It's time for another Saturday Night Special in The Dungeon, and tonight's special feature was once again brought to my attention by my good friend in Berlin, D.J., musician, and all around good egg, Lord Litter!
"The Dead Zone" was originally a novel written by famed horror author Stephen King in 1979, and the TV show was based on it! It was only his seventh novel, and the fifth penned under his real name. "Rage" in 1977, and "The Long Walk" in 1979 were written using the name Richard Bachman!
Fairly simple, but effective to start with, the story of "The Dead Zone" centers around this young man named Johnny Smith. Johnny has just banged his head on the hard ice!
Johnny grows up to be a very hands on school teacher, who does things like encourage his students to climb trees and such. Johnny Smith is played by the very affable Anthony Michael Hall!
Johnny's girlfriend is also a teacher at the same school. Her name is Sarah Bracknell and is played by the lovely pixie Canadian Nicole (Lieutenant Ezri Dax) de Boer. They are really a cute couple. Here they are about to embarrassingly get caught kissing in the broom closet!
Johnny Smith's home looks to me like something right out of a Stephen King novel, what's up with that?
I've always like Michael Anthony Hall as an actor ever since his "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club," "Weird Science" days. He's always been good at playing a sweet and innocent guy, which is exactly what Johnny Smith is.
"Step right up, come on in, see the show, see things you've never imagined before, there's Mysterical Sights to be seen!"
The wheel of luck just might turn unfortunate when the story is written by Stephen King!
This will be about the last time this happy couple's life together will make sense for either of them!
Johnny didn't plan on going out in a blaze of glory, it just worked out that way! He was just going to go get some video tapes to watch!
Six years later, after everybody has completely given up on him, Johnny Smith comes out of a coma!
Sarah never stopped loving Johnny, and she was pregnant when he died, so she ended up getting married to Sheriff Walt Bannerman as played by Chris (Beowulf) Bruno.
When Sarah gets the news that Johnny has come out of his coma, she understandably doesn't know what to think. She loves her husband, but her feeling for Johnny never went away either.
Sarah finally finds the strength to visit Johnny, and tell him that he has a son, but the real story is, since coming out of the coma, Johnny now is a visionary who can see into the past and the future!
I'm really looking forward to watching all three seasons. If you have a Prime account, all three seasons stream for free. Just for the record, "The Dead Zone" was also released as a movie in 1983 with Christopher Walken as Johnny Smith, and Brooke Adams as Sarah Bracknell, then it really started getting weird with deviations on the title like "Zone Of The Dead" in 2009, which was a completely unrelated story! Now it's time for me to step back into my time machine!
No comments:
Post a Comment