While sitting and watching Jeopardy one evening, waiting for his wife to return from the store with some ice cream, Howard Milta begins hearing scratching sounds in their bathroom. Which suggests there might be a mouse - or worse, a rat - skittering around the bathtub.
Knowing that is in the best interest of all parties that the intruding rodent be dispatched and disposed of before Violet, Howard's wife, returns with the ice cream. Howard grabs a broom and a dustpan from the kitchen and ventures into the bathroom to perform his manly duty.
But there is nothing in the bathtub. What Howard finds instead is a human finger popping up out of the drain in the sink.
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| The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction - December 1990 |
The Moving Finger was first published in the December 1990 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and was reprinted in the anthology Nightmares & Dreamscapes, which is where I first read it; some 33 or so years ago. I still have that very same edition sitting in the “Books I have read” section of my collection. [Yes, I do segregate my collection between books that I have read and books that I have yet to read.]
I found The Moving Finger to be one of the more visually memorable stories of that particular anthology and was delighted, when returning to it for this review, that my memory was pretty damn accurate. No doubt thanks in very large part to King’s ability to ground the weird aspects of a story in a tactile reality that feels and reads as both relatable and lived in. King also held back on revealing whether or not the finger actually existed, or if Howard is having some kind hallucinatory mental break with reality.
While the ending does offer a definite answer, its also leaves whatever happens next up to the reader’s imagination. King also wisely refrains from giving any explanation as to what that finger belongs or is connected to…
The most disappointing discovery during my revisit was having to suffer through some questionable and discomforting racial stereotyping. While some of it is addressed within the text, in that Howard notes his wife’s not so subtle racist thoughts and opinions about the Vietnamese owners of the corner deli, she feels that they are sneaky. Yet King himself writes said owner’s dialogue in such heavily accented pidgin prose that it reads as an over the top and insensitive caricature of an accent. Opinion mileage will vary in regards to that, though. But I winced when stumbling upon it while revisiting this otherwise entertaining yarn of the weird.
Even though I do think the story’s central concept and overall approach held up, I also thought the story could have used a tad bit of trimming and tightening. King ofttimes can wander off into the weeds of digressive observations while spinning a yarn, pausing the action to share a "brief" anecdote about a magnet on a fridge or of a memory brought up by song heard on the radio, which can under cut the suspense or narrative drive of the primary story he is telling.
While there are no kitchen magnets or songs on the radio in The Moving Finger, there is a palpable sense of methodic slowness to it. Reading it I kept wondering why this story needed to be forty pages long, but I have no idea as to what could have been trimmed to make it read at a tad faster and snappier pace.
The Moving Finger may not be top tier King, but it is memorable King and the whole concept and how Howard reacted to it still gripped my attention and still kept me wondering… was the finger really there, or not? Even if I already knew the answer.
An adaptation of The Moving Finger served as the final episode of Laurel’s anthology show Monsters, which was their Outer Limits styled follow-up to their more Twilight Zone styled anthology series Tales from the Darkside.
As was the case with Tales from the Darkside, Monsters production budget was bottom-of-the-barrel low and the quality of its episodes could and did vary from pretty damn good to yikes that was terrible. Which is par for the course for any TV anthology series, or any TV series period.
Monsters aired, in the San Francisco Bay Area, on channel 20, which was the home for KOFY, a small local UHF broadcast outfit owned and operated, at that time, by James Gabbert. It had a Saturday night time slot, nestled amongst reruns of Tales from the Darkside, reruns of the original Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, in addition to Freddy’s Nightmares: A Nightmare on Elm Street The Series. KOFY’s Saturday night line-up was awesome.
But this leads to an interesting point of trivia here. Both Monsters and Tales from the Darkside were produced for the syndicated television market and sold without any obligation to air the episodes in a fixed time slot or, and this is more important, in any fixed of order.
So… the order and dates of the episodes broadcast as listed on the IMDB do not align with KOFY’s broadcast schedule. Also, while the IMDB gives an April 26, 1991 airdate for The Moving Finger, I sifted through a good two or so years of TV listings and could not find a single one for The Moving Finger, while just about every other episode of Monsters’ third and final season seemed to have been broadcast. Weird.
