It’s terrifically cast, wonderfully chilling, and one of the most popular Stephen King adaptations of the ’90s. However, after “In a small town” recently disappeared from the market, the cult film is finally available again on DVD & Blu-ray.
Films based on books or short stories by Stephen King are a dime a dozen – from cheap trash, which is not even worth mentioning here, to modern classics like “The Convicts” or “The Green Mile “. Definitely in the upper middle range of the popularity scale is the devilishly nasty “In a Small Town”, internationally known as “Needful Things”, in which Hollywood veteran Max von Sydow drives an entire community crazy as a dodgy shopkeeper.
Directed by Charlton Heston’s son, Fraser C. Heston, and also starring four-time Oscar nominee Ed Harris (“The Rock”) and Bruce Willis’ “Die Hard” wife Bonnie Bedelia, the cult gothic tale disappeared into the increasingly off store shelves in recent years – but that’s exactly where the popular 90s classic is finally returning this week. “In a small town” is now finally available again for home cinema. Koch Media has now given the film a strictly limited new edition in a media book including DVD and Blu-ray:
With its elegant design, the edition, which is available exclusively from the shipping giant Amazon, fits perfectly with some of the King classics that have already appeared in the media book. Here, Koch clearly follows a line for a uniform image on the shelf, as shown by the media books for “Cat’s Eye”, “Sometimes They Come Again”, “Fire Devil” and “The Werewolf by Tarker Mills”:
This is “Needful Things – In a Small Town”
Basically, the original title and German translation reveal quite concretely what to expect here in terms of content: Because the shopkeeper Leland Gaunt, played by Max von Sydow, supposedly sells in his new shop useful things the in a small town cause plenty of terror, hatred, and chaos.
The cause of the misery is not just the fact that Leland Gaunt offers all the things that the residents of the village crave, but above all the way in which he makes them pay for them. Because Leland Gaunt is not about money. Instead, the locals just have to prank someone else to get their desired items. What starts out as harmless practical jokes quickly boil over in the community. And nobody suspects that the real devil has his fingers in the pie here…
We don’t have an official review for “In a Small Town”, but the film holds up well in our list of the best Stephen King films of all time – and is still ahead of “Children of Wrath”, “1408”, “Cujo ‘ or the screwed-up Hollywood adaptation of ‘The Dark Tower.
Also: Fresh Stephen King replenishment new in the cinema
While most of the contributions to the never-ending wave of King adaptations, which once again really picked up speed with “ES” (2017), are lost in the direct-to-video sea, with “Firestarter“ since yesterday, May 12th, finally seeing a King film on the big screen again.
In the new edition, you can expect, among other things, Ryan Kiera Armstrong (“ES 2”, “American Horror Story”), who experienced horror at a young age, as the eponymous girl with pyrokinetic abilities and Zac Efron as her father, who once again gets into trouble doing what he can to finally shake off his “high school musical” image from a young age.
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