Children Of The Corny: The 15 worst Stephen King movies and miniseries, ranked
Not even the Master of Horror can bat a thousand—as films like Dreamcatcher and Pet Sematary prove in our look at truly terrible King adaptations
Film Features Stephen King
If you sometimes wonder if there are more movies and miniseries based on Stephen King novels and short stories than there are Stephen King novels and short stories, we don’t blame you. King’s résumé currently encompasses 65 novels and more than 200 short stories and a huge chunk of those have been adapted for the big and small screen, starting with Brian De Palma’s Carrie in 1976. But alas, Carrie’s quality did not carry over to all subsequent King adaptations. For the best of the (Salem’s) lot, we direct you to our list of the best movies and TV series based on the work of the Bangor, Maine, auteur.
This list, however, is concerned with the worst films and shows with King’s name on them. And there have been plenty. He’s been responsible for some duds—although the filmmakers who endeavored to bring them to the screen shoulder some of that responsibility too. So in the wake of the latest King adaptation, The Boogeyman, we’re reflecting on his weakest on-screen stories. From Children Of The Corn to Dreamcatcher, these are the worst of King in movie and miniseries form.
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Nope. The Langoliers is the worst of the worst, hands down. Everything about it was hell to watch. I spent the whole time wishing someone would have booted Bronson Pinchot and that annoying ass blind girl right off the damn plane.
Better get to Boston, Creggy Weggy.
It’s a combination of bad writing, overacting, truly crappy FX, and an odd TV-movie sappiness underlying it all. The only one not overacting was David Morse, and he just walked around with a vaguely half-scared/half-constipated look on his face. And the “everyone jumping excitedly into the air with a big YEAH!!!” freeze-frame ending was just the cherry on top.
And here’s a nice shot of some evil pink McNuggets eating the world:
Holy shit. Plus, why are there clouds?? The whole point is that moment in time is dead.
Half-constipated is the look of his career.
Yeah, I kind of realized that as I was typing it. It also reminded me of an old movie review for Lost In Space describing the look on William Hurt’s face during the entire movie as looking “as if he were perpetually sitting on a pickle”.
Could you cool it with the criticism? You’re SCARING THE LITTLE GIRL!!!!!
Fine. If anyone needs me, I’ll be off in the corner tearing paper.
I highly recommend, however, the book on tape which is read with aplomb by Willem Dafoe. No joke, it’s a treat.
But without that shitty Langoliers miniseries we wouldn’t have Rick and Morty’s time police characters!
For whatever reason, I often find myself enjoying a lot of these really bad ones. In particular, I watch The Langoliers anytime I randomly stumble across it because it makes me laugh a lot (Dean Stockwell reminds me more of Doc Brown than Shatner, but I can see where you’re coming from). Similarly, The Tommyknockers holds a special place in my heart. One of my college friends got a t-shirt that said “Green Is A Special Effect” in response to the miniseries, which made our friends and no one else laugh a lot also.I wanna go back to the last slideshow though – if we’re counting Sleepwalkers as a worst, then I need to air my grievance about Storm of the Century not being in the best list, along with Castle Rock. Storm had one of the great all time endings in King adaptations, it had an amazing scary Colm Fiore, and every character calls every other character by their full name for the whole movie, which I found delightful and not something I’ve ever encountered in real-life Maine. And Castle Rock should make the list just for the season one episode “The Queen” and Sissy Spacek’s powerhouse performance.
Castle Rock was so good and it sucks so bad that it was cancelled.
It really was. It was very high quality on its own, and it also made me wonder why we don’t get remix versions of other people’s work. Surely instead of rehashing stories that have been told many times we can throw a bunch of them in the bag and come up with something more interesting, right?
‘Dickensian’ was like that. A fun head canon concept.
I’ve always liked Rose Red.
Storm of the Century is not an adaptation. It was originally written for television by King.
Yeah, that’s why I said if Sleepwalkers, which was also written for the screen and not adapted, counts for this list then Storm of the Century has to count for the best list. Keep up!
