Focusing On Fear Street: One Evil Summer

WELCOME TO FOCUSING ON FEAR STREET WITH THERESTHEGIRL

Book # 25 of the Fear Street Series

Published July 1994

Cover Art by Bill Schmidt

The cover may not be very big here but we have our main antagonist Chrissy Minor laughing evilly in her room as she holds a cat that is not very happy to be there. A moon at night and a lighthouse in the setting of Seahaven which is not in Shadyside but our protagonist Amanda Conklin lives on the titular street. I also like how an evil wind is blowing the curtains of the room and the teal coloring is nice with the popping yellow title. I found a couple of German versions with some nice artwork as always from either an original or a reprint or an omnibus edition:

Of course summer settings with a dark foreboding tone. The top is a little brighter but one simple spilled drink tells us danger is afoot. The second one has the bright hue of sunset but it's ominous with abandoned beach gear and a spooky lighthouse in the distance. The only other cover I could find was for the Brazilian/Portuguese edition and well I just love it! Check this out:

This actually does happen in the book! The blonde Chrissy is giving a smack down to brunette Amanda in the ocean with a speedboat and the cliffs in the background. Yes Chrissy is floating so this is not just a touch of awesome added to the cover. The sky in the background is just full of evil with those stormy tones! And for you male readers, hey a little skin from the ladies in some bared midriffs! This has to be my favorite even more than the original!

Taglines: On the front we have "Chrissy is perfect-perfectly evil." and on the back we have "Help! Wanted". The front is definitely better than the back and the little plot blurb will have you intrigued enough to read what's inside.

The First Line: "Amanda Conklin rolled over in bed. She opened her eyes and stretched slowly."

Not exactly gripping but we are introduced to our main character and we learn this isn't the beginning of the story. The first chapter tells us that Amanda is a juvenile detention center because apparently it's believed that she murdered someone but Amanda knows the real reason why she is there and we get the backstory as the main set up of the plot. So the Conklin family is heading off to Seahaven for the summer which is great except that Amanda sucks at algebra and has to attend summer school! I didn't know you could to summer school while on vacation I mean I had to come in on Saturdays for math workshops when I was in school but I could do that at the beach? Damn, I kind of want to live in this universe!

Amanda isn't the only one bummed because now her mother has to find a helper/nanny/babysitter to watch her eight year old brother Kyle and her three year old sister Merry because she can't. Apparently even going on vacation they plan on working a little and going out to dinner cocktail parties or something. So they arrive at the beach house to drop off their belongings but discover they need some food so Amanda's parents and her siblings go off into the town while Amanda stays behind to put their pet birds, Salt and Pepper, and their family cat, Mr. Jinx, out of their cages into their summer surroundings. A knock comes to the door where a pretty blonde girl named Chrissy Minor has come to answer Mrs. Conklin's ad and Amanda tells her not to leave as she tries to get her parents back home as Chrissy says she has another interview to get to. Amanda reaches them in time but she already has a bad feeling about Chrissy because the cat does not seem to like Chrissy.

Mr. Jinx hisses and reacts in fear at the girl and Amanda then sees unbeknown to Chrissy the girl hissing back in just the same aggressive fashion at the cat. Also, the birds don't chirp or sing around her either almost huddling together in a trance of fear. So this is a big red flag to me because animals are a very good judge of character and the flag goes even more haywire when Amanda's mother can't reach Chrissy's references and decides to hire her anyway. Amanda calls Mom out on this and gets a lecture about being just as irresponsible for failing algebra and putting her parents in the situation for help in the first place...harsh!

Of course Chrissy gets the job and the family falls in love with her but Amanda is still wary because of the animals and the fact that they still can't reach the other families that Chrissy has worked for. When she heads to summer school things look up for Amanda as there is a very cute guy in the class named Dave Malone who gets to be her partner. Being a local, Amanda asks Dave about Chrissy and he says he doesn't know anyone by that name or any other of the names that Chrissy gave for her aunt and her cousin. Later that day, while the family is playing badminton, a car almost kills Kyle and Merry as it lurches up onto the lawn! The driver says he couldn't control the speed as if the vehicle had a mind of its own and poor Mr. Jinx is the only casualty, which devastates Amanda. She thinks she sees an evil smile of satisfaction on Chrissy's face at the cat's death and later in the evening, Amanda swears she sees Chrissy floating off the floor in her room!

