The heart’s desire for any resident of Castle Rock can easily be found among the curiosities…in exchange for a little money and-at the specific request of Leland Gaunt-a whole lot of menace against their fellow neighbors. Nothing has a price tag in this place, but everything is certainly for sale. Its mysterious proprietor, Leland Gaunt, seems to have something for everyone out on display at Needful Things…interesting items that run the gamut from worthless to priceless. The town of Castle Rock, Maine has seen its fair share of oddities over the years, but nothing is as peculiar as the little curio shop that’s just opened for business here. Master storyteller Stephen King presents the classic #1 New York Times bestseller about a mysterious store than can sell you whatever you desire-but not without exacting a terrible price in return.

It's not funny and it's not scary and it's all sort of depressing.Set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine In no time the town is at war, and we get the usual exploding buildings (it's a rare movie these days that doesn't have something exploding, with characters in the foreground diving for cover).Įd Harris struggles to provide this unpleasant tale with more of a hero than it deserves, and, to give von Sydow his due, he plays the devil about as well as anyone could, except for Christopher Walken.īut the movie only has one note, which it plays over and over, sort of a Satanic water torture. Von Sydow, as Satan, busies himself setting all of these people against each other with a series of mean little pranks which are fairly mundane, considering their author (the lady turkey farmer gets turkey guano all over her sheets). Others are villains waiting for a stage, like Danforth Keeton III (J. Some of the others seem nice enough, until they wander into the store: like the waitress, Polly ( Bonnie Bedelia), who gets engaged to Pangborn, and the sweet bakery chef at the restaurant, Nettie ( Amanda Plummer).

There's not a person in town who won't sell his soul, except for Pangborn ( Ed Harris), the police chief who has a skeleton in his closet. No prizes for guessing the price of each of these items, as Satan enters names in his little book. For an aging loser, the high school jacket he wore on the happiest day of his life.

For a gambler, a game that allows him to predict which horse will win. The store's stock is eclectic but comprehensive: It contains one each of every item that anyone in the town most deeply desires.

Needful things book review