Blyss's Movie Review for:

Main Cast of Characters:

Timothy Hutton.........Thad Beaumont/George Stark

Amy Madigan..........Elizabeth Beaumont

Robert Joy.........Fred Clawson

Michael Rooker..........Allen Pangborn

Thomas Mardirosian...........Rick Cowley

Rutanya Alda...........Miriam Cowley

Glenn Colerider...........Homer Gamache

1993. Rated: R. Genre: Horror; 122 minutes

Everyone has a dark half.....

It's true. Everyone has a dark half lurking somewhere inside of them. Thad Beaumont's just happens to be more a true part of him than he thought. It all started when he was a teen. He would hear sparrows and get terrible headaches. Thad wrote a lot even as a child, always writing stories. So his mother thought that the headaches may just be Thad straining his eyes. So she buys him a typewriter. He again has a terrible headache that causes him to fall down on the ground this time so his mother takes him back to the doctor and the doctor operates to see what the problem is, fearing Thad has a tumor. When they open up his head, they discover part of a twin sibling that Thad's body did not completely absorb: an eye, part of a nostril, and two teeth. They remove it and Thad is relatively normal for the next 23 years. At this point Thad is grown with a wife and twins. He works as a professor at the local college and moonlights under the pen name of George Stark, writing graphic horror novels. His life is going well until a person named Frederick Clawson comes into his life, threatening to expose Thad as Stark. Thad is angered and decides that instead of being blackmailed by Clawson, he will reveal himself to the world as Stark first. The photographer that is going to photograph Thad decides that it would be wonderful to put up a fake tombstone for George Stark and to have he and his wife, Liz stand behind it smiling and shaking hands so that Stark will finally be put to rest. However, after Thad does this shoot, everyone he knows and loves starts to turn up murdered. Amazingly, Thad's fingerprints keep showing up at the scenes of every crime, even when he is out of town. The local sheriff thinks either Thad is innocent or if he is guilty he must be working with an accomplice because he cannot be in two places at one time. Or is there really a George Stark out there that Thad keeps talking to and seeing flashes of? Is it possible? Or has Thad's personality split?

To be honest, I have seen nearly every film of Stephen King's. This one scared me worse than any of them. I guess because I could relate to Thad. Sometimes when I write my own novels, I keep thinking, if I was this character, what would I be thinking if this happened or boy, this character would have acted this way. It was scary when you finally see George Stark. I was amazed at the end to find out that Timothy Hutton portrayed both Beaumont and Stark because Stark looked nothing like Timothy Hutton. They did a great job in makeup on this character. I also thought it was great the way they put Stark to rest with the fake tombstone and the way they set up Thad and his wife. The special effects and makeup in this film were truly great and I loved "the sparrows are flying again". That was interesting to learn about why the doctors thought Thad heard sparrows compared to the reason Thad really heard the sparrows. This was one of the scariest King films I have seen to date. I highly recommend it!

I rate this film: 10

Blyss