Christmas Mess (Jesus, Take Me Away!): My Christmas Poem This Year

Twas a few days before Christmas

And things haven't calmed down at all

But it was time to share this year's poem

Before heading again to the mall

Drum roll (d-d-d-d-d-d-d):

That's my Christmas poem with all the pictures added, but here it is in a bit more readable format:

Christmas Mess (Jesus, Take Me Away!)

            A word of advice from writers is to just write what you’re feeling

Okay… Everything’s a jumbled mess!  I need some Christmas healing!

              So let’s just jump into the fray

              To see what’s on my mind today:

          Why is this Christmas such a struggle

               With so many things in the air to juggle?

     I shoveled the walk and cleaned the eaves

          Haven’t set up the tree, never finished the leaves

     Everything is URGENT, everything is CRITICAL

I’m tired of all the little fights, familial and political

The world is a disaster, and we’re breathing putrid smog

     I’ve barely touched my journal, haven’t posted in my blog

     I’ve written a poem tying Christmas to the ocean blue

Don’t like it… won’t share it… bit off more than I could chew

The pictures are in disarray and I haven’t even been cropping

We’re eating out too much with all the shopping

     shopping         Shopping         SHOPPING!

We shop on mornings and weekends since I now work night shifts

     Everything’s so expensive, and I can’t find the right gifts

Mom’s arms, legs and back have been hurting, and my sinuses are a joke

   The weather has turned freezing cold & the refrigerator just broke

     My tropical fish haven’t been doing all that well lately, no sir!

There’s more gifts to buy and Christmas is  inching   ever   closer!

And I still have to engage this whole new healthcare endeavor

There’s still cards and decorating, and this poem is taking forever!

     It seems we’re so busy sometimes, we’re just about ready to drop

The DVR is almost full and we need to bake …    STOP!

            This isn’t at all what Christmas is supposed to be about!

            Things can get so out of hand and turned so inside out!

            Christmas can get so jumbled, we miss the reason it’s here

            Lost in a mess of our making, the meaning is no longer clear

                        That cut to the core, Christmas has always been just about Jesus

                        A celebration of His birth, and His death on the cross that frees us

                        From our burden of sin that we’d all die from without

                        The willing sacrifice of Christ!  That’s what Christmas is about!

     That’s the Christmas message I really want to convey

   Now God, get me off this crazy ride; Jesus, lead the way!

Gary Van Buren                                                                                                     Christmas 2013

Blogging with My Shoes Tied Together

Oh, the plans we have!

I've been keeping up on this blog really well... until now!  I'm surprised I kept up at it as well as I have over the last two years.  But as usual, life gets in the way.  That's not a bad thing!  It's just that Mom hasn't been feeling well, I haven't felt like writing a whole lot, I'm disillusioned about Obamacare and the president and all the people that still (STILL!) support him, and all the people who hate Christians because they don't want babies to die... and I guess I just needed a break.

Still do!

I will post in here again sometime soon, and probably still pretty frequently.  For one thing, Christmas is almost here and I need to write this year's Christmas poem (I've got a pretty good idea I think, we'll see) and I wanted to post some of my previous Christmas poems that I didn't post in here last year.

But I just need a bit of a break to pull all my thoughts together I think.  Sometimes I feel so plugged in - to all my little devices, and the TV, and movies, and books, and music, and what's going on in the nation and the world, and the family, and all that goes with it, that I feel like I need time to unplug, and

to be still



and



listen for God's voice





and




know.









Know what I mean?

The Ongoing Saga of a Brutal Fish Killer: My Problems with Aquarium Water Chemistry

Here's a little light, personal story for my blog, though at the time, it was infuriating.  

And I'm sure the fish hated it, of course.

September 11, 2013 - Wednesday

I killed my fish!

           

I’ve had that aquarium for how many years now?  I've never had a problem like this!  I used to clean the tank every three months by taking the fish out and completely changing the water, and they could handle it.  Hell, one of them jumped into the disposal once and I ran water to keep him alive while I felt around for him, and he survived for at least another year after I rescued him!  Not so any more!  I heard those complete water changes were way too stessful for the fish, so I haven't been doing that at all anymore.  And yet I happened to let it go too long without a water change recently, and it was starting to look rank, and so I felt that I had to do a larger water change when I cleaned it at the beginning of the month.  What could go wrong?  I mean, I used to completely change all the water every three months and the fish adapted fine!  Imagine my shock when almost all the fish started floating upside down!  “I killed my fish!” I exclaimed to Mom.

           

“You what?” was Mom’s shocked reply.

           

Out of two guppies and three neon tetras, only one neon tetra survived.  I took a sample of the water in to Petsmart to see what was going on, and the clerk tested the water and told me I replaced too much water at one time, and that the water he tested was too clean!

Huh?  So how about all those times I put the fish in a bucket and did a 100% water change with no problem?

           

Oh well, I guess I’ll know for next time!  Even if I happen to let it go too long between cleanings, only do small water changes, even if it's rank.  The fish, they tell me, need some of that utter filth!  Who'd have ever thought I'd kill my fish by being too clean?

           

In the meantime, I have to restock the tank now, and I think I’m going to go with all neon tetras and zebra danio glowfish, and no guppies for the time being.  However, it’s not quite that simple.  I got two more neon tetras immediately following this tank fiasco, but when I went to breakfast with Mom earlier today at Le Peep’s and then out to the pet store for two more neon tetras, one of them barely survived the trip home and the acclimation process, and then died shortly thereafter, so now I have to return him tomorrow.

September 21, 2013 – Saturday

I’m still killing fish!

