could he find a way back? What will happen next for Jack Sawyer?
In 2021, Straub commented that though he and King wanted to write a third book, his ill health made it unlikely that a third book would happen. His death in 2022 made it very unlikely the two could collaborate. But for those who follow King’s current writing, he has hinted that there is a possibility of a third Jack Sawyer book. Whether that will happen is unknown, but after Black House I would welcome a third visit to see what Jack Sawyer has been up to, especially since he has been confined to All-World.
Observations and Connections
Despite being set far away from King’s Maine location, there are probably more references here than most books previous. God help you if you if you haven’t read any of the Dark Tower books before. As a sequel to The Talisman, noting specific references from that book aren’t really required – just take that as read.
The main thing is the return of one of King’s über villains, the Crimson King, who was first introduced in Insomnia. The King is mentioned throughout, as well as given the name Abbalah, bringing to mind Abaddon, which would be appropriate.
There is some speculation that the Black House itself is a form of the Dark Tower, but that doesn’t really gibe with what the book says. More likely similarities are with the Agincourt Hotel from The Talisman or the storyteller’s club from The Breathing Method (Different Seasons) and The Man Who would Not Shake Hands (Skeleton Crew). The Black House serves partly as a station that links to other worlds, which also put me into a mind of the Way Station from The Gunslinger – maybe if that were active, it would serve a similar purpose? In either case, it is mentioned that previous monos included Patricia and Blaine, who appeared in The Waste Lands.
The kidnapped children are used as Breakers, a concept first introduced in Hearts in Atlantis. Ted Brautigan is mentioned as being back leading the other breakers, that he and Tyler are the two most powerful Breakers to exist and would bring down the Beams holding up the Tower. This is the most comprehensive explanation we get for the Crimson King’s motivations. Breakers have been appearing for the last 200 years, which goes someway to explain the influx of characters like Carrie, Johnny Smith and Danny Torrence over that time.
When Jack flips over to the Territories, it’s all but stated that the Territories are somehow part of All-World, the world of the Gunslinger (and confirming my speculation from The Talisman). Roland and his ka-tet are specifically referenced, albeit briefly. Speedy is described as being a Gunslinger, though he denies it. Jack, Speedy and Sophie speak in Speaking Circle, much like the one from The Gunslinger. The tented hospital Jack flips into will crop up again in another book, so I won’t go into it, but know that it will come back. Speedy’s two headed parrot speaks, much like Gorg, like the birds of All-World tend to.
Being set in the Territories, therefore All-World, there is a lot of use of High Speech, notably ka and thankee-sai, but it’s used throughout. Jack’s actions are specifically said to be ka, so far as Sophie refers to Jack being a beam. Maybe she’s being metaphorical, but it would be a fun twist that Jack Sawyer was a Beam holding the Tower up.
There is an early bird reference to Rose Red, King’s next TV miniseries out the following year.
As a sort of meta-reference, Beezer and his crew make their first approach to the Black House in Chapter 19, that all-important number of the Dark Tower series.
Finally, as a bit of fun, it’s mentioned that Maxton Chipper’s retirement home has been receiving cheques for a long time to pay for Charles Burnside’s care. I never would have thought about it had Straub and King not brought it up, but it does raise the question of who has been paying for his care. As such, it amuses me endlessly to think that the Crimson King has a finance department.
UP NEXT: King tries another shade of red – Rose Red even.
Louise Fletcher as Dr. Gene Tuskin, The Exorcist II: The Heretic
Director: John Boorman Writer: William Goodhart Producer: John Boorman, Richard Lederer Starring: Linda Blair, Richard Burton, Louise Fletcher, Max von Sydow, Kitty Winn, Paul Henreid, James Earl Jones Released: 17th June 1977 Original Trailer
If you haven’t already, I really, really advise that you take a moment to watch the trailer linked above. It’s fine, I’ll wait. If you haven’t seen The Exorcist II: The Heretic, then watching that trailer is very much like the experience of watching condensed into two minutes. I’ve saved you from watching the remaining 115 minutes.
The film is famously hated by almost anyone who has seen it. William Friedkin called it the product of a ‘demented mind,’ and any defence mounted by John Boorman sounds half-hearted at best. There are some defenders – Martin Scorsese a surprisingly notable one. In most cases, it seems as though if you had a negative attitude to the first film, then your attitude to the second is much better, despite (or maybe in spite) of the choices this one makes. And frankly, if Scorsese is defending the film, maybe there is something to be noted about the film voted the worst of all time, second only to Plan 9 From Outer Space.
In fact, there is some good to be said about it. I’ll try to stretch it out to a paragraph. The performances, especially that of Linda Blair, are quite good, and there are a number of sweet moments littered throughout. The scene between Regan and the mute autistic girl is very sweet, despite the implications for the ‘plot.’ The opening of the failed exorcism is an interesting way to open the film, putting Father Lamont on a similar journey of doubter to believer as Karras in the previous film, albeit without it necessarily being a film about God.
Which is where I think ultimately the film falls. The Exorcist was written and made by two believers, and the belief in religion, evil and good is soaked into the very celluloid of the film. Every frame of that is expressing that belief. John Boorman signed on to this film having hated the original, and every creative choice is made in defiance of it. This could have proved to lead to interesting choices, but fundamentally it rejects everything that houses the framework of The Exorcist, turning the small stakes, personal horror and meditation on faith and evil into a barely comprehensible sci-fi plot Stan Lee would reject. This is not an exaggeration.
The film decides to explore the reason why Regan was the one possessed at all in the first film. This was not a question the first film was intent on exploring at all, and indeed the randomness of it being Regan heightens the horror of what happens. In fact, my interpretation of the film and novel is that the demon possessing Regan opens her and her mother Chris to the idea of belief, bolsters Karras’ faith, and gives Merrin a chance to stand as a totem of good belief. People suffered and died, as God is Cruel, but Regan and Karras are saved, for God is Love. The Exorcist II discards the randomness aspect or my interpretation, instead saying that Regan is a forerunner of a new type of empathetic humanity that can heal, and Pazuzu (who gets named so often in this film) is out to put a stop to it.
Basically, The Exorcist does The X-Men, where Merrin is retroactively made into Professor X and Regan possesses the Phoenix Force or something. It feels reminiscent of the later, weird, bad The Omen sequels, especially those ones with adult Damien.
Part of what made The Exorcist interesting was the tension between modernity and the old world of religion. The medical examinations, the psychiatry, the medicines and explanations all failing in the face of something old and unknowable. What is done here is provide some science fiction element, destroying that tension. It could be argued that the tension could still exist, but the science fiction of a hypnosis machine that links minds together is the first step that breaks the immersion the film that has done surprisingly well until that point. It is from there that the film begins to veer wildly off course.
