King unleashes evil and scares up a tiresome tale

Airing tonight on ABC, “Desperation” or “Stephen King’s Desperation” as it is officially unfortunately known, is like Frankenstein’s monster: a thing sewn together from parts dug up here and there -- some from the author’s own backyard. Even one not completely versed in his considerable canon will ken that these balls have been fired elsewhere. The novel on which it is based was considered a return to the good old King of scares and gore when it was published in 1996, and given that King himself is the screenwriter here as well as an executive producer, it’s safe to say that he approves of its cinematic translation.

In fact, “Desperation” plays close to a parody at times. Like many a creep show, it depends on people acting dumb: going into that room they oughtn’t, not heading off to contact the FBI when they find themselves in a town full of corpses. The old, dark country road on a rainy night that leads the honeymoon couple to the haunted house here becomes a two-lane road through the middle of the sunny desert, a road our various heroes and victims have elected to take to wherever they’re going instead of the more usual, efficient, friendly, faster interstate, with its available gas and a McDonald’s at every exit . All fall afoul of Ron Perlman’s big, loud, funny, sadistic, apparently crazy sheriff, who has something inside his head that wants to bust things up. You will not be surprised to hear that it is an affliction of a demonic variety.

Directed by Mick Garris (who also directed King’s “The Stand” and “Riding the Bullet”), the film goes along quite well, with the usual grabs and gotchas no less effective for being so familiar, as long as no one is talking. While we are in dark rooms, or are waiting for that other shoe to drop -- with a foot in it, and dealing with snakes and spiders, mean dogs and various icky insults to the human body, the film works pretty much as it’s meant to. And then someone opens his mouth, and something like wit or thought is offered. But the wit isn’t witty -- “Don’t call me cookie, and I won’t call you cake” is what passes for a snappy line -- and the thought is no deeper than what you’ll hear in a junior high comparative religions class.

The notable exceptions are the nutty baroque monologues King wrote for Perlman’s sheriff, who is inhabited by the villain, an ancient god named Tak who lives in a well in a recently reopened mine and works by proxy through various nearby agents -- though only one at a time, which seems a horribly inefficient arrangement, and in fact, is. (There is nothing that makes evil seem quite so banal as movies about devils.) The longer the film goes on the more apparent it becomes how underwhelming it will all be in the end, and once Perlman is gone almost all of the fun goes out of the movie. Even though he is tempted by “Big Ideas” and “Serious Drama,” I would imagine that King wants his books and the movies that come from them to be fun.

Along with King’s favored themes of possession and cyclical supernatural history, there is some ho-hum business about cowardice and redemption. But there is also a more than usual emphasis on God, to whom one character -- an 11-year-old-boy played by Shane Haboucha -- has been praying in recompense for, he believes, saving the life of a friend who was hit by a car. (God, in his infinite whatever, does not keep such a good eye over Shane’s own family, however.) His new belief has made Haboucha spookily even-tempered in a way that we usually associate with cult members, and he is given some grief about it by his adult companions, but he becomes the little child who leads them in their skirmish in the ongoing battle of Good versus Evil.

Lined up behind him and against Tak are a number of performers known for their work in the fantasy field. There is Matt Frewer, who was “Max Headroom,” and Steven Weber, who played the Jack Nicholson role in the TV remake of “The Shining,” and Henry Thomas, who was “E.T.’s” little friend. Perlman, of course, was the Beast on “Beauty and the Beast” and many strange characters before and since, including “Hellboy” and a baddie in “Blade II.” Charles Durning, Sylva Kelegian and Annabeth Gish are here, too, and so is Tom Skerritt, as a writer in the midst of a late midlife crisis who harbors a dark secret and debates the nature of God and Tak and Free Will with little Shane Haboucha. (“Yeah, good old free will,” snorts Haboucha skeptically, and most improbably). Some of them die, some of them don’t.

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‘Stephen King’s Desperation’

Where: ABC

When: 8 to 11 tonight.

Ratings: TV-14 L,V (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14 with advisories for coarse language and violence)