Needful Things (1993)

Leland Gaunt has come the whole way from Akron to Castle Rock to open an antique store called "Needful Things." Everything he sells gives you exactly what you want, but you need to pay him back with a favor. If that's not the most Stephen King sentence ever — minus 50's slang like daddy-o or references to comics and rock and roll — then I'm not sure what is.This 1993 movie was directed by the baby Moses. No, seriously, director Fraser C. Heston played that role alongside his father in The Ten Commandments.Anyways, Leland (Max von Sydow, who will forever be Ming from Flash Gordon) gets the townsfolk to play pranks on one another, like when Brian Rusk has to play one on Wilma Wadlowski Jerzyck (Valri Bromfield, former comedy partner of Dan Ackroyd and one of the first Second City stage members) for a Mickey Mantle card. Or how he helps Danforth Keeton pay off his gambling debts. From books that people have always dreamed of to helping continue the rivalry between a Catholic priest and a Baptist minister, Leland's objects get into the hands of nearly everyone in town.This brings everyone into conflict with one another, in particular, the battle between Nettie Cobb (Amanda Plummer, So I Married an Axe Murderer) and Wilma, which is so intense that they end up killing one another.Leland even cozies up to Sheriff Pangborn by giving his fiancée Polly (Bonnie Bedelia, Die Hard, Salem's Lot) a necklace that cures her arthritis. When Pangborn tries to warn Polly that Leland may not be what he seems, Gaunt ends up seducing her and reveals to her that the Sheriff has been stealing money from the town, so she breaks off their engagement. Read more at bandsaboutmovies.com

Castle Rock, New England, is a nice place to live and grow and Sheriff Alan Pangborn (Ed Harris) moves from the big city to the town expecting a quiet life. When Leland Gaunt (Max Von Sydow) opens the store Needful Things, he seems to have the object of desire for each dweller. He charges small amounts to the things but requests a practical joke for each of them against another inhabitant. Soon hell breaks loose in town with deaths, violence and riot and Sheriff Pangborn discovers that Leland Gaunt is the devil himself. Further, Gaunt is manipulating the population like puppets exploring the weakness and greed of each person. "Needful Things" is a horror movie with black humor with a story of greed and evilness. Max Von Sydow has a great performance and his personification of evil is scary. There are interesting characters and situations and this movie is entertaining and surprisingly underrated. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Trocas Macabras" ("Macabre Exchanges")

There was a time I used to force myself to read Stephen King books at night in the dark with no one else in the house just to see if I could do it. 'It' was the creepiest and 'The Shining' was a close second, but 'Needful Things' was a pretty good contender even if it wasn't an outright horror story. I survived those days pretty well, so now I'm watching this flick in the dark, by myself, and it manages to block out the creaky noises in the rest of the apartment. So far, so good.I was a little surprised to see the amount of negative reviews for this picture by other reviewers on this board. A lot of them have to do with not following King's novel all that closely, but it's been so long since I read it that it doesn't make much difference to me now. The one thing I remember though has to do with the baseball card; in the book I think it was Koufax, not Mantle. I could be wrong, but when the scene came up I was expecting a Sandy Koufax card, so maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, maybe not. Perhaps some day I'll check it out to be sure.The interesting thing about this story was the way old Leland Gaunt (Max von Sydow) got all the folks in Castle Rock to turn on each other by not pitting likely adversaries against one another. Sort of like a domino effect where one unsuspecting citizen tripped up the next one in line with more and more disastrous results. The backdrop of the curiosity shop was a cool one for me because I like antiques and old things myself. The collecting urge isn't there any more though, so chances are I would have been a casual observer with all the insanity going on.There was some good casting here besides Sydow who appeared to be having a devil of a time. I enjoy Ed Harris and Bonnie Bedelia in most any other movie I've seen them in, but I have to say, Amanda Plummer as Nettie and Valri Bromfield as Wilma were perfect for their roles. Their vicious tete a tete with the strains of 'Ave Maria' in the background was an inspired piece of work. Even old Raider managed to do a good job with his limited involvement. If you stuck around to catch the full credit roll, you'll notice that he was portrayed in the movie by a canine named K-Jin. Stuff like that just interests me to no end.

Being a Stephen King fan, I obviously read the book and I have to say this film does skip a lot of parts. It's like they film everything up to page 200 then skip right to page 400. They missed the Sally Pratt/Lester Pratt bit, they missed Polly's destroying the thing in her azka, they missed how Pangborn's wife and son died, they missed Ace Merrill, The actual store doesn't look a bit like it is described in the book (In the book it's in the middle of the street, in the film it's just standing on its own somewhere), and it would've been nice to see a bit where Gaunt travels to another town, which are the final pages of the book. But King adaptations usually miss out a lot, and that's not necessarily bad. In fact the only faithful adaptations I've seen so far are Misery and Pet Sematary. But the actors all do a very good job. I like von Sydow as Gaunt, I like Harris as Pangborn, the only actors that could've been better were the ones who played Wilma Jerzyck and Nettie Cobb. So all in all a decent job, though it would've been better had it been a little longer and had it contained more of the things that happen in the book.