The film then follows a languorous Father Lamont as he retraces the steps of Father Merrin in Africa (the film is never specific about where in Africa) to seek out the child Kokumo who Merrin exorcised all those years ago. He finds grown-up Kokumo, played by a James Earl Jones, who must have felt very bad about this film’s reception until his next big film released later that year. Kokumo explains about locusts, and this explanation is supposed to act as the key to unlocking the rest of the film. It’s a recurring image throughout the film, and equating the demon with a swarm of locusts could be quite effective if that’s what the film did. Because though it does do that, it also says that Regan is the good locust. And didn’t God use a swarm of locusts to punish the pharaoh in Egypt anyway? I feel like I’m thinking about this more than William Goodhart did, who’s writing career it turns out wasn’t great.
I’m just a loss to go into this. In my essay on The Exorcist, I refused to go into detail about the making of the film itself as I wanted to view the picture on its own merits. But to indulge slightly here provides some explanation, particularly for poor Linda Blair. A script was written, which apparently was quite good, but was rewritten at least five times according to Blair, including being rewritten on set, so that the finished product bore no resemblance to the picture many of the actors had signed on for. It amounts to a confusing mess of a film that ends itself with almost a non-ending that could be criticised as leaving the door open for a sequel involving a Super Regan, only I think it’s more a case that the film had to stop at some point and where it does seemed good enough.
What makes this so bad isn’t necessarily the ideas. As a thriller, it could have been a standard 70s style film, befitting a world where Damien is the AntiChrist. What kills the film is that it is a sequel to The Exorcist, trashing everything that made that film great with a promise that it could do something better, only to offer up a confusing metaphor abut locusts.
Ultimately, The Exorcist II fails because it tries so very hard not to be The Exorcist. Hiring John Boorman, a good filmmaker who hated the first movie, was the mistake, but not the first one. The Exorcist was so purely the vision of William Peter Blatty, facilitated by William Friedkin, that to try to extend Blatty’s personal story of Faith with some half-assed idea about super Regan is frankly insulting. Avoid.
Notes
Given how much Mark Kermode has spoken about The Exorcist, it is always interesting to hear his thoughts on the remainder of The Exorcist films. Here’s what he said about this particular entry: “Exorcist II is demonstrably the worst film ever made. It took the greatest film ever made and trashed it in a way that was on one level farcically stupid and on another level absolutely unforgivable. Everyone involved in this, apart from Linda Blair, should be ashamed for all eternity.“
Mercedes McCabridge/Linda Blair as the Demon/Regan MacNeil, The Exorcist
Director: William Friedkin Writer: William Peter Blatty Producer: William Peter Blatty Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Winn, Jack MacGowran, Jason Miller, Linda Blair and Mercedes McCambridge Released: 26th December 1973 Original Teaser (WARNING: Flashing Images)
On Boxing Day 1973, the day after one of the single most important Christian celebrations of the year, the demonic The Exorcist was unleashed upon the world, forever changing the landscape of horror. There are numerous reports of fainting, vomiting, even miscarriages as a result of seeing this film. Modern viewers may go back and see it as somewhat tame, but for those willing to engage in a thoughtful, contemplative movie rather than a thrill ride, this film still has the power to frighten us.
Much has been written about the making of the film: Ellen Burstyn suffered a permanent spinal injury as a result of a stunt gone wrong, Linda Blair was seen in the press as a disturbed child for her performance (which in some of its most disturbing scenes was actually performed by a double), the deaths associated with the film… In conversation about ‘cursed films,’ The Exorcist is usually one that dominates. Though it can be interesting to read about, it does not feed into our understanding of the film as a piece of art, informing instead our technical understanding of how an effect was achieved, or how a particular performance was recorded. If you want to find out that sort of thing, you should check out the series Cursed Films available from Shudder, which literally has as its first episode the focus on The Exorcist.
Part of the reason I am reluctant to indulge in discussing any of that is because the context it provides does not serve to enhance the power of the film. Instead, it grounds the film in such a way as to rob it of its potential power. Rather than recoiling in horror at the misery the possessed Regan inflicts upon those around her, we marvel at the make-up, the effects, the performance of Mercedes McCambridge. Cinephiles adore finding out the background of a film, and I do not absolve myself of guilt in that regard. But to discuss the film on its own merits means that those factors should be discarded as far as possible in order to appreciate what the film itself is able to achieve with sound and image alone. By all means talk about the sound design’s effect, not where a sound effect was sourced.
I am familiar with the film of The Exorcist, having seen it multiple times before I ever read the book. What I found interesting, though in retrospect unsurprising considering who wrote the script, is how closely the film hews to the original text. I don’t mean to suggest that Blatty wrote his novel with an eye for its eventual adaptation for the screen, but some scenes are almost a one-to-one with how the book presents itself and its core themes. Much of what I described in my essay on the novel holds true for the movie too. Should you think the adage of the the book being better than the movie holds true for The Exorcist, then I would like to quickly dissuade you of that opinion. Though the novel remains a powerful piece, the prose form means that it is limited in some ways. Writers will always say ‘show not tell,’ but prose, no matter how cleverly it is written, always has to default to showing by telling; film offers an opportunity to show far more than prose ever can, leaving far more room for visual storytelling.
William Friedkin, in contrast to William Peter Blatty’s Catholicism, is Jewish. In interviews, he does express a belief in God and evil, which goes some way to explain how the power of the novel is preserved for the film. Both Williams are sincere in their belief of good and evil, and both are committed to putting that up on the screen. However, they do differ slightly in their approach. Where Blatty spends time carefully setting up the actual exorcism, justifying it by grounding then discounting the medical and psychiatric explanations, Friedkin is ruthless in seeking the maximum amount of horror and shock he can wring from the script with the faith aspect baked in. He does this not at the sacrifice of the theme or character, but by bombarding the audience with strong visuals complementing them, ones that are bound to leave an impression. The script maintains Blatty’s groundwork, allowing Friedkin to go for it. The camera feels distant much of the time, cool and detached, as if reporting the events of the story. It’s when the film begins to get closer that we as an audience are drawn into the horror, drawn so far that we begin to be repelled by the action. It reminds me of the extreme close ups in Silence of the Lambs, in that the audience cannot stand to be so physically close to the monstrous possessed Regan, confronting evil on the big screen.
The movie shifts its focus slightly from being a pure meditation on Faith and Karras’ struggle, instead building to the centrepiece that is the final exorcism. Pazuzu, the demon, is not mentioned at all in the movie, but the demon’s presence is not felt any less. Unlike modern exorcism films, where the possessed become emotionally manipulative monsters, the demonic force here is just that – a force, like the weather. The controversial inclusion of ‘subliminal’ images within the movie are used sparingly but effectively, reinforcing its unknowable nature. They act like flashes of some ancient race memory, especially during Karras’ dream sequence, glimpses into some greater unknown; it borders on Lovecraft-style Weird fiction. The reappearance of the Pazuzu statue in Regan’s bedroom is one of the most horrifying images of the film, found without reference at all in the book. As much as Blatty seeks to ground the world, Friedkin pushes us into the weird and unknowable, left with only one choice. We as an audience are always made aware of where this story is building to, and that it can only end with an exorcism.
This is echoed with the medical procedures shown in the film. In the book, these are more used as a way of discounting scientific explanations in favour of the religious. Friedkin instead uses this as an opportunity to prefigure the later religious exorcisms with an exorcism based around science. Regan, strapped to her hospital gurney, squeals and cries in pain, spread out in the form of the cross as her blood is tampered with. Horrifying in a different way is Karras’ visit to his mother in the institute. The poor women in there prefigure Regan’s own exorcism, and gives the demon the perfect ammunition to chip away at Karras. It is present in the novel, but the film gives it a sense of bleak hopelessness. The cruelty of modern medicine highlights one of the themes present in the book but brought forward more in the film version: Faith and Belief versus Modernity.
Friedkin presents this idea visually throughout. In addition to the modern medical exorcisms, there is Karras walking the streets of New York and seeing children jumping on cars; the student protest, albeit fictional one, that is filmed for Chris’ movie; Chris MacNeil is a single mother, with Dad never present. Ultimately it culminates in the fear of the youth of Regan and her potential. The innocence of Regan turns into a fear of puberty. The medical exorcisms can just as easily be read as a rape sequence (Mark Kermode’s book (see below) goes into much more detail regarding this interpretation), but also more explicitly with Regan’s burgeoning sexuality with the masturbation with the crucifix, with that horrific stabbing sound I can still hear. Regan exists in the fulcrum of this theme, where her modernity is implicit but threatening, and Faith can offer some form of absolution.
There are other visual moments that elevate the film and are worth looking out for. The statue of Pazuzu seen in the opening of the film has visual echoes throughout the film. The desecration of the Virgin Mary statue in the church is a clear example, as well as hinting at the form of possession that will happen to Regan. Regan’s bird sculpture looks similar to the Pazuzu statue, as well as the mashed sculpture found by Kinderman at the bottom of the steps. Finally, during Regan’s hypnosis, her hand is raised in the same way the statue has. Other things are shifted slightly in the movie, so that the emphasis remains on the horror of the events. Regan urinating on the floor during the party isn’t given the same weight as in the novel where there is much more focus on the medical procedures.
In the shift from book to film, there are some other changes. Sharon, played by Kitty Winn, is almost a ghost of the character she was in the novel, and the house servants Willie and Karl Engstrom have a subplot regarding their drug-addict daughter cut out completely, which also has the effect of reducing the role Kinderman has to play. By doing so, it keeps the film laser focused on getting us to that final confrontation between the priests and demons.
One of the most interesting changes from the book is the Saint Christopher medallion. In the book it is mostly an image in the close of the book to signify Chris’ new found openness to finding her own faith, after being resolutely atheist throughout. Friedkin uses it as a recurring symbol throughout the film, found by Merrin in the desert of Iraq, in Karras’ dream and in the end of the film. It becomes a symbol open to interpretation, taking on different meaning from the book. It helps draw Merrin and Karras together, and I think it represents the lost faith of Karras. Handing it over to Chris in the end could mean her accepting the possibility of faith, but in returning the medallion to Father Dyer offers him comfort after losing his friend. Maybe it signifies hope.
It seems obvious to say, but The Exorcist would not exist were it not for the book. Yes, obviously for the story, but the depth the film shows is possible because of the depth of the novel. In some ways, it reminds me of the difference between King’s The Shining and the Kubrick’s film version. Both are excellent and worth your time in differing ways. The two versions of The Exorcist share more in common with each other than the two versions of The Shining, but their key differences mean that they are still both worth your time. Though the film is far more on assault on the senses, due mostly too different medium, it plays the same subtle game as the book. The combination of the Catholic Blatty and the Jewish Friedkin in force created one of the scariest meditations of faith you will likely ever see.
Notes
In writing this essay, I am indebted to the Good Doctor, Mark ‘Flappy Hands’ Kermode, who has written perhaps the definitive book on The Exorcist. If you have an interest in the film and a more in-depth look at the minutiae of the film, as well as the making of it, then I can only recommend this book. I have avoided recovering what he covers as much as possible, and it is absolute worth your time. Link here.
On a personal note, I was on holiday recently and had a surreal moment walking through the streets of Bruges when the bells of Belfry of Bruges started playing Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. You haven’t truly heard Tubular Bells until you’ve heard it ring out from a six hundred year old belfry.
Copper statuette of the Mesopotamian deity Pazuzu. Source.
In the world there was much evil and much of it resulted from doubt, from an honest confusion among men of good will. Would a reasonable God refuse to end it? Not finally reveal Himself? Not speak?
William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist
Prior to The Exorcist, William Peter Blatty wrote comic novels and screenplays. His initial work was writing farcical novels, though this quickly evolved to an ongoing relationship with the director of the Pink Panther movies, Blake Edwards, and writing comic scripts. However, by the end of the 60s, it seemed as though the comic work was drying up, so in an effort to make money Blatty wrote The Exorcist. Towards the end of the writing process, he got offered a job adapting Providence Island by Calder Willingham into a movie, something that never came to fruition. The book was rushed to an ending, and Blatty tried to move on. The book would not let him.
He appeared on The Dick Cavett Show as a last-minute guest to promote the book in 1971, and from there the book went onto to become a bestseller for over a year. Bearing in mind his previous career, it seemed only natural that it would become a film two years later. Blatty wrote and produced, sealing his fate as the writer of The Exorcist forever. Now, The Exorcist has a legendary status as one of the scariest films of all time.
The book and film are often viewed in isolation, but form part of the tapestry of horror at the time. Books like Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby and subsequent film adaptation, as well as The Omen later, show that there was a distinct tone to horror at the time, separate from the Haunted House thrill rides the likes of William Castle would offer (Rosemary’s Baby excepted). This sort of horror was meant to horrify with ideas, and even something like Night of the Living Dead rises above lurid offerings of a Vincent Price picture in its masterful attempts to unnerve us. Early Stephen King novels feel more at home with this type of thoughtful horror before he broke into and became mainstream. It’s not until a decade later that horror becomes about seeing sexy teens cut down by a conveyor belt of masked monsters. In the context of the time it was published, The Exorcist was an early example of what we might call today ‘Elevated Horror.’