My own personal Podmass, Lasertime’s Worst of Stephen King.
http://www.lasertimepodcast.com/2020/10/27/the-worst-of-stephen-king-laser-time-421/
What is a “Podmass”?
One of the last new A.V. Club features from before the dark times. It was a weekly-ish roundup of podcasts worth listening to.
Wait did you say Stephen King’s movie opinions are bad partially because he likes Event Horizon? Or did I read that wrong? It’s early so I might have read that wrong.
I came to comment the same thing. Event Horizon is a classic, in the pantheon of space horror movies.
No, you read it right. “Stephen King’s opinions on movies normally suck. After all, he openly loves Deep Blue Sea, Event Horizon…”It’s early, but this was still a dumb take.
Deep Blue Sea is the 2nd greatest killer shark movie ever made
It’s no “The Meg” that’s for sure.
The fucking balls on them for…
Both of those films are great.
“Wait did you say Stephen King’s movie opinions are bad partially because he likes Event Horizon?”
I don’t know, but his opinions ARE bad because he thinks the back-alley-abortion of a TV movie adaptation of The Shining is better than one of the greatest horror films ever made.
I also came down here to say this. Event Horizon rules.
Same here, but also Deep Blue Sea rules.
Parts of it do, at least. There are way worse killer shark movies for sure lol
As John Barrowman would tell you XD
Event Horizon is a dreadful movie. It’s depressing, not scary, and makes no sense whatsoever. And it’s directed by one of the worst directors to ever get a Hollywood career.
Ok…? I can see how you could say it’s depressing rather than scary and that Anderson is generally a lousy director, but it definitely makes sense. I saw it in the theater when it came out and the plot was not hard to follow.
One of my favorite things about horror movies is that they exist to elicit strong emotions (that’s also why they tend to have flimsy plots), and it’s surprising how that can shade into sadness or comedy instead of the “expected” ones like horror or disgust. But that also tends to be what people dislike about them. But ranking Paul WS Anderson among the worst directors is a bridge too far. His movies are hacky and ridiculous, but the direction is impeccable.
All those things are true, but I find that I’m half bemused by and half sympathetic to the way Event Horizon’s reputation has steeply inclined in recent years. I’m not exactly sure why it has slowly become a cult near-classic. High production values? Some unforgettable images? A fairly nonsensical but nonetheless intriguing premise? It is a relatively good horror movie, especially by the standards of the 80s/90s which were pretty barren for us horror fans. The last 10-15 years or so have been a golden age by comparison.
Plus who doesn’t like Deep Blue Sea at least on a guilty pleasure level?
yeah Event Horizon is amazing and Deep Blue Sea is dumb fun.
The only problem with Event Horizon is we lost the awesome extra footage they supposedly shot of the hell stuff. Give it to me! What I would give for a time machine….
Event Horizon isn’t great. It’s basically just Hellraiser on a spaceship.
Your second sentence directly contradicts your first.
I mean, Hellraiser Bloodline exists… But fortunately, Event Horizon has almost nothing in common with Hellraiser.
I caught that as well. Event Horizon is a classic – and a truly scary film.
So ‘It Chapter Two’ belongs on this list but ‘Lawnmower Man’ doesn’t? Keep up the bad work, Mills.
I don’t think Lawnmower Man counts. Other than the title, there’s literally nothing the story pulls from King’s work, to the point where he sued the filmmakers when they tried to say it was based on a Stephen King story.
Technically, there is one single scene that is lifted from the short story (in fact, it actually encompasses the entirety of the short story), wherein the titular Lawnmower Man arrives at the home of a lawn to be mowed, only to strip naked and lay behind the machine, eating everything that is ejected from the mower. Including the homeowner himself when the machine is unleashed inside the house. I’m pretty sure that is actually the entirety of short story told within its ~10 pages.