           

The other neon tetra didn’t survive long either, leaving only one neon tetra.  I took the dead one back to the store and replaced him with two others, and they both died!  Thinking it was probably the stock at Petsmart, I tried danios.  I got three of them, and they survived for exactly one week along with the last remaining tetra (poor schooling fish has been all alone!)

For days, the yellow danio has been hiding, which is usually an indication of sickness.  I tried medicating the tank.  Two days ago, he wouldn’t eat, and then died, and now the large purple one is acting weird.  He’s sluggish and swimming in circles at the corner of the tank.  I’ve been doing my best to keep up on additives – the Tetra AquaSafe to de-chlorinate the tap water and the Tetra EasyBalance to balance the amount of ammonia and ph in the tank, along with one of those large anti-fungus tablets.  I’ve also been trying to regulate the heat, even unplugging the heater completely and finding the tank water is still at 80°, which is a little high, especially for the danios.  My brother questioned me about the heater, which he thought must be defective, until I told them I had completely unplugged it for a day and the water was still too hot.  The temperature has finally come down a bit, but I don’t think that’s what killed the fish anyway.  I mean, the last remaining tetra and the pink danio seem to be doing just fine.  I guess that’s what’s really infuriating.  I used to do complete water changes with no problems, and I’m at a point where some fish are surviving for longer than others, and not acting sick at all.  This doesn’t always last however, but at least it shows a variation between some of the fish, bought at the same time from the same batch.  What does that say about my tank?

           

Anyway, I took the dead yellow one in to Petsmart this morning, along with a water sample.  The girl said everything looks good, except the nitrate.  It’s been a month since I did that thorough cleaning on that tank that apparently removed too much of the good bacteria, and they’re still telling me the nitrate (or “good bacteria” from an established tank) is a little on the low side.  I've been adding the proper chemicals and I even bought some that you can add to a new tank, just in case, and have continued the recommended water changes.  Why are my fish still dying?  They're still telling me my tank is too clean!  What do I have to do to get some nitrate in there?  I'm beginning to think I need to take a dump in there to get some waste going to convert into some nitrate for them!  

So I still exchanged the yellow danio for another yellow danio, and bought another neon tetra.  I figured if the tank needs nitrate/good bacteria, which is converted from fish waste, then the more fish I have in the tank, than the more nitrate will be created.  And I usually don’t add the water from the pet store, but I did this time.  I figured if the tank is low on nitrate, and the tanks at the pet store are well regulated for ammonia, ph, and nitrate, adding it this time could only be beneficial, right?

          

So the two neon tetras are now swimming around like the best of friends, and it’s the same for the pink and yellow danios.  Only time will tell how long this might last.  I hope they live.  The purple danio is still sluggish and isolated, hanging around at the top swimming in circles, but has showed a few signs of normalcy.  The clerks at the pet store said his symptoms seemed to be more indicative of trauma than illness.  If the tank gets the nitrate levels it needs, than this, along with the third danio (since danios are a schooling fish), might be enough to revive him.  I hope so, but I’m not holding my breath.

           

The guys and gals at work know I’ve been struggling with this.  I told them that my surviving fish have started wearing tiny little T-Shirts that read “I Survived the Van Buren Death Tank of 2013!”

October 1, 2013 – Tuesday

I don’t want to dwell on my fish tank, but I did want to say I finally have 5 lively fish in the tank and I plan to add, slowly, a few more… and that those Petsmart clerks don’t always know everything, and are starting to give me conflicting information.  About a week ago, one clerk told me my nitrate is low, which is bad.  I need more waste, which converts to nitrate and good bacteria.  No, that's not true another one tells me this week; nitrate is bad, she says.  I know too much nitrate is bad, but some of it is needed for good bacteria.  But she's telling me I don’t want ANY nitrate in the tank!  Maybe she was thinking "Nitrite" instead.  However, she also says my PH is way too high, especially for tetras.  But I just put in a product that you sell at this store, I tell her, and it states that it maintains chemical and PH levels in fish tanks.  Well, the clerk explains, they have "good", "better" and "best" products, on three different shelves.  I was using one of the “good” products, and the "best" product comes in this huge size and costs at least twice as much as the “good” product.  The product I used, I’m told, probably just increased the PH rather than maintain it, which is bad.  I didn't know what to think, or what to say, but I wasn't going to buy the huge, expensive bottle! The cheaper one I already bought states that it regulates PH!   Later, after I left the store, what she said really bothered me.  Why are they selling me a product that says on the front and the back of the bottle that it will regulate, not increase, PH levels, yet this clerk was telling me the product was not doing what it says it will do?  If that’s the case, perhaps I could sue them for false advertising and killing my fish!  I don’t think the company Tetra that sells this product, called EasyBalance Plus, would be able to mark on the label that the product regulates PH levels unless it actually regulated PH levels.... even if the quality is only just "good".  That stuff still has to go through all kinds of testing and rigid marketing, even if it's just the "cheap" stuff.  It is much more likely that the clerk is just misinformed, or is being pressured to sell the more expensive product.  Did she even know the difference between nitrate and nitrite?

October 11, 2013 – Friday

The fish are doing better.  That's good.  It was getting embarrassing.  The clerks were starting to treat me like the "Ted Bundy" of fish enthusiasts!  Even though the PH is still a little on the high side, I now have 4 danios and 4 neon tetras, though there was one danio death over the last few weeks.  I have the tank decorated for Halloween now, and even bought blue light bulbs.  For a little 10 gallon tank, they're not very bright.

