Blogcritics: Comments on Night Shift

Comment by Chris Kent

Thu, 15 Apr 2004 07:12:05 EDT

I LOVED King growing up, and can remember trying to find my half-read copy of The Shining in junior high school because some dumb kid had stolen it in wood shop. Tommyknockers was pretty awful, as are most of King's later novels. Starting with Pet Semetary, there was a decrease in the quality of his work, which is understandable since the man was so damn prolific. I think his greatest novels were early in his career, to include Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Stand and my personal favorite The Dead Zone. It's more than just a coincidence that the best film based on a King novel is The Dead Zone, one of my favorite supernatural films of all time...... You guys can say what you wish about Shawshank, Green Mile and Stand By Me, but The Dead Zone is his best work, and the best film based on his work.......

Comment by sheri

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 23:26:15 EDT

OK, so I'm haunting this thread. Thank you Mark, I enjoyed that. And I am now eagerly anticipating RJ's review of Nightmares and Dreamscapes.:0)

Comment by Aaron, Duke De Mondo

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 22:51:47 EDT

nice link mark! wow. So thats what a standpipe is, eh? cool.

Comment by Mark Saleski

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 22:19:16 EDT

for me, some of the fun of king's stories revolves around the fact that many of the locations he describes are in the city of bangor where he lives. big deal? a good friend of mine's parents live right around the corner from king. the scene in the park near the end of Thinner is just about right in their back yard. kinda cool. the standpipe in "It"? it's right here.

Comment by Mark Saleski

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 22:09:26 EDT

duke is right, The Long Walk would make a great movie. brutal tho...

Comment by Vern Halen

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 20:01:00 EDT

King's always been a great writer of short stories & novellas, which I guess are really long short stories anyways. Even his newer ones are overall decent, which isn't someting people hace alwasy said about his novels. But I have to ask, what's up with Tommyknockers? I just couldn't get into it, and consider it might be the weakest King novel in his canon. What's upwi'dat?

Comment by sheri

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 18:33:30 EDT

RJ, yes, Last Rung on the Ladder is an excellent example of King's gift of telling a tale , with real emotions, bringing the characters to life in such vivid detail, you feel you know them personaly.My Pretty Pony (N&D) does much the same to me. Duke, maybe you could do IT better :0)I'll be the first in line to see it!

Comment by Aaron, Duke De Mondo

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 17:42:14 EDT

Also, the novel It is fantastic, and to the individual who stopped reading after Jack Goes Whacko In The Big Ol' Scary Place, i recommend this one. One day The Duke will make two king movies, and they will be It and The Long Walk. Seriously, The Long Walk filmed in B/W with really tight close ups would be amazing. Characters getting blown to bits and just left there, in close up, as thousands of feet walk past scared to look. That'd be some powerful malarky.

Comment by Aaron, Duke De Mondo

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 17:39:09 EDT

This is one of my favourite King books right here, and it contains two of my favourite short stories ever - Quitter Inc and The Ledge, both of which were all filmified for Cats Eye, what had Drew Barrymore getting freaked asunder by some goblin motherfucker what tries to steal her breath. When will kids learn? Thank God for the cat, mind. Phew. That was close. Good work, cat.

Comment by Chris Kent

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 11:40:07 EDT

I read this about 100 years ago but will say I enjoyed it immensely. For some reason, "Jerusalem's Lot" is my fav of the bunch. It is one of King's most Lovecraft-like stories, creepy, dark, Victorian and based on an actual ghost town somewhere in the woods of Connecticut I believe. "The Boogeyman" to this day causes me to close my closet door before going to bed. "Children of the Corn" is a creepy, creepy classic and should not be confused with the horrible films based on this terrific short story. Some great early work of Stephen King here, written during the days before he became a household name or even published his first novel. One could argue the merits of Mr. King I suppose, but these varied horror tales certainly reveal a truly imaginative writer.....

Comment by sheri

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 08:54:59 EDT

The critics once said that Stephen King could publish his laundry list and it would be a bestseller.:0) The scene in Children of the Corn, when the woman looks out her door on a peaceful quite day, and sees a child standing in the corn. Something about that sent chills thru me, and is what hooked me to the story. Anyways, I became more interested in King's writing when I read Delores Claiborn.He gets inside the mind of an abused woman in a way that brings to life the true horror that it is.The same for Rose Madder.He has a true understanding of the psycological tragedy of a woman trapped inside a real life nightmare.

Comment by RJ Elliott

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 01:33:54 EDT

The Stand is an absolute classic. Even the ending was well-done, which is surely difficult to accomplish with such a large, far-ranging book. Humanity is offered another chance. And they sorta fuck it all up again. They beat "evil," but then succumb to another form of it. Great stuff.

Comment by RJ Elliott

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 01:33:05 EDT

The Stand is an absolute classic. Even the ending was well-done, which is surely difficult to accomplish with such a large book. Humanity is offered another chance. And they sorta fuck it all up again. They beat "evil" but then succomb to a form of it. Great stuff.

Comment by boomcrashbaby

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 01:15:56 EDT

I read night shift about 15-20 years ago. I can remember grey matter, the last rung on the ladder, graveyard shift and the ledge. Vaguely remember them, but that means they stood out to me, after all this time. After The Shining, I quit reading his work, it seemed to all go downhill after that. He was just churning them out too fast for me. That was the last scary book he wrote. My second favorite book of all time will always be The Stand. (Second only to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy).

Comment by RJ Elliott

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 00:48:12 EDT

I read N+D as well. I will probably post on it sometime soon. Children of the Corn was good, I agree. But didn't The Last Rung On The Ladder affect you in any way? I sure did me. Of course, my all-time fav short story is The Gift Of The Magi. It utterly liquifies my spine. I become a slobbering idiot. And I LIKE that in a story... ;-]

Comment by sheri

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 00:36:06 EDT

I have Night Shift, Children of the Corn is probably my fave from it. Stephen King ...Magical weaver of words,master storyteller who also happens to have a keen insight into an abused and/or trapped womans mind,as in Rose Madder, Delores Claiborn, Geralds Game. The movies just don't weave the same kind of spell on me as reading the books though. Nightmares and Dreamscapes was the last collection I read.