Her parents think Amanda is just stressed at the death of her pet and that maybe she thinks Chrissy is taking her place but Amanda is sure that there is something off and evil about Chrissy. The girl has old newspaper clippings about the death of her parents by carbon monoxide poisoning and how her twin sister Lilith is in a coma...what is she hiding? Amanda calls back to Shadyside to ask her friend Suzi if she can look up some more information than Amanda can find in the small town of Seahaven and she agrees while Amanda seems to be developing a summer romance with Dave. She tells him about Chrissy and he doesn't think she is crazy at all, they go out to a shed on an island where Dave and his brothers have taken over an old hunters' cabin. They kiss and Amanda has to hold on to his waist as they take a wave runner to and back and it's so sweet that Amanda has someone on her side. Dave also says he has a way that might get Chrissy out of the house by placing a hunting knife in her drawers that will have her parents kicking the girl out once they see it.

Getting back to the house, Chrissy throws herself at Dave and he uses this to distract her while Amanda can plant the knife but things take a turn to the weird and horrible as blood sprays out of the knife, all over Amanda and Chrissy's clothing and then the birds are found with their throats slit! So now basically Amanda's parents think their daughter is going crazy, killing the birds and trying to frame Chrissy for it along with everything else and send her to a shrink. Good Lord Amanda just can not get a break! Amanda knows that Chrissy has something sinister up her sleeve and that her family is in danger but what can she do when no one believes her? Is she really going crazy with jealousy or are her instincts right? Why is Chrissy out to get the Conklin family and when will her charade finally stop?

This was a very hard Fear Street not to spoil for those who haven't read it and it is a very suspenseful story with supernatural elements. Think of it as a combination of Jennifer's Body and The Hand That Rocks The Cradle with some of the same plot points here and there but not exactly like the first and teenage rehash of the latter. You know how The Best Friend is like Single White Female? Go with that! The ending is okay I suppose but I think a good twist might have made it a little better be it a downer ending or not. There is also a little bit of maybe inspiration from the Lois Duncan novel Summer of Fear and not anything outright plagiarized so in a nutshell a good read. When it comes to characters, I'm not too fond of Amanda's parents and we don't get a lot of time focusing on her younger brother and sister so I'm neutral on them.

I know the parents aren't really that bad but they don't really do anything in my honest opinion to deserve any praise. Chrissy is our villain but she just seems like a normal mean girl, alpha bitch so I don't really love her or hate her knowing her motives and back story either way. The only characters I like are Amanda and Dave because you are suppose to identify and feel for Amanda and well Dave, he is the only one who believes Amanda. They have chemistry and even if you think it is far fetched for him not to believe this girl he doesn't know is crackers, I still like him anyway.

Body Count: Well we have one dead kitty cat and two murdered birds :( Animal violence in books I don't get but it's just another way to kick Amanda when she is down. As for human fatalities, one definite and two maybes with two of them completely out of left field and totally unnecessary. After The Thrill Club, this is another Fear Street novel where a character death made me kind of sad so if I just gave away an unintentional spoiler...sorry :(

Cameo Time!: Blink and you'll miss it but Carter Phillips from The Cheater calls Amanda with some bad news. (Shutting my mouth as to why...)

SHADYSIDE HIGH TIME CAPSULE

Not to sound cheesy but it depends on what your taste in movies and music is whether you will agree this was one evil summer for both forms of media! In the book, Amanda is said to be wearing a red and black Pearl Jam t-shirt. She's got good taste in music I'll give her that so maybe there are some other songs to enjoy in the same vein:

There's also some stuff that I like:

One I just can't resist putting here:

And a song that truly is evil (middle school dances were evil too!) and terrifying:

When it comes to movies, they mention a totally fictional horror film called Blood Surfer. Sounds interesting but I can think of some better films to watch:

Before I finish, there is a movie from this time that was so evil it made one of the greatest movie critics go berserk:

NEXT TIME, NEXT BLOG: Might take a break from Fear Street with my next idea or maybe not. I guess only The Mind Reader would know for sure...wouldn't you like to know?

