"Blessed me?.....You want to know what God did to me? He threw an 18-wheeler at me! Bounced me into nowhere for five years!.....God's been a real sport to me."

Nobody writes crazy like Stephen King. Nobody acts crazy like Christopher Walken. And nobody can direct craziness like David Cronenberg (Scanners, A History Of Violence, Eastern Promises). When you bring those three together you get a great movie. That movie is The Dead Zone. It's one of the best cheesy sci fi/horror movies to come out of the 1980's. It has a 1970's vibe but with a very 1980's look to it(bad hair, low budget, lots of overacting). The movie is a showcase for two of the best over the top actors in Hollywood, Christopher Walken and Martin Sheen. And, is also one of Cronenberg's better movies. One of his most mainstream and accessible early movies.

The Dead Zone is the story of small town school teacher Johnny Smith, played by Christopher Walken. Johnny is just a regular high school English teacher when we first meet him. But, all of that changes after a car crash that leaves him in a coma for five years. Johnny awakens from this coma to discover that he now has psychic powers. Very real and dangerous psychic powers. He can see a persons past, present and future by making physical contact with them. The movie uses Walken's delivery as a method of showing how a regular person would react to this incredible situation. Walken is playing it straight when he's Johnny after the accident. Which is what makes this movie so much fun. The fact that Walken is such an odd looking and odd sounding person fits the role perfectly. He is acting like a normal person would in the real world if something crazy happened to them. It's brilliant.

When Johnny wakes up from the coma he discovers his powers by touching a nurse. He has a vision of the nurse's house on fire and her daughter about to be burned alive. This is a present and possible future that Johnny is seeing. He doesn't know what's going on and he warns the nurse that there is still time to save her daughter. After this, Johnny becomes both hero and pariah. He becomes a small town's pet psychic and withdrawn from the rest of society.

During the course of the story, Walken encounters a sleazy politician played by Martin Sheen. Greg Stillson is running for a seat on the Senate. Seeing the movie now I was shocked at how much his portrayal screams "George W. Bush". It's eerie. During a political rally Johnny inadvertently touches Stillson and sees a possible future where Stillson has been elected President. In that vision Stillson's true motives are revealed and has just started a nuclear war. After this incident, Johnny makes it his mission to stop Stillson. Asking his doctor and only friend at that point, "If you could go back and kill Hitler, would you do it?". Johnny ends up having to make a decision that could change the future but at the highest cost imaginable.

I am a big fan of everyone involved in this movie. It's based on one of Stephen King's best novels. Christopher Walken is one of my all time favorite actors. He has become somewhat of a caricature at this late stage in his career, but i think he has reached the point where he can do that. His body of work speaks for itself (The Deer Hunter, Annie Hall, The King Of New York, At Close Range) Walken excels at playing people in extraordinary circumstances. He's just so him that he brings his own persona to every role. Martin Sheen steals the movie as Stillson. He plays Stillson as an evil force of nature with an agenda. And, this movie was directed by David Cronenberg who would later go on to make bigger and yet still crazy movies.

This movie is definitely worth seeing. Fans of Walken will love it. So will sci fi and horror fans. The movie is out there on dvd and I watched it (repeatedly) on Instant Netflix. 4 Pitchforks and 1 cowbell.