November 7, 2013 – Thursday

Things have finally calmed down!  I still have the same fish I had a month ago!  I think the water chemistry in that tank is finally fixed.  Hurray!  I'm still going to keep using that Easy Balance Plus though, along with the water changes. 

So now it's time to think about possibly adding a few small Corydoras catfish...

These "Laser Green" ones look colorful!

And the saga continues.

Rating the Movies I Saw in October 2013: King's Dolores, a Pre-Christmas Nightmare, a Conjuring, a Spooky Mama, a Vacancy, and Three Idiots at an ATM

[The titles all link to the trailers]
Since the year 2000, every month in my journal, out of all the movies I saw that month, I always pick my two favorites, and the one or two stinkers I happened to see.  I'm not a movie critic or a true cinefile, which means I often don't get to see most movies when they are released.  Therefore, the only rule is that I can choose any movies I happened to see that month, no matter when they were released, provided I haven't already named it as a favorite (or perhaps a stinker) before.

This is my list for the movies I saw in October of 2013:

Movie of the Month:

Dolores Claiborne

Misery isn’t the only great Stephen King film starring Kathy Bates!  Released five years after Misery, this quieter thriller tells a moving, intricate story of a woman accused of murder for the second time, but more than that, it is a good piece of feminist literature, as not only Dolores, but also her workaholic, drug-dependent daughter Selena (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and her overbearing, pompous employer Vera Donovan (Judy Parfitt) seem to have difficulty with all the men in their lives.  

Dolores and Selena

The men seem to hold all the power, and yet these women are able to stand up to them throughout the story, but not without severe consequences.  For instance, Selena’s now a reporter, and her boss, the editor, who she’s been sleeping with, just gave her story to someone else.  Dolores’ husband was a no-good, lazy, abusive lay-about named Joe (David Strathairn), and he constantly doled out verbal and physical abuse upon Dolores, but she swore she wouldn’t put up with it, and bravely stood up to him.  Then Joe did two more dirty deeds that left Dolores reeling, one of them concerning a young Selena, who seems to have blocked out all memory of it, and the other leaving Dolores’ bank account dry when Joe empties it.  When she goes to the head of the bank, who is a man, she is left no recourse, and he won’t deal with her.  “It’s because I’m a woman, isn’t it,” she tells him, and she’s right, and her righteous indignation doesn’t come off as patronizing.

"Dolores Claiborne" Supporting Cast:  David Strathairn, Judy Parfitt, Christopher Plummer, John C. Reilly

Vera gives her some advice:  “An accident can be an unhappy woman’s best friend, Dolores,” she tells her, revealing at the same time how her husband’s brakes “happened to fail” just when he was leaving his mistress’ house, and so Dolores has just such an accident in mind, which will play out during all the eclipse hoopla around the small, coastal Maine town, and it’s a doozy!  By all accounts, it is a legitimate “accident”, and Joe deserves it, but she doesn’t get off Scott-free anyway, of course, and is doggedly pursued by yet another man in the “old boys club”, Det. John Mackey, well played by Christopher Plummer.  He always suspected foul play in Joe’s death, and in fact, it’s the only case in his entire career that he ever lost.  And so now that Dolores is implicated in the death of Vera Donovan, where she was found standing over her dead body ready to assault her with a heavy rolling pin after Vera fell down the stairs, not to mention the fact that practically the whole town had heard Dolores bad-mouth Vera, he now sees an opportunity to finally condemn the only person who ever managed to allude him.  The only man on her side throughout the whole movie is the constable played by John C. Reilly, who sticks up for Dolores twice when Mackey is trying to demonize her.  Things look even worse for Dolores when it is revealed Vera left her entire estate and all her money to Dolores.  But despite their strained relationships, and appearances, all these women actually come through for each other in the end.

Movie of the Month: 2nd Place

The Nightmare Before Christmas

A little over a decade ago, I named this as runner up for worst movie of the month.  It just so happens that, for that particular month, it really was the second worst movie I saw that month.  Over the last decade, it seems I watch this every year around Halloween, hoping to get it off that list by naming it as the best or second best of the month… but it never seems to come to fruition.  I like this film – the animation, the bizarre story, some of the music, especially “What’s This” (Danny Elfman as Jack Skellington), “The Oogie Boogie Song” (Ken Page and Edward Ivory as Oogie Boogie and Santa), and “Kidnap the Sandy Claws” (Paul Reubens, Catherine O'Hara, and Danny Elfman as Lock, Shock, and Barrel)- but it just never seems to make it into the top two.  That’s because I realize it does have its limitations, but it’s also far from being the worst.  After all these years, there’s still something there.  Will it make it into the top two this month?  Well, maybe… but don’t hold your breath!

Hey, what do ya know, it finally made it!

Stinker of the Month

ATM

ATM:  Three idiots and a ridiculously lucky killer

Three complete idiots get locked into an ATM on a freezing cold December night by a psycho with a big hood on his jacket hiding his face.  The first mistake they made was park so far away from the ATM they needed to use.  The second mistake was not running while the psycho was murdering a guy walking his dog.  From there, it was just a series a one mistake after another, including a security guard that is dumber than a soap dish.  That killer was lucky all these people are so stupid!  They tried to do an interesting twist at the end, similar to Arlington Road, but it was laughable, and not gratifying in the least.  This cheap film is at such a lower level!  

I’ve seen these actors in other roles:  Brian Geraghty as the new recruit in The Hurt Locker, Alice Eve as Carol Marcus in Star Trek: Into Darkness, and Josh Peck in the Disney Channel show Drake andJosh.  He was affable in Drake and Josh, but here he winds up playing a completely selfish and arrogant, bone-headed jerk.  This film had a few good scares, but they would all be non-existent if the characters were smarter than a bag of rocks, or if the plot maneuverings dealing with the killer had made sense.

