21. 'The Lawnmower Man' (1975).
This particular blog post won't be a long one - from what I can tell there is only one short story separating Carrie from Salem's Lot, and it's not one which has a huge amount to say for itself. It's a bonkers, gruesome, pretty silly story, that I enjoyed in less than fifteen minutes.
The Lawnmower Man
It's difficult to outline the premise of this story without simply spilling the entire thing. It's told from the perspective of a fairly ordinary, suburban family man, Harold Parkette, who is reluctant to get his lawn cut after an unpleasant accident caused his neighbour's cat to be run over by his lawnmower the year before.
When the lawn eventually gets out of control, Harold calls a new service he finds advertised in the newspaper, and unfortunately for him, discovers that the service provided is anything but ordinary.
This is a short story even by short story standards, and I was initially baffled by how anyone could have made a feature length picture out of it until I realised the film has very little to do with the story. If you're reading this expecting the Pierce Brosnan movie, think again.
The brevity of the story adds to its utter madness, and left me feeling as though I'd had a very brief bad trip. The titular Lawnmower Man is grotesque and genuinely frightening in spite of (or because of) the wacky, ridiculous concept of the story. The description of his grass-bloated belly was both hysterical and horrifying, and King, as with The Blue Air Compressor, treads the very fine line between comedy and horror.
King leaves much of the real gore to our imaginations - do you really need to describe what it's like being run over by a lawnmower, or can we imagine it perfectly well ourselves? It's one of those everyday accidents most of us have imagined at some point, like getting your hand stuck in the garbage disposal, or accidentally ironing your arm. The build up from cat, to mole, to human leave us with little doubt that the experience would be painful and traumatic.
I tried desperately to find a point to this story; I felt that there might be one I was missing. There are a lot of little references to strange gods and mythical beasts that seemed to have some hidden meaning that I wasn't quite catching. Who knows, maybe someone reading this can tell me. Maybe it was just a mad dream King had one night.
In summary, this is a crazy, gone-in-a-second story, that leaves you feeling the same way you might if you were overtaken on the motorway by a car full of topless nuns driven by a pig wearing sunglasses. What. The. Actual. F-.
The Lawnmower Man
It's difficult to outline the premise of this story without simply spilling the entire thing. It's told from the perspective of a fairly ordinary, suburban family man, Harold Parkette, who is reluctant to get his lawn cut after an unpleasant accident caused his neighbour's cat to be run over by his lawnmower the year before.
When the lawn eventually gets out of control, Harold calls a new service he finds advertised in the newspaper, and unfortunately for him, discovers that the service provided is anything but ordinary.This is a short story even by short story standards, and I was initially baffled by how anyone could have made a feature length picture out of it until I realised the film has very little to do with the story. If you're reading this expecting the Pierce Brosnan movie, think again.
The brevity of the story adds to its utter madness, and left me feeling as though I'd had a very brief bad trip. The titular Lawnmower Man is grotesque and genuinely frightening in spite of (or because of) the wacky, ridiculous concept of the story. The description of his grass-bloated belly was both hysterical and horrifying, and King, as with The Blue Air Compressor, treads the very fine line between comedy and horror.
King leaves much of the real gore to our imaginations - do you really need to describe what it's like being run over by a lawnmower, or can we imagine it perfectly well ourselves? It's one of those everyday accidents most of us have imagined at some point, like getting your hand stuck in the garbage disposal, or accidentally ironing your arm. The build up from cat, to mole, to human leave us with little doubt that the experience would be painful and traumatic.
I tried desperately to find a point to this story; I felt that there might be one I was missing. There are a lot of little references to strange gods and mythical beasts that seemed to have some hidden meaning that I wasn't quite catching. Who knows, maybe someone reading this can tell me. Maybe it was just a mad dream King had one night.
In summary, this is a crazy, gone-in-a-second story, that leaves you feeling the same way you might if you were overtaken on the motorway by a car full of topless nuns driven by a pig wearing sunglasses. What. The. Actual. F-.
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