The truth is, this week's film is not a B-Movie. And that is also precisely the reason I am reviewing it. Confused? I'll explain. Now that this review has been going on for sometime and there is an established readership, I felt responsible to use this leverage to review a movie or two once and a while which is underappreciated or underexposed. THE DEAD ZONE is exactly that kind of a film.

As you might imagine given my love of horror films, I am also an enormous Stephen King fan (yes, I read sometimes...I'm not thoroughly uncultured). One of his earliest works was a novel entitled the DEAD ZONE about an average man who gets into an accident and wakes up with a power, perhaps innate, to see the future. It sounds ridiculous, but King pulls it off well and creates a terrific and fast read in which the average joe, who is even named John Smith, is given a power which could alter world history.

While Stephen King could pull it off in words, that rarely means a filmmaker can adapt it well into the medium of film. But enter the great Canadian director David Cronenberg, creator of such masterpieces as DEAD RINGERS or the truly disgusting remake of THE FLY. In Cronenberg's hands, THE DEAD ZONE becomes the model of restraint and good acting, with the fine Christopher Walken in the lead role. Walken, as Smith, is involved in a serious car accident with his fiancee. He is left comatose for many years and wakes to find a different world: his fiancee has left, he has to learn how to walk again from scratch, and something remarkable happens everytime he touches someone...he is able to see into their future.

Slowly, the movie unfolds. It is amazing to see such a ridiculous plot become so believable and restrained. But this works perfectly. Soon, Smith is used to solve a creepy murder case. Eventually things unfold to the degree that Smith shakes the hand of a senatorial candidate (Martin Sheen) and realizes that he is going to be president, but there is more but I do not want to give it away.