I too wondered how The Lawnmower Man is not listed here until I considered that the film’s story has so precious little in common with King’s source material (hence him filing and winning a lawsuit against New Line Cinema because they dared use his name in the title and promotional material).
But isn’t that also true of The Running Man?
Perhaps, though as far as I can recall, the studio didn’t invoke King’s name in the promotional material or title. If they did, it was done sparingly. I do know that while King wasn’t particularly fond of the finished product, he wasn’t compelled to litigate over it.
King’s name was originally used to promote the film, including the title of the film itself being originally called Stephen King’s The Lawnmower Man. King sued to have his name removed from the film and all promotional material and won. New reels of the film were redistributed to theaters that replaced the title card to simply say The Lawnmower Man and all references to King were removed from the credits. His name was also removed from all promotional and theatrical display material.
In it’s defense, The Running Man also isn’t totally wretched. Like, I love that film so I’m biased, but even at its worst it’s fairly standard ‘80s action cheese with Arnie in it, even if you don’t like it it’s competent enough.
Very aptly described. I happen to still enjoy and appreciate The Running Man very much for a number of reasons (an evil Richard Dawson being one).
It’s a guilty pleasure, but Richard Dawson makes that movie.
no
The Lawnmower Man is even less related to the source material than The Running Man, which is really saying something. With The Running Man, you can at least give a one-sentence summary of the premise that applies to both the book and the movie.
Running Man is much more in the ballpark of the King (er Bachman) story. Tonally completely different but some of the same plot beats. Lawnmower Man is a short story about a Pan-like demon that eats grass.
Running Man still shares the bones of the story, particularly the in the world building aspects. I’d say the main thing that was changed was the tone, really.
They don’t even mention Maximum Overdrive!
Maximum Overdrive is the textbook “so bad it’s good” movie.
That might fall into “so bad it’s good” category? I mean it’s killer trucks! Stephen King directed it while wacked out of his mind on coke!
Yeah that movie holds up for what it is, a B horror about killer cars with an AC/DC soundtrack.
Because this is a list of BAD movies, and Maximum Overdrive is an awesome movie where a truck with the Green Goblin on it bullies Lisa Simpson for delicious gasoline
“We Maaaade You!” as Lisa’s voice actor says. While I’m not so sure it is great as (oppposed to so bad it’s great), this line actually does get why we find things like the Terminator so scary — it’s one thing to face monsters and aliens who hate humanity because they have no connection to it, and quite another to face technology that humanity invented that has turned against us.
I’ll be the pedantic guy and say that’s not Lisa’s line, but the waitress who then gets gunned down. But either way it’s still such a great B-movie: one of those so bad it’s great films (like The Running Man)
Uh, that’s because it’s a total blast.
Maximum Overdrive was never a book. It was just a short story by King.
So? Lots of movies that were on the list (The Mangler, Children of the Corn, Graveyard Shift) were stories rather than novels.
Yeah, because its a coke fuled glorious mess that’s entertaining.
There are so many better choices than It pt. 2 (which was bad, but in a bland and average way) or either Pet Sematary (both disposable but fun with a few cool moments).
The Pet Sematary remake has zero redeeming value. Nothing scary, nothing sad. The daughter getting run over by the semi truck is laugh out loud funny. At least in the original, Gage being run over was really horrifying.
I thought the first one was decent.
Definitely. It didn’t hold up well for me watching it recently, but as a kid, it totally scared the shit out of me. The mom’s sister was my nightmare for a long time.
I didn’t hate it. Just found it paint by numbers and forgettable outside of a couple moments. There are worse adaptations of his books, including the aforementioned Lawnmower Man and Maximum Overdrive. Certainly there are way worse than the first Pet Sematary, at minimum.
So it sounds like the Pet Sematary remake has one redeeming virtue? I’ll admit, the only part of the original that I remember is Stephen King’s cameo as the trucker who hits Gage (while listening to a Ramones song about the movie).
Pet Sematary fucking rules
It Chapter Two is absolutely terrible. The Lawnmower Man is absolutely hysterical.