The Fury

Sometimes you discover movies in many different ways and you are surprised when you learn that some movies you watch are based on books. In 1976, author John Farris published a book titled The Fury about two young children with telekinetic/psychic powers wanted by a creepy government agency that two years later was made into a film.

The film is helmed by director Brian DePalma, has music composed by the legendary John Williams and stars Hollywood acclaimed actor Kirk Douglas. Sounds good so far doesn't it? I saw the film on the Fox Movie Channel when I lived with my mother around Halloween and curiously checked it out when I saw it starred Amy Irving, who played Sue Snell in the film version of Carrie (one of my favorite films).

What's The Plot?
Government agent Peter Sandza (Kirk Douglas) and his son Robin are enjoying their time in The Middle East of the late 1970s before Peter plans to retire and take his son back to The States. Robin is not like other teens his age...he has psychic powers and is afraid he won't fit in. Suddenly, terrorists attack the beach and Robin witnesses the death of his father but all is not what it seems. Peter is alive and finds out that his fellow "agent" and friend Ben Childress (John Cassavetes) set up the entire scenario to isolate Robin from him so he can use the young man's powers to train psychics as potential weapons.

A year later in Chicago, Gillian Bellaver (Amy Irving) possesses the same powers as Robin with one draw back that close contact while she is using her powers causes people to bleed ... heavily. She heads to the Paragon Institute as a volunteer in their study of telepathy and befriends Hester, an employee who just so happens to be Peter Sandza's girlfriend/lover and his eyes and ears inside the Institute. Peter is trying to find Robin, who attended the Institute and supposedly died in an incident there, knowing he is alive when Hester tells him that Gillian is seeing visions of Robin and feeling a strong connection with her almost "psychic twin".

Peter may be in for a surprise when he finally finds Robin because all of Childress' experiments on Robin have changed him into an unstable psychopath and his power is growing as "The Fury" is building up inside of him. He can also feel Gillian and the suspense is finally going to come to and end...but who will survive when all is said and done.

Seeing as The Fury and Carrie share so many similarities it's a no-brainer that I adore this movie and why wouldn't I? John William's score is great as always in any film he does and Brian DePalma is a wonderful director with his suspenseful yet sometimes dreamy atmosphere and of course everyone knows that at the end of the film a man is literally torn to pieces by an explosion of psychic power which is one of my favorites in all of cinematic history! Kirk Douglas is a great actor and his portrayal of Peter Sandza is sympathetic and comical and Amy Irving is a rare gem in the acting world that her most famous role as Sue Snell is eclipsed here and makes me appreciate her even more to check out other films she has done. John Cassavetes is as always a great actor and I love him as the antagonist that I hate him as much as I did in Rosemary's Baby with his almost infectiously smarmy charm.

There is never a dull moment in this movie and The Fury as a film is much better compared to its literary counterpart. I picked up a copy of the novel at a flea market for cheap and didn't even make it through the first chapter before the novel headed to my local Goodwill which is bad for someone who has such a love of the written word that rivals her love of film, television and music. If you ever get around to finding The Fury in a book bin, you can give it a shot but you would be better to peruse your video store instead.

Next Blog: For a change of pace, I'm leaving you in the dark about the next film I talk about. Guess you will just have to wait patiently...until next we meet.

Carrie: Movie/Book Review

It has been awhile since I posted a movie blog review but I wanted to take enough time to get together my thoughts and ideas together on how I was going to write about one of my favorite films and books of all time. So here it is...

Carrie was Stephen King's first published novel and it was the first of his novels that I read and I have became a Stephen King fan ever since! I found the tie-in novel to the film version that was released in 1976 (the novel published in 1974) at my aunt's garage sale because it belonged to one of my older cousins. I was 11 or maybe 12 when I read it and then saw the movie when TNT still had its MonsterVision late on Saturday nights and completely took to the film. Why did it grab my attention so much? Maybe it is because the main character is a tormented young girl mostly mocked and the target of humiliation by her fellow peers and I can relate to that part of the main plot to Carrie.