Other movies from October:

The Conjuring 

One of the better ghost stories we’ve seen lately, it had scenes that were spooky, shocking, and creepy in all the right places.  There’s even an exorcism in the end.  The film juxtaposes two families – one with a whole passel of daughters that moves into a new house, and a ghost-hunting couple with a daughter of their own.  This couple, the Warrens, were apparently based on the real ghost hunters who later dealt with the family who owned the Amityville house.  I was never much of a fan of The Amityville Horror franchise, but this film manages to deliver the goods in the end.  That’s good.  I don’t think I could have taken another Sinister.   

Mama

This was one of the better horror movies we’ve seen lately, but we still didn’t like the ending.  The way the movie ended was still much better than, say, the way Stephen King’s The Mist ended, which we HATED!  But still…

They spared no expense on the story or the ghostly effects, particularly the title creature, and the acting was quite good, and you could see everything quite clearly, unlike many other dark horror films (like Sinister).  In fact, this could have been an all ‘round great movie, if only it hadn’t ended on such a downer.  I’m sure there are some people who liked the way it ended, and that I perhaps missed the meaning, but I didn’t.  Without giving anything away, I will simply say that I understand what they were trying to do, but it just didn’t really work.  We would have preferred an ending in which everyone survived.  Still, I was very impressed and absorbed with this film up until the very end.

Vacancy 2: The First Cut

It’s been so long since I saw the first Vacancy with Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale.  I remember I liked it, and that it was about killers at some backwoods motel, but I didn’t remember the basics of the plot, namely that people were being filmed while killed, and the snuff videos were being sold on the internet.  Now with Vacancy 2, we get the story of how it all started.  This is strictly direct-to-video fare, but as such, we found it rather scary, and truthfully, the gore was turned down (just a bit) in favor of suspense and shocks.  In other words, the filmmakers, to their credit, did not relish every opportunity to linger over torture and blood and dismemberment, like you would normally expect from a direct-to-video cheapie.

            

I recognized David Moscow, who here played the slime-ball owner of the motel, striking a deal with the killer to film his assaults for profit, and then finding himself having to sometimes assist in the rampage, eventually paying the ultimate price for it as well.  A long time ago, he played the 13 year old version of Tom Hanks in Big.  I suppose it’s a good thing he’s still working in film, but to compare his career with that of Tom Hanks… sad to say that his is actually the career the vast majority of actors have, or will have, eking out a smaller audience with less prestige.  After looking for the pictures included below, I discovered Moscow is a leftist political activist (no surprise there for a Hollywood actor, of course, especially since he states in an article, "What I want to do in my life is to make commercial, left-wing propaganda.  I want to change whom the world views as heroes." - see the link here - As the Church Lady used to say, "Well, isn't that special!") and has been making quieter, independent films lately, such as this one, or David & Layla about a Jewish man who falls in love with a Muslim woman, and is developing a TV show, probably for a cable channel, about his real parent’s lives as liberal political radicals.  So there you go.  A quieter, more specialized career.  They can't all be as lucky or well known as Tom Hanks and Kathy Bates, you know.

Stephen King At the Movies: Rating (Almost) All the Theatrical and Direct-To-Video Films

The Best and Worst Stephen King Movies: Theatrical and Direct-to-Video

  With the new Carrie released, I haven’t seen it yet, but, as something fun for Halloween this year, I thought it might be interesting to rate all the Stephen King movies I have seen.  The following list contains my rankings for most of Stephen King’s stories translated to film..  This list of theatrical and direct-to-video films doesn’t include The Mangler, The Night Flyer, Riding the Bullet, or Dolan’s Cadillac because I haven’t seen them.  The average person probably isn't even aware of them, and even if I had seen them, I would be utterly surprised if they changed the top half of this list in the slightest!

This list also doesn't include anything made for TV.  That's another whole list, with titles such as the miniseries of The Stand and It, and full-blown TV series like The Dead Zone and Under the Dome.

I put this list in order from Best to Worst, rather than the the usual Worst to Best, because that's the way I wrote it:

1. The Shawshank Redemption

Known mostly for his ghouls and ghosts, rabid dogs and evil cars, people with powers and dark demonic things, some of King’s best material, especially when translated to film, are his stories that don’t contain any supernatural elements.  The best Stephen King movie ever made was this tale about a prisoner who continues to hang on to hope, centered by two wonderful performances by Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman.  If you have not seen this movie, do yourself a favor and see it!  It’s not just one of the best Stephen King movies:  It’s one of the best movies period!

2. Misery

Kathy Bates will make a chill run down your spine!  A famous writer played by James Caan has grown tired of his romance character Misery Chastain, and has decided to kill her off and write something the critics will actually like.  When he suffers a freak accident in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, he’s “rescued” by his “number one fan”, Annie Wilkes, a former nurse, who plays nursemaid to him while she reads his latest book and picks up a paperback copy of the latest Misery novel.  Disliking his unpublished book, she forces him to destroy it, but that’s nothing compared to her rage when she discovers her favorite writer has killed off her favorite character!  Annie Wilkes is a nightmare character, and Kathy Bates brought her to chilling life.  Wait till you see what she’s able to do with a few straps, a block of wood, and a sledgehammer, all in the name of “love”!  This is one of the best thrillers of the last few decades!

