Battleground (short story)
Battleground is a horror story by Stephen King published in Night Shift collection. It has now also been converted to a teleplay by Richard Christian Matheson for the television series Nightmares & Dreamscapes.
Renshaw is a professional hit-man who returns from his assassination of a toy-maker to find a package delivered to his penthouse apartment. The package contains a G.I. Joe Vietnam Footlocker, sent to him by the mother of the toy-maker he had recently killed. When he opens the package he finds that the toy soldiers are alive with working copies (albeit miniature) of weapons, jeeps, and helicopters. To Renshaw's surprise the tiny soldiers begin to attack him. At one point, the toy soldiers even offer him the chance to surrender. Renshaw does not and is then attacked with more force. Renshaw plots to attack the soldiers with a Molotov cocktail constructed from a bottle of lighter fluid, but when he throws it the whole apartment explodes, killing him. As the dust settles from the explosion, it is revealed that in the box was a one-time special including extra military units including surface-to-air missiles and one scale-model thermonuclear weapon.
The Show
This Stephen King story, penned by Richard Christian Matheson for television, was used as the first episode on the TNT show Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Originally airing on Wednesday, July 12, 2006, the episode was directed by Brian Henson and starred William Hurt as Renshaw the assassin. There is no dialogue in the entire show. The show varies from the book in that instead of dying while throwing a molotov, Renshaw escapes the apartment and gets in an elevator, only to be attacked by a larger Commando doll reminiscent of a G. I. Joe. He defeats the commando in the elevator, crushing its head in the door, only to see the miniture nuke on its back just before it goes off. The package reveals that the special surprises are the nuke and commando, instead of the nuke and SAM.
Trivia
At several points during this episode the killer Zuni fetish doll from the "Amelia" segment of the 1975 television movie Trilogy of Terror can be spotted as part of Renshaw's trophy collection. This is an homage to Richard Matheson the father of Richard Christian Matheson and the author of Trilogy of Terror. The episode also has a similar plot and structure to Richard Matheson's classic 1961 episode of the Twilight Zone, The Invaders which presents a similar sort of battle between a silent protagonist and miniature attackers.
Also of note is that no dialogue is spoken throughout the entire episode.
The concept of a person being attacked and killed by group of living green plastic soldiers was also feathered in the Darkroom anthology horror/thriller series episode Siege of 31 August.
External Links
- Review for Battleground at Dread Central