10/27/13

Pet Sematary :: Countdown to Halloween 2013

Pet Sematary. Another Stephen King classic which I have yet to read, but have very vivid memories of.

You see, contrary to whatever you may have read on the bathroom wall, I am not generally a fan of horror. I don't think I have ever seen a Freddy movie, nor have I seen more than one Jason flick. I don't like gore at all and have avoided everything from the Saw movies to all but  the first Scream movie (and I only saw that because of my then crush on Drew Barrymore and she died right away!) I like psychological horror like The Exorcist and Psycho, and smart takes on old cliches like A Cabin in the Woods, and I love The Walking Dead in both comic book and television form, and of course I am a fan of Stephen King, but I generally avoid the genre as a matter of course, and did even moreso when I was a kid. I'm an enigma, I know.

My older sister, however, could not get enough of this stuff! She read King voraciously, as well as any and every other scary or horror or true crime book she could find. She would also watch all the slasher flicks she could get her eyeballs in front of. Fortunately for her there was plenty of both back in the eighties - and often (quality of interpretation of source material notwithstanding) they would both have the name Stephen King attached to them.

So I don't remember if it was the book or the movie poster I first saw, but I remember my sister explaining to me that the word 'Sematary' was misspelled because it was written by kids who didn't know any better, and that the book involved their dead pets, and that those pets may very well come back to life, but EEVILLLL!

Being a sensitive pet loving horror non-fan then as much as now, I have successfully avoided the book and the movie for about thirty years. But when I found a pile of old Stephen King hardcovers at a flea market for a buck each recently I couldn't walk away from any of them, and this one was one of them.

I want to read it, I really do, but part of me still has reservations.

2 comments:

  1. I myself am not a big fan of slasher movies with very few exceptions. All the excessive gore and violence just makes me queasy. I have started the movie version of Pet Sematary a few times but never finished it. I'll have to add it to the list of movies to watch.

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  2. I haven't read the book but I really liked the movie.

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