Strangely entertaining

Back at the start of his career, Stephen King wrote a nasty little short story that nobody would publish called “Survivor Type.” It was a diary of a coke runner trapped on a desert isle who has to resort to auto-cannibalism in order to stay alive. It was also a foreshadowing of sorts to the twilight of King’s writing career.

In Dreamcatcher, 20 years after some special-ed kid rewards four friends with paranormal powers for saving him from some bullies, the four men gather in a remote cabin to drink beer and reminisce. Unfortunately, a space ship has crashed nearby and is spreading a fungal plague among the locals, the nasty side-effect of which causes terminal flatulence and large, KY-slicked teeth-with-tails to explode from their anuses. These charmingly dubbed “shit weasels” inevitably home in on the crotch of any dude standing nearby.

Fortunately, the gub’mint is on the job and has sent in the Special Forces to secure the area and enforce a quarantine. Unfortunately, the seemingly reasonable commander of this unit (Morgan Freeman) is slowly being driven mad by his eyebrows and wants to pull a My Lai on the local population, just in case. Our four friends are left to retrieve their latent powers to save the town, the world, and most important, their jewels.

Not saying that Dreamcatcher is bad. It’s not. It’s actually pretty damned entertaining, scary, and gruesome. Not to mention seriously loopy. With Lawrence Kasdan at the helm, it’s sorta like watching The Big Chill, only with an alien exploding from Jeff Goldblum’s ass halfway through.