Lawnmower Man is so bad it’s good. Also has some good nudity.
It Chapter Two is mostly just bad. They changed up the fundamental structure of the story when they adapted all the kid stuff into the first film, and then didn’t do anything interesting with the adult stuff. The right move would have been to swerve hard and recontextualize everything in the first film, but they didn’t do that.
To be fair, there’s just such an embarrassment of riches when it comes to bad King adaptations. It’s hard to pick only 15.
The newer take on The Stand deserves a place here. So many awful mistakes made. So many changes that were either at best just unnecessary or at worst weakened the story. The one that comes to mind was the Dark Man’s enclave in Vegas. The book’s group of technically adept people who worked hard and were absolutely loyal (and fearful) of Flagg was a lot more menacing than the Hot Topic rave that the miniseries gave us.
I was really excited for the new adaptation of The Stand, and even when some stuff started trickling out that made me more skeptical, I still figured, “Well, it can’t be worse than the 90’s mini-series.” And I don’t know if it did end up worse than that, but man, it was a hell of a lot closer than it had any right to be considering the amount of talent involved and how TV has evolved since then.The time jumping structure in the first few episodes was just a wildly misbegotten idea, absolutely terrible — it utterly killed the momentum of the apocalypse, which is half the appeal of the story. And yes, you’re absolutely right — making Flagg’s Vegas into Sodom and Gomorrah is a classic example of completely missing the point of the story you’re adapting.What’s frustrating is that there are some good ideas in there. Hamish Linklater’s character, for example, is a really smart addition, and Linklater plays it as well as he always does. And I thought it was really interesting to have Nadine still alive when the Boulder gang shows up in Vegas at the end. But mostly the whole series came off as a desultory box-checking exercise for everyone involved.My kingdom for a big budget prestige TV adaptation that devotes an entire episode to the “no great loss” chapter from the book.
You know who I think would do it justice? Damon Lindelof. He’s got a heavy interest in religion and spirituality, and his work on The Leftovers convinced me he’d get the tone right for The Stand.
I would be interested in a Lindelof adaptation, but so far, only Darabont and Flanagan seem to really get King. Others have come close and I’m not discounting Stand by Me or other good adaptation, but those two come close even when making changes to the source. I give Flanagan props for reconciling the book and movie versions of The Shining even if I wasn’t totally satisfied.
Unpopular opinion:Darabont and Flanagan are both god-awful hacks.
Damn. Yeah. You’re right. Lindelof, if he hits the same emotional feels with Leftovers, would be really good for the Stand.
Someone hasn’t been keeping up with current events
The guy playing Harold was the best thing about the new adaptation. Man wearing a person suit to a tee.
That chapter was definitely one of the most compelling.
I bailed when they tried to make the incel terrorist a sympathetic lead.
I tried watching that and couldn’t get into it. The non-linear structure they went with sapped all the momentum and weight out of the story.
Also, the new ending sounds terrible. I never understood why people had an issue with the old ending – the whole point is that some greater power is moving things into play to deal with Flagg, and the group that walks to Vegas is essentially a distraction while Trashcan Man is the actual threat moved into place.
There was also the reading of the novel’s ending that the hand of god coming down to trigger the nuke was metaphorical. Trashcan man hauling it around could have simply destabilized it.
If it had been metaphorical, Stephen King would definitely have added – possibly as its own paragraph – “metaphorically speaking.” He has gifts, but subtlety and positive depictions of mothers are not among them.
The people in the novel’s Vegas were people who craved order and were sold on Flagg’s fascism. They would’ve fit in in Nixon’s “silent majority” (what I think King was mostly commenting on) or in more recent groups that shall remain nameless. They were cops, hardhats, mostly the kind of people who love appeals to “law and order”. Those people would’ve *hated* the Vegas of the 2020 miniseries. There were plenty of issues with the 2020 miniseries, including the time jumps, weak writing, several bad dramatic choices. But making Vegas “Sin City Plus” instead of fascist was maybe the worst.
