Yeah, the Langoliers.
It was on a Sunday in May eleven years ago that my dad let me stay up on a school night to watch a TV-movie, something I'd never been allowed to do before. I'd always had to go to bed at nine. Suddenly, without precedent, my father was telling me it was okay to stay up late, just this once, to watch... a Stephen King movie.
Pete, our local TV critic with whom I had a love-hate relationship, had written an article about The Langoliers in that day's paper. He'd let it slip that by the end of the two-part miniseries, four out of the ten characters in the movie would die. At school on Monday, I discussed Part 1 with my friend Cheryl as we walked around the track during P.E. We speculated on which four characters we thought would be goners by 11 o'clock that evening. Cheryl was one of those friends I only ever talked to at school, and looking back, I realize that we had an awful lot of conversations about TV-movies that year.
I'm still amazed I sat through the mini-series, the story of ten passengers aboard an airplane that slips through an aurora borealis over the Mohave desert and gets sent through a time rip which gobbles up all the other passengers and turns the ten surviving passengers' world into a land of wonkiness. The survivors (save for the murderous Craig Toomy) try to figure out what happened before it's too late. Too late for what? Only Craig and the little blind girl know the truth: the Langoliers, little creatures who devour the past with sharp, vicious teeth, are on their way. The passengers' only chance for survival is to try to get the plane to go back through the time rip, but it isn't going to be easy, especially with Craig on the loose. Who will live? Who will die? 60% survival rate, man. Not good odds.
Despite the death and destruction, I loved The Langoliers. I loved it so much that, when I saw the Stephen King novel at the store a week later, I begged my dad to let me get it. He said I could, as long as I did a book report on it. So I read my very first Stephen King novella and did a book report for English class. Two years later, I bought the movie on VHS -- my first-ever purchase of a made-for-TV-movie.
Anytime I start feeling like my childhood has slipped away, I pull out the tapes and watch the movie, and I'm immediately transported back to the spring of 1995, when staying up til 11pm was a novelty, when Bronson Pinchot could still scare the hell out of me, and when the show that aired just before Part 1 of The Langoliers made me the happiest girl on the planet.
Is it Stephen King's best? I wouldn't know; I've seen/read very few of his other films/books. Is it the best TV-movie ever? No, but who said we're giving out awards, here? The Langoliers kicks ass, and that's all I have to say about that.
(right click on the image & select "save target as..."
to view a TV spot for The Langoliers; 2.6 mb; mpg)
