Rose Red

[Babydoll]

I finally to see "Rose Red" and I was confused.   May be I missed how the house became haunted, but how did the house become haunted?  Was I the only one confused through out the whole movie.

 I will have rent the "movie" to see without all the commercials.

[Chadzilla]

It was "born bad".  A combination of Ellen Rimbaeur's (sp?) misery and some old fashioned cursed land mojo.  What really happened was that King grafted together the backstory of the Winchester Mystery House with Shirley Jackson's The Haunting with some semi-nifty spookiness.  End result, an overlong haunted house story with its best parts in the middle and, sadly, those best parts seemed borrowed from other material (sometimes that can be a good thing, here it is not).

I did like it though, the thing looks like  a masterpiece in comparison to Jan De Bont's The Haunting.

[Cullen]

Stephen King has never been that good with screenplays.  What he should have done was make Rose Red a novel.  It would have given him more room to dance.

What also would have helped was no magic boulders.

(I liked Rose Red as I watched it, but afterwards it kind of sunk in my opinion.  It's not his worse movie/mini-series ( Maximum Overdrive , as much as I like it, is probably still the champ), but it's far from his best.)

[Babydoll]

O'k that is a first.  A house "born bad".  I have to watch it again to see what I can make of it.

[Cullen]

Babydoll wrote:
>
> O'k that is a first.  A house "born bad".  I have to watch it
> again to see what I can make of it.

Actually, it's not.  There's a novel called The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons which deals with the same topic.  It's better than Rose Red and worth a look.

[John]

>O'k that is a first. A house "born bad". I have to watch it again to see what I can
>make of it.

 What about Christine? In that, the car was just 'built' bad.

 I liked it too, but I thought he had too many different ideas in it. What was the creature in the attic? A ghost, a vampire or a zombie?

[Molly]

John wrote:
>What was the creature in the attic? A ghost, a vampire or a zombie?

The thing that snuck up behind the automatic writer lady?  It was the sister with the crippled arm.

What was up with the zombie/crumbling look anyway?  It would have been scarier if they were ghosts or something, but I found myself laughing at the way King was trying to disgust us into being scared.

Also the house ate the women....ok....  And it killed the men....ok....  I can understand that the women's ghosts (or whatever they are) will come back & be chasing everybody down, but the men are just dead.  So why is it that the men that died recently (the fat guy, journalist, ect.) would come back to life too?  Wouldn't that mean that Ellen's husband and all the other men the house killed would be back to life too?

And here's another one.  The house is supposed to just suck the women up without a trace as too what happend to them.  So why did they find the tour guide's purse all chewed up & bloody?

Steve, the grandson, was male.  Why would Ellen want Steve to join them?

other comments from the peanut gallery:  Steve and the little girl's sister were totally flirting.  I recognize the girl that played the autisic girl..she is a whole lot older than what they were trying to make her out to be.  I wanted to punch that teacher lady.  What was her deal anyway?  I could understand that she was passionate about her work but he was just plain nuts!

I've got a million of these little questions.  Overall I really liked the 6 hr movie.  I'll end up watching it again to see things I didn't notice before.  I too think this would have been a lot better as a book.  It would have been turned into a mini series anyway, why not a book first?  It would have been a lot more understandable.

PS.. the guy that played Nick the mind reader, what have I seen him on?

[J.R.]

Why does anyone even entertain the notion that a made-for-TV miniseries can be scary? The rushed and lower-budgeted schedule of shooting those things ensures crap.

[John]

>PS.. the guy that played Nick the mind reader, what have I seen him on?

 Julian Sands, he was the star of the  first two Warlock movies, he was the spider expert in Arachnophobia. He's been ina lot of movies.

[BoyScoutKevin]

Not that I find it scary, but, reading some of the horror boards on the Net,  some people found the made-for-TV miniseries "Salem's Lot" scary. Especially, when the boy turned into a vampire comes rap, rap, rapping at the window. Enjoy!

[John]

>Not that I find it scary, but, reading some of the horror boards on the Net, some
>people found the made-for-TV miniseries "Salem's Lot" scary. Especially, when
>the boy turned into a vampire comes rap, rap, rapping at the window. Enjoy!

 I was also creeped out by the scene where they're killing Barlow, the head vampire and all the sleeping vampires in his hiding pace start to wake up and crawl silently toward the heroes.

 I think many older movies and show had much more atmosphere than anything done today.

[Molly]

Warlock  !!!   Thanks, It's been driving me nuts

[Molly]

I just enjoyed it.  It was funny trying to be scary.  You have to laugh at it.  The inconsistencies, that stupid zombie/ghost idea, the cheesy dialogue, Steve supposed to be with the teacher lady but totally flirting with the sister (intentional or off camera?), the weirdo with the nut mom (I know a guy like that which made it even funnier)....  Also watching Steve added to my pleasure  **blushes**  and even the journalist...he was cute in a weasel kind of way..  The entire movie was totally Velveeta but I enjoyed just watching it and not nitpicking every little thing.

[John]

>Warlock !!! Thanks, It's been driving me nuts

 No problem.

>Also watching Steve added to my pleasure **blushes**

For some reason, he kept reminding me of Casper Van Dien.

[Haze]

Maximum Overdrive was a my favorite adaptation but yeah it's pretty darn B. I think Trucks was worse thought and it's incompetence has only strengthened my bond with Stephen King's film. Anyway, I think Sleepwalkers was a very good film and the screenplay made the film. But that's me.