Stephen King's The Stand (1994)

Cody looks back at the 1994 mini-series adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand.

In 1978, Doubleday published the novel that I believe is Stephen King's masterpiece. The Stand. An epic story of the apocalypse, and what comes after. The fall of civilization, the attempt to get it restarted. And a battle between the forces of good and evil. I didn't read The Stand in '78. I wasn't even born yet. I was introduced to the story through the 1994 ABC mini-series adaptation that was directed by Mick Garris from a script King wrote himself. That mini-series aired over four nights in May of '94, and there I was, ten years old, tuning in each night. The story that played out on my TV captured my imagination. I was fascinated. 

I could imagine something like this happening to some degree, and wondered how I would deal with it. I plotted the route I would use to travel from my home in Ohio to Boulder, Colorado, an important destination in the story. I bought a paperback copy of the novel - the 1990 update, which added 400 pages to the story and boosted the page count well over the 1000 mark. I leafed through that book regularly, picturing the characters as they appeared in the mini-series. I went so far as to take that book to school and try to get my friends to spend recess acting it out with me. I wanted us to do our own performance of The Stand, just for fun, just for ourselves. That idea didn't go over well with them, they wanted to play instead.

When the mini-series became available to rent on VHS in a local video store, I rented it multiple times. They had two copies and would eventually sell one. I had my mom reserve the copy that was going to be sold; as soon as the video store was done with it, it was going to be ours. Once I owned that VHS copy, I continued to watch the mini-series again and again. This was an important story I wanted to share with other people, even if they weren't usually fans of horror. Despite the awful things that happen in The Stand, there's also a degree of hope in there. A strong dose of faith. This made it more accessible to people - so this was something I could show my paternal grandmother, who would walk out of the room if something we were watching ever got too graphic or vulgar. We spent a day watching The Stand together, and she enjoyed it without ever walking out. I showed the mini-series to my father on the night of December 31st one year, stopping only briefly - I think around the start of the fourth chapter - to watch the ball drop in Times Square and usher in the New Year. I watched it with a friend from school. One of those kids I couldn't get to act out the book with me. Almost thirty years later, I'm still showing the mini-series to people. Soon after the pandemic hit in 2020, I had a strong urge to watch The Stand again, so I did watch it with blog contributor Priscilla during lockdown in Brazil.

The Stand is about a plague. At first. In fact, the first chapter of the mini-series is called The Plague. The story begins at a top secret government lab in California, and in the opening moments a guard named Campion (Ray McKinnon) is alerted to the fact that there has been a containment breach in the lab. A virus they've been working on has leaked out. Campion is supposed to shut the gate and remain at his post. Instead, he grabs his wife and daughter from the on-site housing and escapes. In the lab, the germ kills everyone within five to twelve minutes. Campion and his family have been infected as well, but they last longer. All the way to a gas station in Arnette, Texas. Spreading the virus as they go.

The virus is a souped-up version of the flu with a communicability level over 99%... and nearly everyone who gets it dies. 99.4% of the world's population is wiped out in just a couple weeks. The first chapter of the mini-series shows us that collapse of civilization. Towns being quarantined. The government desperately trying to contain the spread and suppress information. Riots in New York City. Martial law being declared. People dying. In the midst of all this, we're introduced to characters we'll be following throughout the show.

Gary Sinise plays Stu Redman, who is at that gas station in Arnette, Texas when the dying Campion and his dead family come crashing in. Stu and people he knows from Arnette are taken off to a high security CDC facility in Vermont, where the doctors study them as they die of this super-flu, which comes to be known as Captain Trips. But somehow Stu never gets sick. In Queens, singer Larry Underwood (Adam Storke) comes home to visit his mom because he got in trouble with some people in California and owes $40,000. That's a debt he'll never have to pay. Instead, he gets a front row view of the mayhem that hits NYC. In Ogunquit, Maine, the only survivors seem to be a young pregnant woman named Frannie Goldsmith (Molly Ringwald) and her friend's brother Harold Lauder (Corin Nemec), who has an unrequited crush on her. In Arizona, Lloyd Henreid (Miguel Ferrer) is arrested for murder and robbery. In Shoyo, Arkansas, a deaf and mute man named Nick Andros (Rob Lowe) is assaulted by a bunch of local douchebags, then ends up taking care of his ill, jailed attackers when the sheriff gets sick.

We also meet a lot of characters who don't last so long, including Troy Evans as that sheriff, William Newman as the doctor who advises Nick to give up on the sick prisoners, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as a guy who walks around NYC shouting "Bring out your dead!", Ed Harris as a military General who feels an intense amount of guilt over what that lab has unleashed, John Bloom (a.k.a. Joe Bob Briggs) as a Texas police officer, Sherman Howard as a doctor Stu deals with, and more.

 

As the world falls apart, King and Garris also start to set the stage for the battle between good and evil. Some survivors, like Nick and Stu, start dreaming about an elderly African American woman named Abagail Freemantle (Ruby Dee), or Mother Abagail. A 106-year-old servant of God who lives on a farm in Hemingford Home, Nebraska. She tells the people who dream of her that they should come visit her. But she's not the only one appearing to people in dreams and visions. There's also the "Dark Man", Randall Flagg (Jamey Sheridan). A mysterious being of pure evil, with dark magical powers.