3. The Green Mile
Only the third movie on this list and we already have another Stephen King prison movie!  Michael Clarke Duncan is wonderful as the big, strapping, simple and docile character of John Coffey, in prison for supposedly killing two little girls.  Before the end, he reveals a miraculous power to Tom Hanks’ character Paul Edgecomb and the other guards of the “mile” that saves many, including the Warden’s wife, a little mouse named Mr. Jingles, and Paul, but still isn’t quite miraculous enough to dispel the horrible evil that surrounds them all, particularly a cruel guard named Percy Wetmore and a frantically evil inmate named “Wild Bill” Wharton.

4. Carrie
As I said, I haven’t seen the new movie, but the old one starring Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie is a classic of the genre, and is the one that really helped to kick-start Stephen King’s career.  Screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen and director Brian De Palma changed the story to make it infinitely more cinematic, and it paid off handsomely.  Without the advent of CGI, De Palma foregoes normal effects for practical magic and camera trickery, employing inventive filmic devices such as slow motion, split screen, sound, and cinematography, as well as great writing and performances, especially from Spacek and Laurie, to make this first version of the tale about a picked-upon girl who unleashes a deadly telekinetic force upon her tormentors unforgettable!

5. Stand By Me
Another simpler tale with no supernatural elements, centering around the final childhood days of four friends; Gordie Lachance (Wil Wheaton), Chris Chambers (River Phoenix), Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman), and Vern Tessio (Jerry O’Connell).  The four young boys give outstanding performances in this tale of their weekend adventure to find the dead body of another boy, rumored to have been hit by a train.  Narrated by Richard Dreyfuss as the grown-up Gordie, there’s not a bit of it that rings false. There’s humor mixed with nostalgia, tragedy, and a great story about a pie eating contest that turns into a huge puke-a-thon!  What’s not to like?

6. The Shining
Real King fans consider this version of The Shining to be more Stanley Kubrick than Stephen King, and they’d be right.  However, despite the drastic changes made from the novel, director Kubrick does an excellent job of deepening the claustrophobic terror of the hotel with all its ghosts and secrets, including the over-the-top performances from Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Cruthers, and all the ghosts and spooks of the now infamous Overlook, including the creepy woman in the tub and those two disturbing little ghost girls! The soundtrack, most of which comes from Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, is one of the creepiest you’re ever likely to hear for any horror film, and goes a long way towards heightening the tension and the creep factor!

7. The Dead Zone
This is one of director David Cronenberg’s best, and most subdued, films.  It also happens to be one of Christopher Walken’s best performances.  The story centers around Johnny Smith, a small town English teacher who is thrown into a five year coma when his little Volkswagen bug collides with an oil tanker, and when he wakes, he suddenly has the ability of second sight.  Already grieving over the fact that he’s lost five years and that the love of his life has moved on with a family of her own, his ability seems to be sucking the life out of him, yet he still uses it to help the local sheriff track down a serial killer and save a little boy from a horrible accident.  Then he happens to shake hands with a ruthless presidential hopeful and sees the destruction of the world.  What’s a disillusioned psychic to do now?  The low-key soundtrack music and “Norman Rockwell” look manage to make this quieter little thriller a real treat!

8. 1408
John Cusack’s character of writer Mike Enslin makes his meager living debunking haunted motels and hotels.  He’s a writer of true-to-life ghosts and hauntings that doesn’t believe in such things anymore, if he ever did.  The scariest thing he ever sees in any of these drab, ho-hum travel accommodations is the bill.  When he comes across the rumors and internet chatter surrounding the famously haunted room 1408 from New York’s Dolphin Hotel, he treats it the same as all the others, even though he’s been warned that people usually don’t even last an hour in there.  He just no longer believes in ghosts.  What he discovers is that he should.  There really are ghosts, and this hotel room is haunted, and he’ll be lucky to survive an hour, if he can get out!  The tensions and scares, and psychological mind games, come fast and furious.  If you’re looking for a good ghost story for Halloween, this one is certainly one of the scariest, and without being too gruesome and bloody!

9. Secret Window
“You stole my story!”  It’s an accusation that country bumpkin John Shooter (John Turturro) makes to Mort Rainey (Johnny Depp), and an accusation that writers sometimes have to deal with: Crazy people coming out of the woodwork to claim authorship for past books, and to accuse the writer of plagiarism, a very serious charge among the publishing crowd.  In this case, the accuser won’t leave it alone, even when Mort obtains proof.  And yet these two share a secret past that will eventually be revealed, and it’s one of those delicious twists that allow for additional viewings.  Although it’s one of his less “showy” roles, Johnny Depp gives a fine performance.

10. Dolores Claiborne
This is feminist literature presented as an unassuming Stephen King chiller.  Kathy Bates once again takes center stage as the title character, the put-upon Dolores Claiborne, who had already been accused of the murder of her abusive husband Joe years ago, and now stands accused of the murder of the pompous woman she’s been caring for since then, Vera Donavan.  Facing a world of arrogant, powerful men all her life, from her no-good husband to the bank manager who lets Joe empty her bank account to Det. John Mackey, who would like nothing more than to see Dolores behind bars, she manages to stand up to each and every one of them.  Along the way, despite some somewhat strained relationships, she finds common ground with the other women in her life, be it the haughty Vera or her own chain-smoking, depressed daughter Selena.  All concerned give great performances, from Kathy Bates as Dolores to Judy Parfitt as Vera, Jennifer Jason Leigh as Selena, David Strathairn as Joe, Christopher Plummer as Det. Mackey, John C. Reilly as the local constable (the only man sympathetic to Dolores in the whole movie), and Ellen Muth as a young Selena. 

