- Network: ABC
- Series Premiere Date: May 9, 1993
Critic Reviews
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ABC really has done a fabulous job in the special effects department, though, particularly as the story reaches its messy, apocalyptic climax, complete with decapitations, oozing blood, stranglings and exploding monsters. Oh. Did I mention that there's quite a bit of violence? But the whole project, photographed in New Zealand (apparently the real Maine doesn't look enough like Maine), is gorgeous to look at and offers some excellent performances, particularly by Marg Helgenberger as Bobbi, the writer who uncovers the strange force, and Jimmy Smits as Gard, a poet and her live-in companion. [9 May 1993]
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I like The Tommyknockers...Written by Lawrence Cohen, whose adapations produced the best TV ("It") and movie ("Carrie") Kings, The Tommyknockers" gets special-effects, sci-fi silly on the second night. But King's ability to give us relationships-between Gard and Bobbi, between E.G. Marshall's character and his grandson, even between Bobbi and Gard and their dog-on which to hang our emotions provides a familiar and solid foundation for his effective scare tactics.
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Director John Power establishes good pacing, as the mounting suspense alternates with scenes of banal normalcy and campy humor. The action is spread around on a solid supporting cast that includes Joanna Cassidy, E.G. Marshall, Allyce Beasley, John Ashton, Cliff DeYoung, Robert Carradine and Traci Lords...The thriller is like an attenuated, more pastoral version of the original 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But once it gets its hooks in you, you’ll be back for the conclusion the following night.
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When Cohen taps into King’s greatest theme — families in peril from forces beyond their understanding — The Tommyknockers can be moving. The rest of the time, it’s never less than an entertaining goof.
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We are in archetypal King territory. The formula is wearing thin, but this adaptation by Lawrence D. Cohen ("Carrie") manages to squeeze out a respectable quota of creepy chills. Heading a strong cast are Jimmy Smits and Marg Helgenberger as a man and wife heading for an explosive separation. She gets the dog.
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A flawed but still above-average sci-fi thriller. [7 May 1993]
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When it comes to film and TV adaptations of Stephen King's works, the best thing to expect is not too much. However, this weekend's ABC miniseries, Stephen King's The Tommyknockers, defies those low expectations by being passably entertaining from start to finish.
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By the time Hilly puts on a front-porch magic show featuring a sensationally cruel trick, the release of full-blown evil seems too late and predictable for all the fancy preparation. This payoff near the end of Part One is stingy by comparison to its buildup in scores of scenes laboriously creating atmosphere, introducing characters and their webbed relationships, spinning subplots. King understands the intoxications of surrender to the unbridled id, and "The Tommyknockers" is a terrific idea - but one in search of an effectively streamlined delivery system. [8 May 1993, p.21]
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What, you ask, are "tommy-knockers"? And don't you feel kind of stupid for asking? You'll feel even dopier if you waste four hours with Stephen King's The Tommyknockers, a witless and suspense-free adaptation of one of King's sloppiest, most negligible and overwritten tomes. [7 May 1993, p.3D]
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As chill-and-thrill programming goes, the two-evening "Tommy" is overextended and underdeveloped, a laughable, would-be scare-'em inspired by King's novel that has been distended over too long a time to meet the needs of TV's mini form. [7 May 1993]
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It's tempting to laugh at King's transfixed New Englanders, submitting passively to mind control via sensory stimulation - until one realizes that millions of us will be glued to the tube for two nights, under the spell of a shamelessly contrived television program. [7 May 1993, p.65]
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The Tommyknockers' biggest problem is that it's just too long. This would have been a much better movie if it had been cut by at least a quarter - and perhaps as much as a half.
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With its pulsing green glows, glowing green ooze, barking dogs, demented stares, terrors in the Maine woods, kids in peril and unseen powers that take over minds, it's less a journey into the Twilight Zone than a trudge down memory lane - even if you've only seen King's work on television in "It" and "Golden Years." More disappointing, it fails to live up to the foreboding and sense of dread it deftly establishes in a succession of early scenes. [9 May 1993, p.1H]
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Unlike the last King novel-turned-miniseries, It, which made clowns the stuff of nightmares, Tommyknockers won't frighten small children or household pets...Tommyknockers is more sci-fi than horror show - a close encounter of a second-rate kind. What a shame. [9 May 1993, p.D1]
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Director John Power gives the fright thing a try, but the writing is pedestrian, the characters obvious. Eventually the vidpic works up to that ultimate Saturday matinee serial weapon from the ’50s, the death ray. Kelly green. The plot’s clearly out of hand.
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No one will confuse episodic The Tommyknockers with The Twilight Zone. It relies more on cheap effects than imagination or characterizations. Even the setting is counterfeit; this New England is actually New Zealand. [8 May 1993, p.G1]
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To say The Tommyknockers is bad is an understatement. It's awful. [7 May 1993, p.1]
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The Tommyknockers may not be the lamest Stephen King screen adaptation to date, but it’s pretty close. One of the author’s lesser novels has been dumbed down exponentially for TV and put through a deflavorizer to remove every iota of the black humor and pop-culture satire that usually make even the silliest King sufferable...The personality-devouring aliens of the title seem to have gotten to the folks who made this movie, too.
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Stephen King gets away with murder. He's not the master storyteller; he's the master story reteller. And recycler. Stephen King's The Tommyknockers, a howlingly awful ABC miniseries, seems to have been stitched together from many a tattered bit and piece.