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This past week was huge for Stephen King-related anniversaries. On the book side of things, Misery turned 37, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger turned 42, Blaze turned 17, and The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah has now been in existence for 20 years. As for adaptations, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining was given a wide release on this day, June 13, in 1980, and director Tod Williams’ Cell hit VOD eight years ago. But there is no time to dwell on those celebrations, as there are many other stories to discuss from the world of Stephen King this week.
For this new edition of The King Beat, I have a special slate of headlines for you, including Heather Langenkamp’s surprise connection to Pet Sematary, a special request for the stars of The Long Walk, and a brand new 2024 movie recommendation from Stephen King. Without further ado, let’s dig in!
Despite Not Being In The Movie, Legendary Final Girl Heather Langenkamp Was On The Pet Sematary Set For The Movie’s Most Horrific Scenes
With her role in writer/director Mike Flanagan’s upcoming film The Life Of Chuck, Heather Langenkamp will be making her very first appearance in a Stephen King adaptation – which is a bit surprising given her legacy in the horror genre (the actress being best known for playing Nancy Thompson in the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise). Just because she doesn’t have much King experience on her filmography, however, doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have a certain intimate familiarity with the history: as it happens, in the late 1980s, she was on set to witness some of the most gory action in director Mary Lambert’s Pet Sematary, one of the best Stephen King adaptations of all time.
This wonderful story came across my desk this week thanks to CinemaBlend’s Nick Venable, who interviewed Heather Langenkamp this past Monday and dedicated a portion of their conversation to talking about Stephen King. Discussing her affiliation with the author’s work, she explained that she got to spend a lot of time on the set of Pet Sematary thanks to her relationship with special makeup effects artist David LeRoy Anderson – her husband since 1989. Said Langenkamp,
I’m a big fan of Stephen King. I’ve never met him, so I can’t say that I’ve met him or anything like that. But the first experience I had on a Stephen King film was Pet Sematary, because my husband was doing the makeup effects on Pet Sematary. So I was introduced to that story like really close up on the set, and seeing Denise Crosby and Miko Hughes and Fred Gwynne, of course – everyone working so hard to bring that story to life.
Reflecting on her time watching the making of Pet Sematary, she specifically recalled what it was like to see the work of young Miko Hughes, who plays ill-fated toddler Gage Creed in the film. Heather Langenkamp got to personally witness the young actor perform one of the movie’s most gruesome scenes – the death of Fred Gwynne’s Jud Crandall:
Miko was four when I met him on that set; he might even have been three-and-a-half. And watching his parents and him have to do these really challenging shots: biting Fred Gwynne’s Achilles tendon, his leg, and my husband managing that on set feeling very worried every day that he was, like, creating some kind of monster with Miko because he was having him do such really disgusting things.
(Note: in Pet Sematary, Gage actually slices Jud Crandall’s Achilles tendon with a scalpel and bites his Adam’s apple – but don’t hold this slip up against her!)
Because of the content of the work, it’s understandable that there were some concerns about Miko Hughes’ mental health on the set of Pet Sematary, but Heather Langenkamp also recalls that there was a lot of sensitivity working with him and making sure that he was properly protected from the gruesome nature of the work. She continued,
It was [what] the script required, and the director Mary, they all had lots of discussions about what to let Miko do and not do so that he wouldn’t get too grossed out and also traumatized. So that was a daily conversation; you just don’t want to affect a young person like that if you don’t have to. So anyway, that was always very touchy. And so I was introduced to Miko there, of course. He was adorable and just a darling, darling young child.
What makes this story particularly fun is that Heather Langenkamp’s time with Miko Hughes didn’t end when production on Pet Sematary wrapped. While the two actors didn’t get to work together on screen in the making of the Stephen King adaptation, they reunited years later when Wes Craven cast Hughes to play Langenkamp’s son in 1994’s meta sequel New Nightmare. Per the actress, she was amazed to see him become an impressive professional:
When they told me that Miko Hughes was gonna be playing my son, gosh, it must have been like seven or eight years later, and now he was a kid who was so seasoned; he was a seasoned actor. He was probably 10 years old when I worked with him maybe. He looked much younger, so he was a little bit more mature than the part that he plays, but he’s still a child and yet he really was so professional. I mean, he got his lines down after about two seconds of studying and delivered them perfectly.
