-Needful Things (1993): 8/10
Caveat Emptor for those unwary souls who purchase a trinket in the new store that just opened in Castle Rock, Maine, in Needful Things, a spirited adaptation of Stephen King's novel. The proprietor of said shop is Leland Gaunt (Max Von Sydow), a newcomer to the small community who claims to be from "Akron, Ohio". Mr. Gaunt is one charismatic cuss, and seems able to procure anything those who enter his business finds as their deepest, most coveted desire, and for prices that seem far too good to be true. But the monetary transactions are only half of what he wants. The other half...is a deed. A seemingly harmless prank he asks his customers to play on some other member of the town. Soon, he's begun to weave a web of mean-spirited misdeeds amongst the townsfolk (including Amanda Plummer as nervous waitress Nettie Cobb and the great J.T. Walsh as town selectman Danforth "Buster" Keeton III), leading to a rapidly accelerating series of grievances that escalate from thievery to property damage to murder, as Gaunt drinks up the bad vibes like they were mother's milk. Only the local sheriff, Alan Pangborn (Ed Harris) is truly suspicious of the community's newest member, and the wave of misery stirred up by Gaunt causes him to investigate, even as Gaunt drives a wedge between Pangborn and his new finance, diner owner Polly Chalmers (Bonnie Bedelia).
Director Fraser C. Heston (son of Charlton) and screenwriter W.D. Richter (Invasion Of The Body Snatchers '78, The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai), in paring down King's mammoth tome to a manageable length, had to sacrifice much of King's detailing of a piquant small community rife with petty jealousies and strife even before Mr. Gaunt's arrival. The resulting theatrical cut of the movie ran two hours, and came and went in cinemas in the late summer of 1993. However, the movie was reconfigured as a two-part television event for TBS in 1996, offering up a whopping additional hour of footage to flesh out the narrative, and the recent Kino release of the film preserves that cut on a second disc (with the theatrical cut available in 4K on the first disc). I have heard of this elusive cut of the movie for years, and finally sitting down to watch it makes an already effective black-comic horror thriller a richer, more enveloping experience, full of major sequences and character beats jettisoned from the movie to make it an easier sit for theater audiences. It still can't include every little narrative nook and cranny of King's sprawling book, but it makes for a fascinating watch for fans of the movie. However, just as Mr. Gaunt's trinkets carry a heavy price, so too does this longer cut of the movie have its problems. Not only is it now too long for a comfortable sit -- too crammed with incidents and characters -- but the audiovisual presentation leaves a lot to be desired, the image upscaled from the standard-def TV master to "HD" that's plagued with artifacts like aliasing, jagged edges and other anomalies (not to mention being presented in full-frame and with language and violence that's been sanitized for the constraints of mid-90s basic cable). It looks and sounds as good as the movie possibly can given the limitations of the source materials, but considering how Scream Factory presented the extended television cut of the 1976 King Kong (in full HD and even in widescreen!), this makes this cut more of a novelty that fans of the film will pick through to watch the additional footage than sit through in its entirety more than once. Still, whatever version you choose, it's a fun movie, set to a playfully sinister score by Patrick Doyle and buoyed by Sydow's delightful performance, a-twinkle with jovial, erudite menace.
