‘Late last night and the night before, tommyknockers, tommyknockers knocking on my door...’
While Stephen King is one of the most successful and acclaimed modern writers, not all of his output maintains the high standards that constant readers have become accustomed to. The Tommyknockers is perhaps King’s most derided work. He himself described it as “an awful book” and acknowledged that it was written at the height of his cocaine addiction in the ’80s. While I will admit that The Tommyknockers is a downright bizarre read, I mostly enjoyed it…
When writer Bobbi Anderson stumbles across an alien spaceship buried deep in the woods behind her house, she unleashes a terrible evil that overcomes the small town of Haven. Meanwhile, Jim Gardener, a suicidal poet, becomes convinced that Bobbi needs his help and so heads to Haven to answer her call before finishing himself off for good.
A straightforward alien invasion tale then? Not quite. The Tommyknockers features, among other treasures, a cola machine that comes to life and starts murdering people, a dog tied up in a garden shed and used as a perpetual power source and several vivid descriptions of how it feels to be hungover that are so gnarly that they made me question my own uneasy relationship with alcohol.
The plot is not the only aspect of this book that is odd. The structure is strange too. We start with Bobbi and then switch to Gard before the entire book’s midsection switches the narrative perspective between various town members of Haven. There are so many characters in this book it’s impossible to keep up with them all. This robs the third act of some of its impact as I constantly questioned who Becka Paulson was or what was the name of such and such journalist or cop.
Another thing this book does perhaps more than any other King work is that it constantly references other books in the King universe. Firestarter, The Dead Zone, IT and Pet Sematary are all directly referenced and as much as I love King’s Dominion, the level of self-reference demonstrated here was a bit much even for me.
And yet… The Tommyknockers is a long novel at 558 pages and I still devoured it in a fortnight. I genuinely cared about Gard’s fate by the end and was desperate to find out how the story concludes (I read it as a child but could only recall small snatches of plot).
Of all King’s works, this is one of the last that I would recommend to a potential new fan but for those already initiated The Tommyknockers is not just a time capsule of where King was in the ’80s but also a unique, spell-binding terrible disasterpiece of freaky sci-fi horror. It was a pleasure to revisit it.
The Tommyknockers (TV miniseries)
Originally aired across two nights in May of 1993, John Power’s adaptation of The Tommyknockers is an average re-telling of an average book – at least by King’s high standards. Developed for the small screen by Carrie writer Lawrence D. Cohen, The Tommyknockers tacks on a slightly more optimistic ending and also affords a much larger role to town harlot Nancy Voss (memorably portrayed by porn star Traci Lords here). Jimmy Smits is solid as Gard, although the character here is a lot less pathetic than his book counterpart and the version of Bobbi Anderson we are given (as played by Marg Helgenberger) is a downright insulting rendering of a character who is already given a rough ride in the source material.
The Tommyknockers was part of a slew of King TV adaptations in the ’80s and ’90s and as with most of them, it’s pretty shoddy. The special effects are primitive. Much of the acting leaves a lot to be desired. And I can’t imagine what it would be like trying to watch this thing having not read the book. Large swathes of plot are changed, revamped or dropped entirely and the resulting finished product is a bit of a mess. Predictably underwhelming.