The Dead Zone

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Next up on my Stephen King quest is The Dead Zone, again it’s not a review as such but a collection of my thoughts on the book. So there may well be spoilers but I think pretty much everyone has read it a long time ago anyway, all except me.

Vera, presuming that God doesn’t desire her to take medication for her elevated blood pressure, suffers a huge stroke after viewing Johnny on the information. Dr. Weizak pushes Johnny to a different hospital to see his mommy. Sarah visits Johnny at the hospital, and they have a debate about how Sarah’s been the previous five decades. Soon afterwards, Johnny leaves the hospital and goes to live with his dad. Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums. The Dead Zone is more of a drama than a horror, with some science fiction elements thrown in, but what is truly terrifying are the parallels that can be drawn between Greg Stillson, the politician that Johnny forsees causing a nuclear war, and Donald Trump. The similarities are so eerie! King MUST have some some Johnny Smith powers of this own!

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Johnny Smith wakes from a coma with the psychic ability to read a person when he touches them. Will he use this ability for good or for selfish reasons? And what's the deal with this Greg Stillson character that's swiftly becoming a heavy hitter in the political realm?

Ahora, la sinopsis me llamó muchísimo la atención desde siempre, pero a medida que leía me decepcionaba mucho porque pensaba que era una trampa para el lector; donde este creía que esa sería la trama principal pero se estrellaría con otra cosa distinta, pero no del todo mala. Sin embargo, Greg Stillson sí fue un villano en la obra, con sus dotes de grandeza y sus actos descarados y aberrantes... pero al fin y al cabo no fue un villano con mucha relevancia. Él simplemente aportó algo indudable en el clímax de la trama: fue la desicion más díficil e importante de Johnny. Al principio, me decepcionó mucho que no fuera tanta su importancia como había pensado, pero una vez que terminé el acto final comprendí el por qué.By 1970, Johnny is now a high school teacher in eastern Maine. After visiting a county fair with his girlfriend, Sarah, and eerily winning repeatedly at the wheel of fortune, Johnny is involved in a car accident on his way home which lands him in a coma for four and a half years. Upon waking, Johnny finds that he has suffered neural injury, but when he touches people and objects, he is able to tell them things that they did not know. I'm so glad coming out of this that I finally got round to it as it is yet another great King adaptation worthy of its acclaim. The Dead Zone was the strangest experience of my rereading experiment thus far. It's the first book that is totally different to my memories of it; to the point where I even doubted that I had read it, and hadn't just watched the (admittedly excellent) David Cronenberg movie adaptation too much. I had read it, though – I still have the original copy to prove it – but it had slipped from my mind almost completely. (Into the dead zone?) Why? Maybe because, structurally, it's easily the strangest book King had, until this point, attempted to write; and maybe because, unlike other King (not Bachman) novels of the time, it doesn't really have a bad guy to focus on and drive the narrative. Not that it's any the worse for that, mind you … This was certainly a thrilling adventure, and at times it even made me think. If I had that kind of ability, if I could see things happening down the road, how would I handle it? What decisions would I be willing to make? It was cool to read a King book and get myself all mixed up in a wild story, but I also came away thinking about life just a smidge. That doesn’t always happen with this guy. Sometimes it’s vampires and werewolves. Other times it’s dead zones and saving people.

