Technologies of Fright: Christine, Maximum Overdrive, the Running Man, the Mangler, the Night Flier

Abstract

One of the more curious aspects about the films examined in this book so far is how few of them actually fit the mold of the “typical” horror movie. Silver Bullet is the only example where there is the threat of a recognizable horror monster—the werewolf—at the epicenter of the narrative. The monsters that most frequently emerge from Stephen King’s imagination would appear to wear decidedly human faces: They form portraits of severe mental illness (Annie Wilkes, Louis Creed, Jack Torrance); out-of-control illustrations of bureaucratic perversion and violence (Warden Norton and his prison guards, commandant Kurt Dussander and his adolescent protégé, and contemporary versions of Nazi mentality employed by American governmental agencies such as The Shop); and postadolescent rage (Ace Merrill and his gang of thugs; Chris Hargenson and her fiendish allies, who are far more monstrous than their victim, “creepy Carrie”). It is not that King is averse to recalling from the shadows the supernatural archetypes of the horror genre—in fact, this chapter will acquaint the reader with several versions of the vampire in mechanized form—but