Yeah, it seems like someone involved in the recent tv series decided that the bad guys needed to be irredeemably amoral freaks who only cared about sex, drugs, and killing.
They were people who were willing to act outside of law and order while claiming that their actions were preserving law and order. They are people who have foresworn themselves.
It was bad but somehow entertaining enough. I loved The Stand miniseries when I was a kid, but tried rewatching a few years ago and it was absolutely terrible.
Yeah they still haven’t gotten The Stand right – and I know ppl like the 90s series. Frigging with the timeline and Flagg’s characterization in this new one were huge downers.
I wanted to watch the new version but all I heard bad about it kept me away.
The Stand was written as an American Lord of The Rings , so it makes no sense to cut the journey to flashbacks. I really had high hopes for the newer version. I enjoyed the original Stand mini series but it really suffers from the budget and the early 90’s mini series style. I thought with a bigger budget that we get a great adapation, the whole flash back structure just killed the show.
Not to mention the Vegas in the miniseries had such a ridiculous (and if not offensive at the very least dated) portrayal of “debaucherous” gay (queer?) sex.
Was expecting “The Shawshank Redemption” on this list. That movie is so boringgggg…….
Amen. And it’s a bad white male fantasy with racist undertones. Would that movie be half as popular if the two lead actors were swapped?
You left your brain somewhere before you commented.
Please explain how Shawshank was racist. King certainly has had his Magical Negro issues, but this is no Green Mile.
One thing you could say is that was an awfully white prison.
The white guy is innocent, the black guy isn’t. The white guy gets to escape prison, the black guy doesn’t. The white guy has special talents, the black guy needs the white guy’s help. The usual bullshit.
Shawshank Redemption is a remarkably faithful adaptation, almost word-for-word adaptation of the short (100+ page) story. So that’s what they were working from. This wasn’t something where a script writer was changing things so that the black guy is worse off than the white guy, this was just the characters of Red (an Irish guy in the short story) and Andy.
As LastTimeAround points out above, casting chose Morgan Freeman because they thought he was the best actor for the role of Red. The character of Red was “the only guilty man in Shawshank”, had to wait for release, and didn’t have the knowledge Andy had. And they helped each other make it through their time at Shawshank, which is why Andy tells Red where to meet him when he gets out.
Any racism in this is largely what the audience perceives. Yes there’s a bad stereotype in Hollywood of the black guy being portrayed as you describe, but that’s just not the intention of Shawshank Redemption, and anyone asserting that it is is making an oversimplification at best.
What? The casting was fine. Tim Robbins was perfect as the aloof Andy Dufresne, and Morgan Freeman was excellent as Red – even making the joke about him being Irish work (which the character in the short story was).
There’s certainly racism associated with anything about minorities in prison, but highlighting them in the Shawshank Redemption seems a stretch.
And what are the racial undertones that the movie exhibits?
Yes, it 100% would.In the novella Red was a white redheaded Irishman but when auditioning mostly white guys for the part the film’s creators thought Morgan Freeman was just the best actor in the role, so… sure, giving a white part to a talented black actor is totally racist, yup, you nailed that one.
Yes, it 100% would.In the novella Red was a white redheaded Irishman (thus his name), but when auditioning mostly white guys for the part the film’s creators thought Morgan Freeman was just the best actor to try out for the role, so… sure, giving a white part to a talented black actor is totally racist, yup, you nailed that one.
To be fair, King isn’t responsible for the white male fantasy – in the original novella, Red isn’t Black… huh that reads weird. In fact, he describes his own “carroty red hair”, which is why his name is Ellis Boyd Redding because that’s the level at which Stephen King often works.
IIRC when the film was announced and Morgan Freeman was revealed as playing Red, the conversation went something like “huh… he’s not Black in the novella anyway moving on…”
Man those were the days.
Only if you have the attention span of a gnat OD’d on Adderall.
