Pet Sematary (1989)

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1989
Running Time	98:29
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (51:15)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Mary Lambert
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	Stephen King Dale Midkiff Fred Gwynne Denise Crosby Brad Greenquist Michael Lombard Miko Hughes Blaze Berdahl Susan Blommaert Donnie Greene
Case	?
RPI	$29.95	Music	Elliot Goldenthal The Ramones

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Hungarian Dolby Digital 1.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired German Swedish Danish Norwegian Finnish Dutch Bulgarian Icelandic Hungarian Turkish Arabic Romanian Polish Czech French Portuguese Hebrew Greek Croatian Italian Spanish Slovenian	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    You could almost say that the good Stephen King adaptations are the ones that have no Stephen King cameos in them. Of course, you would be neglecting Firestarter, Children of the Corn, Sometimes They Come Back and a few other stinkers, but Pet Sematary seems to qualify. The novel, a massive best-seller in its day, is a cracking good yarn, precisely because it "spirals down into darkness". I read the New English Library paperback in my teens and it scared the living poo out of me. The story is an updating of W.W. Jacobs' classic tale 'The Monkey's Paw' crossed with a Ray Bradbury chiller called 'The Small Assassin'. King left the finished manuscript in a drawer for three years before publication; it disturbed him that much. All of which raises the obvious question: Why have so many Stephen King's novels translated poorly to the silver screen?

    Fantasy writer and scenarist Harlan Ellison explains it all brilliantly in two slices of his film column Harlan Ellison's Watching. Since this great book is out of print, track down the more accessible Kingdom of Fear – The World of Stephen King. These two essays appear alongside many excellent pieces by the likes of Clive Barker and Michael McDowell. Pet Sematary itself hovers somewhere between Creepshow II and The Dark Half. Compared to its contemporaries and especially the sequel, Mary Lambert makes a reasonable go of it with a script by the Maine Man himself and a $11.5 million budget, but the film does have a number of fatal flaws.

    Doctor Louis Creed (Dale Midkiff) and his wife Rachel (Denise Crosby) arrive in Maine to start a new life with their two monsters, err, children Ellie (Blaze Berdahl) and Gage (Miko Hughes). Everything seems perfect, but before the engine in their station wagon cools, toddler Gage is snatched from the path of a speeding semi-trailer by neighbourly Jud Crandall (Fred Gwynne from The Munsters). To further illustrate the dangers of the highway, Jud takes the Creed family on a tour of the local Pet Sematary, where numerous kids have buried their beloved animals, the unfortunate cats and dogs flattened into fur rugs by the Orinco eighteen-wheelers passing by. After discussing Death and cat neutering with his family over breakfast, Louis tends to a shattered road accident victim called Victor Pascow (Brad Greenquist) on his first day at work. With a head that resembles a Big Mac thrown against a brick wall, Victor cautions Louis about dark and terrible things before flatlining the heart monitor. Being a story birthed by Stephen King, we know at this juncture that the Creeds won't be playing Happy Families for long, because behind the Pet Sematary, over the deadfall and through the forest, is another burial ground – one with the power to bring the dead back to life. But sometimes dead is better . . .

    Dead is an apt description of the acting prowess on offer, and it's the main reason why Pet Sematary fails. Take Dale Midkiff for instance, please! This telemovie uber-talent, who lulled us to sleep in Elvis and Me with his papery monotone voice, has all the passion and vitality of a Michael Bolton song. In Pet Sematary, he reaches new career lows as the doting father both torn and driven by tragedy. Either that, or constipation. Someone more competent, like Timothy Hutton from The Dark Half, would have worn this role like a glove. And what about Denise Crosby, that dramatic non-presence plucked from the Star Trek: Next Generation soundstages at Paramount? Looking distracted and rather butch, she is unconvincing as the mum and devoted wife saddled with emotional baggage. Still, playing off Dale Midkiff would not have inspired anyone to greatness. Child actors Blaze Berdahl (aged 8) and Miko Hughes (aged 2) jangle your nerves far more than the horror elements on offer. To be fair, the shooting schedule would not have granted many takes for anyone, let alone child actors and their idiosyncrasies. While the irritating Miss Berdahl has mercifully dropped off our radar screens, her co-star Miko Hughes has since appeared in Apollo 13, Wes Craven's New Nightmare, Kindergarten Cop, Zeus and Roxanne, and Spawn to name a few credits. Actually, his resume is looking healthier than the rest of the cast put together, with the exception of the late Fred Gwynne, who delivers a fine performance as the quintessential Stephen King character, Jud Crandall. He appears to be the only actor who understood the material and could pull it off.

