Cujo

[AlwaysComingHome]

Just watched Cujo for the first time.

I never fancied this when it first came out because there was a glut of Stephen King adaptations and this one always looked like a bit of a Jaws knock-off, but I bought it on Blu-ray because I’m having a Stephen King season and Eureka generally do a good restoration job, plus the set is loaded with extras.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by it. It has a great female lead in Dee Wallace (Elliot’s mum in ET) who, for once, isn’t rescued by a man, but at the same time isn’t just a male substitute.

The kid is rather good too, and the sequences set in the car are genuinely harrowing.

I’m only really familiar with King’s early work but he does seem as interested in dysfunctional family dynamics (Carrie and The Shining for example) as much as horror for horror’s sake.

Horror has been dominated by Halloween rip-offs for so long it’s unusual to film that doesn’t focus on teenagers. I think there has been a revival of adult-focussed horror recently with films like A Quiet Place but they are still a minority.

I've always felt Stephen King genuinely likes women. Really enjoyed Sleeping Beauties recently, where all the females in the world fall asleep and the males are left behind. Two realities emerge, which made for interesting contrasts.

SK writes women really well. He doesn’t give them jobs though, they are always wives.

But he gives them complexities, inner lives, and I feel he really LIKES women.

I agree that sk likes women. He writes about domestic violence, abuse and male violence in generaI very well. I am not sure that cujo is a particular example of that. The book is very different to the film.

Misery is still the grim-est film ever.
This thread is triggering, now I'm thinking about that film.
I'm going to have to flounce.

Stephen King does write very well about women and issues affecting women.

I've just finished The Outsider which features a very interesting female private detective as one of its main characters.

unwashedanddazed I have just downloaded Sleeping Beauties for my next read! Thanks!

I gave up a bit on SK - I felt he lost his magic a bit for a while. I'll be so pleased if he's back on form.

Rose Madder is the one that sticks in my head. I was very invested in all the female characters.

Dolores claiborne is amazingly written from a woman's perspective with two major female characters. I dispute the point that women don't have jobs...they usually do. Stephen king was the child of a single mother who worked tough jobs to support him and his brother and the reflection of her is in lots of his writing.

I read Rose Madder when I was about 18 and the one scene that sticks in my mind was where someone was being derogatory about the women in the women's shelter, calling them names and saying they were trouble etc.

I, in my naivety at that age, thought 'what? Who would object to a shelter for battered women? That's weird'. I thought that everyone in the world felt sympathy for the victims of domestic violence.

Sometimes my cynical 40 something self yearns for the naivety of my 18 year old self.

One of the reasons Stephen King hates the film version of the Shining is that Wendy played as a bit of a screaming helpless woman. The character is the book is absolutely nothing like that

SK - “Shelley Duvall as Wendy is really one of the most misogynistic characters ever put on film, she’s basically just there to scream and be stupid and that’s not the woman that I wrote about,” the writer stated.

When I saw the thread title, I thought you were suggesting a new and more appropriate nickname for Bojo

I’ve always enjoyed SK, and agree that his female characters are usually well rounded. Occasionally I think his writing veers into “She boobed boobily down the stairs” territory.

I remember reading Gerald's Game, again when I was young, and being impressed with the way he made it clear that the wife was participating in a sex game that she didn't like, because she felt coerced by her husband, and the thoughts that went through her mind about how it made her find him pathetic and repulsive.

The book is quite different.

That was Stanley Kubrick's fault. He made her play it that way. She wasn't happy about it from what I read in interviews with her.

Oooh I might have to invest in Sleeping Beauties. Haven't read a new SK for a long time as I felt he'd gone 'off the boil'. His films never seem to translate well though do they? The Tommyknockers is particularly poor.

Insomnia is very good too. It addresses misogyny and anti-abortionist activists and how the 2 usually go hand in hand.

His wife, Tabitha, seems a good sort too:

www.google.com/amp/s/hellogiggles.com/news/tabitha-king-asks-editors-to-give-women-their-names/amp/

His films never seem to translate well though do they?

Some do, some don't. Carrie, Stand By Me, The Mist, Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile are brilliant. Salem's Lot was tv rather than film but was excellent. I liked Needful Things too (can't remember if that was a film or tv)

I loved Stand By Me/The Body and Shawshank but I’m really not a horror fan- what could I read without getting nightmares?

His films never seem to translate well though do they?
It depends on how well the adaptation is done. The TV version of The Dome was rubbish, largely because the main characters were substantially altered; for example, the book's psychopath-with-a-brain-tumour became a misunderstood teenager who just needed the love of a good woman.
OTOH, the TV version of 11.22.63 was way better than the book, mainly because it cut out the padding and side-plots, and concentrated on the main time-travelling story.

I loved Stand By Me/The Body and Shawshank but I’m really not a horror fan- what could I read without getting nightmares?
You could try the Mr Mercedes trilogy (but probably not the follow-up Outsiders, which for me verged onto horror territory); 11.22.63; Doctor Sleep; Dolores Claiborne; Sleeping Beauties.
Also, try his short story collections (Bazaar of Bad Dreams, Full Dark No Stars, Just After Sunset, Everything's Eventual, and others). He's written some wonderful stories that don't contain any 'horror' and you can always skip the ones that do.

There was a mini series version of The Shining which I thought was better than the film.

Kubrick's film is good, but it misses out a lot of book material. IMO the film is just based on the book and not a film of the book IYSWIM?

OOh might get back into SK.

I want to read some more SK now. I haven’t read anything since Dr Sleep, which I really enjoyed.

Rose The Hat puts me in mind of a certain charity CEO now I come to think of it.

The TV version of the Dome was dire. But then I thought the end of the book was ridiculous too. Best character was the young farm lad who hid under the potatoes.

Really enjoyed Sleeping Beauties recently, where all the females in the world fall asleep and the males are left behind

Has he been screamed at by TRA's for this exclusionary transphobia? Looks like SK knows exactly what a woman is

I think it was Cujo I read on holiday once (one of those books left behind by a previous guest) and there was a moment in it where the woman was washing up, or something, staring out of her window and we heard her interior monologue. And I remember being absolutely struck by how much SK "got" what it was like to be a woman, fundamentally.