Yeah, it’s a new month, and I have another batch of movies on HBO Max I need to finish before the end of the month. One of them is 1984’s Firestarter, one I admittedly have been kinda curious about for a while now. Part of that is due to wanting to fill in my old horror movie gaps. Another part is how I used to be a fan of Stephen King’s novels even if I didn’t watch the movie or TV adaptations. And finally, there’s apparently a new version on the way. I do somewhat remember the novel for this one, so I figured I’d start with this one. It’s my Spring Break this week, and while I have no plans to go much of anywhere, I can knock a few movies off my various Watchlists.
Besides, even if this movie is a bit mediocre, it does have a rather impressive cast beyond a very young Drew Barrymore.
Andrew (David Keith) and Charlie McGee (Barrymore) are on the run. Thanks to some experiments Andrew and his late wife Vicky (Heather Locklear) volunteered for, Andrew has some sort of telepathic mind control powers while Charlie, as a result of her conception after the experiments, has some very powerful pyrokinesis and telepathy of her own, and the agency responsible, called the Shop, wants both Andrew and Charlie for more experiments. They have already killed Vicky, and Andrew is at his wits end, his powers probably killing him as he isn’t sure where the two of them can really hide as the Shop’s agents always seem to be one step behind them. It gets a bit worse when the Shop’s head guy, Captain Hollister (Martin Sheen) recruits one of the agency’s top hit men, John Rainbird (a pony-tailed George C Scott), to bring the McGees in. The thing is, they can maybe bring Charlie and her dad in, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to be keeping her.
By the by, I know I mentioned an impressive cast, but that includes an older farm couple played by Art Carney and Louise Fletcher. They’re a pair of minor characters, but it did strike me as odd that Fletcher, who clearly is younger than Carney, was cast as his wife in a way that suggested they were the same age. I know Fletcher has pretty much made a career out of playing maternal types, often with a side of deviousness, but it did make me take a mental step back when I saw her there considering she is something like 20 or so years younger than Carney.
But, beyond that, this movie is pretty darn silly. The fire effects are actually fairly nice considering the time period, but the rest of it I don’t think has aged well. Barrymore looks sufficiently scared when her powers start to kick in before her character develops any kind of control, but the rest of the movie just seemed rather rote and ridiculous. Keith plasters his fists to the side of his head to use his powers, a move that suggests he probably isn’t that hard to defeat, and he doesn’t look very threatening. Yes, his powers are supposedly killing him and he’s a victim not a villain, but the point stands. The rest of the cast is actually largely forgettable. Scott’s character in the novel is a heavily-scarred, one-eyed Native American. I don’t recall the character saying he was a Native in this movie, but he does have an eyepatch that he wears…sometimes. It’s inconsistent. He’s supposed to be befriending Charlie while wearing it, but I don’t think he was wearing it the first time she encounters him.
And that inconsistency may be the movie’s biggest issue in and of itself. It is a very much a product of its time considering the electronic score and the general look. I’m not sure I would classify Firestarter as one of King’s best even if I do remember reading it, but the movie itself is just rather mediocre. Barrymore’s more or less fine considering her age and the material she was given, but the movie itself didn’t do much for me. Considering what I remember of the trailer for the remake seems to be aiming for a somewhat older Charlie, I am curious how it turns out, particularly since the new one did cast a Native actor in the Rainbird role. But that’s for later. This one? It was at best silly.
Grade: C
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