The promised side-sequel to "Poe-read-a-thon 2".
My mother and grandmother were big time Stephen King fangirls.
And big time tea drinkers.
Ma was a nut for Twilight Zone, and Alfred Hitchcock.
And as I said in the Poe review, Poe inspired Rod Serling and Hitchcock.
Here's a pic from her laptop of Hitch with a raven.
And here's the ceramic music box she made for my cousins that played the Hitchcock TV theme when you pressed the spider's pom-pom butt.
So!! It was only natural and inevitable that King wrote an 80's episode of Zone.
It was "Gramma". Originally a story in "Skeleton Crew".
In that, an ailing Gramma is left alone with the put-upon and terrified child protagonist, and at one point, she calls out for tea.
Barking it wickedly like "Tea!! Tea!! Tea!!".
Ma and Gram thought that was funny, and that line become a running gag years, even decades later.
When they'd want tea, they'd say it like Gramma.
Fun fact: Gramma (the character) turned out to be a witch, and she starts chanting spells, and the spell contains the name of Cthulhu.
So!! Gramma is a Cthulhu-cultist!
Wild! Told ya he was a fanboy!
Fast-forward, and when Gram passed, I inherited her Stephen Kings.
I really ought to dig out "Skeleton Crew".
That one's got "The Mist" in it too. It's a damned good anthology.
Ma, following Serling to everything he did, also dug "Night Gallery".
Teenage me wasn't as into it. She was kinda bummed.
I dunno, maybe when it played at night time on its original airing, that made it scarier.
In broad daylight on Sci-Fi Channel, it was kinda silly and cheesey. IMHPO.
Nowadays, on CometTV, I dig it more for the guest stars.
So, in a long roundabout way, I'm glad she turned me on to it.
Like I said in the Serling post, 80's Zone really pulled off what "Gallery" was going for scares wise.
Ironically, no one reruns it. So I've only got 60's Zone, and Night Gallery. Womp-womp!
Ma's favorite King horrors were "Shining" "Pet Sematary" "IT" and "Tommyknockers".
I only saw the "Tommyknockers" movie, and it wasn't great, so I've never touched the book.
Maybe I oughta dig that out too.
Her favorite King non-horrors were "Misery" and "Dolores Claiborne".
Heh, I even said in the old "Dolores" review...
I remember my mother devouring the book in one day, and raving that it was a masterpiece, and proceeding to tell me the whole plot over the next 45 minutes.
So, I kinda felt like I'd already seen it.
But, I'll be damned, the flick still delivered.
It's up there with the really good ones, like "Stand By Me", and "Shawshank", and "Misery".
She liked "Stand By Me" and "Shawshank" okay, but they were "guy stories".
I really think "Dolores" was her favorite King thing ever.
Think she might have even said so.
Been awhile, so it's fuzzy. I remember her being really impressed.
Geez, that's gotta be kicking around too....
When I find it, I'm grabbing it.
If I don't find it, I'm re-buying it.
Um, yeah, that's it for this specific rabbit hole.
I don't feel the need to do a giant multi-parter dedication, because this whole blog is her memorial in a way.
She got me into most of what I like, and we shared a lot of it.
Especially the fantasy genre stuff.
Especially "Time Bandits" "Baron Munchausen" "Princess Bride" "Dark Crystal" "Labyrinth" and "Willow".
So yeah. With all of that, I carry her with me.
6 comments:
IIRC, King has said he doesn't remember writing "Cujo" or "The Tommyknockers" because of the drugs he was doing at the time (his intervention happened in 1987, one year after "It" was published, and the postscript to that book says he wrote it between 1981 and 1985, and I always figured the drugs were to blame for the goofy kid-orgy/turtles-all-the-way-down shit in the latter part of that book). This would go against the stories I've heard of him writing "Cujo" in the space of about three days while strung out on cocaine, with blood dripping out of his Kleenex-stuffed nose onto the pages he was typing. I don't know if he'd care that you hadn't bothered with it!
I went looking for "The Green Mile" at both libraries near me but neither of them have it, but Le Guin is right next to King, so...wow, "The Left Hand Of Darkness" is only 213 pages? Shouldn't take me too long. It's been 23 years so I've forgotten damn near everything that happens in it (whereas I was able to remember "Omelas" damn near word for word.)
I may have asked this but did you read Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan"? I think both King and Lovecraft cited that as the best horror story.
Just slapped it on the list.
From what I can gather, "Tommyknockers" is an un-admitted remake of "The Colour Out Of Space" so I got "Colour" in that Cthulhu book for comparison.
That would track, from what I know about that book (it's not really on my to-read list.)
I read the Library of America compilation for Lovecraft, which was just called "Tales":
https://www.amazon.com/H-P-Lovecraft-Library-America/dp/1931082723
It was 800 straight pages of the guy and a Lovecraft fan on another board told me that reading all that at once was a mistake; that one is supposed to read Lovecraft for "the quick hit," like "The Rats In The Walls."
There is some truth to this; the guy's formula did kinda get old in places.
I would say "The Call Of Cthulhu" still works the best followed by "At The Mountains Of Madness," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and "The Dunwich Horror." Some of the rest of it I really didn't get into much at all due to the formula but I thought "The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward" sort of gave away that Lovecraft wasn't the best at doing long-form stuff.
I'm only a "fan" in passing really but I will say it is sort of cool that pulp from the 1920s has lasted this long anyway.
"The Dunwich Horrror" I think was intended as Lovecraft's own homage to "The Great God Pan," and I think he even mentions that story and Machen himself by name somewhere in there. Happy hunting.
I've got it all lined up. I got "The Great God Pan" on free PDF. I'll do the "Mountains" bonuses which I'm pretty sure mention both Poe and Machan. Then "Pan" then "Cthulhu and other stories" then the Stephen Kings. I'll get the physical of "Pan" if I love it. As far as burning out on Lovecraft, I just did 1020 pages of Poe. I think I can handle it. I'll take a couple days breather here and there if my brain starts to itch.
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