    George Romero is another person who could have pulled it off. He was supposed to direct Pet Sematary but declined after spitting the dummy at producer and long-time associate Richard Rubenstein (Martin, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Thinner). In steps Mary Lambert, who made a name for herself directing Like a Virgin and Borderline for Madonna, as well as helming the decidedly comatose Siesta. Pet Sematary has a scattering of superb moments despite the woeful performances, including an optical effect that gives me the shivers every time. One speculates about the version Romero may have delivered, although like Pet Sematary, his adaptation of The Dark Half is hamstrung by supernatural concepts that are difficult to swallow even in print, which is why characterization in a Stephen King movie must be the absolute, primary and ultimate consideration. Otherwise, screams turn to yawns and horror turns to humour.

    Attempts to interpret Church the cat as an expression of Rachel's dissatisfaction with Louis fulfilling his manly duties, or seeing the whole film as a nightmare Pascow suffers under anaesthetic, are casual musings that all reached dead ends. Was King writing about his own worries? Nevertheless, the themes from the book are apparent in the film, which is no small victory. With one or two crazy sequences and a pleasing gore quotient, Pet Sematary is undemanding entertainment. At times shot like a TV movie of the week, with a clumsy segue into slasher film territory in the final act, Pet Sematary plods along much like Rachel's deformed sister Zelda: daring us to embrace her, warts and all.

Video

    From the crisp white opening credits superimposed over languid shots of the Pet Sematary, you know the transfer is going to be sharp and detailed, although not reference quality. Whenever film grain goes off the scale, there is a dramatic drop in resolution. Blacks are solid and shadow detail reveals much of the set decoration by Katharin Briggs and Kathe Klopp. Edge enhancement creeps in occasionally, but owing to the age of the film a slight amount of brittleness is to be expected.

    Colour saturation does its best with the cinematography by Peter Stein, which looks bold and vibrant in sunny outdoor shots, and quite drab in others. Colour bleed and low level noise are no problem at all.

    Film specks (black and white) pop up infrequently enough to be ignored. As reported for the US release, film grain runs riot in a number of shots, most notably during the early sweeps through the dimly-lit Pet Sematary and on the Paramount logo. The main offenders are concentrated in reel one. There are no compression artefacts apart from a mild amount of aliasing on hard edges and overhead powerlines, which are more conspicuous during grainy shots.

    The layer change at 51:15 is little bit jarring, depending on how fast your player refocuses. Mine is sluggish.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Dialogue is clear as a bell and undistorted. Instances of ADR are obvious in problematic surroundings, but the overall audio sync keeps time with the visuals. At one point, you will hear a particular vocal effect applied to Pascow's first ethereal sermon to Louis that would have been impossible on VHS . . . as Pascow floats up, his last warning to Louis does indeed issue from the ceiling. Eerie!

    Pet Sematary was an early assignment for maestro Elliot Goldenthal, who would later work on more prominent projects such as Interview with the Vampire, Heat, Demolition Man and Final Fantasy. His primitive but still effective compositions here are served well by the surround remix and higher fidelity that Dolby Digital offers. Stringed instruments, melancholy piano chords and children's choir vocals swell throughout the muscular soundfield. Both rock numbers by one of Stephen King's favourite band The Ramones are loud and punchy.

    Also taking advantage of the improved dynamic range are the sounds of dirty big tanker trucks barrelling down the road. The cumulative effect of these noisy drive-bys is guaranteed to set your nerves on edge, so turn up the volume to get the most from it. Generally speaking this is a busy and dynamic sound mix, with chirping crickets, loons, wind, cat screeches and other ambient sounds occupying various positions in the room. Directional effects across the front, sides and back of the soundstage are also plentiful, keeping the viewer's ears locked into the story, even though the mind may be planning a midnight raid on MacDonald's.

    Bass from synthesizers, diesel motors, thuds on wooden surfaces, inexplicable booming sounds in the forest and other causes underscore the soundtrack, lending it a sonic menace that outstrips the story itself.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menus

• English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack

• German Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack
• Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack
• Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack
• Hungarian Dolby Digital 1.0 soundtrack
• Various foreign subtitles

    Paramount have given us an almost definitive release on DVD. The anamorphic transfer does the freakshow visuals justice (not to mention making the bloodletting more vivid) and the 5.1 surround remix is probably way better than the film deserves. Even without extras this is a splendid pick-up for students of the danse macabre.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall