Once again Stephen King takes us into the world of mental powers, this time with pyrokinesis, in Firestarter.

More below the cut.

Just let me say, this movie makes me feel old. Drew Barrymore is playing a small child. Wow.

A quick synopsis: Firestarter opens with a father and his daughter being chased by the Keystone Kops version of the shadow government. They ditch these amateur hour G-men by, amongst other things, *getting in a taxi*

Only once they’ve lost this pair do the G-men think about covering the airport, which coincidentally is where they’re going. We learn in the taxi that the father can telepathically coerce people, making them see or do things, though with considerable effort. At the airport we see him demonstrate telekinesis as well, and then his daughter loses her temper and sets a man’s shoes on fire.

Hence the title of the film.

At some point we also learn the girl is named Charlie, and her dad… umm… *furious imdb’ing*

Her dad’s named Andy.

From here on there are a lot of spoilers, but I don’t think I can discuss this film much without spoiling things. Please be advised.

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Shortly thereafter we’re introduced to their pursuers, a sinister, yet very small, branch of the Federal Government called ‘The Shop’. The Shop is actually ‘The Bureau of Scientific Intelligence’ or something like that, and they’re the ones responsible for our enhanced pair. A few years back they conducted an experiment on some college volunteers, using what they thought was a relatively harmless hallucinogen, and it went terribly wrong. Two people developed superpowers and fled, having a little girl along the way.
Martin Sheen makes another appearance here, relatively fresh off of The Dead Zone. Sadly he doesn’t get nearly as much to do, and ends up as sort of a placeholder. He has a much more sinister subordinate named John Rainbird, played by George C. Scott. Scott does a pretty good job, but it’s just not the kind of movie to elevate really creepy acting.

Eventually The Shop tracks them down and kills her mother (Heather Locklear in a brief role) in an attempt to retrieve Charlie.

This is where I’d make my first digression to ask: Why?

Ok, you’re a secret government intelligence agency tracking three superpowered individuals. One can read minds (the mother, Vickie), one can coerce people (Andy), and one has an uncontrolled power to start fires (Charlie).

Which one would YOU make the highest priority target to capture? I can see an argument for either Vickie or Andy being intensely useful for any black government outfit. The girl? Come on. We already have control over fire! The military has about a thousand different ways to turn a village into charcoal, we don’t particularly need a volatile tot to set the third world aflame.

The Shop’s resident mad scientist, Dr. Wanless, has his reasons, believing that Charlie’s powers will grow exponentially as her brain advances. This might explain The Shop’s odd behavior, except that THEY DON’T BELIEVE HIM.

Back to the story though. Andy and Charlie go on the run, and find solace briefly at a farm run by Irv (played by Art Carney) and Norma (played by a sadly under-utilized Louise Fletcher). The Shop’s not far behind, and soon about thirty FBI looking guys show up to apprehend an incredibly dangerous pair of semi-superhero types.

And not one of them draws their gun. No special precautions are taken with a pair of superhumans. Then, when the kindly old farmer makes a stand for the Fourth Amendment with his rifle, they freak out and wing him. This leads to a rather large slaughter from Charlie.

Andy next takes Charlie to, and I swear I’m not making this up, the family cabin. A cabin that belonged to his father. Because The Shop would never think to look there.

Are you KIDDING ME? The government keeps track of who owns land! Of course they’d look there!

(As an academic aside, I remember reading a scholarly article when I was getting my poli-sci degree about the difficulties in creating functional governments/economies to fund them in Sub-Saharan Africa. The article argued that a lack of accurate records of land-ownership meant that landowners in Africa couldn’t use the equity in their properties to obtain financing and loans. The First World in essence doesn’t want to loan money to the Third World, they said, because they can’t get collateral. It was an interesting piece, and demonstrates that keeping real-estate records is, you know, one of the ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT)

Rainbird figures out a cunning plan to capture these two: he’s going to shoot them. From a distance. With tranquilizer darts.

Rainbird is the one competent agent in The Shop, ladies and gentlemen.

