The Creed family moves from busy Chicago to quiet Ludlow, Maine, there they are in need of doctors. They are Louis (Dale Midkiff), Rachel (Denise Crosby), and their children Ellie (Blaze Berdahl) and Gage (Miko Hughes), plus their cat Church (short for Winston Churchill).
Louis treats Victor Pascow (Brad Greenquist), a jogger who is hit by a truck. Before dying, he warns Louis about the Pet Cematary. That night, in a dream, Pascow’s ghost leads the good doctor to the children’s “Pet Cematary” in the nearby woods and warns him not to cross the barrier. When he wakes, Louis finds his feet covered in dirt.
During Thanksgiving, with the family gone to see the grandparents in Chicago, Church is hit by a truck and killed. Knowing that Ellie will be devastated, Louis takes the cat’s body to the Pet Cemetary, but places it in an ancient, sacred Mikmak graveyard beyond the barrier. Neighbour Jud (Fred Gwynne) told Louis to bury the cat there and tell no-one. The next day, the cat came back, acting viciously and his eyes glowing. Jud explains that as a boy he revived a dog that way.
Later, Gage is killed by a truck on the same road. Jud fears that the devastated Louis will try the same trick with Gage and warns him of a man named Bill Batterman who buried his son there and both father and son were killed when townspeople burned down their house.
After the funeral, Rachel and Ellie leave for Chicago and Louis stays behind. He exhumes his son’s corpse and buries him in the Mikmak ground. In Chicago, Ellie has a warning dream and returns to Maine, alarming Jud. That night, the reanimated Gage returns home, steals a scalpel and murders Jud. Rachel is lured into Jud’s house by the spirit of her dead sister Zelda. She sees Gage, tries to hug him, and is killed.
Louis overpowers Gage, injects him with morphine, and sets the house on fire. But then he takes Rachel’s body to the burial ground, so grief-stricken that he believes he simply waited too long to bury Gage. That night, Rachel returns and the couple embrace, then Rachel grabs a knife.
The film was directed by Mary Lambert on a screenplay by Stephen King from his 1983 novel. The book, this film, and a 2019 remake all changed the story somewhat. There was also a sequel with other characters in 1992. At first, George A. Romero bought the film rights but pulled out of the production. But the script was finished by the writers’ guild strike and Hollywood was hard up for projects. King was impressed by Mary Lambert and agreed to her directorship. The film was shortened and made more horrific than the original script. Executives believed the public would not accept Fred Gwynne in the role of Jud because he had been Herman Munster, but he acquits himself well.
It received mixed reviews, garnering 58% on Rotten Tomatoes. Gene Siskel called it sickening but Bloody Disgusting praised it. Well, it was both sickening and bloody disgusting, but it was also relentlessly creepy. Seven gruesome scenes were cut to avoid an X rating. It was the only novel that Stephen King said frightened him. He did not publish it right away but put it on a shelf. His wife found it and made him publish it. The film was shot twenty minutes from King’s house, and he was there every day.
Nine cats were used in the film because cats are notoriously hard to train. They found seven Blue British Shorthairs to play Church, including a jumper, a snarler, and a cuddler. Because cats have a retina that reflects light, it took only a light on the camera to make their eyes glow evilly. Ellie was played by twins: Blaze Berdahl and Beau Berdahl Oliver. Zelda was played by a man because they could not find a 13-year-old girl who
looked creepy enough. The film is not only creepy, it’s horrific. I’m thinking a lot of people would not care to see a two-year-old boy run over by a truck and then come back from the dead to kill his mother.