Oh man, get this. It was back in 1984, and it was a crazy time with experimental drugs … but like actual CIA experimental drugs that made me claw my eyes out and forget everything. Do you remember what happened in Firestarter (1984)?
Pop Quiz Hot Shot!
1) We start in media res with Drew Barrymore and her father running from some agents. How do they get away?
2) Next they get picked up by a nice elderly couple. But don’t worry, the bad guys from the shop are right on their tail. How does The Shop find them, and how do they get away?
3) Finally, just prior to getting caught they hide out at one last place. Where? And how are they caught?
4) In the shop John Rainbird is going to convince Barrymore to light some things on fire. But he wants one thing in exchange: give him Barrymore at the end instead of killing her. What does he want with Barrymore?
5) Here’s a challenge. Name everything Barrymore lit on fire during the film!
Bonus Question: After that gangbusters finale that can’t be it, right? What happens to Charlie after the end credits?
Answers
1) Well first they kind of just get lost in the crowd a bit and jump into the street, but the real key is that they hop into a taxi and then “charm” the driver into taking them (quickly) to the airport by convincing him that they are paying him a bunch of money.
2) This is kind of wild, but they literally just see them in the old guy’s truck and get his license plate. So easy enough to find out where they probably are from that. They get away by having Barrymore blow up everyone and then borrow a car from the couple after.
3) It is Drew Barrymore’s grandfather’s cabin isolated in the woods. But naturally the feds know all about the cabin and have agents planted in the town waiting to see if they show up. And indeed, at one point they need to mail some letters, et voila! They are caught.
4) He wants to kill her! But … why, you ask? Whasn’t the shop just going to kill her anyways? Yes, but you see, John Rainbird really wants to kill her while starring into her eyes because he believes that that way he can take per power with him to the afterlife. It is weird, and mostly he seems like a pedophile, but I don’t think he is. I think he’s just a true blue insane person.
5) Oh man, can I do this? Well, we see her light her mother’s hands on fire in the kitchen. We see her light the person’s shoes on fire in the bus station. We see her light everyone on fire at the farm house. Then we see her light a bunch of wood in experiment #1. Then again, she lights a concrete wall on fire in experiment #2. I’ll call the burning of The Shop as one big fireworks-esque finale. I think that’s it. They did a good job restraining themselves in the film I think.
Bonus Answer: Much like the Hulk she’ll ultimately be forced to roam from town to town, her power held in secret, incurable, and at the slightest anger it is unleashed! But she wants to control it, and the only way to control it is to understand it. Throughout this television series we learn that Lot Six actually unlocks telekinetic powers. These powers manifest in people differently. In Charlie’s mother she could move people’s eardrums themselves, which seemed to manifest itself as telepathy. For Charlie’s father it was the ability to physically move electrons and excite precise brain function, which seemed like some sort of “suggestion”, but again, it was just the way his brain could “move” things. For Charlie her’s was to excite atoms and make them intensely hot. In the end though she begins to realize that she could harness all of these powers. But where does the power come from? From the Todash space of course, and indeed, Lot Six is a hallucinogenic which allows one’s psyche to cross into the Todash Space. For most subjects this is so traumatic as to kill (see The Mist), but for Charlie’s family they were the ones who could survive. Can Charlie figure out why?
Find out in Firestarter: The Television Series. Which is shot on cheap video so that it looks just like Highlander: The Series.
Bad Movie Twins 