The Tommyknockers

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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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]