11. Apt Pupil
Falling just outside the top ten, this is still a riveting tale about the alluring nature of evil.  A young boy and straight-A student named Todd Bowden becomes obsessed with the Nazi’s and World War II after reading about them for school, and then discovers a former Nazi war criminal just happens to be a neighbor.  Blackmailing the old man, he forces him to recount horror stories about the concentration camps and the horrible deaths they metered out upon the Jews and other ‘inferiors” they rounded up, until he winds up awakening an evil that had been asleep for a long, long time, and soon this student finds himself in so deep, he may not be able to find his way back out.  It’s a tale about the dangers of playing with fire, and the masks we all wear, no matter who we may be!  

12. Cujo
I’m with King on this one.  Although it fell just outside my top ten, and garnered some negative reviews from film critics and other writers, Stephen King himself has indicated that he liked this film adaptation.  Many years ago, when some of my brother’s kids were in their teen years, I showed them a double creature feature of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and Lewis Teague’s Cujo.  They were actually bored by the Hitchcock classic, but found Cujo quite terrifying!  The beginning of the movie is all a slow build with a lot of elements that might play better in a Soap Opera or a made-for-TV movie for the Lifetime Channel.  But I still found the characters well drawn, and the build up was good, with Cujo contracting rabies and getting steadily worse, and the main characters’ families starting to disintegrate.  After killing his owner, Cujo then lays siege upon a mother and her young son, stuck in a stalled car in the middle of a distant farmyard in the “dog days” of August.  I thought the way the director built up the tension in that car was handled with expert aplomb.

13. Pet Sematary
Okay, this IS Stephen King, the Modern Master of Horror, we’re talking about here.  So you want scary, huh?  This movie delivers, and then some!  King was once asked what scared him the most, and the answer was to lose one of his young children.  In the book, which was a real page turner, he wrote to that fear.  What could be worse than losing a child?  How about having that child come back, as something dark and wicked, that looks like that child, but is actually something that isn’t human, something totally malevolent and evil?  How about not only losing your child, but having to kill that child – or, that is to say, a vile demon thing disguised as that child?  The acting in the movie, especially early on, from any of them, isn’t always the best here (Blaze Berdahl as young Ellie Creed is one of the whiniest little actors you’re ever likely to see), and the pacing is strained, keeping the film from breaking into the top ten, yet the film hints at the horror to come when the family cat comes back, and after a tragic middle act sets up the ending, it’s both terrifying and tragic at the same time, with at least one very shocking death at the hands of the nasty little tyke who comes back!

14. Christine
This is the evil car one, and we’re starting to get into the territory now where the book was definitely better.  Some of the changes they made for this movie didn’t do a whole lot for the story.  Still, Alexandra Paul was a knockout as Leigh Cabot, John Stockwell was interesting as the best friend Dennis, and Keith Gordon gave a memorable performance as Arnie, the geek who becomes transformed once he buys an old, beat up 1958 Plymouth Fury painted red, named Christine, and begins falling in love with her.  John Carpenter, after successes with the theatrical horror films Halloween, The Fog, and The Thing, showed that he was still in fine form for this film about a demonic car.  She’s hell on wheels! 

15. Creepshow
Stephen King loves horror.  That’s one reason he writes so much about it.  He knows the classic old stories like “The Monkey’s Paw” and “The Lottery”, and the classic writers like Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft, and the classics of the film genre as well, from the old Val Lewton/Jacques Tourneur films of the 40’s to Roger Corman cheapies and the Hammer studio films of the 50’s and 60’s, and the film magazines that went with them, such as Famous Monsters of Filmland and Fangoria.  And going right along with all of that is the old EC Horror Comics like Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror.  Long before HBO made a (rather vulgar) series out of Tales from the Crypt, King teamed up with director George Romero to make this film as a loving tribute to those old horror stories about revenge and perfect comeuppance.  The comic book style here is right on target, and it has yet to be beat, and the six tales told here (including the wrap-around tale about a little boy and a voodoo doll) seem to be right out of the pages of one of those old comic books.  If you’re a fan of horror, especially those old horror comics, and have not seen this original Creepshow movie, what are you waiting for?

     
16. Firestarter
Yes, the book was better.  And given some of the acting caliber here, such as George C. Scott, Art Carney, Louise Fletcher, and Martin Sheen, I guess I was expecting more.  The story is still interesting, and I liked the relationship between Drew Barrymore as young Charlie McGee and David Keith as her father Andy, on the run from a government agency who wants to exploit her fire making mental abilities.  Yet compared with the book, it falls flat.  Many scenes were full of wild shlock and bad acting, and the screenplay had major problems with plots and characters, even with such a good book as a blueprint.  In the end, though, it does deliver with some action and some fantastic fire stunts.  It was just okay as it was, though it’s far from the best.  If it were ever remade with some better acting and a better script, it could be quite a good movie!

17. The Running Man
Who’d have ever thought that a Schwarzenegger action film would ever come from the mind of Stephen King?  Writing as “Richard Bachman”, Stephen King wrote this early story about futuristic gladiators fighting a televised battle to the death for ratings.   On a role, the powers that be thought this would be the perfect vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger… and they were right!  Adding a sleazy Richard Dawson as the game show host of “The Running Man” was a bit of a clever stroke.  When Arnold spouts his trademark line, “I’ll be back,” Dawson counters him with “Only in a rerun.”  It’s all cheesy 80’s sci fi/action, but as such, it shows Schwarzenegger smack-dab in the middle of his action film heyday!

