The Dark Half (1992)

Dir: George A. Romero

A lacklustre adapation of an even worse Stephen King book is one of several unfortunate misfires that the normally excellent Romero unleashed in the late 80s/early 90s. Timothy Hutton (from "Revenge of the Nerds"!) plays Thaddeus Beaumont, a mild-mannered author who writes hyperviolent crime novels under the pseudonym of George Stark. When Beaumont decides to move into 'serious' writing he 'kills' off Stark in a publicity stunt and soon finds that his alter-ego has somehow manifested himself into a real-life pissed-off entity that's on the loose, slicing and dicing everything in sight. There's a nice idea at the root of this about how all writers of dark fiction have a 'demon' inside of them but it's almost impossible to portray this convincingly without it all becoming hammy and unfeasible. Using words like "folderol" and "psychopomp" does not necessarily make a screenplay intelligent and in this case, such excruciating dialogue only serves to make what is already a po-faced and overlong movie feel like someone is slowly squeezing your head in a vice whilst reading extracts from "Finnegan's Wake" in your ear. Timothy Hutton's pair of performances (as both writer and demon) are actually good but most everything else, from the bland direction to the "huh?"-inducing craptastic finalé are not. *1/2