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Apt Pupil (story)

The book Apt Pupil (story) was made into the movie Apt Pupil.

Which one did you like better, the book or the movie?  There are 7 votes for the book, and 8 votes for the movie.

Book details for Apt Pupil (story)

Apt Pupil (story) was written by Stephen King. . More information on the book is available on Amazon.com.

Stephen King also wrote Cat From Hell (story), Graveyard Shift (story), The Boogeyman: (story), The Raft: (story), The Body: (story), Trucks (story), Cycle of the Werewolf (story), The Mangler: (story), Children of the Corn (story), The Woman in the Room: (story), Night Flier (story), Riding the Bullet (story), The Crate and Weeds: (stories), The Lawnmower Man: (story), The Shining (1977), Dead Zone (1979), Firestarter (1980), Cujo (1981), Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (story) (1982), Christine (1983), Pet Sematary (1983), Misery (1987), The Dark Half (1989), Secret Window, Secret Garden (1990), Needful Things (1991), Dolores Claiborne (1993), The Green Mile (1996), Hearts in Atlantis (1999) and Dreamcatcher (2001).

 

Read More About This Book

Todd Bowden is an apt pupil. Good grades, good family, a paper route. But he is about to meet a different kind of teacher: Mr. Dussander. Todd knows all about Dussander's darl past. The torture. The death. The decades-old manhunt Dussander has escaped to ... Read More
Todd Bowden is an apt pupil. Good grades, good family, a paper route. But he is about to meet a different kind of teacher: Mr. Dussander. Todd knows all about Dussander's darl past. The torture. The death. The decades-old manhunt Dussander has escaped to this day. Yet Todd doesn't want to turn him in. Todd wants to know more. Much more. He is about to learn the real meaning of power--and the seductive lure of evil.

This acclaimed collection of four novellas by Stephen King also includes "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" (basis for the Academy Award nominated film The Shawshank Redemption), "The Body" (inspiration for the motion picture Stand By Me), and "The Breathing Method."

Movie details for Apt Pupil

The movie was released in 1998 and directed by Bryan Singer. Apt Pupil was produced by Sony Pictures. More information on the movie is available on Amazon.com and also IMDb.

Actors on this movie include Brad Renfro, Ian McKellen, Joshua Jackson, Mickey Cottrell, Michael Reid MacKay, Ann Dowd, Bruce Davison, James Karen, Marjorie Lovett, David Cooley (II), Blake Anthony Tibbetts, Heather McComb, Katherine Malone, Grace Sinden, David Schwimmer, Anthony Moore (II), Elias Koteas, Kevin Spirtas, Michael Byrne and Danna Dennis.

 

Read More About This Movie

At the top of his game, Stephen King has a real gift for mining monsters--zero-at-the-bone horror--out of everyday faces and places. Adapted from a novella in the 1982 collection that also spawned Stand by Me and The Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil loo... Read More
At the top of his game, Stephen King has a real gift for mining monsters--zero-at-the-bone horror--out of everyday faces and places. Adapted from a novella in the 1982 collection that also spawned Stand by Me and The Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil looks at first as if it might draw authentically enlightening terror from the soul-cancer that makes blood relations of a Southern California golden boy (Brad Renfro) and an aging Nazi war criminal (Sir Ian McKellen). Turned on by a high-school course about the Holocaust, Todd Bowden (such a bland handle for this top-of-his-class sociopath!) tracks down Kurt Dussander, a former Gestapo killer hiding in the shadows of sunny SoCal. Blackmailing the old man into sharing his firsthand stories of genocide, the teenager trips out on the virtual reality of the monster's memories. There's perverse play here on the way a kid hungry for knowledge can bring a long-retired teacher or grandparent back to life. Truly superb as James Whale in Gods and Monsters, McKellen brings subtlety to this Stephen King creepshow: his dessicated Dussander is like a mummy or vampire revivified by Todd's appetite for atrocity.

Considerable talent intersects in Apt Pupil: It's director Bryan Singer's first film since The Usual Suspects, that enormously popular, rather heartless thriller-machine. The outstanding cast also includes David Schwimmer as a Jewish guidance counselor pathetically impotent in the face of Todd's talent for evil, and Bruce Davison as Todd's All-American Dad, lacking the capacity to even imagine evil. And the story itself has the potential for gazing into the heart of darkness right here in Hometown, U.S.A. But Apt Pupil just turns ugly and unclean when it trivializes its subject, equating Holocaust horrors with slamming a cat into an oven or offing a nosy vagrant (Elias Koteas). Reducing the great spiritual abyss that lies at the center of the 20th century to cheap slasher-movie thrills and chills is reprehensible. Both Todd and the writers of Apt Pupil should have heeded the old saw: When supping with the devil, best use a long spoon. --Kathleen Murphy