18. Silver Bullet
It’s actually sad to see what eventually became of some of these young gifted actors from Stephen King movies!  The very talented River Phoenix of Stand by Me and Brad Renfro of Apt Pupil both died very young of drug overdoses, and the same thing happened to the very gifted Corey Haim, who plays the young, wheelchair bound Marty in this film about a brother and sister on the trail of a werewolf, based on the heavily illustrated novelette Cycle of the Werewolf.  The film isn’t as good as An American Werewolf in London or The Howling, in either tension, scares, or effects, but what it lacks in these areas it tends to make up for in the acting.  Not only Haim and, surprisingly, Gary Busey as the weird ol’ Uncle Red, but Megan Follows as Marty’s sister Jane did a wonderful job in this cheesy genre piece, long before taking up the title role of Anne of Green Gables.  Not the scariest movie you’re ever likely to see, but this was still a pretty good werewolf film.

19. Needful Things
This film was a bit of a mess.  Edited down to 120 minutes for the theatrical release, it severely gutted the story.  I’ve since seen the expanded 183 minute version on TV with most of the edited stuff added back in, and it was almost like I was watching a different movie.  It finally made sense!  So I do recommend this movie about a mysterious man who opens a curio shop in a small New England town, but only the longer version.  It’s something akin to Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” and Max von Sydow brings an unnerving presence as the shopkeeper Leland Gaunt.  As a quieter piece, it’s able to sustain an interesting story and mood, but only in the extended cut.  Bonus points:  The fight between the two women Nettie and Wilma, played by Amanda Plummer and Valri Bromfield, is one of the best knock-down, drag-out fights between two women in cinema history!

  
20. Cat’s Eye
This one came out shortly after Creepshow and Firestarter, forever linked with those two movies for being another Stephen King horror vignette, and starring Drew Barrymore.  The three tales here are more low-key than the ghouls, ghosts, cockroaches, and vicious things in crates from Creepshow.  The first is a black comedy about a guy who wants to stop smoking, and enters a facility fronted by the mob.  The second is about a cheating tennis player who is forced to walk around the ledge of a skyscraper by his lover’s jealous husband.  And the third is about a little girl menaced by a breath-stealing troll.  There is some enjoyment in these Stephen King tales, and the production is just enough to make it rise above the single King segments of other vignette movies like Tales From the Darkside: The Movie and Quicksilver Highway, or single episodes of such shows as Monsters and The Outer Limits.

21. The Dark Half
Stephen King often likes to explore some of the conventions dealing with his writing.  In Misery, his main character was a famous writer who suddenly found himself at the mercy of his psychotic “number one fan”.  In Secret Window, his main character finds himself confronted by a bumpkin with charges of plagiarism.  In 1408, his main character is the tired writer of ghost stories who suddenly discovers it’s all real.  Gordie Lachance from Stand by Me is a writer, and so is Jack Torrence from The Shining, mirroring Stephen King’s own bouts with the bottle.  In this story, he explores his pseudonym “Richard Bachman”.  Like himself, and Paul Sheldon from Misery, the main character here, Thad Beaumont (Timothy Hutton) attempts something more noble than his usual critic proof pulp fiction, and puts his pseudonym, “George Stark”, to sleep.  He even stages a grave marker for George while shooting a magazine spread.  This time, what the main character discovers, is that this pseudonym is as real, and as dangerous, as the ghosts in 1408 and The Shining.  Although some of the performances are good, and a few scenes involving thousands of sparrows hint at what could really be done these days with a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, this is far from one of King’s most thrilling movies, and it quite often falls flat.

22. Thinner
This was originally written as a “Bachman Book”, and the premise certainly sounds like reliable entertainment.  In the movie, a fat, gluttonous lawyer is cursed by gypsies and soon discovers that he loses weight no matter how much he eats.  Fans of Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell will now how horrible those old gypsy curses can be – or just old gypsies, for that matter!  At first, he’s thrilled to lose some fat, but after only a short while, he soon discovers that it won’t stop.  He gets thinner, and thinner, and thinner…  The film concerns itself with this lawyer character discovering that his cronies at the court have also been cursed with various maladies, and he attempts to track down the gypsies to reverse the curse, and also discovers at the same time that his wife has been cheating on him.  Although the premise is interesting, and the end is straight out of the EC Horror Comics, dealing with the lawyer, his wife, the doctor she’s been cheating with, the lawyer’s innocent daughter, and a gypsy pie, the rest of the movie doesn’t live up to the hype, and actually finds itself meandering in the middle quite a bit.

23. Graveyard Shift
This is a B movie about killer rats infesting an old textile mill.  As such, it simply cannot compare with some of the other movies on this list thus far.  Yet for being a B movie about rats, it actually isn’t all that bad.

24. Children of the Corn
This is the original movie with Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton running afoul of a town full of creepy, murderous children who have killed all the adults and now worship something inhuman that lives out in the cornfield.  They are led by the short but domineering and ever watchful Isaac (John Franklin) and the tall, lanky, red-headed murderer Malachi (Courtney Gaines).  Despite the seemingly endless cycle of sequels and a remake, like the Friday the 13^th legend of Camp Crystal lake, these corn kids are now rather iconic, and though this film still embellished upon Stephen King’s now classic original short story, it kept enough of the creep factor to still be worth a look, if you’ve never seen it.

