Back in 1980s, Pet Sematary Creators Wanted to Cut 1 Creepy Scene – Stephen King Said No

Summary:

• Stephen King has acquired his status of a proclaimed author thanks to his numerous frightening stories that later on transformed into successful movies as well.
• One particular scene in the 1989’s adaptation isn’t that scary, but its dramatical twist may have made it even harder to watch than any other horror scene.
• The movie’s creators initially didn’t want the scene to appear in the film, but eventually it was Stephen King who insisted that the decision about this be changed.

Stephen King has been giving goosebumps to his readers for quite a long time now — with all his versatile stories about evil clowns and eerie ghosts, the proclaimed author’s storylines have almost never left the big cinematic screens.

And while King’s ghastly characters rule over the viewer’s stress condition, some less scary scenes may have had an even bigger impact.

Over the decades, Stephen King’s books were repeatedly turned into commercially successful films that also found a lot of love from the author’s devoted fans. Apart from the relatively recent It and Carrie, the world saw a movie adaptation of King’s most famous and probably most terrifying novel called Pet Sematary back in 1989.

The original plot follows an initially happy family with two children that moves to a new home that for some reason is put too close to a busy highway. When the main character Louis’s wife’s cat dies in a tragic accident, he decides to follow a neighbor’s advice to bury the perished pet in an ancient cemetery conveniently located right behind his house, but some time later the dead cat comes back reanimated.

When Louis’s 2-year-old son Goge dies in the same circumstances as the cat, Louis starts fearing that he may expect for his dead son’s return as well.

It will be a significant understatement to say that Pet Sematary is crammed with eerie scenes performed in Stephen King’s best traditions — but there’s one particular scene that can’t be really called eerie given its dramatical twist, yet it may frighten the viewers off even more than anything else.

What’s interesting here is that while preparing the film for its release, Pet Sematary’s creators almost cut this scene from the movie due to its presumably heavy content that viewers will find hard to deal with.

Yet Stephen King managed to talk them into leaving the scene as it was and thus contributed to the movie’s overall presence of grief hovering over the horrors unfolding in the family.

In this particular scene it’s Louis’s son’s funeral that takes place and the little closed casket is surrounded by members of the mourning family. Then the film turns to Louis’s father-in-law and his son’s grandpa Irwin Goldman who approaches the former from behind and starts unambiguously blaming Louis in Goge’s death — the squabble that later on develops into an open fight.

When Louis starts attacking his father-in-law back, Irwin loses his balance accidentally knocking over Goge’s casket — and then the coffin lid falls off exposing the dead boy’s little hand with the suit sleeve on it.

Though the creators initially thought that such a disheartening scene could have spoiled the film and taken all the fright away, it in fact didn’t.

On top of that, King’s decision to leave such an important element of his book in the film completed the movie with the overwhelming atmosphere of grief and death mixed with paranormal events that caused it all.