Osgood Perkins, the visionary filmmaker behind last year’s creepy-as-hell “Longlegs,” still remembers the first time he was exposed to Stephen King’s macabre world.
He was a kid and his parents (actor Anthony Perkins and actress Berry Berenson) had left him with a babysitter. He crept downstairs and what he saw horrified and delighted him. It was “Salem’s Lot,” the 1979 CBS miniseries by “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” auteur Tobe Hooper, based on King’s beloved 1975 novel. He vividly remembers – still – the little vampire kid floating outside the window.
And now, with “The Monkey,” his adaptation of King’s 1980 short story (collected in “Skeleton Crew” in 1985), Perkins has made something that will traumatize an entirely new generation of curious kids with sleepy babysitters.