![]() ![]() ![]() You would think that afterthe first couple dozen horrible deaths, the hotel management of the time would have pretty much boarded the room up for good. No one, he archly insists, who has ever checked in has ever lasted more than an hour. Jackson, as the hotel manager, with the really scary number, 56 – as in, the number of people who have died in the room in the hotel's long and colourful history. ![]() Which is actually, of course, on the 13th floor, since the building doesn't officially have a 13th. He is certainly skeptical when he first hears about New York's venerable Dolphin Hotel, and its haunted room, No. But King somehow finds the human equation that transcends the usual "knock, knock, boo's there."Īnd by "lesser writer," I mean someone very much like 1408's protagonist, Mike Enslin (a somewhat slumming John Cusack), a once-promising young novelist touched by tragedy and now reduced to grinding out cheesy travel guides debunking "haunted" inns, hotels and tourist attractions.Įnslin is not a believer – in much of anything anymore. ![]() Not the most original idea, in any lesser writer's hands – as we have lately had ample evidence, particularly at the movies. Even King initially dismissed this particular notion as a simple writing exercise, to which he later returned to flesh out into a full-on King short story, now the basis of yet another King-inspired movie, 1408. There is no hoarier horror cliché than the old-fashioned haunted house/hotel room. The key, I think, to Stephen King's prolific genius is that he can craft a complex and compelling story out of the simplest, most basic concepts and characters: the overzealous fan, the malevolent car/dog/clown/whatever, the prom night gone horribly wrong – stuff you could scribble out on a paper napkin and still leave room for a good-sized ketchup stain. ![]()
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