BEFORE: Last day of our mini-vacation - yesterday we took a lunchtime boat trip around Lake George, then we went to check out a very cheezy tourist attraction - the House of Frankenstein Wax Museum. I guess it would be a very scary Halloween attraction if you were a small child, which was the perfect level of spookiness for me - a bunch of wax figures and mannequins in torture chamber settings, or re-enacting scenes from various horror films. Finally, after dinner at Giuseppe's, I watched a sort of auction on the local public-access channel, where Halloween costumes and other items were being sold to people who were phoning in their bids. The TV upstate was very strange, but I sort of got hooked on it, especially the public access channel.
THE PLOT: A lawyer is cursed by a gypsy to lose weight...and lose weight...and lose weight...
AFTER: Like Alfred Hitchcock and Stan Lee, Stephen King has made a habit of playing cameo roles in films based on his stories - here he plays a small-town pharmacist who witnesses the death of an old Gypsy woman. As in last night's film, the set-up for the supernatural situation involves a car accident - and this was written (and filmed) years before the author's famous van accident in 1999.
This time the driver in the accident, Billy Halleck, gets cursed by an old Gypsy, which causes him to lose weight at an alarming rate, no matter what he eats, or how much. Some might call that a blessing, but obviously it's got its drawbacks also.
So Halleck's in a race to track down the Gypsy and convince him to reverse the curse, before he wastes away to nothing. His friend and fellow lawyer tries to help him by threatening the Gypsy, but this just escalates the conflict, and makes things worse.
To me, the ending just seemed very mean-spirited, and I was left wondering which system is fairer - Gypsy justice, or the American legal system.
Starring Robert John Burke (last seen in "Good Night, and Good Luck", but more famous for his roles on "Rescue Me" and "Law + Order: SVU"), Joe Mantegna (last heard in "The Simpsons Movie"), Daniel Von Bargen (last seen in "The Majestic") and Kari Wuhrer (as the Gypsy man's hot granddaughter)
RATING: 4 out of 10 smoothies
SPOOK-O-METER: 6 out of 10. Although the actor was in fact thin, and wore a fat suit for the early scenes, the later emaciated effects are rather disturbing.
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