p e n g u i n d e v i l

And I would have rather waited until the end of time for this! Falling victim to the OnDemand again, we settled in to spend three hours watching what was possibly one the worst of the worst… It was certainly (and shockingly) the worst Stephen King TV movie I have seen yet. Yes. Honestly… Though I had always thought that it had an intriguing title, there is nothing intriguing about the movie The Langoliers. Being bad in every sense of the word: terrible visuals (!some of the worst computer graphics I have ever seen!), bad acting, terrible scripts, ridiculous story… Oh, in total it was a travesty. Maybe there would have been some potential in the idea with a good production and a good director. Though this was directed by Tom Holland who did make the brilliant “Child’s Play”, the other highlights of his career are Fright Night and Thinner, which while they are quite terrible themselves, they certainly best this one easily. Even with those low marks, I would have expected a director and producer with no professional credits for this slab of dull, dead-hogwashing! The story of a plane flying from Los Angeles to Boston wherein a few people wake up and realize that everyone else is gone. Luckily, one of the waker’s-up is an airline pilot! For some reason that escapes me (well, Stephen King?) they decide to divert to Bangor, Maine to figure out what happened and where everyone went.

Dean Stockwell is the writer (of course) who manages to figure everything out, the always awful Bronson Pinchot (well, he was perfect for his role in True Romance) plays the “antagonist”, an insane wall street guy who is, with much hostility, trying to overcome his overbearing and demanding father. The best part of the cast is David Morse (who played my idol, Dr Peters, in Twelve Monkeys) as the airline pilot, he does just fine and acts as if this is a real role. The story is quite terrible though. Honestly, they realize quickly that they flew through a rift in time in which everyone who was awake disappeared but the people who were sleeping (them) survived… Who would have expected a rift in time to be so discriminating? Once they end up in Bangor, they hear weird and ominous sounds approaching and decide that they need to fly back to that rift over the mohave to get back to modern time!

Featuring other low points like a Stephen King cameo, a blind girl who can read minds, two couples who fall in love,  endless “crazy logic” and a vast expanse of terrible looking sets and effects… This movie has not one moment of chills or scares or even an interesting idea. Except for the one moment when I realized where it was all going and that this whole story must owe its existence to some beery comment that someone must have made around King about what happens to the world when time moves on. And, my friend, after a couple of hours of this tedium, the punchline comes upon us, and that is the worst part.