Pet Sematary (1989)

Pet Sematary (1989) is Mary Lambert’s film of Stephen King’s novel about a Maine family that moves next to a pet cemetery and a burial ground that gives back what it is given. King wrote the screenplay. Paramount Pictures released the film in the United States on April 21, 1989. Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby play the parents, Fred Gwynne plays the neighbor who knows the rules, and Miko Hughes plays their son. It was a commercial hit, and the Ramones’ title song kept the misspelling in the culture.

At a glance

Release date	April 21, 1989 (United States)
Director	Mary Lambert
Writer	Stephen King, from his novel
Starring	Dale Midkiff, Fred Gwynne, Denise Crosby, Miko Hughes, Brad Greenquist
Runtime	103 minutes
Rating	R
Genre	Supernatural horror
Budget	About $11.5 million
Box office	About $57.5 million domestic

Plot summary

Louis Creed, a doctor, moves his family from Chicago to a house in Ludlow, Maine, so he can run the university infirmary. The road in front of the house is used by tankers. Across it, a path leads to a children’s pet cemetery, the name spelled wrong on a sign, and past that to a Micmac burial ground the neighbor Jud Crandall will only talk about after the family cat, Church, is killed. Jud takes Louis past the deadfall and tells him to bury the cat. Church comes home. He is not the same cat.

Louis’s daughter Ellie dreams about the place. A student Louis fails to save, Victor Pascow, appears to him with a warning. The family leaves for a holiday. Their toddler son, Gage, gets away from a kite string near the road. Jud, who has already told Louis the story of a man who buried a person and lived to regret it, tells him again. Louis does not listen. The film is about a father who knows the rule and breaks it because grief is louder than the rule.

Spoiler section: the ending

Gage returns wrong and kills Jud and, later, his mother Rachel. Louis buries Rachel in the same ground, telling himself he waited too long with Gage and will not wait too long with her. She comes back. The last shot is the two of them, and a kitchen knife, and Louis deciding the experiment worked.

Production and behind the scenes

King had written the novel in the early 1980s and put it in a drawer. He has said it was the book that went too far, a parent’s fear rather than a safe monster. It was published in 1983. George A. Romero was attached to direct a film for a time. When that fell through, Lambert, who had come up through music video, got the job. King wrote the script and took a cameo as a minister at a funeral. He has said he wanted the adaptation close to the book, including the ending studios usually sand down.

The shoot was in Maine, around Ellsworth and Hancock, with a house dressed as the Creed place and a built cemetery. Gwynne, famous as Herman Munster, plays Jud as a Maine neighbor who has already made his peace with a bad story. Hughes, not yet three during much of the shoot, plays Gage. The dangerous scenes used doubles and careful cutting. The road kills were staged with a truck and inserts. Paramount opened the film in April 1989, a slot more often used for leftover horror, and it grossed about $57.5 million in the United States and Canada on a budget of about $11.5 million.

The Ramones recorded “Pet Sematary” for the film after King, a fan, asked. The song reached the band’s highest chart position. A sequel, Pet Sematary Two, followed in 1992 without the Creed family at its center. A remake opened in 2019 and changed the ending’s victim. Lambert’s film is the one that kept King’s last beat.

Cast

Dale Midkiff as Louis Creed
Fred Gwynne as Jud Crandall
Denise Crosby as Rachel Creed
Miko Hughes as Gage Creed
Blaze Berdahl as Ellie Creed
Brad Greenquist as Victor Pascow
Stephen King as the minister

Trivia

The misspelling is the children’s. King kept it because a correct sign would have looked like a committee wrote it.
Gwynne modeled Jud’s accent on Maine neighbors and on King’s own reading of the book on tape.
Church was played by several cats. The “returned” Church was a different, more ill-tempered animal in a similar coat.
King’s cameo is at Pascow’s funeral. He has a few lines and does not wink at the camera.
Lambert has said the studio was nervous about a toddler as the threat. The film shoots around Hughes rather than asking him to play a killer.
The 2019 remake swaps which child dies. Lambert’s film does not.

Trailer

Go Behind the Screams

Check out these behind-the-scenes looks at how Pet Sematary (1989) was made: