Product: The Dead Zone [VHS] (1983)
Rating: 3.0
Grade B for 'bowlcut'
Based on Stephen King's novel, the Dead Zone is about a teacher who goes into a five-year coma following an automobile accident and emerges to discover he has psychic powers and the capability to change the future he sees.The film delivers a solid story and acting, but there are no real scares here for me, other than Walken's bigtime bowl haircut before the accident. Once he comes out of the coma, his hair is also altered, taking on its familiar unkempt height. I had a hard time accepting his life-long distraught over his girlfriend marrying another man while he was in the coma because, frankly, she just wasn't all that. Also, there is a suicide scene in which a man somehow dies almost instantly by shoving a pair of barbershop scissors into his mouth, raising the age old anatomical query -- can you get to the brain through the roof of the mouth? I'm just not sure.