I would not see The Moving Finger until I nabbed a bootleg DVD of the complete series at convention some 20 or so years ago. I think it might have been a WonderCon, back when it had its home in San Francisco's Moscone Center.
From the very outset I knew I was in trouble, as the episode’s calliope-style electronic score playing over the opening credits screams “COMEDY EPISODE” and I find almost every single comedic episode of either Tales from the Darkside or Monsters to be painfully unfunny, most times. There are exceptions, of course. But few, very few…
King’s story was adapted by Haskell Barkin, a television writer who toiled, for the most part, writing episodes of 70s era Saturday morning cartoon shows (i.e. Clue Club, Jabberjaw, and The Scooby-Doo Show) as well as some scripts for The Love Boat. The Moving Finger was the third of the three scripts he wrote for Monsters, the other two being Refugee and The Hole. He wrote four scripts for Tales from the Darkside - Pain Killer, an adaptation of Harlan Ellison’s Djinn, No Chaser, All a Clone by the Telephone, and The Impressionist. He also wrote two segments for the 1985 relaunch of The Twilight Zone - Act Break and Tooth and Consequences, as well as the direct to syndication episode (and personal favorite of mine) The Curious Case of Edgar Witherspoon.
The Moving Finger was directed by Kenny Myers and is one of only two directing credits for him. The other being another third season episode of Monsters, titled Bug House. Myers is best known for his special make-up effects work in films such as Return of the Living Dead, Parts 1 and 2, Star Trek V and VI, Home Alone 2, and many, many more… His special make-up career has been a long and prestigious one.
The episode opens inside of a television set, pulling back and up to reveal Howard (played by the late Tom Noonan) and his wife Violet (played by the late Alice Peyton) sitting and watching a Jeopardy style quiz show. While it was actually Jeopardy in the story, I think securing the rights to use an audio clip would have cost more than the episode itself did. I thought I recognized the voice of the unseen game show host, so I checked the IMDB. It was the voice of character actor Richard B. Shull, who I know best for his roles in the schlocky snake shocker Sssssss, wherein Dirk Benedict gets turned into a snake by Strother Martin, and the short-lived sitcom Holmes and Yo-Yo, which lasted all of thirteen episodes.
Violet decides to go get some ice cream and, after crumpling the beer can he has just finished off, Howard begins hearing scratching sounds. He investigates and discovers the titular Moving Finger poking out of the sink basin drain.
On the plus side of the adaptation equation, The Moving Finger is almost word-for-word King’s story. Although everything that takes place outside of the apartment was cut in its entirety, for budgetary reasons. Also Howard’s struggle over whether or not he is hallucinating the finger, as well as his final, bloody battle with said finger, was whittled down to the most time saving and cost effective bone.
Yet the episode nonetheless manages to retain the shape and content of King’s yarn with zero liberties taken. Which is quite the impressive feat.
But there are downsides, of course. As I said before, the cartoonish music that opens and underplays the entire episode works against it. There scenes that might have played better with a tad more serious leaning underscore. One where the overt comedic aspects grow from it organically.
While Tom Noonan does give a solid and energetic performance throughout, it is also a very uneven one. It looks and feels almost like he was given contradictory directions whilst filming. Act serious. Now act goofy. Now act serious. Now act goofy. Bah, we’ll fix it in the edit.
Even with the story whittled down to its very core elements, it still loses the struggle to effectively fit within the series' half hour format. That means there is no room whatsoever for Howard’s confrontations with the finger to breathe.
Also, you do not get a face full of drain cleaner spray and walk away from it unscathed. That part really needed to go.
Then there’s the ending, which goes ever so slightly past that of its source material, if by only a few seconds and, well, it stumbles badly due to a poor choice of a practical effect coupled with a clumsy rewrite of Howard’s closing observation(s) in the story.
So, despite the obvious hard work by all involved, The Moving Finger ended Monsters with a more of a constricted whimper than an enthusiastic bang. Yet, while it does fall short of qualifying for one of the series worst episodes, it sits well within the below average section of its weaker ones. So it goes.
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