Can Stephen King bring horror back to TV?

Miraculous healings, corpses covered by swarms of ants, an artist afflicted with terrifying telepathic powers and haunted by the dead. It’s the latest frightfest from Stephen King, the most trusted brand name in the horror genre. His new 15-hour miniseries, “Kingdom Hospital,” premieres March 3 on ABC.

Though inspired by Lars von Trier’s acclaimed Danish series “The Kingdom,” the American version has lots of signature King touches, including the character Peter Ritter (played by Jack Coleman of “Dynasty”), who’s brought to the hospital when he’s run over by a drug-impaired driver, which happened to King himself in 1999.

King has brought his work to television roughly a dozen times over the years, with varying success. The best of his small-screen set was the 1994 miniseries of his sprawling post-apocalypse novel “The Stand,” but like King’s “The Green Mile,” that was a fantasy with dark overtones rather than an outright scarefest.

However, TV is now taking to King’s pure-horror works with a bloody vengeance. Besides “Kingdom Hospital,” there’ll soon be a new miniseries of his vampire novel “Salem’s Lot,” and ABC plans on an adaptation of his Richard Bachman book “Desperation” in 2005.

King’s previous attempts to bring pure horror to TV have been markedly less sanguine. This goes especially for the pointless TV retreads of “Carrie” and “The Shining,” which had already been perfected on film and seem more like attempts to capitalize on King’s profitable marquee name. It’s nice to see that “Salem’s Lot” is being tried again, though — the first TV adaptation, in 1979, was a disaster despite the directorial effort of “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” helmer Tobe Hooper. A nonsensical script and poor acting staked it long before it rose from its coffin.

Originally published on msnbc.com March 1, 2004. Read the complete article.

The ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy triumphs

Tolkien fans around the world are counting down to Dec. 17, when at long last we’ll know the answer to a hugely important question — whether the final film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy will live up to all the expectation. (Oh, and also whether or not Frodo can destroy the evil ring of Sauron and save the world.)

We’ve been burned by cringe-worthy trilogies before, and the big thud of Matrix: Revolutions is still fresh in our minds. But director Peter Jackson’s got an even more difficult task than ensuring that Return of the King is a good wrap-up for the first two Rings films. He must satisfy the legions of admirers of J.R.R. Tolkien’s story, who are adamant that any film version should stay true to Tolkien’s original vision.

Originally published on msnbc.com Dec. 15, 2003. Read the complete article.

“Hubert Humphrey Was a Vampire!”

“So you’re telling me,” I ask the Pope of Witches, “that Hubert Humphrey was a vampire?”

“Yes, he actually was. Hubert was a very interesting person.”

So says Carl Llewellyn Weschcke. We are sitting in his spacious office at the St. Paul headquarters of Llewellyn Worldwide, the largest independent occult publishing house in America. At age seventy-two, he’s a sage and grandfatherly figure, like a well-groomed Father Christmas or Albus Dumbledore. He has been president of Llewellyn for forty-three years. The ascendance of his company has both mirrored and fueled the rise of New Age from an obscure fringe phenomenon to the remarkably mainstream movement it is today. And because of his influence, the Twin Cities is one of the nation’s major pagan population centers. Just across town, in fact, the hugely popular Edge Fest conference kicks off later this month. Weschcke can take some small measure of credit—or blame, depending on your point of view.

The Weschcke family has for four generations combined business with an uncommon interest in unusual religions. Carl’s grandfather Charles was a successful pharmacist, patent-medicine inventor, and prominent theosophist who passed his views on to his son and grandson. As a young man, Carl felt his life’s work went somewhat beyond his grandpa’s herbal laxative, and in January 1960 he spent forty thousand dollars on a small mail-order astrology publisher, Llewellyn, and moved it from Los Angeles to St. Paul.

Unless he’s clairvoyant, Carl couldn’t have known how successful this would be. He tells me that if he’d only wanted to make money, he’d have done something else. But he was passionate about the occult, and he identified with the company so strongly that he literally took its name as his own. And his timing was perfect: Llewellyn may have been decidedly fringe in the Eisenhower era, but few people in the fifties guessed that the next decade would be…the sixties. Vision-questing hippies found their needs met in a steady stream of books with the distinctive crescent-moon logo on the spine.

Originally published Oct. 23, 2003 in Rake Magazine. Read the complete article.

Interview: Tony Hillerman

New Mexican mystery novelist Tony Hillerman has been the unofficial cultural ambassador of the Navajo Nation for more than 30 years. His Indian detectives, Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, have introduced thousands of white readers to the rich culture of the tribes of the American Southwest in bestsellers like A Thief of Time and Skinwalkers. Hillerman turns 78 this month, just in time for the release of his 16th Leaphorn & Chee novel, The Sinister Pig, which revolves around an evil billionaire, a murdered CIA agent and the oil pipelines on the U.S.-Mexico border. He’s hard at work on the 17th, with no plans to retire anytime soon.

Originally published in Rake Magazine April 24, 2003. Read the complete article.