For the modern reader, the book may come as somewhat of a surprise. Such is the book’s reputation, as well as the litany of demonic possession movies that have happened since, that to find the book spends most of its page count justifying the case for possession can put the reader on the back foot. There are events, symptoms even, throughout, but nothing like what you might expect from a genre that has also seen the likes of seven or eight Paranormal Activity movies.
Part of that I think is to due with the possession and exorcism itself. I have tried to find examples of earlier demonic possession fiction similar to The Exorcist, and struggle to find anything. The closest I can find is Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudon, a non-fiction book. There had been ghost stories, stories of the devil, but demon possession was something relatively unique in fiction. Today, we know the genre conventions well, but like Halloween or Night of the Living Dead, this was the story that established genre conventions in pop culture. Readers may have been aware of the historiography of possession before they picked up The Exorcist, but part of what makes the book so effective is how grounded it feels and how carefully it is all established. Much of the book is taken up by exhaustive medical examinations and explanations, and then Father Damien Karras spends a large portion of the book looking at the historical symptoms and explanations for possession. Because of the lack of precedent, Blatty has to put in a lot of work into convincing the reader that demon possession could be a real thing. That hard work pays off even for a modern reader familiar with the genre conventions as a way of grounding the book’s fantastical elements.
This marks The Exorcist as a technical achievement for horror. It effectively establishes its own new genre of horror fiction, grounded in a reality based in history, science and faith. In some ways, it matches the hard work Bram Stoker puts into placing Dracula into the real world of Victorian London, with its similar grounding in history, science and real estate. Placing the uncanny in the real world heightens, not diminish the horror. The verisimilitude the book employs heightens the final scenes of the book especially, because everything beforehand has done the hard work of establishing that this could happen. That Blatty based the events on the story of real life exorcisms goes some way to help that too. But if that were all the novel were to do, then I do not think it would have quite the same resonance it still holds all these years later. Stories need characters, and those drawn in the book are rich, vibrant and are absolutely put through the wringer.
Before I talk about the characters however, some time should be spent discussing the theme of the book. William Peter Blatty was a Catholic, and this book bleeds with religion to the point of stigmata. It forms an important part of understanding Blatty’s identity. Towards the end of his life, Blatty filed a petition to the the Pope complaining that Georgetown university was inviting speakers who were pro-abortion, and as such at variance with Catholic dogma. He has literally described abortion as ‘demonic.’ His Catholic faith clearly forms a large part of his identity and it is deeply infused within the book.
The book at its core is about finding faith. Throughout The Exorcist, characters are repeatedly at a loss, believing in the worst that can happen, only for something to happen that reasserts their faith. Father Karras is the clearest example of this, admitting almost in his first appearance on the page that he is a Jesuit psychiatrist who has lost his faith in practically everything, including himself. He admits that he has lost his faith in God, which has set off a chain reaction leading to a general malaise. His faith in psychiatry is broken, as feels he makes no real difference and only adds to his burden, and the faith in himself is shattered by the death of his mother and associated guilt. Regan’s possession is almost a dark miracle, in that it forces Karras to confront his faithless somnambulism through life.
Somnambulism, or sleep-walking, is mentioned enough early in the book that it should be considered an important theme. Father Karras is sleepwalking through his life in the roles he has been assigned, by his mother, by Chris, by the Church, by Merrin. Lacking in a true identity or motivation for anything, he does as he is expected to do, and this ambiguity allows for doubt and evil to work its way into his life. He suffers at the expectations of others, but does little to fight against it truly. He has purpose because he has been given purpose by others. But what he feels like he lacks is a purpose from God. With the evil in the world, Karras struggles to see God present. He attends the sunsets over Georgetown out of habit rather than seeing the beauty of God anymore. He is lost, and questions his faith. He almost languishes in it, finding excuse for his faithlessness until confronted with something that ultimately will refuse his science-based explanations, until he has found something that will force him to believe. It’s like a nightmare, and I wonder if the Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare was playing in Blatty’s mind as an image while he wrote.
It is debatable whether Karras does indeed find faith at the end of his life. Blatty would rankle at the idea, as he believes fully that Karras regains his faith in that room with Regan. Meeting Father Lankester Merrin changes Karras. In meeting him Merrin, Karras is confronted by the Platonic ideal of a good Christian Man: Karras measures himself by Merrin’s deads and finds himself wanting. Though they are the words of a demon, this ideal of Merrin is broken down in front of Karras, with the demon claiming that Merrin is a victim of Pride. Merrin does admit this to an extent, and his death is what finally propels Karras to make his final sacrifice. In effect, Karras sees the weakness of man still can be a man of God, and sees perfection through imperfection. But does Merrin’s death prove the weakness of even true faith in the face of evil? Despite the evidence, Karras is constantly doubting that the demon possession actually exists, even in the company of the Merrin who has no ounce of doubt in himself. Does Karras, in confronting a demon, assert his belief in God, or is Karras’ suicide a moment to confront God through ultimate sacrifice? Would God even want that?
Personally, I do think Karras believes in God by the end, but I’m not sure if it is a loving God. His final moments lend themselves to this ambiguity. As Father Dyer comforts Karras in his final moments, the book notes that Karras is ‘staring upward as if patiently waiting stars of some beckoning, mysterious horizon.‘ After everything he has done, after all that happens, does Karras, in his self-sacrifice to save Regan, gain entry into Heaven? Or is he waiting for some divine thing to happen that does not arrive? Blatty believes The Exorcist demonstrates that, though he may not know what is after death, he knows it is not ‘oblivion.’ But in the text itself, that fact is more open to interpretation. At most, we get a demon claiming hell exists, which could prove there is an afterlife and a heaven. But that is a demon, and we should not trust it. We cannot know what happens after death, and that is the mystery of God. Maybe Karras got lucky.
It’s not all Christian guilt though! Chris MacNeil, Regan’s mother, is explicitly an atheist in the book, rejecting religion throughout. She is also playing roles assigned to her in life like Karras, though in a much more literal sense as she is an actress. Chris already distrusts modern medicine, having lost a child before Regan was born. Like Karras’ lack of faith before, her atheist viewpoint is shaken to its core by her daughter’s possession. Unlike Karras however, she uses the exorcism not as a way to confront her own beliefs but as a last resort. The ending of the book does hint she is more open to belief and faith in her accepting a Saint Christopher necklace, but not fully. She puts it in her pocket, not around her neck. This is the beginning of a journey for her. This is another point where I think Blatty’s Catholic beliefs infuse the book. The atheist is essentially proven wrong in her lack of belief; the possession and exorcism of her daughter puts her in path to finding some form of faith. Though the demon Pazuzu has an important presence in the book, God similarly has a presence that is far more ineffable. God is Cruel, and Their plan unknowable. Through this demonic possession, did God just grab a couple extra believers for his side in the fight against evil? Chris’ faith in the work of Karras and Merrin paid off, so it would be understandable for that to be the case.
