Wondra: I’m glad you picked The Dead Zone (1983) as our next movie because it’s dark and heavy and so perfect for this time of the year.
The Dead Zone is a movie that changes as it goes.
Every time you think you’ve got it nailed down, it shifts again. It’s never the
movie you think it is. I guess what I’m asking is, through it all, does it remain
a horror movie? If so, what kind of horror movie is it and how does it compete
with the usual slasher gorefests of the 1980s?
The Dead Zone is about Johnny Smith (ChristopherWalken,) who finds out he can see into the future. Sometimes into the future…
and sometimes into the past. As it goes along, Johnny learns that he can alter
the future using his power when he saves Chris Stuart (Simon Craig.)
W: We were talking before about the similarities between
this and The Medusa Touch (1978,) with Richard Burton. If you had to
choose…?
J: There’s a huge difference between The Dead Zone
and The Medusa Touch. One sees them and one causes them. Walken’s
character can see them, Burton’s character actively makes them happen. You’re
talking about the difference between a hero and a villain.
Funny, I never thought of The Dead Zone as a horror
movie when I was young but now…
The Medusa Touch is the scariest of the two. Jesus, can
you imagine Donald Trump with those powers? At least with The Dead Zone,
the bad guy loses. Not so with The Medusa Touch.
W: Honestly? I wish I never had to think about Donald
Trump doing anything ever again. Like you said, though. At least with The
Dead Zone, there’s that blissful moment where the Trump character gets his.
It almost feels like a personal victory when you watch it now.
With some Stephen King horror films, you get actors that
aren’t as well known. That’s not the case with The Dead Zone. Maybe they’re
not A-listers, necessarily, but there are some big names here – and a helluva
lot of talent.
J: But they were A-listers, Walken and Sheen were, at
least. King does tend to stick a lot of the same actors – I’m thinking about
people like Ed Harris and Bonnie Badelida – older actors, too, like Fred Gwyn,
which is a good thing.
W: Johnny’s an… odd choice for a hero, isn’t he? Walken
speaks in a rush, which makes him sound brash, almost rude. He’s an unlikely
hero – if you can call him that. Do you think of Jonny as a hero? I mean… he
does try to assassinate a politician. He’s not exactly a law-abiding citizen in
that way.
J: But he did it to save the world. Johnny is absolutely a
hero. He’s not even an anti-hero. He doesn’t really do anything wrong. He saves
a little girl from burning to death, tells the doctor where his mother is,
stops a serial killer, saves a kid from drowning, and saves the world from a
nuclear war. It’s not like he’s Snake Plissken or something. He’s not a right
fucker, he’s a hero.
W: I find it interesting that Johnny won’t have sex with
Sarah (Brooke Adams) when the movie starts because he’s a good little Christian
boy and “some things are worth waiting for.” You can see how much his attitude
has changed when she comes back later (with her kid, which is yucky weird) and
she’s ready to go. He doesn’t give a shit about God and he’s not waiting for
anything anymore.
J: Oh, his relationship with God is gone. His
attitude is savage. You see it when Sheriff Bannerman (Tom Skerritt) tries to
get him to help, and he turns him away. The sheriff doesn’t have a leg to stand
on and, really, you’re with Johnny.
W: Back to Sarah, though. She didn’t wait long for him!
What, two years, at most? They were engaged, right? Assuming she met someone,
fell in love, got engaged, got knocked up, had a baby – all in three years?
Bitch moved fast.
J: How long do you wait? Do you waste the best years of your
life for someone who might never wake up? Sucks, but at the same time, she had
to move on.
W: Well, I think you wait a little, at least. Doesn’t
seem like she waited at all. Which totally makes me judge her. The fact that
she ended up with someone involved in politics just makes me judge her harder.
I liked Dr. Weizak (Herbert Lom) when he was talking about Johnny’s ability. “Either a very new ability or a very old one…” I’d love to see that explored further… If other people got the ability or if other abilities showed up. You watched the TV series… did they ever do that, take it further?
