Friday Matinee

Pet Sematary (1989)

In the ‘80s Stephen King was a legitimate brand name, the ubiquitous Master of the Macabre, and multiplexes were inundated with a deluge of big-screen adaptations. But Pet Sematary isn’t just one of the good ones, it’s one of the absolute best ones, and not just because King wrote the screenplay himself. Director Mary Lambert, a talented young filmmaker then making music videos for Madonna and Janet Jackson, manages to mine genuine scares and dread from an admittedly goofy but simple premise: a burial ground outside of a small-town pet cemetery has the power to resurrect whatever, or whoever, is buried in it – but like in all good versions of “The Monkey’s Paw,” there’s a catch. Lambert shows particular skill at taking King’s creepiest characters and incarnating them in flesh: the late great Fred Gwynne’s take on “Jud Crandall”, the nightmare-inducing invalid shut-in “Zelda” (in a daring cross-gender casting coup, played by Andrew Hubatsek), and the skin-crawling presence of murderous baby revenant “Gage Creed.” Plus, you’ll be tapping your toes to the raging Ramones theme song that closes the end credits.