The film begins with some lovely if not atypical graphics on the opening credits and right off the bat two things are abundantly clear: (1) this is the first film for which Cronenberg didn't have a hand in the screenplay, and (2) gone is the great composer Howard Shore (the first non-Shore soundtrack since The Brood, replaced here by Michael Kamen, who does a more than admirable job. Check it out in double-time...
We'll be picking this apart beat by each important beat, but let me say here in case you can't/don't make it all the way to the bottom: 1983 was a very good year for David Cronenberg. This is another Solid 9 outta 10 and I'm slotting right behind his first feature from that year, Videodrome, which came out just eight months before. It's been a joy to see him tighten up his process and hone his skills during this project, and '83 was clearly a very important stepping stone on this journey.
This also marked the first time I've seen anything which featured the great Christopher Walker in a lead role. His patented cadence isn't all the way there (which... for the better I think?) but he was really quite good and magnetic in the part. Walken plays a grade school teacher named Johnny who is madly in love with a fellow teacher named Sarah. They go on a date to an amusement park that has literally zero other visitors. And normally Walken and his bowl cut hairdo would really enjoy not waiting on line for the rollercoaster, but he has a dizzy spell...
Then later that night, Walken crashes his Volkswagen bug into a truck hauling milk when its driver falls asleep at the wheel and lands in a coma for five years...
He awakens at a rehab clinic, but it's not like any of the myriad shady establishments from [literally take your pick from any of the Cronenberg films not named Fast Company up until this point]. This seems to be a major thematic difference between a King and a Cronenberg story: there are nefarious forces at work which need reckoning with, but they aren't nearly as clandestine and shrouded, and they have nothing directly to do with the cause or origin of the cosmic forces at work. Which, in this case, involve Walken's newfound ability to see the future and/or the past of a person just by touching them...
That is one of the first of many outstanding set-pieces Cronenberg cooks up for this one. Soon after, we learn that, not only can he conjure images of the near future, but of the very distant past as well, as he sees his own doctor fleeing the Nazis as a small child. Later in the film, we get the obligatory "would you kill baby hitler?" paradox based off this information...
Like the institution itself, that doctor is also on Walken's side. This feels like a striking departure from Cronenberg's typical M.O., but I think — perhaps — he found a freedom working inside these new parameters. His old flame Sarah, who has fully moved on with her life (she has a husband and 10-month old son now) comes to visit. Walken is hobbled and in recovery and we briefly meet his personal trainer — who is easily (somehow) the most Canadian actor we've come across in a D.C. film (which is terribly ironic because this is his first American production, albeit still filmed outside of Toronto) — before learning the ins and outs of the latest fad sweeping the nation: the "coma diet" ...
The media catches wind of his strange powers, which is referred to as the power of second sight, and Walken puts on a press conference to get ahead of things. There, he encounters a reporter played by Videodrome stand-out Peter Dvorsky (Harlan)...
Here we get the first inkling of the politics subplot, which will become the main plot after we wrap up the murder mystery first half. And this maybe cuts at my biggest complaint. The Dead Zone feels like two separate movies, each with their own concrete beginning, middle and end. I imagine, in the novel format, there's a lot more room to work with in terms of smoothly bridging the gaps between these two plots. But here, even with his longest run-time today, they come off as separate entities. Thankfully, that's a structural issue one can easily forgive if not wholly ignore because both sides of the film are so well put-together.
Sheriff Tom Skerritt shows up because it is a movie with Tom Skerrit in it so naturally he's playing the town sheriff. He is seeking Walken's aide in cracking the case of an ongoing serial killer targeting young women in Castle Rock. He tries to guilt him into helping because "god," but Walken ain't having none of that shit...
Next, his now-married ex comes over and they bone while her kid takes a nap. We know they have sex because there is an awkward sex joke about it with Walken's dad later...
Walken's mom has recently died and his dad is sad about that because he can't figure out how to use tinsel on a Christmas tree (?) ...
Also: The Dead Zone is a Christmas movie.
Eventually, Walken comes around on helping the cops' investigation when he learns that serial killer has slain nine women over the last three years. He meets Skeriff in a tunnel and it is just an immaculately lit shot...
While in the tunnel, the cops get a radio call for a brand new victim. At the "ga•ze•bo"... so that's where they head. Walken touches the hand of the newly deceased and has a vision...
