The mind boggles at the suck.

[yendi]

We just watched the first two episodes of Nightmares and Dreamscapes, the TNT miniseries adapting various Stephen King short stories.

The first one, "Battleground," was decent enough. Knowing that King's short story was about as original as a CBS sitcom, writer Richard Christian Matheson and director Brian Henson wisely chose to play with some unusual narrative choices (including not having star William Hurt utter a single line), and it was quite nice, if about fifteen minutes too long to be called "great."

But the second episode, an attempted adaptation of King's Lovecraft tribute, "Crouch End," has to be one of the worst hours of TV ever. Starting with dreadful lead performances by Claire Forlani (whose career continues to spiral into oblivion -- she's filming Uwe Boll's Dungeon Siege flick) and Elon Bailey (who never had enough of a career to worry about, and certainly isn't likely to, based on this performance), there's also the uncommonly bad script by Kim LeMasters, filled with stupid people doing stupid things, and the unbelievable bad direction of Mark Haber, who never met a camera angle he wanted to spend more than five seconds on. Just an amazingly god-awful hour of TV that doesn't even come close to summoning an ounce of terror, and certainly doesn't have any of the qualities of the original short story (which was actually one of the better ones that King during his late-80s/early-90s rut).

Future episodes are likely to be better, if only because they can't get much worse.

Comments

[hughcasey.livejournal.com]

"Future episodes are likely to be better, if only because they can't get much worse."

You underestimate the power of SUCK.

Of COURSE they can get worse...

[yendi]

Yeah, but it'd take a lot of work.

[muse0fire.livejournal.com]

Lovely! I have them both sitting on Tivo, and was considering watching them this evening, but now I think I'll stick more pins in my feet, since it sounds like more fun than the second episode.

The title "Crouch End" is REALLY familiar - I'm sure I read it (loved King's short stories more than his full novels), but can't remember what it's about.

So if I watch the first and skip the second, am I safe?

[yendi]

So if I watch the first and skip the second, am I safe?

Yep. And Crouch End was the one about the couple that goes to London, and the two Bobbies who help investigate the hubbie's disappearance.

[robyn-ma.livejournal.com]

You know you're in trouble when the first episode of a series called Nightmares & Dreamscapes is actually based on a story from Night Shift.

Having said that, I wish two things related to short-form King film:

(A) That someone would adapt 'The Boogeyman' and do it right. Jeff Schiro's adaptation sucks llama ass;

(B) That, when the anniversary edition of Shawshank came out, they could've put Darabont's 'The Woman in the Room' on there as an extra.

I would also like to see more of whatever the fuck King was getting at with those 'Milkman' stories, and I would like to see David Lynch do something with it. Because King wrote that stuff when he was taking the good drugs.

[amokk]

Man, I knew Battleground wasn't in N&D, I couldn't remember what it was in.

[yendi]

You know you're in trouble when the first episode of a series called Nightmares & Dreamscapes is actually based on a story from Night Shift.

Hell, you know you're in trouble when they try to adapt any King stories that aren't found in Four Seasons.

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the first episode. Though I suppose mostly it was because it was Brian Henson doing it so I was kind of in analysis mode. Overall I did have that problem one has when watching any horror movie that star toys as villains. A voice in the back of my head keeps screaming, "They're freakin' toys! Step on them!"

I liked the silent thing. There was only one part of the episode where it just felt forced to me. But overall, enjoyable.

The second one...ugh. It was just a whole lot of "What are you doing? Stop that, that's stupid!"

[yendi]

Exactly my thoughts on both episodes.

[lurkerwithout.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I passed watching the 2nd one to go see PoTC instead. But, yeah Battleground could have used a 5-10 minute trimming...

[amokk]

Crouch End was a fucked up read and didn't make sense to me, I don't understand how they can make it into anything visual.

[yendi]

Honestly, they didn't even try.

[laurel]

Interesting. I have review copies of all of 'em (except one of the last ones, I think, which will be sent later supposedly) and haven't checked any out yet as I've been on "hiatus". I've not read any King so will only be viewing/reviewing 'em for what they are without any knowledge of the source material. Kevin wants to watch the first one, I suspect we'll skip the second (little point in me watching it now anyway, I'm gonna focus on forthcoming ones so I can make recommendations one way or another on 'em for TV Picks).

[sweinberg.livejournal.com]

I saw the Forlani episode at a comic-con a few weeks ago. So so bad.