Pet Sematary
Published by Scooter February 22nd, 2006 in Possessed Children, The Supernatural, When Animals Attack.This movie wasn’t actually about a pet sematary, which I found sort of annoying. I pictured zombie cats and goldfish coming back to attack people, but what I got was much worse. No, I never read the book, and no, I never plan to. In fact, I’ve never read any of Stephen King’s books, but I keep thinking maybe I should. I know people from the lowliest trailer dwellers to the snobbiest Ivy League nerds who worship the books of this Cheesemeister, and I was almost tempted to fork over the $8.00 library fine I owe to see what the mystique was.
I didn’t bother. After seeing Pet Sematary, the mystique was lost. Denise Crosby’s hair is pleasantly monotone in this cheese fest of fondue-swimming-pool proportions. It begins as the happy Creed family move to a sleepy little New England house, which for some reason has Spanish moss growing around it. There is a mysterious path leading into the woods, and Jud (Fred Gwynne, aka Herman Munster,) the friendly elderly neighbor, eventually shows them what’s down there- the Pet Sematary. Why is it spelled wrong? Who knows? It doesn’t figure into the plot much anyway. We do find out that the road between Jud’s and the Creeds’ houses is very, very busy. The same big tanker truck whizzes by at all hours of the night. The Pet Sematary is for the roadkill victims of the trucks.
Ellie, the whiny little girl has a cat named Church, (short for Winston Churchill) that she loves. Eventually, poor Church ends up a road pizza on Jud’s lawn. Jud shows Louis, the Dad (Dale Midkiff) an Indian burial ground, beyond the Pet Sematary, which Victor, the Bloody Ghost warned him not to go to. Victor is a road accident victim that Louis tried to save. Being dead, and therefore an expert on all things pertaining to the supernatural, he shows up a lot and warns people of danger. Anyway, Jud and Louis bury Church, and the next day…poof! He’s back! But he isn’t the same little kitty. He’s much meaner.
Gage, the Creeds’ toddler son, gets the same treatment when he, too, is flattened by a truck. Now, Gage was the 171st most popular boy’s name in America in 1998, and it’s all due to this movie. Why anyone would want to name a baby after a reanimated dead kid is beyond me, but anyway… Gage isn’t the same adorable toddler when resurrected. He enjoys the taste of flesh and has a lot of fun with daddy’s scalpel. He runs around brandishing the scalpel with an evil scowl- it’s priceless.
Anyway, Louis thinks Gage went bad because he was dead too long before he was resurrected. Rachel (his wife) has only been dead a few minutes, will she be the same again? What do you think? Will she kick butt all over her dead sister whom she never liked? That figures into the plot. When she was a little girl, Rachel’s sister Zelda (actually played by Andrew Hubatsek?!?) was dying of Bad Special Effects, oops I mean, spinal meningitis. She died while Rachel was left alone with her. But the sad thing was, Rachel wanted her to die. Because of this small subplot, Zelda is going to come back from the dead to get even.
This film is full of bad special effects, cheesy acting and just overall badness. You’ll be really annoyed at the little girl, especially, who has whining down to a science. I actually found myself rooting for the homicidal Gage, who goes after the bland caricatures of his parents. Don’t miss Steve himself in a cameo appearance as a preacher. Nope, Stephen is actually a worse actor than the little girl. At least the little girl has some oomph!
Pet Sematary…
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!
I seen this movie and it was great. The way that little boy died just stained my mind of what he must have looked like in the end.