Regan is central to the book. She is, after all, on the cover the most often. Like Karras, she has been given a role – that of a possessed child. In this, she plays multiple roles; braying animals, Burke Dennings, Karl Engstrom’s drug addict daughter, Karras’ mother… Though this is a neat parallel with Karras and her actress mother, Regan is largely absent from the book. Not physically, but her self. It’s more interesting to look at how she impacts the other characters in the book with regards to their faith.
Lieutenant Kinderman for example. Kinderman is shocked by his conclusions he draws in his investigation into Dennings’ death. How could a little girl like Regan do something like that? It forces him to confront the possibility of evil. Karras and Chris are obviously impacted by Regan’s possession. The resolute Karl Engstrom is emotionally affected by Regan’s possession, though for different reasons.
Karl and Willie Engstrom are the house servants, and enjoy a minor subplot of the book. The other character in the book, Sharon, is mostly there for ease of plot, and hasn’t very much to do. But Karl and Willie, though minor characters overall, share a parallel storyline with Regan. Where Regan is possessed by an actual demon, Karl and Willie’s daughter Elvira is addicted to drugs. Karl suffers alone, seeking a similar sort of exorcism to save Elvira. Kinderman confirms that Elvira is in some rehab, and though it’s not shown whether Karl and Willie find this out we can assume they did. Though this subplot exists mostly for plot reasons, there is something else to be drawn from here. Drawing a parallel between these two and Regan’s possession, we can see the emotional toil Regan’s possession would have on Karl. Blatty invites that comparison, and in effect equates the demon possession with drug addiction, the exorcism with sobriety.
I think this feeds into the wider themes of the book regarding Faith. Karras and the many doctors present in the book are unable to fully explain away Regan’s possession. Their methods are unsatisfactory and incomplete. Each character gets there a different way, but ultimately without proof or conventional explanation they are forced to confront the idea of actual demonic possession and the real possibility that God is exists.
The book closes with everyone moving on, changed by the events of the book. Though Blatty does not have heavenly light shine down to smite the demon, the book serves as an affirmation of his faith at least. God works in mysterious ways, and sometimes that means three people die and a little girl gets possessed by a demon. But part of the strength and power of the book comes from the faith that suffuses the whole thing. Blatty spends so much of the book explaining exorcisms, its history, culture as well as debating its veracity on the page that when it comes the final chapter, we believe too. When Merrin and Karras are in that frozen room for days at a time exorcising that demon, Blatty makes us believe in its power for great evil. And by means of convincing of us of great evil, and that it can be defeated, we must therefore also have faith in a greater good.
Observations and Connections
As mentioned above, the novel goes to extraordinary lengths to show its depth of research, with numerous books mentioned and referenced. One such book is The Devils of Loudon by Aldous Huxley, first published in 1952. Though not as well-known as some of Huxley’s other books, in an odd moment of synchronicity it would be the basis for the 1971 film The Devils, released a month after The Exorcist book.
In addition, it’s interesting to note that where The Exorcist film is venerated by its studio Warner Brothers, The Devils is almost a dirty secret WB would much rather you forget about. WB has yet to release an uncut version of The Devils, and actively seems to be suppressing the film in general. Despite this, the nuns from The Devils (it’s definitely them, they have a very unique design) show up as background characters in Space Jam: A New Legacy. Come on WB – if you can release something with no artistic merit like The Flash without a shred of shame, then you can release something of actual merit too.
A small one, but there is some irony in Father Damien Karras’s name. Father Merrin comments that Damien is a very nice name. It’s later use for the name of the AntiChrist in The Omen feels like a gag at his expense.
Unless you’ve gone to the effort of tracking down an older copy, the version of The Exorcist you can read today will probably be the 40th anniversary edition. In his introduction, Blatty describes the changes as mostly clarifying points in the prose. However, there is an additional, completely new scene. I will come to discuss this addition in more detail at a later point.
UP NEXT: after going in-depth with The Exorcist, it’s time for… The Exorcist. Film.
One of the frequent questions that comes up surrounding Stephen King is ‘which book do you start with?’ The man has a massive bibliography, and for someone who has never read a book of his before, it can be very intimidating to know where to start.
My advice is simple. If you’ve heard of the story, that’s a strong one to start with. The Shining, Misery, or It are all well-known stories for a reason. By the same token, if you want to only dip your toe into the world of King, a short story collection isn’t a bad shout – Night Shift, Skeleton Crew or Everything’s Eventual are my personal favourites. From there, you can go on to some of the more obscure or less well-known stories: Desperation, Bag of Bones, or The Dead Zone for example.
Dark Tower aside (which has its own article), there are no explicit series with an overarching narrative, only books with one or two recurring characters. However, if you’ve heard about King, you might be aware that his stories have links with other stories; read certain books out of order, and King is likely to spoil a whole other book you haven’t read yet! Some are linked thematically, some by a character, some by location…
Though these informal series can be a good place to start, there are a number of great books and stories that don’t fit into any easy category. Sound off below with your favourites and why!
The Castle Rock Chronicles
Castle Rock is mentioned in lots of stories, but these are the main ones to be set there, presented here in publication order. However, should you prefer a chronological order, move The Body to first position. It won’t affect the stories much otherwise. There are many other stories that mention the Rock in passing, but these are the core stories.
Despite its prominence in popular culture, Derry only has a few prominent appearances in King books. There are major cameos in The Tommyknockers, Secret Window, Secret Garden, and 11/22/63, plus some short stories, but none are too concerned with Derry as the main focus. These are a couple that are about the town, often sharing themes.
It is arguably King’s most famous book, and despite having an inbuilt way to make a sequel, King has never directly addressed the possibility. However, fans look at certain monsters in other stories and wonder, just a little, if they might be an egg or two missed by Ben. There is also a possible cameo in The Tommyknockers and references in Dreamcatcher, but they’re small fry by comparison.
King wrote a trilogy of novels known as the Bill Hodges Trilogy. From there, King made an informal spin-off series about his favourite character, Holly Gibney. Here are all the stories in which they have appeared.