And with those words his geek card burst into flame.
Let me guess, you love DC movies!!
Cannot tell if just trolling or not, but if not, regardless of your own personal opinions of the film, you seriously expected one of the most widely acclaimed films of all time to be on a list like this?
It’s critically acclaimed!?
What a shock, troll has no friends or human contact so he criticizes A popular movie for contact.
It’s a popular movie?
I remember Firestarter 1984 being fine except for George C. Scott which really wasn’t his fault because it was stupid character to begin with. The Magic Native American is as bad as, or worse than, the Magic Negro trope.I didn’t even know they did a Cell movie. I liked the book because it was as much a new and interesting take on the zombie virus thing as a metaphor on mobile phones. Both are cliches now but at least the zombie virus transmitted through a cellular signal is a novel approach.
I will be very honest and say that I don’t remember the plot of Cell. What I do remember, though, is that I read it my freshman year of college. I remember being so excited for it that I went out and bought the hardcover. I remember being so ROYALLY PISSED OFF about the ending that I stormed out into my dorm room hallway (still holding the book!) looking for someone to yell at about how stupid the ending was. I just don’t actually remember what that ending was.
John Rainbird wasn’t ever meant to be a “magic native american”.
He was a fucking psycho and his superficial quasi-N/A spiritualism was just how he expressed it.
I didn’t see the movie, but I don’t really remember Rainbird being a Magical Native American in the book. He was just a sadistic, manipulative, creepy asshole who happened to be Native American.
Was surprised to see the Sleepwalkers antagonists described as “vampires” when their gimmick is being werecats. Pretty sure vampires aren’t mentioned once in the whole film. A quick look at the wikipedia article, however, describes them as “vampires” or “vampiric” based on their feeding habits. Did you just wing your review using that as a source, Mills?
The Dark Tower wasn’t a bad movie considering they took 8 books and crammed them into 95 minutes. It should have been a mini-series on cable/streaming. I hope that it does make it way there at some point.
I can’t stand The Shining miniseries, but the shameless Dark Tower adaptation truly deserves to be #1. As the book series is the greatest achievement in King’s career, to get the first film adaptation attempt so egregiously wrong is unforgivable. There’s nothing interesting or entertaining about what made it to screen, and not even Elba is charismatic enough to save things. Just turn it into a Max TV series already and pump millions of dollars into the right creator’s hands …
For me, it would be Dreamcatcher. I really disliked the book, one of the few I’ve completely disliked of his (though I haven’t read them all) but the movie makes the book look like a masterpiece.
I hated Dreamcatcher the book but I sure as hell was going to watch a movie about aliens coming out of people’s asses. It was simultaneously campy but also has the typical “too faithful to work on screen” that plagues a lot of King stuff (especially the dialogue), so it’s like a special kind of bad. Too well produced for MST3k, but a similar kind of stink.
This is the right answer, IMO. Just really terrible on every level.
I went into Dark Tower with the expectation that it would be trash and oh man it was, but Elba did a hell of a job as Roland and he did the reloading trick, so I was actually happier than I thought I’d be at the end.
That is the coolest thing I took from the movie. I had always wanted to see his reloading visualized.
Absolutely, one of the only redeeming parts of that whole mess but it was totally worth it.Of course now I want to see Elba play Roland in a Dark Tower series that’s actually done well.
Ha! I just posted about the reloading trick as well.
It’s really cool 🙂
I guess it really sums up the movie that our favorite part is a guy reloading his gun.
Absolutely…I don’t feel like I wasted my time watching it but only barely.
I wouldn’t rate it as the worst, because it’s at least watchable – I enjoyed it as a big dumb action movie with some fun action scenes.
But it definitely does squander the source material. Especially since they had such an interesting idea with the Horn of Eld and the significance of “20″, playing with the expectations of fans.
Agreed. It was also kind of heartbreaking when there would be the occasional, minor thing the movie actually got right. Like seeing Elba do the “reloading trick.”
