Stephen King Month: Thinner

3.5 Stars - Decent

Today I'm looking at the only other Richard Bachman book to be adapted to a film at present, Thinner. This was the last of Bachman's books to be published before his secret was revealed and the dust jacket even came with a false picture of Bachman 'taken by his wife' Claudia Inez Bachman.

The book tells the story of Billy Halleck, an obese Lawyer who one night, whilst getting a handjob from his wife in the car on the way home he runs over an old woman. As he is close friends with a high ranking judge and police chief they get him off with no charges; but upon leaving the courthouse an old man comes up to Billy and touches his cheek while whispering the word thinner in his ear. Billy quickly starts to lose weight, losing roughly forty pounds a week, he soon begins to realise that he has been cursed. He later learns that the judge has slowly started to gain scales over his skin and that the police chief has been horribly disfigured by acne; they both eventually commit suicide. Billy sets out to find the old man, and along the way he calls in a favour of a local mob boss he helped get off a case, the two eventually track down the old man and strike a deal, Billy will get better and no more of the old man's people will die. Billy has to put the curse into a pie and then get someone to eat it so they die; Billy decides to give the pie to his wife as he blames her for it all, however he discovers his daughter has also eaten a slice of the pie, Billy, faced with what he has wrought, eats the rest himself.

The film is fairly entertaining, though not at all scary, the main thing to be praised are the makeup effects, making Billy look in turn fat and then thin. The performances however are a bit silly and over the top with almost every line seeming to be quite sarcastic in delivery... though it does have Commandant Spangler and Fat Tony, so there's that.

As an adaptation it is pretty good hitting most of the moments from the book, but I don't remember the book being as mean spirited as this film is, every character seems to be dripping with vileness and right at the end of the book, when Billy had redeemed himself by eating the pie, here he causes another relatively innocent guy to die from it. So I guess that's my main complaint it just seems a bit too mean, as I never really sympathised with the guy who's meant to be the hero of the book.

Let The Curse Fit The Crime

In short, this is a fairly decent film, but could have done with less mean spirited performances.