7Roulette - THE TOMMYKNOCKERS

Stephen King has notoriously stated that he hates this book and the cocaine-fueled state he was in while writing it. This extends to the 1993 TV miniseries. While King felt that the team behind the movie didn't get the story, I feel that all of the symbolism was overt. There's a small town bewitched by a mysterious alien presence that changes its residents' minds, bodies, and souls. There's even a novelist character that completes whole books while unconscious, with the aid of her extraterrestrial typewriter. Whether it works or not, it's certainly a time capsule, and one of the most honest and fantastical depictions of addiction out there. C

-Babes

A Stephen King miniseries reminds me so much of Fangoria, the 1990s, and childhood in general. I'd read about them and see ads everywhere forever, and then on the night they'd air I'd end up watching Nick at Nite instead. Now with the technology of time travel I get a second chance to watch something like The Tommyknockers for the first time, and man does it put me back in that time and place - I was nostalgic for it without having ever seen it. But it has that feel, the one that's present in all made-for-TV stuff - you can always guess roughly when it was produced just based on the film stock, the set design, the costumes, and the actors. But in the case of a Stephen King miniseries there are a handful of comforting caveats: a giant cast of characters, all with their own "thing" going on in a small New England town, and then everything spirals outta control once the paranormal shit hits the foreshadowed fan. Also as usual, the performances are really what carry the whole film while the hokey scary stuff kinda detracts from it. 

Jimmy Smits plays a recovering alcoholic (a plot point they reintroduce every 4-7 minutes in a 3hr. runtime) in a town whose residents themselves have become addicted to some inexplicable energy radiating from a large object buried in the woods. Said energy is depicted as a lotta glowing neon green light which redirects the whole production into 1960s Science Fiction territory. Eventually we have an entire Village of the Darned with only a few unaffected characters attempting to Fight The Power. While the whole story is a thinly veiled analogy for addiction itself (with a likely focus on cocaine) I can honestly say I wasn't sure where the premise was going; I was certain ABC wouldn't air anything too abstract so eventually these shenanigans would have some explanation - and I can also honestly say it was a surprise (though by today's standards it's probably predictable). But the journey there was an adequately engrossing trek through King Country. B+

- Paul