Deciding to turn Dark Tower into a YA novel adaptation centering on Jake was one of the most insane ideas ever.
The bonkers thing is The Gunslinger plays so heavily on archetype that the first movie should’ve been an easy layup.
Exactly what I just posted upthread. It’s a multi-dimensional western.
Eh… Having literally just finished a re-read of the The Gunslinger yesterday: it’s a tricky book. It’s very episodic, Roland is by turns distant, despicable, and inscrutable (even being privy to his internal monologue) for pretty much the entire book and it (SPOILERS for a 40yo book, I guess) ends with the hero catching up with the guy he’s chasing… and having a campfire chat with him.
I’m sure there’s a way to do it (and Mike Flanagan probably already has figured it out), but it’s not an easy in for such a massive story.
I get that King and Kubrick had artistic differences, but I can’t believe that the grudge over it resulted in the Shining miniseries.
Especially because The Dark Tower is, relative to the subsequent books, a pretty straightforward story. Even a workmanlike director should be able to do something good with it.
Yeah, there’s really no excuse for that not being the worst, just for sheer awfulness of trying to cram a seven (8 if you count Wind Through the Keyhole) book series into an under-two-hour-movie.
“the greatest achievement in King’s career”Well…it had the chance to be for the first four books…
Having Roland state in the film that he doesn’t care about the Tower shows that the filmmakers didn’t understand the books at all. That was probably the worst thing that they could have done with the character. The story exists solely because of Roland’s unshakable (and ultimately destructive) obsession with the Tower. The man is a Tower Junkie, through and through.
People have a right to like what they like, but the book series to me was a massive disappointment. The first book was so great, and then then next 3 were also strong. Then the whole thing just flew off the rails as King wrote himself into the novels (?!) and cheaped out on a lame, cliched ending.
While I haven’t watched it in years, I remember feeling like Dreamcatcher started off really well. Maybe it was the anticipation/foreboding of the whole thing, then it fell apart probably around the time the aliens took center stage.For The Langoliers, I’m in the camp of “so bad it’s good”.
The thing that kills me about The Shining is that one of King’s (and other detractors’) complaints is that they cast Jack Nicholson, who looks crazy from the beginning of the movie.
That’s fine, if that’s your complaint, but then how does he rationalize the fact that Steven Weber is *PLAYING* crazy from the second he appears on-screen.
He’s practically channeling Nicholson the entire time.
The original Pet Sematary adaptation is fucking great. Yeah, the lead is boring, but Church is terrifying, Pascow is creepy and gross, resurrected Gage is chilling, the flashbacks of the sick sister still creep me out more than 30 years later and it somehow manages to be almost as dark as the book.
Steven Weber… Do you think there’s a parallel universe where he’s got Woody Harrelson’s career? I kind of do. I was rooting for him.
Somehow, crops still aren’t freaking us out.You know who did this right? Ti West and Mia Goth in Pearl. The scene where she goes into the corn field and within about 20 feet turns around and sees how suddenly it is impossible to tell what direction she is facing and how to get out had my blood pressure rising and butterflies in my stomach. And then she says “fuck this” and goes deeper in to confront the spooky scarecrow… and basically rapes him… talk about subverting expectations! I knew then that this was a genre-busting slasher for the ages. Great fucking flick.
The original was a tight little horror movie that was perfect HBO material. Never saw any of the sequels.
I found X to be fine, ok, sure, but Pearl was great. Haven’t seen the third one (did it come out yet?).
MaXXXine has not come out yet.
Sorry, I was talking about Children of the Corn. It’s basically an extended Twilight Zone episode in a very “what the fuck is going on in this isolated small town?” kind of way. I found it highly enjoyable back in the day.
Oh ok! Yeah, I liked it too! Played on my crippling fear of the Amish effectively.
Just don’t mess with them, you don’t know what you’re going to run up against.
