90's American Horror Part Twenty-Six

MISERY
(1990)
Dir - Rob Reiner
Overall: GOOD

The only detour into the horror genre from director Rob Reiner ended up being widely recognized as a one of the best Stephen King adaptations ever made.  While Misery may not boast any supernatural components and is more accurately in the thriller vein, its solid reputation is quite justified with the usual disturbing King premise, tight pacing, and skilled performances out of its two leads.  In the role that kicked her career into hyper-drive, Kathy Bates makes an iconic "cuckoo for cocoa puffs" villain while James Caan steps out of his usual tough guy persona and becomes the vulnerable victim.  Reiner and prominent screenwriter William Goldman faithfully streamline the novel while tweaking the infamous scene where Annie Wilkes breaks writer Paul Sheldon's ankles instead of severing them, which makes her slightly less monstrous enough to feel some level of pity for.  Riding that line of tongue-in-cheek schlock is a tricky yet essential one in ordter for such naturally outrageous material to work and thankfully, Reiner and co satisfyingly elevate things here until the last uncomfortable, balls-out act.

TALES FROM THE CRYPT: DEMON KNIGHT
(1995)
Dir - Ernest R. Dickerson
Overall: GOOD

Banking on the success of the popular/now iconic television series, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight was the first theatrically released tie-in film which plays exactly like a full-length version of the show, with the same opening and bookending Crypt Keeper segments in tow.  The script was originally its own beast, going through several directors and studios before kicking off what was planned to be a trilogy of Tales from the Crypt movies, though only two were ultimately made.  Because of this, the story is not an adaptation of one of the original EC Comics titles and is instead a Biblical end of days bit of schlock that intentionally leans into its B-movie archetypes.  One of those archetypes is rather loose plotting that features a handful of "stupid people in horror movies" cliches, yet director Ernest R. Dickerson seems to know his audience and keeps up a highly engaging pace with his first work in the genre.  As the main, wise-talking baddie, Billy Zane chews up the scenery accordingly and the practical effects deliver the blood-drenched, slimy goods.  It is no masterpiece, but as silly, entertaining, and macabre popcorn fare, it delivers all that is required.

BELOVED
(1998)
Dir - Johnathan Demme

Overall: GOOD

Johnathan Demme's follow-up to the Oscar winning Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia was the ambitious and largely faithful adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel Beloved, which unfortunately failed commercially.  Oprah Winfrey secured the film rights to Morrison's source material shorty after it was published over a decade earlier and this reunites her with The Color Purple co-star Danny Glover, both of whom turn in stellar performances along with Kimberly Elise as Winfrey's daughter Denver.  The only work in Demme's filmography with a supernatural component, it is far more disturbing in its historical depictions of slavery and the troubled aftermath of the Civil War than in any horror movie type moments.  This is fitting though as the highly traumatic past of the characters would have been cheapened by conventional genre pandering and the overarching theme of manifested guilt and the eventual outcome therein hits stronger in this more serious, be it melodramatic tone.  While it is steadily sensationalized and the nearly three-hour running time is a bit cumbersome, it is still a powerful work as was clearly the intention.