In 1975 Cavalier magazine published a strange little story Stephen King titled “The Lawnmower Man” about Harold Parkett, a suburban father who hires a lawn care company to mow his overgrown yard and finds himself dealing with a strange but cheerful man who apparently works for a Greek god Pan and whose magical lawn mower seems to have a mind of its own. When a man strips naked to eat the cut grass, in front of any curious neighbor who wants to look, the hapless suburbanite calls the police, who arrive too late - Parkett is the lawnmower’s latest victim. In 1992, New Line Cinema released a film adaptation, originally titled Stephen King “The Lawnmower Man”which bears so little resemblance to King’s original story that the author sued the distributor to have his name removed from the title and from the advertisement - and won.
A 10-page story by itself is not substantial enough for a feature-length adaptation, so Allied Vision, which owned the film rights to the work, brought in writers. Brett Leonard And Gimel Everettwho mixed King’s story with their own script. Cyber God. Received film it’s a weird mix Flowers for Algernon And Lucy in which a mentally retarded man named Job Smith (Jeff Fahey), who makes a living mowing lawns, is subjected to scientific experiments designed to make him smarter by injecting him with nootropics and hooking him up to a complex virtual reality system. As his IQ skyrockets, he develops Lucy-as abilities such as mind reading and telekinesis, and begins to use them to exact revenge on those who wronged him. He eventually decides to transform into a being of pure energy and merge with the Internet. Yes indeed.
Job looks and acts very different from King’s unnamed pagan gardener (a much better proxy would be Dumb and DumberHarry Dunn), and the seeds of King’s story are only present in one scene, in which Job kills his young friend Peter’s abusive father with his giant, telepathically controlled red lawn mower. After King got his hands on a copy of the script in the fall of 1991, he and his lawyer began to press Allied and New Line to remove his name from him, a campaign he continued until the film was released in March 1992. then saw a movie that was still called Stephen King “The Lawnmower Man”on an early screening, and although he admitted it was visually “extraordinary”, he was “still unhappy” with the “trolls at New Line Pictures”.
Bad reviews strengthened King’s case
Reviews for the film were moderate to negative, fueling King’s claims that his association with him would damage his artistic reputation. Critic Steve Newton wrote in Georgia Straight“God, for this movie they really scraped the bottom of Stephen King’s trunk. … [T]an apparent attempt to cash in on King’s name, possibly fueled by the Oscar-winning success adversity— has never been so obvious before, and at this rate, we can safely expect the paramount horror and gruesome upheavals of Stephen King’s Food List, while Washington Post Critic Richard Harrington opined, “The Lawnmower Man is so loosely based on a Stephen King story that it’s a fraud, it ranks at the very bottom of a growing list of failed King adaptations.”
In late May 1992, King filed a lawsuit against New Line to have his name removed from the film and sought damages for all profits “attributable to the use of Stephen King’s name”. At that time, the film grossed $30 million at the box office. The case was settled a year later when the court ruled that New Line must remove the owner’s credit, i.e. remove King’s name from the name, but could retain the “based on” spelling credit. It also awarded King $2.5 million in damages.
However, in August 1992, New Line had already released the film’s theatrical and unrated director’s cut on VHS, with King’s name plastered all over the packaging and promotional posters. To address this issue, the court ordered New Line to send a new package or “stick-on” to any retailers selling the tapes, along with a demand by registered mail that the retailers actually use them.
This is where it gets really juicy. In June 1993, King sent private detectives to video stores in five cities around the country to find out if New Line followed court orders. To King’s dismay, private detectives found that his name was still clearly visible on almost 90% of the tapes they checked. King sued New Line again, where it was found that the distributor had made only a token attempt to comply with the court’s original directive. New Line was convicted of contempt of court and ordered to pay King $10,000 a day until the issue is resolved, plus any profits made from videotape sales since the previous court ruling. However, today you can still easily find copies online with King’s name in the title.
Is The Lawnmower Man really that bad?
So how lawn mower hold like a film? Judging by the reviews, the quality is ambiguous. Pierce Brosnanwho plays the scientist who administers drugs and VR treatments to Job is as charming and serious as ever, and Fahey’s muted portrayal of the mentally handicapped Job is as solid as can be.
While computer graphics look cartoonish by today’s standards, they were revolutionary at the time. While 1991 Terminator 2: Judgment Day there were only nine minutes of CGI effects, lawn mower boasts 23 minutes, including several extended psychedelic sequences in the virtual reality world, a bizarre cybersex scene, and some unusual effects during Job’s latest attack on the government agency responsible for the experiments.
Graphics by Xaos, Inc. and Angel Studios (now called Rockstar San Diego, Inc. and best known for its red dead video game series), both of which had to develop their own software for some of the effects, which were so new that no commercial tools existed to create them. Although it is easy to forget now, not only was computer graphics still in its infancy, but virtual reality and the Internet itself were not well known among ordinary viewers. You can find a stern reminder in Kathleen Maher’s book. Austin Chronicle a film review in which she takes the trouble to explain to her readers that the “network” consists of “electronic bulletin boards like CompuServe, Genie or Prodigy”.
The film’s biggest weakness is its dialogue, which is funny at times, with lines such as “Your naive idiocy makes me very angry!” and “Once I enter the neural network, my birth cry will be the sound of every phone on this planet ringing in unison.” Despite this, and perhaps partly because of this, lawn mower has become a cult favorite among fans who appreciate both its over the top nature and its historical significance. It exists today as a work of art that documents both an important moment in the evolution of filmmaking technology and the growing omnipresence of computers in our lives and the fears and anxieties that came with them.
Source: Collider
I have worked as a journalist for over 7 years and have written for many different publications. I currently work as an author at Daily News Hack, where I mostly cover entertainment news. I have a great deal of experience in the industry and am always looking to learn more. I am a highly motivated individual who is always looking to improve my skills. I am also a very friendly and personable person, which makes me easy to work with.
