"Pet Sematary" (1989) d/ Mary Lambert

Author Stephen King once said that the only novel he wrote that truly scared him, was Pet Sematary, the basis for tonight's review. Is it any wonder that he would tackle the screenplay himself, overseeing much of the production, which was shot just twenty minutes from his Maine home? Ah-yuh, it's anothah horror movie full of bottles of beeyah, Herman Munstah, zombie cats, and reanimated scalpel-wielding toddlah cadavahs that are bound to have you and yours shouting, "Awwwww, isn't he precious?!!?" at your television screen. I grooved on it slightly back in '89 at the theater, at a time when I was more apt to accept a genre film that assumes it has to spell everything out for it's audience the way this one seems to. Forward...


Formica rufa, baby. Wood ant. Wouldn't. Get it? Ah, forget it.
The Creeds move from Chicago to Ludlow as Louis (Dale Midkiff), family patriarch and professional Tony Romo lookalike, is offered a job as a doctor at the University of Maine. His wife Rachel (Denise Crosby), and their two children, Ellie (Blaze Berdahl) and Gage (Miko Hughes), and their cat, Church, all get acclimated to the rural landscape that's bisected by a stretch of road that's seemingly traveled at breakneck speed by the same tanker truck all day and night long. That's gonna pose a problem, later on, I just know it. Elderly neighbor Jud Crandal (Fred Gwynne) takes a shine to the young family when he isn't chain smoking Marlboro's and drinking Bud bottles. Ah-yuh. It doesn't take long for Jud to show them the local pet cemetery, and even less time for him to reveal the Micmac indian burial ground that supernaturally raises your dead pet from the grave on the chance that you're not quite ready to say goodbye, when Church gets splattered on the side of the aforementioned treacherous stretch of asphalt while Rachel and the kids are back in Chicago for Thanksgiving. The only problem is that no pets ever come back from the other side exactly the way they were pre-mortem, explained away as a side effect of the stony ground of the magical area. Uh huh.


"My balls are this big." boasts Father Phone-it-in (Stephen King).
Despite getting clawed and ominously hissed at by his undead cat, Louis eventually asks Jud if the site was ever used to bring back something other than a pet, spurring the old man to repeat his trailer tagline no less than four times for dramatic effect ("Louis...sometimes...dead is bettah."). During a picnic in the nearby field, all the adults lose track of little Gage as he stumbles in front of the tanker truck barreling down the road, and Louis automatically has designs on putting Jud's warning to the test, against the constant, annoying warnings of a teenage ghost named Pascow (Brad Greenquist). It should also be noted that Rachel is also haunted by the twisted memory of her wheezy,bone-cracking spinal meningitis-stricken sister that she believes she let die as a fear-gripped child. Naturally, Louis digs up his boy and replants him on the Micmac grounds, leading to some totes adorbs evil toddler action, and a twist ending that nobody in the civilized world didn't see coming...


Herman, you dead idiot.
Dale Midkiff also appeared in 1986's Nightmare Weekend. I'll refrain from any jokes involving Denise Crosby, seeing as how she was Lt. Yar on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and you sci-fi nerds will likely doxx me for it. Miko Hughes would also show up in New Nightmare (1994). Much like our previous entry, tonight's boasts of a director change, from George A. himself, who was too busy working on Monkey Shines at the time and his pal Tom Savini turned the job down, too, so the chair was given to one Mary Lambert, who provided legendary visuals of a brunette Madonna shaking her ample bobblers in a bustier in front of burning crosses for the "Like a Prayer" video. I'd rather watch that on repeat with the sound off than sit through this mess again right now. The only positive I could pull from it was Fred Gwynne's performance, which was effectively understated for the most part, with one or two Herman Munster-style "DARN! DARN! DARN!"s thrown in for nostalgia's sake. He'd later famously appear as a judge in My Cousin Vinny (1992), before passing away two years later. Overall, this is one Wop stuff, without question.


10 more cc's of adorable for Zombie Gage (Miko Hughes)? Yes, little man'll take it.