Skeleton Crew

This was quite a strange collection of writings. There isn't really any theme that the publishers stuck to. We get novellas, short stories, poems, and to be perfectly honest, what seem like unfinished ideas. Genres range from sci-fi to body horror to Lovecraftian to supernatural. Submissions go from high school age all the way to current at the time (1985). I hate to write 22 separate reviews, but I think that's the only way to do it. I'll average out each story minus the poems.

1) The Mist - 4/5 - Great storytelling. This is King's bread and butter. Ending didn't land, but overall very good.

2) Here There Be Tygers - 2/5 - I mean, I guess it's really good for a high school student, but nothing special about this one.

3) The Monkey - 2/5 - Generic spooky story here. Think that Family Guy episode where Stephen King says a lamp is haunted or whatever. What if a monkey toy was haunted. Unoriginal and boring.

4) Cain Rose Up - 1/5 - Some early writer weirdness on this one. Seems to be immune to King's anti-gun self-censorship like Rage was.

5) Mrs Todd's Shortcut - 3/5 - I really liked this concept, but didn't work for me as a super short story. I think some things could've been fleshed out. I feel like the set-up was really cool and then a time skip happened.

6) The Jaunt - 5/5 - Awesome sci-fi storytelling on this one. King doing Asimov in King fashion. I was as rapt by the father's storytelling as the children were. And even though I knew what was going to happen, I was still terrified at the ending.

7) The Wedding - 1/5 - Doesn't seem to have much of a point than to be an excuse to use racist and fatphobic language. It's a discussion for another time, but King does this often and is at his worst when he does it.

8) Paranoid: A Chant - NR - A quick little poem about insanity and paranoia. Neither good nor bad, but I couldn't do an entire book of this.

9) The Raft - 3/5 - Honestly, I was very disappointed in this one. This story led to my favorite Creepshow vignette so I was looking forward to it quite a bit. The characters did weird, dumb stuff that no one would do. The ending wasn't nearly as fun as the movie version. Cool idea, not very well executed.

10) Word Processor of the Gods - 3/5 - King likes to write about writers. This one was OK, but works better as a teleplay. In fact, it did get filmed as an episode of Tales from the Darkside. More fatphobia.

11) The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands - 2.5/5 - I mean, it wasn't bad. It also wasn't super good. The entire plot is given away in the title, so the rest of the story seemed unecessary.

12) Beachworld - 2/5 - Not exactly sure what to make of this one. It reads like the lost chapter of the Heavy Metal movie. Kinda pointless, to be honest.

13) The Reaper's Image - 3/5 - More early King weirdness. I did like this one, but it wasn't terribly original. Some people see Grim Reaper in a painting, disappear, not much else to say.

14) Nona - 2/5 - Male rage.

15) For Owen - NR - Cute little poem for King's son. Kinda just thrown into the mix without rhyme or reason.

16) Survivor Type - 4/5 - One of the best stories in the book and not for the weak-stomached. King hype's himself up on this one, but it's not even as gory as The Raft. Corrupt doc is stuck on an island with a bunch of heroin, so he autocannibalizes. I always love horror for the “what if this happened to me?” factor. I have a few nitpicks, but overall, this one was quite enjoyable.

17) Uncle Otto's Truck - 3.5/5 - Really liked this one until the end. Unfathomably silly.

18) Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1) - 2.5/5 - Previously unpublished, this was more of an idea than a story. We get a set-up but not much beyond that. The fact that the next story involves the milkman makes me wonder if the character was shoe-horned into the whole thing as an afterthought.

19) Morning Big Wheels: A Tale of the Laundry Game (Milkman #2) - 2/5 - I hated the way the characters talked to one another. And I don't understand how the reader was supposed to know who the Milkman was or why he's important in this story. Ending seems tacked on.

20) Gramma - 3/5 - This is a classic King ending flub. I think what makes this story so scary is that a lot of us know what it's like being a kid and having to deal with adults who scare us. In a kid's imagination, anything can happen. Is gramma a witch, a monster, a serial killer? King had me by the throat up to the climax and then lost me.

21) The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet - 4/5 - Another one about magical typewriters, huh? No, actually, the first part of the story just seems like people in the book publishing biz having a social get-together. As the editor begins telling his story, the reader joins in on the madness. Who are the sane ones? Who are the insane? Is insanity rooted in truth?

22) The Reach - 3.5/5 - A nice, heartwarming little book end. An old lady who lives on an island has never been to the mainland. A little muddied of a plot, but overall very good.

Average comes out to 2.8/5.0 so I'll give it a 3.