Again, perhaps this all a bit better flushed out in the book, as it seems a tad too convenient to have the killer be the Sheriff's partner. But they hunt him down at his mama's home where he promptly throws on his best serial killer black leather S&M jacket and commits suicide in the weirdest way possible before his ma shoots Walken and gets gunned down by Skerrit...
All toll, that storyline chewed up under a half-hour of screen time. And after the suicide, we get a HARD reset and about 45-minutes to tell an entirely new story. Walken, who can't fucking catch a break, recovers from the gunshot wound in a neighboring town where he's laying low, trying to carve out a new life as a private tutor. It's here where the entirely new plot line springs forward, one which was only hinted at before.
His doctor pays a visit and tells him that his psychic powers are slowly sucking the life out of him. He knows this because he did "research," which — AGAIN — I'm sure was filled in with some more, I mean ANY detail in the book. No matter.
He agrees to tutor some rich guy's son but it has to be at the rich guy's mansion because the kid is apparently a real wack-a-doodle, only the kid is alright; it's the dad who's strange...
While there, he also runs into Martin Sheen, who is looking for campaign contributions. Sheen is terrific as the true foil/antagonist of the picture. He's basically the most politician politician you've ever seen...
Later, the rich dad tries to get his nerd son into sports so he schedules a hockey practice. Only Walken does his second-sight thing and sees that THE ICE IS GONNA BREAK! ...
That's the most classic Walkenese line delivery in the movie and it's beautiful.
All the while, Sheen has been doing really dirty political politician type stuff and the audience knows he's just pure evil. But it turns out Walken's ex Sarah can't see through the rouse at all, as she and her husband are volunteers on his Senate campaign. Emboldened by saving the life of his pupil, Walken confronts Sheen at a campaign event conveniently taking place at a park right across from his apartment. He shakes Mr. Politician's hand and BOY OH BOY does he get a vision...
Sure. It's all a bit hokey. Walken seeing that, in the future, Sheen becomes President one days and decide to nuke some unidentified country. Maybe Mrs. Ivy was right and Stephen King isn't a very good writer. But he's certainly an entertaining one, and Cronenberg, Sheen and company are firing on all cylinders here bringing it to life. Sheen's performance especially borders on being goofy. But it's dispersed in limited supply and I felt it went right up to the edge without becoming an annoyance. And — at its best — is kinda brilliant...
So Walken hatches a plan to assassinate the would-be Senator at a rally before he can continue his rise towards the end of the world. Only, it doesn't go down as he'd imagined it would...
Now that's a pretty clever ending! (RIP Walken, however. ) This is how you do it, folks...
I think what I appreciated most about this was the willingness Cronenberg showed to move out of his weird body horror comfort zone. This had a completely different vibe and it worked. And while he'll certainly return to those roots (next up might be the one I've most anticipated, 1986's The Fly), overall, from this point out, his filmography seems extremely varied, and I'm excited about that.
𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚒𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 9th 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝙲𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚗𝚋𝚞𝚛𝚐 – 𝚖𝚢 𝚌𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚘𝚕𝚘𝚐𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚕 𝚠𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑/𝚛𝚎𝚠𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑 𝚘𝚏 𝙳𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚍 𝙲𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚗𝚋𝚎𝚛𝚐'𝚜 𝚏𝚒𝚕𝚖𝚘𝚐𝚛𝚊𝚙𝚑𝚢. 𝙲𝚕𝚒𝚌𝚔 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚏𝚞𝚕𝚕 𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎...
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 443 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 445 ⫸
⫷ EPISODE 443 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 445 ⫸
The Dead Zone is a 1983 American science-fiction thriller film directed by David Cronenberg. The screenplay, by Jeffrey Boam, is based on the 1979 novel of the same name by Stephen King. The film stars Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt, Herbert Lom, Martin Sheen, Anthony Zerbe, and Colleen Dewhurst. Walken plays a schoolteacher, Johnny Smith, who awakens from a coma to find he has psychic powers. The film received positive reviews. The novel also inspired a television series of the same name in the early 2000s, starring Anthony Michael Hall, the 2-hour pilot episode of which borrowed some ideas and changes used in the 1983 film. It was released on October 21, 1983.
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