Pet Semetary (1989)

Dir: Mary Lambert

Stephen King adapts one of his most popular novels for the big screen, seemingly by typing with his toes, blindfolded, on Class "A" drugs; all in under five minutes ... Clumsy and hackneyed are adjectives that wouldn't even begin to describe this clunkin' hunk'o'junk's sorry-ass screenplay. A family who move into one seriously inappropriate house for children (it's right in front of a main trucking route and doesn't even have a fence in the front yard) are surprised when their kid gets run over. Luckily, there's an Indian burial ground next door (oh, that old chestnut!) and, according to their creepy-ass drunkard neighbour (Fred Gwynne, tragically slumming it here), it can bring the dead back to life if you put them in the soil. Next thing you know, dead kid's up and running with new-found skills in telephony, knot-tying, scalpel-hunting and corpse-stashing. None of this is really elaborated on and yet it all takes itself so seriously that an explanation is sorely needed. Instead, we just get melodramatic, pseudo-philosophical rhapsodising on the nature of death. The acting is atrocious (Dale Midkiff, as the family father, seems to be in a particularly talky coma) and director Mary Lambert clearly doesn't have a passion for the genre and (over)compensates by loading her film full of every cliché in the book (echoey voices, copious dry ice, loud bangs, gratuitous gore, etc). The animatronic child puppet steals the show from everyone and, if it wasn't for the totally gnarly Ramones song at the end, "Pet Semetary" would be entirely worthless. It's odd because I remember watching this when I was a wee lad and really enjoying it, but as an adult, it's just too poorly executed and downright stupid to work in the slightest. EL BOMBA!