CAP HOLLISTER: As director of the Department of Scientific Intelligence (The Shop), Captain James Hollister is in charge of all operations relating to the fallout from the late 1960s Lot Six experiments. This includes the pursuit and capture of, and later experimentation upon, Charlie and Andy McGee.
Cap Hollister also orders John Rainbird to execute Dr. Wanless. In addition, he arranges for Rainbird to work with Charlie McGee, and is later psychically coopted by Andy McGee into planning Andy and Charlie’s escape. In the ensuing chaos, he is burned to death by Charlie McGee.
DR. JOSEPH WANLESS: The scientist who supervised the trial experiments on a chemical compound called Lot Six. Wanless later has a stroke and becomes a vocal supporter of execution for all participants in that experiment. That idea extends to Charlie McGee, the offspring of two of those participants.
When Cap Hollister decides that Wanless has become a nuisance and a potential danger to him politically, he orders John Rainbird to execute the man.
THE SHOP: Also known as the Department of Scientific Intelligence, The Shop is a Virginia-based agency of the American government that participates in what are generally referred to as “black ops.” Loosely defined, these are operations that are not officially sanctioned by Congress and whose budgets are blacked out or buried as part of other operations. The Shop’s specialty is researching scientific avenues for potential use in warfare.
LOT SIX: A chemical compound, created by The Shop, that forces latent paranormal powers to manifest in certain test subjects, and that causes madness in others.
DR. HOCKSTETTER: Patrick Hockstetter (who, coincidentally, bears the same name as one of the victims in It) is the scientist in charge of testing Charlie McGee while she is held captive by The Shop. Hockstetter apparently survives the conflagration that destroys the Shop compound in Longmont, Virginia.
His current whereabouts are unknown.
ORVILLE JAMIESON: Also known as O.J. or Juice, Orv Jamieson is a Shop agent. He is one of the very few to survive the fire that Charlie McGee visits upon the Longmont compound.
Orv Jamieson’s current whereabouts are unknown.
IRV and NORMA MANDERS: When Andy and Charlie McGee are on the run and hitchhiking, a farmer named Irv Manders picks them up. He and his wife, Norma, show the McGees every hospitality, right up until several carloads of Shop agents come looking for the fugitives. Even then, Irv tries to protect his guests and his property with a shotgun—enraged that an American citizen’s rights could be so heinously violated—and is shot for his trouble.
As a result of the battle on the Manders’ farm, Charlie lets her power loose on a large scale for the first time, and the Manders’ house is burned to the ground. Irv later recovers from the gunshot wound.
After the destruction of the Shop compound, Charlie finds her way back to the Manderses on her own. They lovingly help her to recover from the recent horrors she has been through, and set her on the path to bringing the truth to light about The Shop, the way her father would have wanted.
It is assumed that Irv and Norma Manders still live on Bailings Road in Hastings Glen, New York.
TASHMORE POND: The Vermont retreat where Granther McGee, Andy’s grandfather, used to take him and his family when he was a boy. This cabin in the woods is also where Andy and Charlie hide out from The Shop for an entire winter. Unfortunately, it is also where they are captured by John Rainbird and other Shop agents.
FIRESTARTER: ADAPTATIONS
In October 1984, just in time for Halloween, Universal Pictures released the film version of Firestarter. Though quite faithfully adapted by screenwriter Stanley Mann, it was, in a curious and detrimental way, too faithful. Due mainly to the fact that each scene is fit together with very little in the way of texture or characterization but rather with an eye to expediency—in order to fit in all of the novel, one might imagine—the resulting film comes off as very flat and lifeless. Every major character and scene from the original novel is there, but King himself would comment that the whole of the movie was somehow less than the sum of all its parts.
This might well be the fault of director Mark L. Lester, whose only real claim to fame is the cult favorite Class of 1984 (1982). His other films include such “classics” as Truck Stop Women (1974), Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw (1976), and the early Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Commando (1986). Clearly Lester knew how to blow things up and set people on fire, but whenever it came to drawing more than rudimentary performances from his powerhouse cast, the director seemed out of his element.