Mr Mercedes
Finders Keepers
End of Watch
The Outsider
If It Bleeds (from It It Bleeds)
Holly
The Gwendy Series
Three novels about a woman called Gwendy and the adventures she has. Has some links with the Dark Tower and Castle Rock, but is very explicitly its own thing. Interestingly, the first and last of the books are co-written with Richard Chizmar, with the second written by Chizmar alone.
Gwendy’s Button Box (with Richard Chizmar)
Gwendy’s Magic Feather (Richard Chizmar solo book)
Gwendy’s Final Task (with Richard Chizmar)
Hard Case Crime Collection
There’s a rather interesting publishing imprint called Hard Case Crime which publishes hard boiled crime novels of the type popular in the 1920s. King has contributed a couple of books to the series. Blaze, the final Bachman book, was almost a Hard Case Crime book too. His contributions are:
The Colorado Kid (13th release of the publisher!)
Joyland
Later
The Shop Spiel
There was a brief period where King seemed very interested in a government agency called The Shop. It is briefly mentioned in the uncut version of The Stand before getting properly introduced in Firestarter. King revisited the concept a few times, but clearly grew bored with it and left it alone. I’ve included a couple other ‘Shop-adjacent’ stories, either where the Shop is mentioned as having a role in events or similar government agencies play a role in the story and may as well be the Shop.
On a side note, I wonder if they ever had anything to do with the Sombra Corporation.
Though King meant for the first two of these books to definitely link together, the third book shares so much in common thematically that they can be considered an informal trilogy. Carrie, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and Bag of Bones could also be considered part of this collection, though are not as explicit as the three listed below.
King has written a couple sequels in his time, usually with at least a twenty-five year gap between instalments. Never let it it be said he does it for the money.
King wrote a number of books under the pseudonym Richard Bachman for a number reasons explained here. Here are all the Bachman books, plus a couple other honourable mentions, in release order. There are a number of short stories, particularly early on, that feel in tone with other Bachman books. However I have only included the one that is explicitly an attempted Bachman book (or George Stark book), according to King.
The Running Man (the above four novels were collected into a single volume called The Bachman Books, though Rage has been removed from modern editions.)
Coming up next, The Regulators! But first, a word from our sponsor, Oasis cigarettes…
Cary Ripton wasn’t going to be the Wentworth Hawks’ starting shortstop next summer: Cary Ripton wasn’t going to swing in through the back door, asking what was for supper. Cary Ripton had flown off to Never-Never Land, leaving his shadow behind. He was one of the Lost Boys now.
The provenance of this particular book is almost more interesting than the book itself. It began as a script in the 1980s that King was shopping around, then called The Shotgunners. Apparently, Sam Peckinpah of The Wild Things and Straw Dogs fame, had shown an interest but passed away before anything could happen. King left it to moulder, until he resurrected it as a Bachman book (setting a precedent for Blaze later on). But as if that alone wouldn’t be interesting, as he published The Regulators on the same day as Desperation, each book acting as a twin to the other. What that means for both books will be addressed in a separate essay, but part of its unique release meant they have a unique cover that links the two stories visually as well as thematically.
But as someone who is bored of golf might say, enough about the links. How does this book stand on its own right?
As explored numerous times before in previous essays, Bachman books allow King to indulge in his darker instincts as a writer. Not that he hasn’t in his mainline books too, but with Bachman there is a feeling of hopelessness that runs through Bachman stories, including honorary entry The Dark Half, that separates them. In some cases, that it is to the book’s benefit (The Long Walk, Thinner), others to its detriment (The Running Man, though other opinions are available). This is one where King doesn’t quite pull off whatever it is he’s trying to achieve here, except if his intention was for extended sequences of guns shooting and grisly deaths.
There is a danger in performing readings of books where sometimes the material simply cannot support what’s going on. This is not always reflective of the quality of the book: The Mist is a white-knuckle ride that is mostly about monsters, whereas The Tommyknockers has endless interesting and deliberate discussion points yet is also pretty bad. But here there are lots of ideas going on, not a one that I think is fully developed enough for it to lead to a satisfying, thoughtful conclusion. Death of the Author is an interesting and useful literary analysis tool, but in the wrong hands can make the author the voice of comments never intended by the text, especially when the text isn’t built to support the weight of those observations.
Take for example, the character of Seth Garin. Seth is autistic, as the book is at pains to constantly remind us throughout. Though King has touched on differently abled people occasionally throughout his books, some literally like Tom Cullen from The Stand and others metaphorically such as Charlie McGee from Firestarter (which as ambivalent as I am about that particular book, tells the story of a parent struggling with their differently-abled child much better). Those with long memories might even recall that autism was mentioned as a possible diagnosis for Danny back in The Shining. But its use here feels like King had recently come to understand autism more since its use then, and was desperate to use it in a book. Its use comes across clumsy, similar to how autism was used in The Predator as the next stage of human evolution. Trying to do a closer reading on a metaphorical or allegorical level collapses because I don’t think King intended for any of those negative meanings of an autistic child being a monster. Fresh off his deliberate feminist run starting with Gerald’s Game, I think it’s more likely King simply wanted to try address another representation gap in his writing but didn’t stick the landing. Does that reflect badly on King, as a person? Perhaps, if you were being ungenerous, which a close reading of the book could support. But I don’t believe that was the intention.
Or consider the use of Motokops 2200 and cowboy western violent films as the background that Seth and Tak use to terrorise Wentworth. Is this King saying that violent media is bad for the development for kids, and leads to violence? The same man who wrote Danse Macabre and waxed lyrical about his early cinema experiences, shivering with delight at the the horrors on the silver screen? Clearly not.
Or take the character of Johnny Marinville. King has written about Vietnam in a few of his books, usually through metaphor. But again, Johnny is explicitly a Vietnam vet, and though it feeds into some descriptions written from his experience, it doesn’t seem to inform the character nor the story. Just because that is a fact of his character doesn’t mean it should form his entire character, but it barely forms much of his character in general. The morality of the story could have been played up more, and Johnny an interesting character to explore that with. Such as it is, it’s a detail that mainly gets left behind and conflict hurried over to end the book.
Johnny Marinville is emblematic of the problem I think this book has at its core. The book takes places over such a short period of time, with so many characters dying in grisly, explosive ways, that King’s usual strength in character doesn’t get the same play it might in a more spaciously-timed book. It certainly gives the book pace, which may work as a feature film, but struggles to have effect here. A huge cast is introduced, and then almost as quickly members are picked off before we get a chance to care for them, and making it difficult to care for those who do survive, let alone differentiate them. There’s a moment of mistaken murder around two thirds through the book, swiftly followed by an impulse suicide and then a monster attack: I, as a reader, am still not entirely sure who it was who got killed in the first place.
