NIGHT SURF – Tony Pomfret

Once again I’m back to bring you my latest interview from the world of “Stephen King Dollar Babies”. The film program for filmmakers to get the rights to short stories from the famous author Stephen King and bring those visions to the big screen all on a promise and one dollar. The “Dollar Baby” program has covered a lot of King’s stories and this time we have what I call a “Side-quel” story, Night Surf. The story isn’t a “prequel” nor a “sequel”, but takes places roughly the same time period as Kings Mega-Epic Masterpiece, The stand.

The short story Tony’s film is based, comes from the Stephen King short story book collection, Night Shift. It was originally published in 1969 in Ubris magazine and later in the short story collection in 1978. The story takes place during the same time as King’s over-sized book, The stand. This post-apocalyptic story is about a killer virus known as A6 or “Captain Trips”, which wipes out a very large amount of the world’s population. A small group of survivors camp out on the beach thinking they are safe and exempt from the virus. As time moves on and very little survivors left in the world, the group capture one. They think if they sacrifice him they will not be cursed with this virus. However, some in their group survived an earlier strain of the virus known as A2. By surviving this they feel they’ll not die from A6 which is much stronger. When one of the survivors begins to show symptoms of the A6 or “Captain Trips”, they realize it’s just a matter of time before their time is up as well.

Tony did a very fine job adapting this short story of Night Surf. He captures the atmosphere and fear of the story nicely. The actors did fine performances and the film leaves you guessing and wanting a little more.