Years ago, I watched the movie staring Christopher Walken that was made in 1983. I was a bit surprised by some of the differences in the book vs movie. When Johnny comes out of his coma, he has the ability/curse of being able to touch someone or something owned by that person (psychometry) and see pieces of their future. Some key elements always seem to be missing, and those murky parts Johnny calls The Dead Zone. Dodd ( b. 1978; d. 2001) nearly murdered Allison Connover, but wound up killing Stacey Shephard instead. The next day, he took Johnny Smith's statement when he and Bruce Lewis tried to report Allison Connover missing. Like in the novel, Johnny Smith assists the sherrif in the solving of several rape-stranglings of various women. He is able to expose him as the serial killer. Before they can arrest him, he commits suicide. The FBI agent is killed by a car bomb. Meanwhile, Johnny's warnings that a disaster will occur at his pupil's graduation party are ignored by some, leading to several deaths. Now believing he must take more decisive action to prevent nuclear war, and learning his headaches are the result of a brain tumor, Johnny buys a rifle to kill Stillson. At the next rally, Stillson begins his speech and Johnny shoots from a balcony. He misses and is wounded by guards. Stillson grabs a young child and holds him up as a human shield. A bystander photographs Stillson's act. Unable to shoot a child, Johnny is shot twice by the bodyguards. He falls off the balcony, mortally wounded. Dying, Johnny touches Stillson a final time. He feels only dwindling impressions but knows the terrible future has been prevented. When published, the picture of Stillson using a child as a shield ends his political career.The cast are on point and Lom who is famous for his villianous characters (Pink Panther for example) is highly likeable and steals every scene he's in. Ed Glosser, Trivial Psychic", a Saturday Night Live sketch featuring Christopher Walken that parodies the film The supporting cast, however, is a bit of a mixed-bag in terms of quality and memorability. Roger Chatsworth, for instance, a wealthy man who hires Johnny as a tutor, is complex and multifaceted. There were times when I expected him to act in rote, stereotypical ways, and he didn’t, which is always a nice surprise. The relationship between Johnny and Dr. Sam Weizak is also effective, conjuring a real sense of mutual affection. Magistrate, Tony (2003). "Defining Heroic Codes of Survival". Hollywood's Stephen King. New York City: Palgrave MacMillan. p.120. ISBN 0-312-29321-6.

No se dejen llevar solo por la sinopsis (como me pasó a mí). La historia es mucho más que eso; lo vemos todo con los ojos del protagonista, a personajes con miedos e inseguridades pero con decisiones que van dejando marca, sea para bien o para mal. La historia de Johnny Smith es triste, cautivadora, reflexiva, emotiva y en cierta parte tranquilizante. Es una historia donde gran mayoría de los personajes no se olvidan y eso es gracias al protagonista. In the novel, the phrase "dead zone" refers to the part of Johnny's brain that is irreparably damaged, resulting in his dormant psychic potential awakening. When some information in Johnny's visions is beyond his perception, he considers that information as existing "in the dead zone." In the film adaptation, the phrase "dead zone" is that part of his psychic vision that is missing—a blank area that he cannot see. This "dead zone" refers to an outcome that is not yet determined, meaning Johnny can change the future. Production [ edit ] Development [ edit ] The Dead Zone was initially under production by Lorimar Film Entertainment At the rally, Stillson begins his speech and Johnny attempts to shoot Stillson, but misses and is wounded by Stillson's bodyguards. Before he can fire again Stillson grabs a young child and holds him up as a human shield. Johnny pauses, unable to shoot, and is shot twice by the bodyguards, falling off the balcony and fatally injuring himself. A young photographer successfully photographs Stillson using the child as a shield, a picture that it is implied destroys Stillson's political future when published. Dying, Johnny touches Stillson a final time but feels only dwindling impressions and knows that the terrible future Stillson would bring around as President has been prevented.After watching and falling for the character John Smith- in the 1983 movie THE DEAD ZONE, I decided to search out the book that it was based on. I had never heard of Stephen King- I had read a lot of mysteries, but had never read a horror novel. To me this was the perfect start into the genre. It is suspenseful and gripping without being gory. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three-and-a-half stars, describing The Dead Zone as by far the best of the half-a-dozen cinematic adaptations of King's novels to that date. He praised Cronenberg's direction for successfully weaving the supernatural into the everyday, and noted believable performances by the entire cast, especially Walken: "Walken does such a good job of portraying Johnny Smith, the man with the strange gift, that we forget this is science fiction or fantasy or whatever and just accept it as this guy's story." [29] Janet Maslin of The New York Times referred to the film as "a well-acted drama more eerie than terrifying, more rooted in the occult than in sheer horror." [30] Robin Wood stated that it was the first film by Cronenberg that he could admire and called it a "healthy development". [31]