A busy road, a wandering cat, a curious little boy and an ancient Indian burial ground that has gone sour – not a good combination . . .

. . .well maybe not for the Creed family, but the combination certainly works for Stephen King’s Pet Sematary.

We meet the Creed family – Louis (Dale Midkiff), Rachel (Denise Crosby), Ellie (Blaze Berdhal) and Gage (Miko Hughes) – as they are pulling into their new home in small town U.S.A. All looks wonderful in the new neighborhood until Gage almost gets run over by a passing semi. Thankfully neighbor, Jud Crandall (Fred Gwyne – aka Herman Munster) makes it across the street in time to whisk the beautiful Gage to safety. He also then takes the time to warn his new neighbors about the dangers of this particular stretch of road which has made many a pet owner sad on one occasion or another.

The next day Jud takes the whole family down the path in their yard to the local Pet Sematary which holds a lot of victims of the road between their two houses. It is easy to see from the beginning that Rachel has some sort of weird phobia about death. When the reason why comes out later in the film it is one of the absolutely most terrifying scenes of the entire movie for me.

His first day at work at the local college, Louis tries to save a young man Victor Pascow (Brad Greenquist) who was hit by a semi out in front of the school. Pascow then tries to warn Louis and his family that the barrier between the pet cemetery and the Indian burial ground was not meant to be crossed – that the ground beyond the pet cemetery had soured.

Unfortunately for Louis he does not heed Pascow’s advice and after Ellie’s cat Church gets run over while she is away he follows Jud up to the ancient burial ground and buries Church. But when Church comes back, he is not quite the same cat that he was before his little accident. This should have made Louis understand about the burial ground being soured and you would think that this would make him heed the advice of the recently deceased Pascow. Unfortunately for the Creed family Gage next becomes a victim of the speeding semis and Louis cannot see through his grief that burying Gage as he did Church would be a big mistake. Even after Jud tried to warn him of how a young townsman had once been buried up there and of the horrible thing he became.

Pet Sematary was an extremely good film. Even today it stood up for me as it did when I first viewed it in the late eighties, early nineties. The characters were all very well developed – even Pascow the helpful ghost whose character held my biggest worries that he would come off as a bit weird and cheesy in the film was very well done and made a lot of sense. I loved that he played a much larger role in the film rather than he did in the book. I liked how when Rachel was coming back to the house after Gage’s funeral Pascow helped her the whole way, but she never actually saw him and neither did any of the other people in any of the scenes. And don’t even get me started on Zelda (Andrew Hubatsek – interestingly enough he was chosen for the role of Zelda because they could not find a woman skinny enough for the part), Rachel’s sister who was suffering from spinal meningitis. That character just freaked me right the heck out!

That character single handedly gave me nightmares for MONTHS! Just talking about her gives me the creeps. I still have nightmares to this day of opening up my bedroom door and seeing her sleeping on the bed, then snapping to attention and speaking in that awful voice.

I would definitely recommend a viewing, especially for King fans. This is by far one of his best novels in my opinion if not the best.

Enjoy!