"He threw an 18-wheeled truck at me and bounced me into nowhere for five years!"

All the horror fans are talking about It this week -- whether they loved it or hated it, whether it was scary enough, funny enough, or too funny, whether it was better than the 1990 TV mini-series, whether it followed the book closely enough or whether it should have included the adolescent gang bang, and so on.

You might expect Stephen King to hand out full-size Snickers bars this Halloween, what with all the truckloads of cash being backed up to his home in Bangor, Maine, but King doesn't give out Halloween candy. He used to, but too many people showed up, wore him out, and played "hell with the law."

According to the FAQ on his web site, there are quite a few things King won't do. He won't give you writing advice and he won't read your book, which is a shame because I wanted to know what he thought about the Kindle Edition of Thursday Thrillers.

In honor of King's latest box office success, this week's Thursday Thriller is The Dead Zone.

David Cronenberg directed this 1983 adaptation of King's novel. Christopher Walken stars as Johnny Smith, a high-school English teacher who decides on an especially rainy night not to have sex with his girlfriend Sarah (Brooke Adams) and instead drive home. Visibility is hampered and the roads are slick. Smith slides into a jack-knifed tractor-trailer and awakes from the resulting coma five years later. He survived the crash but what the hell for? Sarah has married another man. 

It's not like he got nothing for his trouble, though. Smith inexplicably has supernatural insights into the lives of people he touches.  He's got psychic powers. He saves a child by telling his nurse that she's trapped in a burning house. He helps his doctor track down his long lost mother. It's not long before Sheriff Bannerman (Tom Skerritt) from Castle Rock comes asking for help catching a serial killer, because for all his devoted deputies and highly authoritative moustache, he's got doodley squat for leads. 

Smith gets shot during the killer's apprehension, and then he moves far away from Castle Rock, which is probably smart, considering nothing good ever happens there.  He takes pupils under his private tutelage for work and has  and especially Christopher Walken moment when he tries to warn a student's father not to make the boy play ice hockey. 

Martin Sheen plays Greg Stillson, a ruthless and corrupt politician riding a wave of populist anger into the U.S. Senate. Smith shakes Stillson's hand at a campaign rally and foresees him starting a nuclear war. Smith feels like he should do something about it, but what?

The Dead Zone is a cool flick. It streams on Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime.