Do you believe it’s difficult to lose weight? How would you deal with a situation in which you’re losing weight despite consuming over 10,000 calories each day? As we take a close look at the film Thinner today, such weird questions will be answered, and many more will be examined in this video!
There are some timeless classics among Stephen King’s books, as well as some neglected, underappreciated gems. Thinner, a 1996 film, is the latter, as it is unquestionably one of the strangest adaptations of a Stephen King story.
For fans of Stephen King, the narrative’s unpredictability and bizarre plot developments make for the ideal late-night viewing experience. It’s not the best Stephen King adaption out there, but it’s definitely worth your time! So, without further ado, let’s dive right into the strange world of Thinner.
A Detailed Synopsis to refresh your memories
Billy Halleck, our protagonist, is someone you would instantly despise. He is an obese lawyer who is unconcerned about his health or the ethics of his profession. If the actor, Robert John Burke, looks familiar, it’s because he’s the protagonist of RoboCop 3. In this film, he is morbidly obese, which is quite a change from his shredded status as the RoboCop!
He is an arrogant and ignorant fellow this time around, beneath the fat-suit and all the make-up he wears. He lives with his family in a nice Connecticut suburb, and his practise makes it plain that he is financially well-off.
His wife Heidi seems concerned about his ever-increasing weight, but Billy cannot stop eating the extra calories. He also has a young daughter named Linda, and Heidi asks him to take his health seriously, if only for his daughter! So, does the eating stop? Not for the entire ninety minutes of the movie – our guy takes his food very seriously!
At the breakfast table, the characters are seen discussing a case that Billy is handling, involving an underworld crime boss called Richie the Hammer Ginelli. Billy assures his family that the man is innocent, but it soon becomes clear that he has arranged for the case to become twisted to prove his client innocent.
The crime boss is seemingly delighted on having been acquitted, and assures Billy that in addition to his fat paycheck, he owes him big time! The town seems to be in the middle of a carnival run by the Romani people, though it is quite clear that Billy’s client is quite averse to the idea of these people coming into the town. Billy is smitten by an attractive lady in the group, but she is too feisty and gives a fiery reply to his creepy gaze!
Billy is soon sitting down to dine with his family and friends. He’s up to his neck in food yet again, and his wife has to physically restrain him from eating anymore! (#Dinner scene in which he celebrates his victory)
Heidi is concerned about Billy’s food addiction and wonders whether there is anything that could serve as a distraction. Billy acknowledges that eating is his obsession and that he can’t think about anything else. As a result, Heidi decides to give him something to ponder! Yes, fellas, you guessed it, she gets rather handsy, or should we say mouthsy, on the way home.
Meanwhile, an old Romani man walks into a pharmaceutical store, seeking meds to treat his facial scars. He is accompanied by his daughter, and guess who is selling the meds! It is Stephen King himself, doing his bit in a customary guest appearance.
Billy is distracted by Heidi’s oral skills, and runs over the old Romani lady. Her 106-year-old father, Lempke, is a witness to the crime, but he can do nothing when the subject is taken up in court.
You see, our protagonist has a lot of influence in town: the judge, Cary Rossington, is his friend, and even the local police chief Duncan Hopely falsely testifies in Billy’s favor. He walks away from the case free of any charge or guilt, though little does he know that his troubles are only about to begin!
The 106-year-old man, the father of the slain Romani lady, curses Billy by saying the word Thinner and rubs his fingers against his face, leaving him confused. Billy has no idea that a curse has taken over his life when the Romani group departs town. The weight loss miracle has begun!
For someone who is fat, it’s almost like a dream come true, since he sheds weight quickly. Billy is initially ecstatic at the possibility of being able to eat anything he wants and yet lose weight. However, it is quickly apparent that something is wrong. We also hear that the old guy condemned both the crooked judge and the corrupt police chief.
Rossington is transforming into a lizard, with what appeared to be psoriasis quickly developing into a horrible, reptilian scaly skin. He starts to lose his mind, and after a hostile encounter with his wife, he takes his own life. Rossington’s wife confronts Billy and tells him about the curse.
The logic adds up, but Billy is hoping against hope that all this is just not true. He still goes on to find his friend, the police chief Duncan. Upon his visit, he finds Duncan in a state of shock because of the morbidly oversized pimples all over his face and body.
He is visibly disfigured, and when Billy tells him about his plans to meet the old Romani man, he pleads with him to put a bullet in his head as revenge. Billy doesn’t comply and walks out of his house, and we hear a shot being fired. Duncan has put an end to his misery by committing suicide, just like the judge!
