The sort of follow up to the Night Shift poll. (Of course, someone had to steal my thunder and start a Skeleton Crew poll wherein you could vote for as many (or as few) stories as you please. Philistines.
But in this poll, as in the earlier, superior Night Shift poll, you can only choose one story.
I don’t remember most of the stories too well…You Know They’ve Got a Hell of a Band, and The End of the Whole Mess are the only ones I remember well enough to consider voting for. I ended up voting for the former.
Looking up the collection, there’s a single image from Rainy Season that I remember - the toad-creatures dissolving. But that’s it…
I’m pretty lukewarm about this whole collection, but the logistical problem-solving in Dolan’s Cadillac was interesting.
I actually loved a number of stories from this collection (though I didn’t like it as well as Night Shift or Skeleton Crew), so I wish this had been a multiple-choice poll. But if I have to pick just one, I’d have to go with Dolan’s Cadillac, which is not only probably King’s best short story, but possibly one of the best short stories I’ve ever read. I said in another thread that I love it when King follows a character’s descent into insanity, and this story backs it up.
A close second, though, would be Umney’s Last Case, just for being nifty and fun and kind of a new riff on some old ideas.
Lots of good stuff in the book, though, including You Know They Got a Hell of a Band.
Oh, and The House on Maple Street is a story I’ve ‘read’ to my children, when they were, oh, nine or ten years old. When I put read in quotation marks it’s because I edited for content as I went along. Still, when edited down a bit, the kids love it!
That’s my problem, too. I only really remember Dolan’s Cadillac and The Ten O’Clock People, neither of which was especially great, IMO.
I have read this book, but the stories in it just don’t resonate with me the way the ones in the other two collections did. Hell of a Band and Moving Finger are just plain nightmares, Ten O’Clock People is only memorable in how much it resembles the movie They Live. Crouch End is a fairly bland Lovecraft pastiche.
The only one which makes me smile is The Night Flyer, because it’s such a silly little thing.
I have to vote for The Moving Finger. As I mentioned in the other thread, that story has made me afraid to go to the bathroom at night for over a decade. Anything that creeps me out that much for that long is a damn good story.
And I’m the other vote (so far). Technically, I don’t think it’s the best story, so I probably should have voted differently, but it’s the one I enjoyed the most.
As noted in the other thread, The Moving Finger crept into my psyche and took up permanent residence. Something that can freak you out in your dark bathroom decades later deserves credit!
That said, I wish I could vote for Dolan’s Cadillac too. Love that story. I got excited to see they made a movie of it last year, then dejected when I saw the crappy reviews. I’ll still watch it, but I’m sure it won’t be great.
I also really like Umney’s Last Case (the adaptation with William H. Macy is pretty darn good too).
Honorable Mention to The End of the Whole Mess, Home Delivery, and Crouch End.
ETA: who voted for Dedication? Ew.
To me, Crouch End was as close to a perfect modern Lovecraftian horror story as I’ve ever read, even as an homage. The growing pervasive sense of gloom, horror, and claustrophobia was palpable.
I voted for Dolan’s Cadillac. It was well written and had no supernatural elements as was discussed in a recent thread. Dolan ‘heard’ his wife’s voice, but that could just have been his own imagination as he was caught up in the need for revenge. “Beware the vengeance of a patient man.”
I wasn’t a fan of this collection, to be honest. None of the stories really resonated with me, and in fact I had to google a lot of them to even remember what they were about.
I do remember being intrigued by “Sneakers” and “Dolan’s Cadillac,” though.
I interpreted his hearing his wife’s voice as part of his plunge into insanity. At the end of the story, if you recall, he stopped hearing it. To me, it was because the issue that was making him crazy had been resolved.
From what I recall about Dolan’s Cadillac, King wrote in the notes at the end that he got the exact instructions for what happened, then changed them quite a bit so that if someone tried to do it, it wouldn’t work.
I actually remember the same notes. In the story, the protagonist (Robinson? I think his name was) went to a friend of his for instructions. But in real life, King went to his brother, who apparently is some kind of genius, and did, in fact, get real numbers, real math, etc. Then he changed it up for the story, for the reason you mentioned. I guess leaving it all very factual would be begging for both bad karma and a lawsuit!
I remember being disappointed by this collection when I picked it up, and can’t remember half of them. (As opposed to Night Shift and Skeleton Crew, every story of which I can recall in detail a quarter century later). “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band” was OK – original, with still a bit of the old hungry passion. The others seemed either to be consciously aping other artists (Poe, Lovecraft, Rowdy Roddy Piper) or part of King’s “Look How Special It Is To Be An Author” navel gazing.
I’m seriously debating whether I can seriously vote for “The Doctor’s Case.” I’m a Sherlock Holmes and locked room mystery fan, and read it when it was in the Sherlock Holmes pastiche collection (ie before it was tapped for Nightmares and Dreamscapes), so I may be prejudiced and giving short shrift to the other stories.
I too liked Dolan’s Cadillac the best – the slow-moving buildup and the sheer dedication of the revenge stuck with me for quite a while. Has anybody seen the movie, by the way? I must admit I quite liked it (if only for the good taste showed in trying to film that particular story).
Agreed - the growing “oddness” of the surroundings as the couple’s confusion turns into terror made Crouch End the most memorable story in this collection in my opinion.
While I read some Doyle when I was younger, I don’t consider myself a huge Holmes fan, but I still thought this story was a lot of fun!