Faux Stephen King, but not faux John Carpenter in what is probably the best of his later films.* Producer and occasional writer Michael De Luca gets credit for the script on this Stephen King pastiche about best-selling horror author and King rival Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow in a purposefully unbecoming wig). His immense sales & cultural influence a lifeline to publisher Charlton Heston (well cast) and editor Julie Carmen (less well cast). With Cane’s latest manuscript way overdue, but scheduled to hit the stores soon, they can’t even locate him. That’s how insurance investigator Sam Neill (terrific) gets involved, hunting him up along with editor Carmen through directions more imaginary than real. A lot like his books, getting weirder and scarier as the searchers find they’re driving into a living horror fable right out of his fevered brain. Threatening small-town rubes, unspeakably gory monsters, it’s more maze than amazing. Yet the best scare, the only one that really shows Carpenter still in top form, is a simple one that sees Neill hot-wiring a car to make an escape only to discover no matter how far or fast he goes into uncharted territory, you wind up right back where you started from. Pure Lewis Carroll logic. He’ll have to go twice as fast to get anywhere.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Not having seen all of Carpenter’s later work, use the COMMENTS Box to let us know if we’ve missed something good. Thanks.
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