ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

lisakeys2003 As a considerable Stephen King fan, especially of his short stories, I was anxious to see this series. I bought the DVD set as I don't have cable and have watched it several times. While I agree with much of the content in the reviews, I have some notes to add. I guess I will go through each show... 1. Battlefield: Excellent. Special effects were of high quality. Agree with another reviewer that the people downstairs probably would've heard something...... 2. Crouch End: One of my very favorite of SK's short stories, however, I will regretfully agree that Claire Forlani's acting was atrocious and it did not translate well to the small screen at all. I completely agree with the commenter who said that what they envisioned in their mind while reading was much better than what was presented. I did enjoy the Melbourne scenery, though! 3. Umney's Last Case: Not my favorite short story, but well done thanks to William Macy. 4. The End of the Whole Mess: Rang true to the original story and was well executed. Yes, he could've done a bit more research on the La Plata population, but I guess time was of the essence. 5. The Road Virus Heads North: A great story by SK, remember it really effecting me when I read it, and quite frankly, this one really bit the big one. Something was missing for sure. 6. Autopsy Room 4: Good suspense, but I don't really think in real life that the hospital staff would be that disrespectful, inappropriate or pathetic. The attempts at sexual tension over the body were laughable. 7. They Got a Hell of a Band: Good story, but really should have picked a different story all together. It didn't really translate well. 8. The Fifth Quarter: Good story, well presented. Not horror, of course, but good just the same. Relatively happy ending for King. Hardly recognized Cody from Let Me In, what a great little actor he is.I wish they would do another, though. Call me a sucker for punishment.

rushhour3 I have to say that I loved this miniseries. I had read about TNT doing something on it last year and came into it with great anticipation. I actually went out and bought all the books so I could read the stories prior to viewing. The books are great so I advise anyone who hasn't read them to do so and there only about six dollars each. Now onto the stories, I actually liked just about every story on screen better than on paper simply because of the fantastic acting and music. Also my favorite to read and watch was The End of the Whole Mess. If your someone who likes horror movies but thinks that the same stories are told over and over this should be a nice change. I highly recommend this to all horror and Stephen King fans because your in for a ride and the stories are very faithful to the books.

ChristianZane After the Salem's Lot and Shining re-make fiasco, we finally have a couple of episodes form this series that really make up for a lot of the bad Stephen King movies on television.Firstly we have Battleground which sets the tone of the series and does a good job of making something out of a nothing story. The effects were well done (for TV) and except for the first 20 minutes, this mostly kept me on the edge of my seat."Crouch End" is an excellent companion to the night with a surreal nightmare through a desolate English suburb. Thrilling directing, a neat look to the film and great performances really make this and Battleground the two best of the series.

Sandoz The majority of Stephen King's short stories are little gems, with original ideas that don't take a long time to develop; basically lean and mean--he sets them up quickly in a scarce number of pages, you read 'em, and you're finished before you know you've begun. They're like the equivalent of a carton of McDonald's fries--they taste Really good and you know there's not much nutritional value in them (re: from a literary standpoint, they don't say much about the universal human condition), but you're still gonna scarf 'em down, just don't be a pig and go for the extra-super-sized portion and fill up on too much grease ("too much grease" is a metaphor for the prose in King's novels when find yourself reading one of them and saying come on--enough with the pop-cultural observations or clever Yankee asides--get on with the story already!) He has compiled four books of short story collections. I've read them all--from NightShift to the latest, Everything's Eventual, and they all display an efficiency of getting-to-the-point which is sometimes sorely lacking in his tome-sized novels.But his short stories never overstay their welcome...which brings us to the TV adaptations of Nightmares And Dreamscapes...How in the hell did they (the series' producers) get a green-light to turn stories that usually averaged 15 pages into 50 minute episodes? I'll tell you how--two words--"Stephen King." Stories with his name on them probably didn't come cheap, and one hour shows enable more advertising than half hour ones, so...what should have been an anthology of mostly 23 or 24 minute episodes is turned into double that length, and double the commercial time...Ka-Ching!I'm not going to waste time synopsizing the plots of these stories--this review supposes you have already read the stories and/or seen the show; what follows is merely my gut reactions to what TNT presented... Of the four installments so far, here's my ten cent assessment (from first to worst): Battleground-- Not a classic by any means, but hey, how could anyone argue with keeping William Hurt from opening his trap by filming this episode without a single line of dialog? And the tongue-in-cheek reference and destruction of the killer Zuni doll from Trilogy Of Terror proved to me the producers (and the writer of the teleplay, who is Richard Matheson's son--the writer of TOT) knew their mission with this one was to make the action deadly, yet at the same time, fun. It took longer to get to Hurt's apartment than it should have, but I think it fulfilled it's objective. 8/10Umney's Last Case-- Liked this one primarily because of William H. Macy's performance. I think the writer/Umney should have appeared in the story sooner into the private eye/Umney beginning because he was the actual reality of the story, and anyone familiar with the King short story (probably half, if not more of the audience) knew the Chandleresque set-up was due to get interrupted by the writer's reality, so let's get on with it already, and cut-out the cute and clever hard-boiled repartee' Private Dick banter already. Once the writer/Umney's family tragedy began to reveal though, I thought the show developed an emotional connection that made the viewer (me, at least), feel sympathy for the real-life Macy's attempt to escape his sorrows by usurping his fictional creation's exciting life. 6/10 The End Of The Whole Mess-- Uh, this title is how I felt about this episode when it was over. After twenty minutes, I was ready to scream at the TV--OK, we get it already, the younger brother is a Mega Mensa Genius Prodigy Extraordinaire! We know from Ron Livingston talking to the camera ("time is running out for me"--not fast enough, I thought) that the young whiz kid is going to discover something really bad for humanity--we know this because he's already built an airplane but almost died because he couldn't steer it out of the path of a tree; and, he blew up his chemistry lab while teaching himself chemistry (to think the end of the world could have been prevented if only this kid had some more parental supervision). So much time was wasted on establishing the uber-genius of Henry Thomas, when we finally get to the resolution of his discovery--the end of the world through unintended idiocy--how much do we get to see of the world "ending?"--a cheap video shot of a reporter starting to forget what she's reporting on, and brief radio broadcasts announcing the day of judgement is at hand. Oh, and the brother's parents drooling and singing old songs. My point is, if your story is really about the "end of the whole mess (world)", I wanna see the "mess" as it goes up in flames and crashes and burns. Talk about ending with a whimper, indeed. 2/10 Crouch End-- This episode just ticked me off totally. I could have lived with the taking-forever exposition of the happy couple arriving at their hotel, playing slap-and-tickle, having lunch, and getting a taxi (that was half the episode right there), if once they finally crossed-over into Crouch End the episode delivered the chills, but it failed miserabley. Not only wasn't it scary, it was practically laughable. Ooh, look--a kitty...wait, it turns...oh my god! Look at it's scary eye! Uh-huh. They could have gone a long way towards achieving chills by filming the Crouch End sequence at night instead of in daylight, too...things you might unintentionally find funny can become scarier when you see them in the shadows of the night. But I guess the budget wasn't high enough to afford shooting at night on the fake London sets they slapped together for this one. On the page, this is a very scary story about tourists wandering into places they shouldn't and the terrible things that might lurk there just around a corner. The only terror in this adaptation was the directing and acting--those were truly horrifying. 1/10 Overall Series Average (so far): 4/10