J: I only watched a couple of episodes because it wasn’t my
cup of tea. King has had a fascination with telekinesis, with the mind and how
it’s evolved. We know we only use a percentage of our minds. We have so much
space, so much potential – and we’re not using it. Maybe we will. One day.
W: Hey, we lived through the Trump administration. And
the Johnson administration. We both know that there are a whole lotta people
out there using a whole lot less than others. *sigh* Maybe one day they’ll catch
up…
I’m not sure which would be more terrifying – the stuff
Johnny sees or having him grab you and tell you all that horrible stuff. Small
town like that? He’s lucky he didn’t get his ass chased out of town…
I wonder if things would have been different if he was a
woman? Would he have gotten “Burn the witch?” Would he have been treated as a
saviour or blamed for everything that ever went wrong?
J: Well, there’s only one moment where he does that and it’s
with the reporter at the beginning. The minute he turned it back on him, the
reporter didn’t want to know. Wouldn’t you love to fuck with people that way?
Johnny doesn’t really touch anyone else, though, does he?
Like when he goes to shake Stillson’s hand, Stillson slaps a badge into it. He
also wears gloves a lot. You have to think that he’s trying to prevent the
vision, especially when you learn that using the power is probably killing him.
He does move away, too. They don’t explain why, exactly,
but he does move away. It makes you think that there’s a good reason for it. His
power changes things. I guess the reason they don’t go after him is that he’s
more useful than he is frightening.
W: The Dead Zone is so character driven you forget
for a long time that there’s supposed to be a baddie in it. And, even when they
introduce Stillson, you barely notice them doing it. The first time I saw The
Dead Zone, I was expecting the conflict to come from Roger Stuart (AnthonyZerbe) or for Johnny to just burn himself out. I didn’t give Stillson a second
thought for ages.
J: Stuart’s not an issue because he’s broken, he’s done. He
knows he’s responsible for the deaths of two kids – and could have been responsible
for his son’s death. You don’t come back from that.
You do see little bits of Stillson as the movie goes, but
he’s still in the background. He only becomes a major player right at the end.
W: We can’t talk about The Dead Zone without talking
about, like you said, the almost prophetic similarities between Stillson and
Trump.
J: Again, a mafia figure that’s absolutely corrupt to the
core. The majority of the world knows that the guy was the worst kind of con
man. The whole idea of getting into the White House was to enrich himself. If
he’d kept his mouth shut, he could have left with his pockets lined. But he
couldn’t. He was a Stillson. He was lining the halls of power to keep himself
there indefinitely. And the people around him were just waiting for him to go
for the button if things got bad.
W: The Dead Zone asks the eternal question: if you
could go back in time and kill Hitler, would you? I pose the same question: if
you could go back in time and kill Trump, would you?
J: As me now? Yes, in a heartbeat. The man set the world
back twenty, thirty years. The problem is… I’m not sure it was 100% Trump.
After Obama and the world becoming more accepting, becoming a better place… the
Republican party hated that. I think they were just waiting for someone like
Trump to come in. They would have gotten someone to drag it back. There were –
and still are – too many crackpots in that party.
W: Sadly, too true. Hate is eternal, isn’t it?
The ending of The Dead Zone is just phenomenal. It
would have been brilliant if Johnny had killed Stillson, but it was so much
better that he destroyed himself by grabbing the baby. I’ve gotta be honest,
though… I don’t think even that would stop Trump.
J: Imagine if Trump had picked up a white baby and held it
up in front of himself. He doesn’t have any shame, but he wouldn’t have
a chance at getting any kind of power. He would never take his own life, but he
would be powerless.
You don’t see the end coming. You know Johnny’s going to try
to kill him, and you see him fail. It’s better this way. If he’d killed him, he
would have become a martyr.
Jay’s Rating: 💀💀💀💀
Wondra’s Rating: 💀💀💀💀