It’s a shame, because the book has some really exciting moments in there too. The opening chapter leading up to the first murder I think is some of King’s most exciting and horrifying writing. The prose swoops through Poplar Street in a way that almost feels modernist in how it jumps from scene to scene with barely a full stop to cut the flow. The ideas, as much as it feels like a very specific Twilight Zone episode, are fun, and King is clearly having a lot fun writing about the various horrible ways that people die. But even he must have realised that as a whole, the book isn’t actually saying much. He tries to tie it together by saying the residents of Poplar Street somehow deserved their fate because of how they ignored Audrey and Seth’s plight. But it doesn’t ring true with everything we’ve read so far; it feels tacked on, as if King realised that ultimately the story wasn’t quite working and this was a last second effort at emotional resonance. Considering how often King has explored a similar idea before, and how much better he has done so (It, Needful Things) only sharpens the contrast between the book’s successes and failures. Not a bad book per se, but in a year when King puts out three novels, one of which is The Green Mile, it pales by comparison.
Observations and Connections
As a Bachman book, this occupies a unique place in King’s placement of his universe. Unlike previous Bachman books, which were relatively self-contained, this has some sly references to King. But as a Bachman book, it doesn’t play too much with King’s toys.
For starters, as a Bachman book, King can more easily reference himself as a separate entity as he does so in the closing letter of the book, which makes references to The Shining as a novel. And yet it is heavily implied that Seth’s powers are a form of the shining itself, which may be why Tak was able to take control of him in the first place.
Another sly King reference is that the setting of Wentworth, Ohio is just off of highway 19, which we know from Dark Tower books is an important number. As Tak came from Nevada, there may be some link between it and Flagg during The Stand – maybe Flagg sent Trashcan to find Tak, and came back with a nuclear warhead instead?
Another possible link is to do with the storm that heralds everything going wrong and reality getting thin. Last time that happened, we got The Mist, which implies that Tak/Seth’s powers were literally warping and breaking reality on a macroversal scale within the King universe, albeit on a local level. Coupled with the highway 19 reference noted above, could Seth and Tak (perhaps as an agent of the Random from Insomnia) have been a threat to the stability of the Tower? I am certainly overreaching, but what else is fan speculation for?
A couple of outside references. King references his old friend George Romero with a Dawn of the Dead reference, particularly the film’s tagline. The extract of the MotoKops 2200 script we read is credited to Allen Smithee. For those who don’t know, Alan Smithee is a famous pseudonym, now discontinued, used by the Director’s Guild of America for directors who end up dissatisfied with their film and don’t want the credit. One famous example includes the TV edit of David Lynch’s Dune.
UP NEXT: A short hop to another level with King’s twinner, Desperation.
The view of a Maine island from the bay, similar to how I imagine Little Tall looks.
I do give a shit about one thing, though, and that’s why I came down here on my own hook. I didn’t kill that bitch Vera Donovan, and no matter what you think now, I intend to make you believe that.
Stephen King, Dolores Claiborne
TRIGGERWARNING – Child Sexual Exploitation
The dedication to Dolores Claiborne is made out to Ruth Pillsbury King, Stephen’s mother who sadly passed away from cancer not long before Carrie was published. As noted in other essays, she lived long enough to see King begin his career, but not enough to see him truly become the success he would become. In some ways, he has written about his grief for her loss before – Roadwork in particular is a raw exploration of grief written by a man who had only just lost his mother. But Dolores Claiborne stands as tribute to the woman who, in effect, single-handedly raised Stephen and his brother, David King.
Though it is somewhat jumping the gun a little, much of what King recalls of his childhood in his memoir On Writing mirrors that of Dolores. Single mother, with a father who was absent for the Kings, living in Maine and doing everything she can to provide and ensure a brighter future for her family. It can be difficult, and I think also frankly invasive, to speculate on how similar Dolores and Ruth are. Though there are parallels between the two, and I think King draws much of the humanity he instills within Dolores from his experience and love of his mother, only Stephen himself can answer that particular thought. But regardless, King writes Dolores with an honest humanity inspired by his mother, but also I think the book allows him to come to terms with the childhood he had. King cannot recall much of his childhood – how much is just childhood fog lost to memory, or trauma, again, would be just unfair speculation – but King has been in a reflective mood in his writing. Writers will always cannibalise their own lives for material, but going back to The Dark Half it appears King is using his writing to process different aspects of his life: addiction, recovery, regret. Here, and to a lesser extent Gerald’s Game as well, it’s processing the trauma of just being a child.
These two books are linked closely in that they lead with similar themes, as well as the literal link which I’ll get to later. That both books discuss the inherent evil of child abuse frankly, openly and with considerable sympathy to the victims, should be applauded. King doesn’t shy away from talking about it, but never once does he cheapen it. Gerald’s Game‘s Space Cowboy and the dust bunnies present in this book are as supernatural as it gets, and mostly act in the peripheries of the stories they inhabit. They are not the focus. King is interested here, and stretching his abilities as writer too, in writing deliberately from a woman’s perspective. King’s fears in his books have been, to be glib, evil cars and bad ghosts. The fears he is examining here are very much how Margaret Atwood said: ‘Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.‘
This may be why, despite Dolores Claiborne clearly being a magnificent piece of work, it is it not as highly regarded/known. It’s easy to sell a killer clown, but the Evil That Men Do, especially from the man who wrote the book on a Killer Clown, isn’t as attractive a proposition. That its closest antecedent to this is the deeply unpopular Roadwork (which I also love) I don’t think is a coincidence. But that King is pushing himself as a writer, and succeeding too, is worthy of your time. The form, as an unbroken monologue written in a light Maine vernacular, may also be off-putting for some. But it would be hard to imagine King writing this story any other way, so linked is it intrinsically with the life and experience of Dolores and Maine.
The only other story that I think truly precedes Dolores Claiborne is the final story from Skeleton Crew, another under appreciated gem, The Reach. So linked are they in my head, I had to check to make sure they weren’t set on the same island. As much as this book is a fictional exploration of King’s mother, it is also an exploration of King’s experiences as someone who lives and breathes Maine life. The love he clearly expresses for his home state is wrapped up in the feelings he has for his mother who protected him throughout his childhood. It wasn’t until he was older that he fully realised all the sacrifices she had made for him, and though King cannot repay it to her now (which is not to say he was a neglectful child – rather, he couldn’t care for her when he was dirt poor in the early 70s), King repays it by supporting and keeping Maine alive with his extensive charity work.
