Yesterday I got the chance to see last years most "less available" King movie, Strawberry Spring. It was never released to any cinemas, it wasn't released on video and it wasn't shown on TV. The only place it was shown was on St. Louis Local Filmmaker Festival which happened on July 29, 2001.

Strawberry Spring is an 8-minute long movie based on King's short story with the same name from Night Shift. The story is told by a student on campus and is about a killer named Springheel Jack. Springheel Jack is stalking the campus area and killing innocent girls. This is not enough though; he also takes their head with him after the murder. As the story progress it becomes clearer and clearer that it's the narrating student and Springheel Jack is one and the same.

The movie is a bit shorter then the story in the fact that some of the story has been cut away, nothing major though. The essential of the story is still there.

The look and feel of the movie is very modern and even though it's only 8 minutes long it's a well-financed piece. There are extremely many statistics in it and you can tell that it must have cost a big sum to make…or Doveed Linder is really good at making it look like it. I would say that Strawberry Spring (along with Paranoid) is quite clearly the best looking of all short films made by King's work.

Like the short story the movie consists mostly of narration and there aren't much dialog (except at the end) and I think this was a great move from Linder. Partly because that is the way King told the story but also because it would extremely hard to tell the story in this short time with the help of dialogs. This way the pace of the story moves along smooth and the viewer gets all the info he/she needs to understand what is happening.

 
As I said earlier the movie looks extreme new and modern. Not that there is any reason that it wouldn't but my experience is that the short films do from King's work is often low budget and doesn't have that much financial backing. Strawberry Spring seams to have that though.

Another thing that hit me immediately was the actor that plays the student (Greg Loch) was perfect. He looked exactly like I would imagine the character. I don't know if this is a compliment or an insult but he looks the way I imagine someone that is a bit craze but still manages to hide it (or doesn't even know it himself) would look like...

As I said. I'm not sure if this is a compliment or not but for the movie it's extremely good and I hope Greg will forgive me for saying this if he is reads this. He also gives the narrating a believability that is crucial to the movie. I'm not sure if it's his voice we hear as the narrator but it fits nicely to his looks.

Strawberry Spring is a great movie. Even though it's short it tells King's story in a great way. It gives the same feeling that the short story does and it has a great lead actor.

I can only hope that King acknowledges this one and make sure that the general public gets to see it.

Why not put it in front of another King movie when it's released on DVD or video? Wouldn't that be a great way to get it out to the general public?

I personally think that it's a loss that not more people gets to see this one, it's deserves a bigger audience! Doveed Linder has done a great job making this movie!

If you want to comment or discuss this review, please mail me.