Apr 01 2009
RIDING THE BULLET
Quick, who else has seen this movie?
PLOT
Alan Parker is just your typical college student in the 1960s who smokes too much pot and is a little too involved with his girlfriend. When she breaks up with him on his birthday, he goes home, draws a bath and slits his wrists just as she breaks in with a surprise party. Later she gives him 2 tickets to a John Lennon concert and tells him the breakup wasn’t serious, but he realizes that she’s lying to make him feel better. He makes plans with his buddies to attend the concert, but gets a call that his mom’s in the hospital after a stroke so he decides to skip the concert and hitchhike home. He gets picked up by Nicky Katt (as great as ever) who’s a paranoid draft dodger that wears a wig so he looks more like a hippie. He ends up wandering the streets, having visions of people and places until he’s picked up by an older man. Finally he gets picked up by an odd man named George and realizes that there’s definitely something wrong…
TRIVIA
Directed by Mick Garris and based on a short story by Stephen King. He’s also done the King adaptations The Stand, The Shining, Sleepwalkers and Desperation.
THOUGHTS
I’m betting that a good portion of people who read this have never heard of Riding the Bullet, which is completely understandable. It does have some familiar names in it like Erika Christensen, Barbara Hershey and Jonathon Jackson, but the movie itself isn’t very popular. Apparently it was cut as a theatrical release, then had its debut on the USA Network before disappearing into DVD heaven. I doubt I’d even know it if I hadn’t been trying to complete my Stephen King collection.
Surprisingly Riding the Bullet really isn’t that bad of a movie. David Arquette is the real highlight, though he doesn’t turn up until ½-¾ of the way through the movie. He plays menacing and camp in a way that kind of sets off the movie. I read the short story not too long ago though and I couldn’t help but notice that the movie takes too long to get going. In the story, his meeting of George/David Arquette takes place about halfway through because it’s a major point, but here it doesn’t have the same impact. It’s probably one of the better Stephen King adaptations from recent years though. Plus it has a really great soundtrack, full of 60s music, which I really love.
I don’t think any of his short stories were adapted that well into a movie format. They tend to add too much subplot and other things to flesh out the story and it usually doesn’t work.