Format: DVD from Homer Township Public Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.
Stephen King’s novella collection “Different Seasons” contains four stories, three of which have been turned into films. The first story is “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” which was turned into The Shawshank Redemption, a film that lives on IMDB’s top-250 in the top position with good reason. The second is called “The Body,” which was turned into Stand By Me, also on IMDB’s top-250. The third is Apt Pupil, clearly the least of the three and the only one to keep the name of the original story. However, that’s not saying a lot when the movies its being compared to are as highly regarded as they are. Additionally, one wonders about the fate of the fourth story, “The Sun Dog,” about a demonic creature trapped inside a Polaroid camera.
In many ways, Apt Pupil is one of King’s darkest and most disturbing stories. Much of that is because it deals with fascism overtly, but also because it’s entirely believable. There’s no supernatural here; there’s just evil. The high concept is that a straight-A high school student named Todd Bowden (Brad Renfro) becomes fascinated by his history class’s lessons on the Holocaust. He studies it on his own and discovers that his neighbor Arthur Denker (Ian McKellen) is actually Kurt Dussander, a notorious concentration camp leader currently wanted by the Israelis for war crimes. Rather than turning Dussander in, Todd starts visiting him every day after school to hear about the atrocities that he committed.
