This week's pairing features two tales from the mind of Dean Koontz. Is Koontz the poor man's Stephen King? He is when is comes to cinematic adaptations.
Watchers (1988)
Corey Haim out-acted by a dog shock!
Come to think of it Corey Haim out-acts a dog would have been more of a surprise. Haim plays the teenage hero in this adaptation of the Dean R. Koontz bestseller. When he finds a lost dog he takes it home with him, little suspecting the mutt has escaped from a secret research lab or that it’s probably more intelligent than he is. It was part of an experiment to create the perfect killing machine, the dog itself acting as a lure to draw another genetically engineered creature to its victim. That other creature is free as well and looking to carve itself a little Haim sandwich.
While the novel this is based on had an equally silly premise, it was still able to craft some effective moments, most notably the climax which manages to elicit the reader’s sympathy for the “bad” beastie. There’s none of that here; everything is black and white. With the best moments of the novel excised, this has been turned into a simple boy and his dog tale albeit witha horror/SF slant. Nothing wrong with that per se — I’ve enjoyed many a shaggy dog story, but then they never starred Cory Haim. He’s all '80s hair and zero acting ability, and I really wasn’t kidding about the dog having superior thespian abilities.
Helping to make things slightly more bearable is horror stalwart Michael Ironside, an actor capable of great performances when given something decent to work with. On the other hand when he knows he’s making a dog (pun intended) he can be so over the top that he’s worth watching just to see how much of the scenery he’ll chew. Here his performance is equal parts ham and cheese and while he doesn’t make the film worthwhile, he does liven things up if you are unable to avoid it.
By far the scariest thing about the film (well, excluding Haim's hair) is that it spawned not one, not two, but three sequels!
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