Should you now find yourself in the mood to appreciate the talents of young Miko Hughes, Pet Sematary is available to stream with a Paramount+ subscription, and having an active Netflix account presently provides the ability to instantly watch New Nightmare.
I Have A Specific Request For The Stars Of Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk As The Movie Gets Closer To Becoming A Reality
After years of false starts, it appears that we may finally be getting an adaptation of The Long Walk. Back in November, director Francis Lawrence and screenwriter JT Mollner were hired to develop the project as a feature for Lionsgate, and it was revealed this week by Deadline that the film has brought aboard Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson to star. Sadly, the new trade report doesn’t make any mention of when production may start, but when cameras do start rolling, I have a special request: please have all of the actors on the film wear pedometers so that we know how many steps they end up taking over the course of principal photography.
This may sound silly, but I am personally fascinated by the logistics of bringing The Long Walk to life. In the book (first published in 1989 under King’s pseudonym, Richard Bachman), 100 teenage boys sign up for a dystopian last-man-standing competition that sees them continuously walking at a pace of four miles per hour along U.S. Route 1 for days on end without breaks. The story doesn’t feature any subplots or flashbacks, which means that just about every scene in the film is going to feature the main stars in motion – and with multiple takes of every setup factored in, that should mean a whole lot of steps… and I want to know just how many.
Needless to say, The Long Walk is a project that I am going to keep a very close eye on as it continues to make its way to production and add to its cast – and hopefully Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson and all of the actors involved will be properly prepared to do some extreme cardio.
Stephen King Got Surprised In The Best Way By The New Shark Thriller Under Paris
Summer 2024 has some exciting upcoming horror films on the way, but genre fans are going to have to exhibit some patience, as Michael Sarnoski’s A Quiet Place: Part One won’t be arriving until the end of the month, and both Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs and Ti West’s MaXXXine aren’t set to arrive in theaters until July. That being said, if you have a hankering to sit down and watch a scary movie right now, Stephen King has a new recommendation: for those of you who enjoy a good shark-centric feature, the author suggests that you put your Netflix account to use and check out Xavier Gens’ new movie Under Paris.
It was just a few weeks ago that King endorsed another 2024 creature feature – the French spider-filled thriller Infested – but if you already watched that particular title, the author has another movie for you to queue up. On Wednesday, King took to Twitter to explain that Under Paris is a film that took him by surprise, as he was expecting campy fun but ultimately got served a completely different experience. He wrote,
I thought UNDER PARIS would be a jokey movie, like SHARKNADO, but Twitter convinced me to give it a watch, and it’s really quite good. The last 25 minutes were amazing.
In the film, a scientist (Bérénice Bejo) finds herself confronting trauma from her past when she learns that an enlarged mako shark has taken up residence in the Seine and is threatening to turn an upcoming triathlon event into a bloodbath. The movie also stars Nassim Lyes, Léa Léviant and Sandra Parfait.
Under Paris got a global release on Netflix last Wednesday, June 5, and it has received a mix reaction overall – the movie sporting a 64 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes matched with a 35 percent audience score. I’ve personally been a bit iffy about checking it out, but the Stephen King stamp of approval means that I’ll probably be watching it myself this coming weekend.
Recommendation Of The Week: “Rattlesnakes”
Time for another You Like It Darker recommendation! I’ve been using this space in The King Beat in the past month to highlight the best of the best entries from Stephen King’s new collection, and this week it’s time to put “Rattlesnakes” in the spotlight.
One of the most anticipated novellas in the 2024 omnibus, “Rattlesnakes” stands out because it is a sequel to the beloved 1981 novel Cujo. Set in 2020 during the first summer of the COVID-19 pandemic, the story catches up with Vic Trenton decades after the horrific experience that saw his wife and son trapped in a broken down car and tormented by a giant, rabies-infected St. Bernard. Now a widower and staying at a friend’s house in Florida, Vic lives a solitary life, but he finds his solitude disrupted in horrifying fashion when he becomes entangled with a neighbor who has her own tragic past involving a pair of twin sons who were killed after accidentally stumbling into a rattlesnake pit. It’s a top notch ghost story full of powerful emotion.
That wraps up this week’s edition of The King Beat, but I’ll be back next Thursday with a new column here on CinemaBlend. Meanwhile, you can learn about all future King projects with my Upcoming Stephen King Movies and TV feature and learn how to be the best King fan you can be with my guide to building the ultimate Stephen King collection.