Zoning Out

I had heard a lot about The Dead Zone (1983) on blogs and podcasts and things, but I hadn’t caught on to one important fact - Christopher Walken stars. Once I realized that I queued it right up. So we’re sort of having a not-very-good Stephen King film festival.

It starts out with Walken teaching school - he’s reading Poe and assigning “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” to his class, then going out on an amusement park date with his girlfriend Brooke Adams. Afterwards, she invites him to stay the night, but he declines - waiting until after they are married. I am sure at this point that she is a goner, but it turns out worse.

On the way home, he hits a milk truck that had jack-knifed on the road - Milk and blood on the highway. What is it with King and trucks? Was he prescient? Anyway, when he comes to in the hospital, Dr. Herbert Lim lets him know he’s been in a coma for five years. His religious mother tells him that Adams is married with a child. Bet he wishes he’d stayed the night now.

Then he takes a nurse’s hand and sees a vision of her daughter in a fire. He urges her to rush home, and she makes it in time to save her. Word gets around about his gift, but he can’t control it, and it seems to be draining him. He is called in to help the police track down the Castle Rock killer (this version of Castle Rock is in New Hampshire, I think). He catches him, but gets shot. So now he’s psychically drained and wounded in the leg. Then he has a serious vision and needs to do something radical.

This is directed by David Cronenberg, but there is really no body horror - very little gore at all. It has a nice rural Northeast flavor to it, almost like Something Wicked This Way Comes. Some of the creepiest parts were in the beginning, where Christopher Walken is smiling and relaxed. [Shiver.] Once he gets all tortured and twitchy, he’s much easier to take.