The film benefits greatly from its lead actor, the always underappreciated David Keith (An Officer and a Gentleman), as Andy McGee, and the presence of Martin Sheen as Cap Hollister. (Sheen had already appeared in 1983’s The Dead Zone.) Young Drew Barrymore, the only real choice in 1984 to play the lead as Charlie McGee, was widely considered the finest young natural actress working in Hollywood. Spielberg loved her when he put her in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). So did King, who would later see that she was cast again in Cat’s Eye. Unfortunately, like so many others in the cast, here Barrymore delivers a rather flat performance, though her undeniable charm does rise above that level frequently enough.
Art Carney and Louise Fletcher, two of the most well-respected character actors in Hollywood, have small yet worthy roles as Irv and Norma Manders, and their presence lends a certain amount of venerability and humanity to the screen project.
Ironically, however, the opposite is true of the presence of another Academy Award–winning actor, George C. Scott. A legendary talent, Scott does only an adequate job of portraying the terrifying Native American assassin, John Rainbird. But no matter how Scott glowers on camera, no matter what makeup effects are used to make his face appear scarred, he is simply not John Rainbird. In one of the few times in his career, here he’s just an actor cashing a paycheck.
Still, on a fifteen-million-dollar budget, Firestarter is competently executed and fast-paced. It must be applauded for its faithfulness to the original novel, a point of view rarely taken by any Hollywood production of a bestselling book.
A sequel to this film, Firestarter 2: Rekindled, premiered on the Sci Fi channel in 2002. Featuring Margueritte Moreau as a teenage Charlie, the film blithely ignores much of the original’s continuity, resurrecting John Rainbird, played by Malcolm McDowell, as the leader of a small army of children with wild talents. Overlong and heavily reliant on special effects, this version is for only the most rabid of King fans.
FIRESTARTER: TRIVIA
• Pay close attention while watching the movie version of Firestarter. She isn’t in it long, but there, in the role of the doomed Vicky McGee, is nighttime soap diva Heather Locklear, leading lady of Spin City, Melrose Place, Dallas, and T. J. Hooker.
• The Shop later appears in The Tommyknockers (1987). There, the mysterious agency dispatches agents to investigate the odd happenings in Haven, Maine.
• Firestarter was one of the first novels to be issued as a signed, limited edition. It appeared in 1980 from Phantasia Press in an edition of 725 copies at $35 each. Even more “fireproof” was a tiny run of only 26 copies that were specially bound in asbestos cloth.
35
THE TOMMYKNOCKERS
(1987)
The Tommyknockers is Stephen King’s bittersweet look at runaway science, pointing out how unchecked technology for its own sake is not necessarily progress. Here, King examines the ramifications of “dumb evolution,” looking at a community so enraptured by what it can do that it never stops to wonder if it is doing what it should. This book is extremely relevant to our times, in which new technology becomes obsolete almost immediately after it is introduced. Like the Tommyknockers, the town’s nickname for a race of highly advanced aliens, we love our gadgets—even if we have no idea how they work, or if they ultimately cause more harm than good.
Stories like “The Word Processor of the Gods” aside, King has always evidenced a healthy mistrust of technology and science. Examples abound
in his fiction: Captain Tripps, the superflu that killed most of the world’s population in The Stand (1978), was most likely created as part of a secret military project. Likewise, The Mist, which may have had its origins in the military’s fabled “Arrowhead Project.” In Firestarter (1980), The Shop meddles with human DNA, producing mutants with the experimental chemical solution code-named Lot Six. Then there’s machinery in and of itself. Who could forget “The Mangler,” which featured the evil Model-6 Speed Ironer and Folder, or the malign vehicles depicted in “Trucks” and Christine (1983). King even casts a wary eye at the scientific method, in ’Salem’s Lot (1975), when rationalism allows the vampire epidemic to spread through the entire town.