Billy is still in Daniel about his situation, but he is well aware that he is in big trouble! He goes to a clinic for help with his worsening weight loss, but nothing is wrong with his health. His reports are fine, and he is always eating, so the sudden weight reduction makes no sense.
He finally accepts that the curse is genuine, and he feels that only Lempke, the one who cast it, has the power to lift it. While he intends to search for this elderly man, his family appears to believe he is going insane.
Heidi thinks that he needs immediate medical assistance, thinking the concept of the curse to be ridiculous! Easy for you to say, Heidi – you are in perfect shape! Billy literally flees from his family and decides to track down Lempke. He also gets the whiff of an affair brewing between his wife and Dr. Houston, and writes to Heidi about his plans, asking her to end the affair.
Billy experiences a terrible nightmare where he is involved in a car crash caused by Lempke and the deceased judge. He wakes up shaken, and discovers that his family has put out a reward for his whereabouts, because they consider him to be mentally unstable.
He also learns about the Romani group that has moved to the next town and heads to their campsite. When he confronts Lempke, and requests to get the curse off him, Lempke laughs it off. Gina, his granddaughter, is infuriated at how Billy’s recklessness caused her mother to die, and she shoots him in the hand with her catapult.
Billy is mocked as the town’s white man, and he is escorted out. Billy could have pleaded guilty gracefully if he hadn’t had the attitude and arrogance! With no other options, Billy turns to Richie, the mob boss who owes him a favour.
Richie recognises the gravity of the issue and, with the assistance of his associate, searches down the Romani group. He also poisons the camp’s dogs, leaving a letter that reads, “White Man From Town Says Take It Off.” The plan backfires when they discover the associate dead the next day, his mouth stuffed with a chicken head.
Richie is enraged, and he isn’t called the Hammer for nothing. He launches a vicious one-man attack armed with automatic weapons, and the Romani camp is taken by surprise. He even gets one of their own killed, a man who turns out to be Gina’s partner.
The very next morning after the attack, Richie turns up at the campsite posing as an FBI Agent. He asks Gina to accompany him to identify the man behind the attack and leads her to an old barn. He then tortures her and threatens her with acid if the curse is not lifted. He leaves her with a message for the old man to meet Billy in two hours at the lighthouse.
Lempke recognises that if he wants to stop the attacks on his people, he needs to attend the conference. He meets Billy but tells that he won’t be able to lift the curse on his own. It can only be transmitted to another victim, which is exactly what he intends to do.
He then stabs Billy in the injured hand and pours some of his blood into a strawberry pie he had with him. Lempke assures him that the curse will be lifted soon, and that within that time, the pie must be consumed by an unsuspecting individual.
That individual would then die a horrible death, but if they did not cooperate, Billy would be cursed again. He also puts in a word of advice, suggesting Billy to consume it himself and end it all for good. But, this is the first time in the movie that Billy refuses to eat!
He returns home, much to the relief of his family, and leaves the pie in the kitchen. He wants his wife to try it because that would be a nice way of getting back at her for cheating on him. She is happy to eat a piece, and Billy pretends to be exhausted and heads to bed.
The next morning, he discovers his wife’s mangled body, and he rejoices because he has escaped the curse at the expense of his adulterous wife. His happiness is short-lived, however, because he soon discovers that his daughter ate some of the pie for breakfast before going to school.
He is heartbroken at the prospect of losing his precious daughter at any moment. At the same time, he learns that Richie has been discovered dead in New York City under unexplained circumstances.
A dejected Billy decides to die with dignity and goes on to consume a piece of the pie. Just as he is about to do so, Dr. Mike Houston, the supposed paramour of his dead wife arrives at the doorstep.
He clearly has no explanation for being there, and so Billy’s suspicion about the doctor and Heidi is seemingly confirmed. Billy decides to deliver one last killer blow and invites Houston in for a piece of the strawberry pie. The movie ends as we see him closing the door with a smirk on his face!
Our Take on the Movie
We had a hard time accepting the fact that losing weight while eating everything we wanted was terrifying! Aside from the jokes, this film is as close to a serious horror film as you can get while yet maintaining the comedy of a B-movie. The characters are engaging, and except from Billy’s daughter, none of them are blameless.
So many of the characters in this film turn out to be horrible people that you almost feel like they deserved it! In fact, the gangster is the only one who has any loyalty, with Richie defending his friend, who had once saved him.
The story isn’t without a sense of humour, however the lighter moments tend to veer towards the darker. He keeps eating, from the start of the movie until he is deep in crisis, and you have to admire Stephen King’s knack for wicked humor. Conceptually, the storyline is quite entertaining, with the theme of a gypsy’s curse recreated by Sam Raimi in the movie Drag Me to Hell.