Returning to the theme of female empowerment, King deliberately has linked this book with his previous effort, Gerald’s Game. In fact, the story goes that King had planned to write this novel in the autumn, wanting a summer break, only to come up with the concept of Gerald’s Game as well, write that, and then this. It is also well-known that these originally were going to part of one large project before being split called The Path of the Eclipse. Knowing that, it is important to finally discuss how these two novels are linked and the symbolic importance of the eclipse itself.
Both stories reach a peak in the 1963 eclipse, a real event. In Gerald’s Game, it is the moment Jessie realises how she has been manipulated by her father to satisfy his needs, and begins to find the strength to fight against it. It is the memory of this that later compels here to free herself from Gerald, the Space Cowboy and by extension male influence. In Dolores Claiborne, it is the moment that Dolores is able to get rid of her abusive husband by orchestrating a fall down the dry well (most people in horror die when a phallic symbol, usually a knife, stabs them – this is the metaphorical opposite!). I discussed a similar idea in my essay on The Sun Dog, echoing ideas that King had discussed in great depth in Danse Macabre. The Sun shines a light on everything, penetrating all, represents a masculine, Apollonian order. But the Moon’s arrival in the form of the eclipse disrupts this, allowing for the Dionysian disorder to interrupt the male with the female. In both books, it represents the moment that the woman character is able to disrupt and gain power over the masculine. In that moment, Jessie and Dolores are able to find strength in each other to fight back against the male powers that hold them back. It may not be forever, and it may come back to haunt them – but in that eclipse, they are able to find the strength to beat back the men, even if only for the length of time it takes for the moon to pass in front of the sun.
Or, as Vera, Dolores’ companion throughout life, so often puts it, ‘Sometimes you have to be a high-riding bitch to survive… Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto.‘ Vera has her own experiences similar to Dolores’, and despite the class divide between them are ultimately able to bond, such as they may be able to at all, in the fact that compromise has gotten them nothing but compromised lives. It’s the kind of relationship that definitely invites a queer reading at least. Being a bitch gets them what is needed. For Vera, she loses it all, but Dolores at least has a shot at redemption. The novel’s close implies less that the police couldn’t prosecute Dolores after her extensive confession (though her drinking alcohol, even if only a single glass, would surely invalidate it anyway?) but rather letting her go in recognising that all Dolores was trying to do was live her life supporting her family, just as Ruth King had done for Stephen and David.
Ultimately, that is what Dolores Claiborne is about. It is a magnificent book, showing that King does have that ability within him to write strong female characters with complex interior lives, histories and emotions. In doing so, I think he has also given himself a better understanding of the women around him, and a greater appreciation for one of the most important women in his life: Ruth Pillsbury King.
Observations and Connections
King wisely keeps the references, save the central imagery discussed above, to a minimum. The Infamous Shawshank is mentioned a couple of times from Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, and Derry of It gets a fleeting mention in the close of the book. When the eclipse starts, there is also a oblique reference to a town in the south of the state where the streets are empty which is probably Jerusalem’s Lot.
Excuse me, do you know how to get to the Dark Tower? Michael Whelan artwork.
The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.
Stephen King, The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger
King is a prolific author, to say the least, but for those who don’t know, King’s stories will often reference other stories previously published. Most of the time, these are fun easter eggs, but sometimes plot relevant information to those previous books will be revealed in progressing the current one. A guide to some of those can be found here.
However, King has also written The Dark Tower series, which in some ways attempts to unify all of his books under one single ur-story. Does that require you to read fifty books in order to understand just seven (or eight) main ones? Absolutely not. But there is a certain richness that comes from having read certain books, catching references that help expand the world of the Tower. Go online and ask this question, you get nineteen answers from fifteen people. It can be intimidating getting started, and for the casual King fan it may be off-putting. It was for me for the longest time.
Presented below are my attempts to put this all into some sort of perspective, with lists focused on: Core Journey, Expanded Journey, Expanded Chronological Order and Tower Related Stories. I hope you find this useful. Other fans of the series may disagree, and we invite them to offer their version below.
The Core Journey
This is by far the simplest. In order to read the entire series you start with The Gunslinger and work your way through the numbered books to The Dark Tower. Though there are references and returning characters from other books, all are given their context within the books themselves so that you understand who or what is going on. If you were only interested in the series, then don’t worry yourselves with the extra stuff. It’s all there in those seven books.
That being said, there are a couple of extra stories that directly concern themselves with Roland’s journey. Neither are necessary to the journey, but fill out the world slightly more. One is a prequel story, the other a book designed to slot in part way through the series. If you were reading the series for the first time, I would read them in publication order, which is the order presented below. A chronological order would slot the short story at the beginning, and the extra book between books four and five.
The Wind Through the Keyhole(often labeled book 4.5, but published eight years after the series had concluded).
An (Almost) Chronological Order
As mentioned, there are a number of books that have direct links to the Dark Tower, with returning characters and such. Though I can only emphasise that these are not required reading, if you have got this far you surely are interested to see what links and doesn’t. In most cases, I have defaulted to publication order, as that broadly fits chronological order where books are set in the year of release. However, I have shuffled others around, hence this being almost a chronological order, though I’m sure I would not recommend this for first time readers.
As the series progressed, King assimilated more books into the Tower to greater or lesser degrees, and so not all the Tower-related books are included here. An extra list of those with very minor references are below.
Italicised stories are those not mentioned above, with brief spoiler-free notes to explain their importance.
Without spoiling anything, the above should do you fine to get the major references, fill out the world and enjoy the series. You don’t have to read fifty books to achieve that (like I did!), and there may still be the occasional reference you may miss, but not worth a whole book to get a single line in a seven novel series.
Tower Related Stories
Though the above is fairly comprehensive, there are a few stories that are Dark Tower adjacent. By this I mean it links to the Tower, but does not contribute to the main thrust of the series. These are stories that may share something from the series or the Tower contributes to the story instead. As such, you can read these stories at any point should you fancy dipping a toe back into the world of the Dark Tower. There is in fact an argument to be made for reading many of these after the Dark Tower series
This is not an exhaustive list of every King reference that crops up. The scandal magazine Inside View is mentioned in a number of stories, first back in The Dead Zone, but to say that has relevance to the Tower is beyond credulity.
From a Buick 8(Low Men – my speculation is this takes place after the entire series)
Kingdom Hospital(Antubis, according to Bev Vincent, was an old trail mate of Roland. There is also Nozz-a-La present. The earthquakes in the show may be beam-quakes.)
The Colorado Kid(timeline discrepancies could be explained by the Tower)
Cell(one character seems to be writing about a version of Roland)
Duma Key(oblique references to roses throughout and a similar power to Patrick Danville)
The Gwendy series (with Richard Chizmar) (various links)
Deeper Thoughts for the Horror Inclined 