There's just nothing wrong with this movie, really. It's a rare case where critics absolutely blew it. It has a great plot idea, great actors and is generally entertaining as hell, even after having watched it four times or more.

Much of the criticism doesn't make any sense to me. Someone wrote that the town was ugly from the beginning. Well, otherwise it would be way less realistic. Gaunt used the ugly stuff that was already there to destroy the place and it's citizens, that's what Ed Harris' whole soliloquy at the end was all about. Some critics say it's unpleasant and depressing. I just don't see how. Don't watch any movies about say war then, if this is too dark or too ugly for you. What the hell. Personally i laughed a great deal. It's not a master piece by any means, but a good dark comedy. A fun little movie.

There was a time I used to force myself to read Stephen King books at night in the dark with no one else in the house just to see if I could do it. 'It' was the creepiest and 'The Shining' was a close second, but 'Needful Things' was a pretty good contender even if it wasn't an outright horror story. I survived those days pretty well, so now I'm watching this flick in the dark, by myself, and it manages to block out the creaky noises in the rest of the apartment. So far, so good.

I was a little surprised to see the amount of negative reviews for this picture by other reviewers on this board. A lot of them have to do with not following King's novel all that closely, but it's been so long since I read it that it doesn't make much difference to me now. The one thing I remember though has to do with the baseball card; in the book I think it was Koufax, not Mantle. I could be wrong, but when the scene came up I was expecting a Sandy Koufax card, so maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, maybe not. Perhaps some day I'll check it out to be sure.

The interesting thing about this story was the way old Leland Gaunt (Max von Sydow) got all the folks in Castle Rock to turn on each other by not pitting likely adversaries against one another. Sort of like a domino effect where one unsuspecting citizen tripped up the next one in line with more and more disastrous results. The backdrop of the curiosity shop was a cool one for me because I like antiques and old things myself. The collecting urge isn't there any more though, so chances are I would have been a casual observer with all the insanity going on.

There was some good casting here besides Sydow who appeared to be having a devil of a time. I enjoy Ed Harris and Bonnie Bedelia in most any other movie I've seen them in, but I have to say, Amanda Plummer as Nettie and Valri Bromfield as Wilma were perfect for their roles. Their vicious tete a tete with the strains of 'Ave Maria' in the background was an inspired piece of work. Even old Raider managed to do a good job with his limited involvement. If you stuck around to catch the full credit roll, you'll notice that he was portrayed in the movie by a canine named K-Jin. Stuff like that just interests me to no end.