Movies based on Stephen King novels, so prevalent on the big screen throughout the 1980s, were boosted in terms of critical acclaim and box-office by Castle Rock’s adaptation of “Misery” in 1990. The production company would go back to the well for numerous other King projects over the course of the next decade, starting off with NEEDFUL THINGS (120/188 mins., 1993, R), an uneven picture that nevertheless offers one of the strongest acting ensembles to be found in any film based on one of the author’s works.
Initially developed by director Peter Yates, who eventually bowed out while still receiving an Executive Producer credit, “Needful Things” isn’t so much “scary” or even classifiable as outright “horror” as it is a supernatural thriller laced with a touch of black comedy. It’s a typical King mixture into which screenwriter W.D. Richter injected some playfulness – after all, its very premise involving the Devil opening up an antiques shop in a small Maine town, spurring the worst elements of humanity to manifest amongst its “local yocal” populace, carries with it the notion that the Old Man (here in the form of Max Von Sydow) is just out to toy with people, crushing their hopes and dreams via his mere meddling.
It’s a concept that that could’ve been made into a potent “dark fantasy” a la “Something Wicked This Way Comes” or “The Witches of Eastwick,” but director Fraser C. Heston (son of Charlton) doesn’t get the pacing and tone quite right. The script is literate, but too much of the film seems repetitive and on an emotional flatline – Von Sydow’s “Leland Gaunt” provides a trinket or memento to individual townspeople (including J.T. Walsh and Amanda Plummer) that causes them to eventually cave into their most animalistic instincts, beating up on – sometimes literally – one another in the process. Meanwhile, good guy sheriff Ed Harris suspects something is amiss, as even his diner-owning sweetheart (Bonnie Bedelia) succumbs to Gaunt’s spell.
With a little finessing “Needful Things” could’ve been a cracking good film, but the 120-minute theatrical version of the picture – which opened and quickly closed in the late August ‘93 dumping grounds – failed to register with audiences. Heston’s workmanlike handling seemed more suited to TV than the big screen – with the movie’s pace and overall level of restraint playing like one of the many Stephen King TV mini-series that were big back in the ‘90s as opposed to something like Rob Reiner’s celebrated “Misery” or Castle Rock’s next King film based on “The Shawshank Redemption.”
This feeling was cemented when Turner Broadcasting, which owned Castle Rock, packaged a substantially enhanced TV version of “Needful Things” when it came time for its basic cable broadcasts. Augmented with over an hour of discarded material, “Needful Things”’ extended version loses just a bit of R-rated violence (no real loss, as the film is already closer to a PG-13 than most King flicks) but gains an appreciable amount of character development and several excellent sequences that never should’ve been cut to begin with.
The pacing is even more “leisurely” and laid back, but if viewed in the context of being a high-class King TV mini-series as opposed to a movie, “Needful Things” functions better and the longer cut enables more of the standout cast to make an impression: Harris and Bedelia are both highly appealing and have good chemistry together, Von Sydow is engagingly devilish, and Walsh and Plummer each handle their eccentric characters with the right amount of increasing mania. The TV version is flabby, no doubt, and a better cut surely could’ve been produced as a compromise between it and its theatrical counterpart – yet when the choice has to be made, there’s little doubt the long version of “Needful Things” is the superior viewing experience.
Kino Lorber’s new 4K UHD boasts the theatrical cut of “Needful Things” in a superb Dolby Vision HDR master (1.85), newly minted via a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative, with both 5.1 and 2.0 audio. It also includes the 188-minute TV version on a separate Blu-Ray, upscaled (pretty well at that) from a standard-definition broadcast master. This is as good as the longer cut of the movie will ever appear given how it was assembled, seeing as there are “shifts” in the image when cuts were made as well as recycled music cues the TV version editors had to utilize in its creation. It’s worth noting this is one of Patrick Doyle’s best scores, providing the film with some energy its pedestrian direction desperately needed.
For extras, a new 18-minute interview with W.D. Richter is included plus the trailer and the 2015 Kino commentary with Fraser Heston and late Scorpion Releasing guru Walt Olsen. This is a frustrating track with Heston reading prepared comments for a time and Olsen later peppering him with a flurry of good questions in the final minutes which one wishes were raised earlier. Nevertheless, it’s a nice inclusion on a highly recommended package for fans of the movie.