The adults in The Tommyknockers also convey the fears King must have felt as a child who grew up during the Cold War. As a product of the 1950s, King evinces both a healthy fear of radiation from the Bomb, and the loss of individuality so feared by Americans in terms of the threat of Communism. Whatever radiates from the uncovered Tommyknocker ship, its effects mimic radiation poisoning, while the Tommyknockers’ takeover of Haven, Maine, brings to mind classic cinematic parables of paranoia like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Invaders from Mars (1953).
Purposely reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft’s classic 1927 tale “The Colour Out of Space,” The Tommyknockers also contains several explicit connections to the rest of the Stephen King Universe. Desperate to reveal the strange doings in Haven, local Ev Hillman speaks with David Bright, a journalist who reported on the events chronicled in The Dead Zone (1979). In Derry attending to the needs of his comatose grandson, Ev hears “chuckling sounds” emanating from a sewer. Another Haven resident thinks he saw a clown “grinning up at him from an open sewer manhole” on Wentworth Street while passing through Derry. As The Tommyknockers is clearly set in 1987, this would indicate that the main evil known simply as “It,” a.k.a. Pennywise the Clown from It (1986), may still be alive at the time of the curious events occurring in Haven.
The surviving Haven Tommyknockers are brought to a government installation in Virginia. In an obvious reference to the events detailed in Firestarter, King tells readers, “This installation, which had once been burned to the ground by a child, was the Shop.” Finally, King indirectly references himself, as when Ev Hillman briefly thinks about smutty books, “like that fellow up in Bangor wrote.”
THE TOMMYKNOCKERS: PRIMARY SUBJECTS
ROBERTA “BOBBI” ANDERSON: While walking in the woods one day, Bobbi trips over a piece of metal partially buried in the earth. Curious, she tries to dig it out, only to realize that it is part of something much bigger. For reasons she cannot yet fathom, she feels compelled to free the object from its earthen tomb; forgoing her writing (Bobbi is a bestselling author of several Westerns), she works on her dig day and night. Although she doesn’t know it yet, Bobbi has fallen under the influence of the Tommyknockers, a race of highly advanced intergalactic gypsies. Her contact with the ship yields varied results. On the positive side, she is able to improve her water heater’s efficiency several times over, modify her tractor (the gearshift now has a setting that reads “UP”), and invent a typewriter that reads her subconscious mind so she can write in her sleep. On the negative side, she seems to be suffering the effects of long-term radiation poisoning (e.g., Bobbi’s general health deteriorates, and her teeth begin to fall out.).
Being the first to start “becoming” (a process by which human beings are transformed into Tommyknockers), Bobbi becomes the de facto leader of the townsfolk in Haven who fall under the Tommyknockers’ influence. Although she’s quickly shedding her humanity, Bobbi does retain some human traits—her love for Jim Gardener, for instance. Despite repeated demands from her compatriots that she dispose of Jim, Bobbi uses her influence to keep him alive. This proves to be a bad mistake—shortly after they explore the alien vehicle for the first time together, Gardener suddenly turns on his former lover. Their brief scuffle in Bobbi’s kitchen ends in her accidental death.
PETER: Bobbi’s aged beagle, Peter is invigorated by his exposure to the Tommyknocker ship. Forgetting her humanity, Bobbi coldly turns the animal into a sort of “living battery.” Keeping him in the shed adjacent to her home, the former pet is later joined there by Ev Hillman and Anne Anderson.
JIM GARDENER: Bobbi’s friend and lover, Jim is a poet and an alcoholic. He is not with Bobbi when she first finds the spaceship carrying the Tommyknockers—he’s traveling New England as part of a caravan of poets, doing readings and attending parties. At one of these parties, Jim gets drunk in spectacular fashion: enraged by the statements of a proponent of nuclear power, antinuclear activist Jim delivers a spirited lecture, then proceeds to completely disrupt the party.
Jim continues drinking, waking up several days later on a beach in New Hampshire. Frightened by his relapse, he returns home to beg Bobbi’s forgiveness. Seeing the woman for the first time in weeks, Gardener is frightened by her unhealthy appearance and odd behavior. After agreeing to help with her excavation project, Jim spends the next few weeks digging during the day and drinking himself into a stupor at night. Although Jim is not immune to the effects of the Tommyknocker ship, the process is hindered by the presence of a metal plate in his skull, a souvenir of a youthful ski accident. The plate also keeps the telepathic Tommyknockers in town from reading his thoughts.
