When Stephen King published The Stand in 1978, the book represented a major increase in scale and ambition for the author, whose story of a nationwide battle between forces of good and evil was both his longest and most sophisticated novel to date. 16 years later director Mick Garris took a similar leap when he graduated from modest horror fare like Critters 2: The Main Course and Psycho IV: The Beginning to helm the miniseries adaptation of The Stand, a four-night, six-hour (not counting commercials) epic with hundreds of sets and speaking roles. Stephen King’s The Stand premiered on ABC […]
by Jim Hemphill on Sep 17, 2020One of the more interesting experiments in mid-2000s cable television was Mick Garris’ Masters of Horror anthology for Showtime, a series that lasted only two seasons but yielded terrific work by John Landis, Stuart Gordon, John Carpenter, John McNaughton, and Garris himself. It’s now streaming free on the advertiser supported platform Tubi, and many of the episodes are well worth revisiting – particularly Joe Dante’s The Screwfly Solution, an entry from season two that presciently taps into current anxieties relating to both the coronavirus and the #MeToo movement. The movie begins with a series of unprovoked assaults on women by […]
by Jim Hemphill on Apr 10, 2020