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Primetime Show Reviews
"A Night at the Movies: The Horrors of
Stephen King"
review by Suzanne
Airs Monday October 3 at 8pm ET on TCM
In this special, Stephen King talks about horror movies. He just
sits there and talks, and we see clips from the films he's discussing. That's
it, and yet it's fascinating, especially if you love Stephen King books or
movies, or other horror movies.
The only part I found slightly disappointing is when he is
discussing the movies made from his own books - he doesn't mention "Firestarter",
which I thought was one of the few movies that did a great job in reproducing
his book for the screen.
Overall, it's a great special for any movie, horror, or Stephen
King fan to watch.
More Info:
TCM’s "A Night at the Movies: The Horrors of Stephen King"
features Stephen talking about the genre of horror films from early days to
present day to include some of his own. The premiere is Oct. 3 at 8pm on TCM.
The special’s producer, Laurent Bouzerau is available for interviews on Monday,
Sept 19 from 1-3pm ET.
He’s a very well know documentary director, producer and author and has worked
with Stephen Spielberg in the past along with many others. He’s a VERY
interesting guy.
TCM’s A Night at the Movies specials are written, produced and directed by
Laurent Bouzereau, an award-winning filmmaker and author. Bouzereau has created
many documentaries on the making of films on some of the world’s most acclaimed
filmmakers, including Peter Bogdanovich, Brian De Palma, William Friedkin,
Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean, George Lucas, Roman Polanski, Steven Spielberg and
many others. His most recent books include The Art of Bond and Alfred Hitchcock:
Piece by Piece.
We’ve included some quotes from Stephen King:
Stephen King Talks Horror
The following quotations are taken from A Night at the Movies: The Horrors of
Stephen King, an all-new Turner Classic Movies (TCM) special produced by Amlin
Television and award-winning filmmaker and author Laurent Bouzereau.
The Genre
“One of the things that’s always attracted me to the horror genre is that it’s
assaultive. When I’m writing a story that I want to scare readers, I’m all about
that experience. It’s a way of reaching out to the reader or to the viewer and
saying, ‘I’m gonna take you by the lapels, and you’re gonna forget that you were
supposed to pick up the kids from their scout meetings or their music lessons,
and you’re gonna forget about making supper when your husband comes home.’ To
me, that’s what the genre is supposed to do. It’s just supposed to assault your
emotions and overwhelm your reason and your logic.”
“The horror genre is an extremely delicate thing. You can talk to filmmakers and
even psychologists who’ve studied the genre, and even they don’t understand what
works or what doesn’t work. More importantly, they don’t understand why it works
when it works.”
“Horror movies often work better when we have a stake in the game. The more we
care about the characters, the more human they are to us, the more appealing
they are to us and the more effective the horror tends to be.”
The Movies
“People often ask me, ‘What was the first move that ever scared you?’ And I say,
‘It’s Bambi.’ I remember the forest fire and animals leaping to get away from
it. I remember coming back home and worrying that our house was going to catch
on fire.”
“When you watch movies from the black-and-white era, and I’m thinking
particularly of the era when Val Lewton worked, you come to an appreciation of
how wonderful black-and-white movies were, especially with the use of shadow and
the use of kind of a surreal imagery. The scene in the swimming pool from Cat
People is an extremely scary sequence where you never see anything.”
“I think that the shelf life of horror films is limited in terms of the
emotional response of the viewer. The first time that you see Night of the
Living Dead, you’re absolutely riveted. The second time, you’re scared. The
third time, the film has lost something essential that it had the first time.
Now people continue to go back and see Night of the Living Dead, but what
they’re experiencing isn’t horror at that point. It’s the memory of the horror
that they felt the first time they saw it or the second time they saw it. But
that’s also one of the magic elements of the movies. It not only causes us to
experience emotions, it causes us to re-experience them and then to remember
where we were and how we felt.”
“The ghost story movie that scared me the most was The Changeling, with George
C. Scott. I think that’s sometimes overlooked, but it’s a wonderful piece of
work.”
Stephen King Movies
“Carrie was a terrific piece of work. At the end of the movie comes, when Amy
Irving kneels down to put the flowers on Carrie’s grave, a hand comes up through
the grave and seizes her by the arm. The audience went to the roof, totally to
the roof. It was just the most amazing reaction. And I thought, ‘We have a
monster hit on our hands. Brian De Palma has done something new. He’s actually
created a shock ending that shocks an audience that was ready for a horror
film.’ And there were several people who did it after that.”
“The only actor or actress that won a major award for anything that was based on
my work was Kathy Bates for Misery, and she certainly richly deserved that
Oscar. But Dee Wallace probably deserved to be nominated for Cujo as much if not
more than Kathy Bates. It’s a performance that grows in my eye every time that I
see it. It was an absolutely terrific job.”
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