Year of Release - 1983
Rating - R
Director - David Cronenberg
Running Time - 103 Minutes
Distributor - Paramount Studios

Big screen adaptations of Stephen King?s best selling novels have a rather scattered history in terms of their quality. In a nutshell, they?re really hit or miss and while there are a few genuine classics out there based on his work, there are just as many (if not more) true stinkers. Thankfully, David Cronenberg?s take on King?s 1979 novel The Dead Zone stands as one of the best takes on his work to date.

Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken in one of his finest moments) is a schoolteacher who lives and works in a small town where he hopes to soon tie the knot with his lively bride to be, Sarah (Brooke Adams). Johnny?s life is thrown for a loop one night when he gets into a serious car accident and he spends the next five years of his life a vegetable, laying in a coma in a hospital bed.

Then, out of nowhere, Johnny wakes up. While normally this would be a cause for celebration, a lot has changed in the five years that Johnny has been out of it. Sarah has found another man, people around the town have changed, and since his ?resurrection? he?s found himself with the unique ability to touch a person and see into their past or their future. This talent comes in bursts, and as such, it?s very intense whenever it happens but Johnny decides that since he?s been given this gift that he should try to do the right thing with it and try to help people. Initially he?s off to a great start when he helps Sheriff Bannerman (Tom Skeritt) catch a serial killer, but soon these intense bursts start eating away at Johnny and he finds his health suffering for it.

If things weren?t complicated enough for the poor guy, they soon get much worse when he shakes the hand of a campaigning politician named Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen). Johnny is floored when he has one of his bursts as what he sees this time is truly shocking. He knows that he has no choice but to do what he knows is the right thing, even if no one else believes him.

The Dead Zone is a turning point in King?s career and in Cronenberg?s as well. Considering that the director shot this right after Videodrome (a truly grisly film with some over the top set pieces and the typical Cronenberg themes of technology gone wrong and body horror) it?s interesting to see just how quietly he handles things in this movie. The same can be said for King?s novel, which is much more psychological and more of a slow burn than many of his other books. The end result is a movie that slowly but very surely gets under your skin in just the right places. Characters are well established and as the plot moves along we get to feel for Johnny during his ordeal and the pacing and look of the movie accentuates this almost perfectly.

While there are some more intense scenes in the film, they aren?t played for shock value and instead serve to propel the story along ? nothing in the film feels excessive. Performance wise, Walken is in truly fine form here giving one of the best performances of his career. His take on Johnny Smith (an every day name for an every day character) is as good as it gets and his natural ?weirdness? really works to the movie?s advantage. Casting him alongside Martin Sheen, who is just as good, was a great move and surrounding him with strong supporting actors such as Tom Skerrit, Herbert Lom, and Brooke Adams is the icing on the cake.

The Dead Zone was released by Paramount way back in 2000 with only the trailer as an extra. The new special edition release is a vast improvement offering a new 5.1 Surround Sound mix as well as the original stereo track and a nicely re-mastered 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. This time around, in addition to the trailer, we get four featurettes that relate to the film, the first of which is "Memories from The Dead Zone" where Cronenberg and Brooke Adams talk about making the movie. "The Look of The Dead Zone" is a particularly interesting piece that covers the art direction and the cinematography used in the movie while "Visions of The Dead Zone" covers how the filmmaker brought Johnny?s visions to life on the big screen. The final featurette, "The Politics of The Dead Zone", is the best of the bunch as it explores how the political climate of the late seventies had a direct effect on King?s novel and on the subsequent movie adaptation.

It?s a shame that Stephen King and Christopher Walken aren?t here to tell their side of things and the absence of a Cronenberg commentary track is lamentable but the featurettes do provide some very welcome background information on the making of the movie. That, along with the improved audio and video presentation makes this a double dip worth taking.