The Shop gets these two, holds them captive and conducts experiments to measure their powers. Rainbird gets close to Charlie by posing as a kindly janitor; Andy gets close to the head of The Shop, Sheen’s character, by pretending he’s lost his powers (a distinct possibility because his power damages his brain with each use). The Shop thinks they’ve turned Andy into a drug addict, Andy’s not swallowing his pills, and the next thing you know you have a dramatic confrontation between Rainbird, Andy and Charlie. Chaos ensues.

Ok, I don’t need to spoil the ending any further. There’s a lot to talk about with this one.

First, yes, I DID read this book. There are a number of changes, and they more or less cut my favorite part of the book (Andy’s drug addiction and process of dealing with it) down to nothing. Still, it’s a pretty faithful adaptation.

There are a lot of recognizable names in this movie. A LOT. Martin Sheen, George C. Scott, Louise Fletcher, Art Carney… they had a casting budget this time around. Oh, and of course, future big star Drew Barrymore.

Unfortunately most of these people don’t have a lot to do. Sheen just stands around, mostly. Scott’s pretty creepy but the movie doesn’t let him establish the mood much. Fletcher and Carney are barely in it. Heather Locklear’s here too, but only in flashbacks.

As for Charlie, well…Drew Barrymore does a decent job, but she’s just a tot so I would have cut her a lot of slack anyway.

The talent here just feels squandered. The movie rushes from place to place, set to set, Andy and Charlie running, Andy and Charlie hiding, Andy and Charlie running, etc. The directing and cinematography are flat and uninspired. Nothing catches your eye. Even the fire effects, and boy, they had a ton of fire effects, just feel tacked on. On the other hand, Andy’s powers are goofy. Whenever he uses them, he clutches his head, ruffling his big 80s hair, and grimaces while a 6-Million-Dollar-Man style sound effect goes off.

The music isn’t anything hugely memorable; I was expecting something worse considering the billing of Tangerine Dream in the opening to do the soundtrack. Never once do you feel like you’re at a German rave, so, there you go. It is of course full of synthesizers.

So after digesting the movie, the feeling I’m most left with is a mild letdown. It’s not awful, but it could have been better. It falls into that gray, mediocre middle ground of King movies (like Christine or perhaps Carrie), where it’s not awful (like Cujo), so-bad-it’s good (like Children of the Corn), or even great (like The Shining and The Dead Zone). It’s mostly forgettable.

It is a perfect little time capsule of another era, however. In order to really buy this story you have to remember when it was made. The movie came out in 1984, while the book was put out a few years earlier, 1980 or so. This was a different time. The US had lost the Vietnam war, a President had fallen due to scandal, the country had been crippled by an oil embargo. The Iran Hostage Crisis was going on while King released Firestarter (the book). America seemed very weak, and yet, at the same time, the country was still reeling from the revelations of the Church Committee, which detailed the incredible, outlandish activities the CIA and FBI had conducted.

Particularly relevant to Firestarter is that the Church Committee uncovered the MK-ULTRA program where the CIA experimented on a wide variety of people with psycho-active drugs. This came out starting in 1975.

So this was a time in which a reader had every reason to fear a shadowy conspiracy involving illegal government experiments with drugs, unaccountable murderers, etc, and yet at the same time, had every reason to believe their government was incredibly inept.

(Ironically we’re swinging back toward that late 70s/early 80s mentality now, with calls for a new Church Committee style investigation over the various torture programs and rendition activities the CIA and private mercenaries have been engaged in.)

Except for the superpowers, Firestarter could be called Historical Fiction. Hence this bizarre mix of obvious stupidity and menace. Throughout Firestarter you find yourself wondering, ‘Is this any way to run a black op?’ Which, of course, it was. It’s *precisely* the way we ran black operations. It seems like cognitive dissonance, being afraid of such a bunch of bunglers, but you HAD to be!

Needless to say, as a poli-sci guy, I eat this stuff up.

Therefore, I watch Firestarter less as a horror movie, or even a thriller, than as a period piece. It’s like huffing the wacky national security politics of the 70s/80s.

Next Week: More Drew Barrymore? It’s Cat’s Eye
Last Week: What’s so great about Nebraska? It’s got… Children of the Corn!