25. Creepshow 2
The only sequel on this list, simply because these were all original Stephen King tales, not just “based on his characters,” it pales significantly in comparison to the original.  To begin with, although they spent some money for the animated sequences in the first one, the animation here is very sub-par, and that includes the dumb wrap-around tale about a boy growing giant, carnivorous Venus Fly-traps.  Then there’s the live action stories:  There are only three this time, instead of five, about one of those wooden drugstore Indians coming to life and going on the warpath, a slime monster attacking a group of teenage idiots on a raft, and a hitchhiker menacing a pretty lady driver who killed him while she was on her way home from an affair (“Hey, thanks for the ride, lady!”)  That last one played the best, and they all had a scary moment or two, but there’s nothing in here as delicious as any of the segments from the original (except maybe the one starring Stephen King, “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill”)

26. Hearts in Atlantis
In trying to be something different than the usual King tale about killer kids, giant rats, gypsy curses, and evil arriving in a coastal Maine town, the filmmakers here adapt a quieter story about a bullied little boy connecting with a strange but somewhat magical old lodger who is being chased by mystery men.  Anton Yelchin is very likable as the little boy, along with a sweet, endearing performance from David Morse as the boy all grown up in the wrap-around tale, but Anthony Hopkins seems to be missing some of the endearing qualities he had as C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands.  They had some good material to work with here it seems, but the end result is actually been-there-done-that King, with less drama, tension, magic, or nostalgia than we’ve seen with this kind of thing before in films like Apt Pupil, It, and Stand by Me.  Hearts in Atlantis is a film that deals more with emotions and feelings than plot and story, but it wound up feeling empty and hollow, far from the films at the top of this list.  It’s a film I really wanted to like, and then I have to ask how come I didn’t. 

27. The Mist
This film, starring Thomas Jane, was actually pretty darned good all the way through.  They had a very interesting story for a sci fi/horror film, well executed all the way through, with some sort of mist descending on a town from a nearby scientific lab where a hole may have been created leading to some otherworldly plain of existence, and allowing some bizarre and very dangerous creatures to pass over into this world, concealed in the mist.  A group of survivors holds up in a grocery store, battling all kinds of weird, grotesque beasts.  Then one of them, Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), the freaky religious nut, gets it into her head that they have to sacrifice the main character’s son, and manages to convince several other people in the store to sacrifice him too, sowing seeds of prejudice and discord among the chaos (you know, pretty much like what would probably really happen!).  The effects, the pacing, the characters, the scares and shocks, all made for a pretty thrilling horror film.
            …and then they tacked on that awful, horrible, terrible, atrocious, nasty ending!  It was sickening the way it ended.  I’ve never seen such an otherwise good movie with such a dreadful, ghastly, hideous, repugnant, revolting, nihilistic ending!  It was shockingly horrendous and inexcusable!  I can’t even begin to tell you!

28. Dreamcatcher
Another Thomas Jane stinker!  Well, at least the previews made it look interesting.  Four guys are caught off guard in the wilderness by some sort of alien ship crash landing, somehow infecting all the animals of the area, and the military is called in, led by Morgan Freeman.  Sounds exciting, huh?  But then, previews can make just about anything look interesting, if it’s edited right.  This one had a silly ending, centering around Donnie Wahlberg as a mentally challenged character named Duddits that was tormented years earlier by these four guys.  Not to give anything away, but remember how Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ended (if you’ve seen it)?  That was, hands down, the worst of the Indian Jones movies, and this film has a similar ending, but it’s even more ridiculous!  And although the ending wasn’t as repulsively vile as the one in The Mist, at least The Mist was exciting up until that nauseating ending.  This one, despite the interesting premise of alien parasites and visuals to represent one character’s immense internal struggles (Damian Lewis as Jonesy), it doesn’t work, making this one a considerable disappointment.

29. Sleepwalkers
As silly as the ending of Dreamcatcher may be, if you really want silly, try this story, written directly for the screen by King, about a teenage boy and his strange mother who are Cat People.  Unlike the suspense and suggestiveness of the original Cat People (1942) or even the style, sexuality and wild cinematic visuals of the 1982 remake, this one is all cartoonish crap.  I’ve really liked Alice Krige’s otherworldly menace in movies like Ghost Story and Star Trek: First Contact, but not THIS one!  The filmmaking qualities are at a low level here, the makeup effects are ridiculous, particularly towards the end when these two cat people actually look like human panthers – or something – and then there’s that scene where some poor slob is stabbed in the back with a corn on the cob!  That’s right, I said a corn on the cob!

30. Maximum Overdrive
This is, without a doubt, the worst of the theatrical Stephen King films I’ve seen, and is it just a coincidence that it just so happens to be the one that was directed by Stephen King himself?  I think not!  The guy should stick to writing!  He’s not really a good actor (evidenced by Creepshow in particular) and this film shows he’s not a good director.  This one is based on his short story “Trucks”, about machines coming to life and trying to take over the world (or at least a small town and a gas station).  That premise has some possibilities, but this horrible movie about a group of idiotic characters we don’t care about isn’t it!  And just whose idea was it to stick a big green goblin face on the front of the “leader” of the menacing trucks?

Other than anything made for TV and the five theatrical or direct-to-video films I haven't seen, the above list also does not include all the shorts & student films, or unfinished, unreleased, or generally unknown films, or films with difficult releases (Everything’s Eventual, Willa, or an earlier, unfinished version of Apt Pupil starring Ricky Schroeder), theatrical movies with just a single segment by King (Tales From the Darkside: The Movie, Quicksilver Highway), theatrical movies using King’s name, but not really based on his stories (The Lawnmower Man), or any sequels not written by King, but based on his characters (The Children of the Corn franchise, the Sometimes They Come Back TV movie sequels, A Return to Salem’s Lot, The Rage: Carrie 2, Firestarter 2: Rekindled, Pet Sematary 2, and The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer).