Firestarter (1984, Dir. Mark L. Lester)
Synopsis:
8 year old Charlene or „Charlie“ (Drew Barrymore) and her father Andy (David Keith) are being pursued by a sinister government agency ‚The Shop‘ after a trial of an experimental drug called Lot 6 gave Andy and his future wife Vicky (Heather Locklear) psychic abilities and their daughter pyrokinetic ones. The pair are eventually captured by deranged shop assassin, Rainbird (George C. Scott) and taken to a Shop facility in Virginia run by Hollister (Martin Sheen). Rainbird pretends to be an orderly and befriends Charlie, getting her to agree to participate in Hollister’s experiments to test her powers. Little does she know that Rainbird has made a deal with Hollister to be able to kill her once the experiments are over, as he believes in doing so this will transfer some her powers over to him. Charlie must overcome her fear of her powers, if she and her father have any chance of escaping alive.
In my post about Stephen King‘s IT last Halloween, I mentioned how much his books had meant to me as a teenager. After the flurry of King adaptations on both the big and small screen lately I‘ve been revisiting a number of the adaptations of his work and so my final two posts this year will look at two underrated and in my opinion often unfairly maligned 80s screen versions of his work.
I knew of Firestarter‘s bad critical reaction long before I saw the film. In fact, the negative reviews put me off seeing the film for more than 20 years after I read the novel – which I really enjoyed. When I eventually saw the film I was surprised at how faithfully it followed the novel and it’s interesting to see this clip of director Mark L. Lester (which is included on the bonus features of the Scream Factory dvd) Talking about how he and screenwriter Stanley Mann stuck to the book almost verbatim.
Why then is it so disliked, with even King himself dubbing it one of the worst adaptations of one of his novels? The answer is a complex one. Firstly critics were very hostile to Drew Barrymore’s performance as Charlie and, clearly, in some respects they’re justified: Carrying the burden of an entire movie is a lot to put on any 8 year old child actor’s shoulders – let alone one that requires as much of a range of emotions as this one does. Barrymore‘s performance holds up remarkably well under the circumstances. Yes, in the scenes where she is expected to switch between emotions quickly she does comes across as slightly whiny and petulant – however you could also argue that this was a factor common to many 80s movies featuring young children. I recently re-watched E.T. (Which of course was Barrymore’s breakout performance) and was shocked by how annoying and bratty the character of Elliot seemed. It’s also a potential problem for a great many Stephen King adaptations as so many centre around pre-teen children and even the better ones struggle to convincingly have those child characters do all the things they do in the novels.
Another problem common to screen versions of both King’s novels and other stories featuring psychic powers is that telepathy is not inherently cinematic. Characters look concentrated or touch their foreheads and something happens. Pyrokinesis (as they call Charlie’s abilities) is obviously more visual but they still can’t get inside a character’s head like a novel can, so the filmmakers are reduced to having Charlie tell the fire to „back off“ out loud all the time.
Finally, a factor I think that is worth mentioning is that, by the 80s, studios saw King‘s books as guaranteed box office gold, after the success of the film adaptations of Carrie and The Shining. Forgetting, of course, that a great deal of those film’s success was due their respective directors visual style. There followed a slew of attempts to film King‘s work which often failed due to unimaginative direction, lazy writing or the simple fact that not every one of King’s stories is a masterpiece deserving a film adaptation. As the decade wore on, it was increasingly the film versions of King’s non-horror work, such as Stand By Me or Misery that garnered acclaim, whilst both critics and fans became more and more annoyed and dismayed at the lazy attempts coax horror audiences into the cinema simply through the draw of King’s name alone. Firestarter falls more or less in the middle of this period, so it’s also possible to see why it ended up being lumped alongside Cujo, Children Of The Corn, Christine, Pet Semetary and King’s own Maximum Overdrive as the less successful adaptations of King‘s work – whereas, for all its faults, it’s actually better than all of those.
As for why King himself hates this film, it’s difficult to say. He‘s called it „flavorless, it’s like cafeteria mashed potatoes.“ Originally John Carpenter was hired to direct the film, with Bill Lancaster (Carpenter’s scriptwriter for The Thing) adapting the novel. King apparently signed off on the Lancaster script and there’s no doubt in my mind that Carpenter’s version of this story would have been far more interesting than the one we have here. That said, what we have here is essentially King’s novel and King’s view of how filmmakers adapt his work for the screen isn’t always the most reliable. Remember this is the man who hated Kubrick’s version of The Shining enough, to re- adapt the novel himself for the terrible 1990s miniseries version directed by Mick Garris. He was also full of praise for the recent big screen version of IT, which for all its success bares very little resemblance to the book of which it’s based.
Having spent quite a lot of time focusing on the negative reactions to the film, let’s switch our attention to the positive however and look at what is good about it.
Perhaps wisely, given the youth and comparative inexperience of their lead actress, the film surrounds Barrymore with a cast of well-known actors and actresses to play off against, the best of these being George C. Scott – who chews the scenery with relish as twisted Shop assassin, Rainbird. His scenes with Barrymore, when she thinks he’s just a janitor at the shop facility, are some of the best and most interesting in the film. There’s also the ever reliable Martin Sheen as Holister and fine supporting turns from Moses Gunn as Dr Pynchot, Freddie Jones as Dr Wanless and Art Carney as sympathetic farmer, Irv Manders. There’s even a brief appearance by Heather Locklear as Charlie’s mother (then at the peak of her T.J. Hooker fame). If there’s a weak link in the performances it’s David Keith (White Of The Eye, Daredevil) as Charlie’s father, Andy. Keith always comes across as larger than life in most of his performances, in some cases positively unhinged; which is perfect in a film such as White Of The Eye where he’s playing a serial killer, but less so here. A more understated performance would have suited the character much better (there was talk at one point of having Richard Dreyfuss in the role, which perhaps would have been going too far in the other direction, but would have been interesting nonetheless).
The film also features what is probably (alongside Thief and Risky Business) one Tangerine Dream’s best scores of the 80s. Somehow, whilst the scores for the other two films are justly lauded as some the best work the group ever did for the movies, this score is often overlooked. This is a great shame because it’s easily the equal of the other two. Sadly the CD is long since deleted but you can track down the score on You Tube.
Clearly, this is never going to top anyone’s list of screen adaptations of King’s work but, if like me, you’ve avoided watching it because of the film’s negative reputation you should give it a go. Equally, if you’ve not seen it for some years, give it another go. It’s no masterpiece, but neither is it the flaming pile of trash both it’s original reviews and King himself made it out to be.