The only difference between the titular Carrie White and myself is that Carrie possesses telekinesis, a latent but very potent ability to control and move objects by pure thought in situations that cause anger and distress. As you could guess having a power like this while in high school might not be such a good idea when one is tormented constantly and unlike me, Carrie not only suffers at school but at home as well. My home life compared to Carrie White's is more or less a basket of roses as she is abused by her overtly Christian Fundamentalist mother, Margaret, who sees everything as a sin...which includes her own daughter as she was the result of her own husband raping her in their otherwise "sexless" marriage.

The story and movie are driven by an incident of Carrie's everyday abuse when she starts her first period at 17 and having never been told of menstruation by her mother thinks she is dying. Her fellow female classmates decide not to sympathize but torment her instead and throw tampons and sanitary napkins at Carrie as she is in hysterics. The gym teacher stops the girls, lead by the very cruel Chris Hargensen, and later punishes them with detention in a boot camp style environment and most of the girls develop remorse for their actions...except for Chris who refuses and is banned from attending the prom.

One very remorseful girl, Sue Snell, is ashamed of her actions and decides to make up for not only the most recent incident but the years of torment Carrie has experienced by setting the girl up with her own boyfriend to take her to the senior prom. Tommy Ross, Sue's handsome, athletic yet academic boyfriend goes along with the plan out of his love for Sue and escorts Carrie to the prom where it seems that Carrie is actually beginning to fit in. She arrives in a gorgeous homemade dress and has even fixed up her appearance to look not only completely different but beautiful enough that Tommy starts to fall in love with Carrie as well. It seems like Carrie will finally have that one perfect night but she doesn't realize that Chris and her delinquent boyfriend, Billy Nolan, have one more little nasty prank in mind for the girl who has always been the butt of the joke and the class outcast. Even if you have never seen Carrie or read it, you know that a bucket of pig blood becomes the last straw and soon, a town and the people in it will pay a price for one girl's torment, one girl's hatred and one girl's kindness

This is the basic plot of the film and novel even though the style of the book is written more or less as a flashback set in the frame of a fictional documents such as interviews and excerpts from magazines and books documenting the night of Carrie's destruction, dubbed "Black Prom". Since so much is going on in the book, the reader will have to pay attention but Stephen King segues very nice and smooth between what is the present and what is the past with helpful headings for the "fictional" documents and the normal narrative goes in his delicious style of the omnipotent third person.

The 1974 novel and the 1976 film get a meshing of sorts in the 2002 remake (same plot and fictional interviews) where the effects are better but most of the acting is bland and the modern references are just horrendous. Now, I actually own the 2002 remake and it is only because I have that much appreciation for the novel that made me fall in love with Stephen King. Also I relate to its main character so much that I could watch anyone play Carrie whether they are as fabulous as Sissy Spacek (1976) or as hard trying as Angela Bettis (2002). There was of course a sequel to the 1976 film in 1999 titled The Rage: Carrie 2 but besides the reference to Carrie White directly, a cameo by Amy Irving as Sue Snell and more telekinetic outcast girl with religious mother, I view it as film of its own merit and don't know if you could really call it canonical even if parts of it fit with the original film plot more than the novel.

I'll eventually review The Rage: Carrie 2 in one of my future blogs but I wanted to focus mostly on the original Carrie because of its great sentimental and personal value. True, I don't have Carrie's telekinetic gifts or over bearingly religious mother and I am no longer in high school but I still bear the same emotional scars almost like a stain of pig's blood you can never get out. No matter how much time passes even though the stain may fade, it never dies...sin never dies whether it is your own or those brought upon you by others. I hate to end something on such a serious note but...thank you, Stephen King for not giving up on this novel so that it could be made in to one of my favorite films of all time.

On a less serious note: there is a little bit of comedy in the films and just enough horror to enjoy the movie if you think I'm trying to make it overly dramatic or anything. In fact...it's bloody good fun.

Next blog: The Brothers Grimm