The second chapter of the mini-series is called The Dreams, and it's set in the aftermath of the plague, when the survivors have to figure out what to do with themselves in a world largely populated by rotting corpses. Inspired by their dreams, the characters we've been following hit the road, some intending to go see Mother Abagail in Hemingford Home - or in Boulder, where she soon moves to. Others intend to join Flagg where he sets up shop: in Las Vegas, with Lloyd his right hand man. This is the section that really gripped me more than anything when I was a kid, the concept of people making their way across a devastated America. This was a major part of why King was inspired to write the book as well; he wanted to write a modern American equivalent of the journey in Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings is great, but this modern American story is more my speed.

As they travel, we're introduced to even more characters, including the seriously off-balance pyromaniac Trashcan Man (Matt Frewer), who leaves a trail of fire - even burning down Des Moines - on his way to the side of Flagg, who he has already pledged his life to. Larry has an unpleasant experience leaving New York through the corpse-littered Lincoln Tunnel, with an odd woman named Nadine Cross (Laura San Giacomo) at his side. Then she ditches him. Stu crosses paths with not only Frannie and Harold, but also with a kindly teacher named Glen Bateman (Ray Walston). Walston's endearing performance makes Glen one of my most beloved characters, and Nick meets another one: the simple-minded Tom Cullen (Bill Fagerbakke), who thinks M-O-O-N is the spelling for every word there is. Nick also runs into Julie Lawry (Shawnee Smith), who isn't so nice. And since Salt Lake City was one of the filming locations for this mini-series, the Vincent Drug pharmacy seen in Halloween 4 and Halloween 5 is the place where Nick finds Julie. By the time Nick and Tom reach Mother Abagail, they're also accompanied by a country fellow named Ralph Brentner (Peter Van Norden), and some others. Including a character played by the director's wife Cynthia Garris.

The Stand really hits the gas with the third chapter, The Betrayal. In fact, the very first scene of the chapter drops us right into the middle of a situation in such a jarring fashion that when it first aired, I thought I had missed a chapter. The Plague aired on May 8th, The Dreams on May 9th, and then The Betrayal on May 11th - and when this one began, I feared the mini-series hadn't actually skipped May 10th. That's because we find Stu's group with characters we hadn't met before and Stu in the middle of performing emergency surgery on one of them. But that's just the story jumping ahead and speeding up. Soon all of our heroes have moved into Boulder, clearing out corpses and getting the electricity running again. A handful of them are chosen to lead the community, forming what's called the Free Zone Committee. America is coming back, starting here: the community even celebrates the return of electricity by singing the national anthem. As said, King wanted to make this a very American story. We don't know what's going on elsewhere in the world. Whoever survived outside of America is getting left out of this whole good vs. evil thing.

Mother Abagail wishes she had been left out of it. The Free Zone Committee starts sending spies to infiltrate Flagg's set-up in Las Vegas. Larry has gotten married to someone he met in the previous chapter, so he's no help to Nadine when she shows up, desperate for him to have sex with her. That's because she's a virgin and has been claimed by Flagg. She's not entirely comfortable with this idea, but she's falling under his spell... and she's able to lure someone else in Boulder to Flagg's side as well. Thus the title, The Betrayal. When that betrayal is fully carried out, it has a major emotional impact.

Before the spies sent to Vegas can even report back about anything - and thanks to a Flagg lackey played by Sam Raimi, one of them doesn't even get to Vegas - we've moved right into The Stand. Through Mother Abagail, God decrees that four men from the Boulder Free Zone are to travel on foot from Boulder to Las Vegas, taking nothing but the clothes on their back, for the final confrontation with Flagg. The ultimate confrontation between good and evil. Stu, Larry, Glen, and Ralph are the ones sent to "stand", with Glen's dog Kojak following along. It's not an easy trek for them, and there is no epic, heroic action sequence... but the climax works for the story. King is known for fumbling his endings from time to time, I have certainly been disappointed by the end of a King novel, but I have no complaints about the ending of The Stand. (The last chapter of the extended edition isn't so great, though.) And what happens in Vegas isn't the end. There are still some miles to go on this journey.

What took eight hours to play out on broadcast television takes six hours with the commercials removed, and there are times when things progress so quickly - in The Betrayal particularly - it does feel like even more time could have been taken to tell this story. Peter Jackson took more than six hours to bring Lord of the Rings to the screen, after all, and this is a massive story inspired to some degree by that J.R.R. Tolkien one. But when you take into account the fact that previous plans were to turn The Stand into a single feature film, this six hour format was absolutely the right way to go. And this is a terrific adaptation. Sure, it has some weak points, and airing on early '90s network television brought some limitations with it. But for me, any shortcomings this version of The Stand has are greatly overshadowed by the amount of heart and emotion that were packed into these six hours. This mini-series tugs at my heartstrings; I really come to love and care for many of the characters in this story, and I get emotional about the things they go through.

Garris has directed some fun movies and mini-series over his career, but for me The Stand will always rank as his masterpiece, much like I feel that the novel is King's greatest work. This had to be an intimidating challenge, directing something with a scale this large, and Garris pulled it off. He also assembled the perfect cast to bring King's characters to life. Everyone does well in their roles, with some of the actors - like Gary Sinise, Ruby Dee, Ray Walston, Rob Lowe, Bill Fagerbakke, among others - being absolutely incredible. I've seen some fans put down Jamey Sheridan's casting as Randall Flagg, but I thought he did fine. 

Garris also put together a really cool soundtrack, with standout moments including Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" playing over images of the dead lab workers at the start of the first chapter, and "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House opening the second chapter. I love the score composed by WG Snuffy Walden as well, especially the use of slide guitar.

When I was ten years old, The Stand entertained and captivated me in a way that few other things ever have or ever will. Decades later, it remains one of my all-time favorites. This will always be a very important piece of entertainment to me, and I will continue returning to it from time to time as the years continue to go by.