Although he helps Bobbi, Jim certainly doesn’t condone her bizarre behavior. Discovering that Bobbi has turned Peter, Ev Hillman, and her sister Anne into living batteries, he decides he must stop her. After exploring the Tommyknocker ship for the first time, Jim decides to act, and attempts to shoot Bobbi. The gun misfires, and they scuffle. Bobbi is killed, electrocuted when a radio falls into a puddle of liquid she’s standing in.
Jim then enters the Tommyknocker ship for a second time, assuming control of its simplistic navigation system. At his command, the ship rises from the woods and takes off into space. The effort proves fatal; when last we see him, the dying Jim is lying on the transparent floor of the ship’s control room in a widening pool of his own blood.
RUTH McCAUSLAND: Haven’s no-nonsense police chief, Ruth is referred to as the heart and conscience of the town. When the Tommyknockers begin taking over various residents, Ruth resists becoming mentally enslaved, knowing it’s not right. The rest of the town, however, does not agree with her, and as a result cruelly shuns her. Realizing she won’t be able to resist the Tommyknockers much longer, Ruth sacrifices her life in an attempt to warn the outside world, blowing up the town hall clock tower in hopes that it will attract the attention of the authorities of neighboring townships. The sacrifice is in vain, as the Tommyknockers produce a convincing hologram of the tower that manages to fool the eyes of the investigating Maine state troopers.
HILLY BROWN: Under the influence of the Tommyknockers, aspiring magician Hilly invents a device that actually makes things disappear. Unfortunately, ten-year-old Hilly uses his younger brother David as a “volunteer” from the audience for his magic show. Hilly makes David disappear—to Altair-4—but can’t bring him back. Sick with guilt, Hilly worries himself into a coma. He escapes the influence of the Tommyknockers when his grandfather takes him to the hospital in Derry.
DAVID BROWN: Hilly’s younger brother, David is whisked to a world the Tommyknockers refer to as Altair-4. David spends several uncomfortable days there, but survives the experience, due to the combined efforts of his grandfather and Jim Gardener. David was last seen alive and well in the Derry hospital.
EV HILLMAN: If Ruth McCausland is the heart and conscience of Haven, Ev Hillman could be thought of as its memory. Realizing early on that something is very wrong in Haven, Ev spirits his remaining grandson, Hilly Brown, out of town before anything else can happen to him. While in Derry, Ev tries to raise an alarm; his tale is too wild for the local newspapers to publish, but he does convince Derry policeman Butch Dugan to investigate. Unfortunately, Ev and Butch are captured while investigating the woods near Bobbi Anderson’s h
ome. Butch is programmed by the Tommyknockers to commit suicide, while Ev is taken to Bobbi’s shed and used as a human battery.
BIG INJUN WOODS: Also known as Burning Woods, this piece of land borders Bobbi Anderson’s property. The site of many an odd occurrence over the years, it is also the resting place of the Tommyknocker ship.
THE SHOP: When the secret government agency, first introduced in Firestarter, learns of the strange goings-on in the town, it descends on Haven only hours after Jim Gardener has piloted the Tommyknocker craft into deep space. The Shop studies the devices left behind by the Tommyknockers; they also examine Haven’s survivors, all well on their way to becoming a form of Tommyknockers themselves. How much The Shop is able to learn from their studies is not known—all the survivors die within two months.
THE TOMMYKNOCKERS: As King states in a prefatory note to the book, Webster’s Unabridged states that Tommyknockers are either 1) tunneling ogres, or 2) ghosts that haunt deserted mines or caves. The author received his original inspiration from a verse he had heard as a child:
Late last night and the night before,
Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers,
knocking at the door.
I want to go out, don’t know if I can,
’cause I’m so afraid
The Complete Stephen King Universe Page 30
