The Pumpkin King: THE DARK HALF (1993)

We all have two sides to our personality: One that usually conforms to what is socially acceptable—which we readily show to the world. But the other we hide because, for whatever reason, it might be seen as inappropriate or unacceptable. It could be judgmental thoughts you’d never say aloud, a taboo interest or it could be a dark secret such as an addiction. This duality of human nature is the central theme behind THE DARK HALF.

The movie stars Timothy Hutton as Thad Beaumont, an English professor and writer. While he’s written and published literary fiction, his more successful work has been the violent crime novels he publishes under the pen name George Stark. After learning the author’s true identity, Fred Clawson (Robert Joy) attempts to blackmail Thad to keep his secret. Instead of paying him off, Thad decides to stop writing the Stark novels and reveal his identity. However, George Stark is more than just a name and, in order to survive, he manifests physically and begins killing the people responsible for ending him.

While I’ve been a Stephen King fan for many years, his career started before I was even a thought, leaving me with a backlog of work to catch up on. It wasn’t until a couple years ago that I found this one. I’m glad I didn’t read the book or watch the movie earlier. It’s only within the past couple of years that I would have really understood and appreciated the inner struggle of the main character. At first glance, it might just seem like a batshit crazy story, but there is a deeper meaning to the events that take place. 

King describes the story as an answer to the question of where his ideas come from: “It seems to me that for most writers there really is another person hiding inside, although it isn’t always dark and it’s hardly ever as much as a half. I thought it would be fun to write a story about a novelist whose muse gets totally out of control.” This idea is specifically referenced in a scene where Thad is teaching a class of students about digging into that hidden persona for their writing.

While that may have been the beginning premise, it explores a more universal and deeper aspect of the human psyche.

If you strip away the supernatural elements, the story is about a man struggling with himself. George Stark was never his own person; he was always a part of Thad. Before he manifests physically, we see glimpses of him in Thad’s interactions.

There are several scenes where he says things that are more in line with Stark’s personality. And it’s not just what he says, it’s the way he says it, a visible change in his tone and demeanor. In addition, his wife Liz (Amy Madigan) mentions how different he acts when he writes as Stark; including drinking when he’d quit years before.

This uncertainty of the line between Thad and George is heavily emphasized in the first half of the movie. When the killing begins, Thad is the most obvious suspect and the evidence supports it. The audience is kept in the dark, only getting shadowed glimpses of the killer. We don’t see him until the middle of his attack on Miriam Cowley, his third victim. Until then we’re not sure of how real Stark is, for all we know it could be Thad working under the guise of Stark’s persona.

While Stark is driven by revenge at first, it’s not his end goal. The movie builds to the final confrontation with Thad where only one of them gets to continue living. It reminds me a lot of the inner battle people have with themselves to change for the better. Stark represents the side of Thad that wants to drink, smoke, and be “not a very nice guy.” He could also be seen as a physical manifestation of addiction. Thad didn’t want to give up Stark but had no choice for the sake of his career. The consequences of Stark’s actions wreak havoc on Thad’s life, threatening his freedom, his family, and eventually his life. 

Writers tend to put a lot of themselves in their work, sometimes even more than they realize. King has written about his own issues with addiction. It’s hard to look at this story and not assume that he drew on his own inner battles. It was also in part inspired by his own experience of having his old pen name of Richard Bachman revealed.   

Personally, the exploration of these themes makes the story much more interesting to me. The horror and supernatural elements are simply icing on the cake.