'Apt Pupil' is one of King's best

I scratched another Saturn Award winner for Best Horror Film off my list yesterday, and this time around, it was the 1998 winner, “Apt Pupil.”

This movie was released in October 1998 and stars Ian McKellen, Brad Renfro, David Schwimmer and Elias Koteas.

For those of you who haven’t seen this movie, it’s about a teenage boy who’s obsessed with Nazis and the Holocaust. He pours over books about these subjects and spends hours studying old World War II photos. One day, while riding the bus, he recognizes a 75-year-old former Nazi who’s been on the run since the end of the war. The boy begins to blackmail the old man in hopes of learning from a first hand source all he can about the Nazis and their death camps. However, it doesn’t take long for the wily old SS officer to turn the tables on the boy, and that’s when things get interesting.

One interesting bit of trivia about this movie is that it is based on a long short story written by Stephen King. It originally appeared in “Different Seasons,” a book of short stories that also included “The Body” and “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.” Both of those stories were also turned into movies, “Stand by Me” and “The Shawshank Redemption,” respectively. The only story in the book not to have been made into a movie, so far, is “The Breathing Method.”

King is not only known for his awesome stories, but he’s also known for making cameos in the film adaptations of his books. “Apt Pupil” is no exception, and if you look closely, you can see him at the graduation ceremony at the end of the movie.

For those of you who have read the book and seen the movie, you probably noticed a number of key differences between the two. The novel is set in 1974, and the movie is set in 1984. Also, the endings of both are very different, but I won’t go into that here for fear of spoiling the ending for anyone out there who’s never read or seen the book or movie.

In the end, it was fun re-watching “Apt Pupil” and from here, it’s on to the 1999 winner, “The Sixth Sense.” Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, this movie stars Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment. Many of you will likely remember it for having one of the greatest all time twist endings.