He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Despite its flaws, Apt Pupil is a good, entertaining thriller that delivers chilling moments that are quite disturbing.Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. Either way, you'll probably have chills coming up and down your spine when you watch the film. Apt Pupil is an entertaining and good thriller that could have been a lot better than it is, but it manages to still have a good story and got thrills. The film does a great job at capturing the cold, evil nature of Ian Mckellen's character (who is well cast and gives a great performance) But considering that this is a film directed by Bryan Singer, you know right from the start that this isn't his strongest directorial effort. However by the film's end you feel that something could have been improved and it could have been somewhat better. Bryan Singer has a talented cast at hand and he takes every opportunity of the talent present to create something tense and unerving. Apt Pupil is not a horror film, but its most certainly horrifying due to its subject matter. Dussander agrees and Todd Bowden starts a lesson he won't forget. When he discovers that one of his neighbors is a Nazi war criminal, teenager Todd Bowden persuades and blackmails Kurt Dussander to tell him about his war crimes. Directed by Bryan Singer who is famous for directing the first two X-Men films directs this chilling and thrilling tale. It's not a horror film by any stretch, more a psychological thriller, and quite a competent one.Īpt Pupil is a very interesting Thriller. Still, it works on most levels and seems to get the majority of King's ideas and themes across to the audience. And David Schwimmer's casting as Todd's geeky school counsellor was laughable - I'm not sure what they were trying to achieve with that one. Renfro was a good enough choice for Todd, but I've always felt that McKellen wasn't quite the right actor for Dussander. This is a workmanlike but relatively atmospheric account of King's novella, although the casting has always concerned me. As the film progresses, Todd's constant questioning starts to reignite the old hatred, the old thirst for blood in Dussander's veins, and the character starts to take on different shades. It's here that King excels, capturing the uncertain but developing relationship between the nervous old man and the monstrous boy the content too lures us in, as we - like Todd Bowden - are grossly attracted to tales of the Holocaust even though we shouldn't be. Beneath this seemingly perfect middle-class existence beats a dark fascination with the Holocaust and the Nazi death camps, particularly the gory details (you know the stuff: gas chambers, lampshades made from skin, electrodes attached to nipples, Mengele's ghastly experiments and so on.) He spots Mr Denker, an old man who lives in his neighbourhood - partly by chance, partly by his arcane reading, he recognises him as Dussander, a vigilante Nazi war criminal who has slipped from sight and set up in America.Īrmed with this knowledge, Todd blackmails the old man into recounting stories of Hitler's 'Final Solution' in all their grotesque horror. Brad Renfro is Todd Bowden, a teenager who seems to have it all: terrific grades, affluent parents, even a gorgeous girlfriend. This movie is not in the same league as those two, but it still holds considerable interest as King explores the recidivist power of evil and the strange attraction it has to the young. "If you don't believe in the existence of evil, you've got a lot to learn."Ī boy blackmails his neighbour after suspecting him to be a Nazi war criminal.Īpt Pupil comes from 'Different Seasons', Stephen King's quartet of novellas that also spawned The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me.
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