The director, Tom Holland, had to wait it out patiently for six years before the movie was finally made. By the way, this Tom Holland has nothing to do with the young Spiderman who was barely born when the movie was released!
The book that this film is based on was released in 1984, and Holland had immediate plans of making it into a movie. He was known to horror fans for his work on Child’s Play and Fright Night, and he had even worked with King previously on the mini-series titled The Langoliers.
The problem was getting the studio on board with the idea. There were concerns that the portrayal of Billy’s weight loss could be likened to the symptoms of AIDS, which was a very sensitive topic back in the day!
In reality, the idea actually occurred to King while he was enrolled in a difficult weight loss program. He had developed resentment towards the process, and this disdain manifested as a character who cannot stop losing weight.
Makeup was vital for this film, and the filmmakers were lucky enough to find the right man for the job! Greg Cannom, an Academy Award winner, was enlisted for the job, and he lives up to his reputation. At the risk of appearing arrogant, we must state that the effects were quite good for the period.
The scars are horrifying, and the boils on the police chief’s body come as a rude awakening. The judge emerges momentarily in his mutant-lizard state in a dream scenario that is breathtaking. As for the protagonist’s makeup effects, they were right on, if you forgive the funny fat-suit.
The original concept for portraying fast weight loss was more worse. The director had an image in mind where Halleck would literally have the flesh dangling down his jaws and cheekbones. It certainly would have made the movie way more intense and dark, but the idea was dropped because it was deemed to be too horrific.
Many are completely unaware that when Thinner was shown in the theaters, it was teamed up with an unlikely companion: none other than Michael Jackson’s Ghosts, which was made roughly at the same time.
The Credibility of the Cast
Yes, the film has a campy vibe to it, but it has nothing to do with the cast. In fact, throughout the film, the acting performances are solemn, and well-chosen casting aids the cause. As previously stated, Robert John Burke, who previously played RoboCop in RoboCop 3, played the lead character.
To play Billy, he had to go through a difficult change, losing a lot of weight, down from 300 pounds to under 200. He had to sit through four to six hours of gruelling makeup to resemble the role, in addition to losing weight. Because the transformations were terrible by the time they recorded sequences at the pinnacle of the curse, it got a lot worse.
Joe Mantegna, who played the role of the crime boss, also deserves a special mention for his performance. He is someone we have seen as a gang leader time and again on screen, and he brings all his experience to this role.
He turns the film briefly towards the action genre with all his shooting, and it is great to watch his antics as he tries to get rid of his friend’s curse. Others like Michael Constantine as the old Romani man, Lucinda Jenney, and Time Winters were decent enough in their individual roles.
The sheer political incorrectness in the plot
People could get away with a lot of political incorrectness back in the day, and Thinner is no exception. The film does not stop at utilising the term gypsy and pointing a disparaging finger at the Romani people.
We could have made more money than this video if we had a dollar for every time they said “the white dude from town”! The characters are clichés, and no one seems to care what they say, whether it’s harsh statements about Romani people or racial slurs directed towards Halleck.
Deviations from the book version
When Thinner was launched, it was not a commercial success, and one of the reasons was because fans were enraged by the modifications from the book. While movie adaptations necessitate certain adjustments, some significant discrepancies, especially near the conclusion, irritate viewers.
We’ll try to give you a quick overview of the differences we found between the two versions of Thinner in this section. The story begins with Billy being let off by the judge after running over an elderly woman.
The film, on the other hand, does an excellent job of presenting Billy as an obese overeater who worries his wife about his peculiar eating habits. From here onwards, the movie does follow the book pretty closely, only to deviate towards the end.
The film explores the deteriorating relationship between Billy and his wife a lot more than the book, which merely throws in the idea. The movie on the other hand develops this plotline into a deep hatred inside Billy, which is enough for him to want Heidi dead.
The climactic scene is changed significantly. In the book, Billy doesn’t purposely feed the strawberry pie to his wife. In the film, it is a pre-planned action, and we even see him inviting the doctor in for a bite when he arrives at the doorstep. The director wasn’t too happy with this change, but nobody in the test audience seemed to like the original ending, and the producers decided to change it.
Our Final Words
While watching this film, we had a strong want for a snack. It’s difficult not to see food in most of the scenes because the protagonist is constantly munching. After a few Mars bars, Snicker bars, and bags of chips, we can safely claim that the film was entertaining.
It isn’t a mind-blowing Stephen King film like The Shining, but it isn’t among the worst adaptations either. This is the one to choose if you want some silly fun with a bit of seriousness, and you won’t be disappointed with our choice.