The scene where she goes into the corn field and within about 20 feet
turns around and sees how suddenly it is impossible to tell what
direction she is facing and how to get out had my blood pressure rising
and butterflies in my stomach. That’s the premise of In The Tall Grass (2019), which I just found out is from a novella by Stephen King and Joe Hill.I just skimmed the linked Top 15 list, and I’d say it belongs in the Top 20, at least.Jeezus, King’s prolific. How many authors can have a Top 15 and a Worst 15 and still have so many left over.
Jeezus, King’s prolific.
I watched In The Tall Grass on a date, and it was the perfect movie for two people more interested in making snarky jokes than being scared.Funny enough, one of my first comments once I got the premise was “this is just Cube in a field!” I didn’t realize until later that both movies were from the same director.
Stephen King: A through Aardvark
– Futurama
Into The Tall Grass was also good with corn. Wait, maybe that wasn’t corn but it still worked.
In the Tall Grass wasn’t crops but it was definitely scary. Also a Stephen King originated (also Joe Hill who also makes some fun stuff). There was also a short from Love and Robots that did something similar. Personally I found the description in Children of the Corn for He Who Walks Among the Rows scary but the movie’s version wasn’t very impressive. I think Children of the Corn would either be better as an animated stylized short exact to the original story or a well-written and cast reflection set in the current American home school network where kids could definitely have a hard time figuring out what counts as ‘normal’ and where constant young reproduction is also a focus (one of the creepiest parts of the story were all the little 14 year old child brides that were maintaining the population of the town- so messed up)
And then she says “fuck this” and goes deeper in to confront the spooky scarecrow… and basically rapes him… talk about subverting expectations! Wait… what?!
Danny Lloyd may not have been the best part of the Kubrick Shining, but my god was he ever light years better than the kid they got for King’s version. I recently watched the bathtub sequence of the remake and he makes it absolutely unwatchable for all the wrong reasons.
It’s never great to harp on child actors, but … I cannot agree with you more. He’s THE reason I dislike that version
I know, it’s like “FUCK that little kid!” You feel like a dick but holy cow, after ten minutes in front of the camera the director should’ve said “Er, anyone got a nephew who’s free this weekend?”
In some (not all, obviously) cases — it’s just a mismatched role.My wife and I saw the latest revival of Les Miz on Broadway and the kid they had playing Gavroche was a stellar actor… but had a really bad lisp, which totally undercut his singing in that extremely sarcastic and dramatic role, especially as he’s killed.We actually left the theater saying “Wow, he was just NOT a good fit for that role — we hope he gets something else in the future, because otherwise he was great!”And… it was Gaten Matarazzo. So that worked out!
I clicked through just to see if this was on the list so I could comment on how much I hated that kid 26 years later.
Lloyd was quite good IMO. Very creepy when he’s stalking his mom and doing the Redrum voice. Very sad and lonely sounding when he’s chatting with “Tony.” He does his job.
Agreed – as young child actors go, can’t think of a better one for holding his own among some truly incredible performances.
“Fun” fact – I used to know the guy who was runner-up to play Danny in the Kubrick Shining. He grew up to become an economics professor, and resigned in disgrace after he was busted hiding a camera in the female students’ bathroom on a study abroad trip he was leading.
That’s bonkers! In light of the bathroom scene in the film, there must be some deep Freudian relevance there
Philip Brown?
Yep, that’s the guy. My mom used to work at Colby College and was friends with his then-wife, so we’d have them over for dinner or something time to time when I was in high school. Last I heard he was working for some mining company in New Zealand I think?
All I can remember about that awful Shining mini-series was how whiny and annoying the kid playing Danny was. I don’t reflexively hate Kubrick’s film and think it deserves to be a classic, but I’ve always thought the casting was just… weird, except for Danny Lloyd.
Kubrick’s The Shining is a classic horror/suspense movie. It deserves its accolades.
What it *isn’t* is a good adaptation of another artist’s work. It fails entirely to capture what King was trying to say.
Kubrick didn’t even bother to *read* the damn thing himself, according to his daughter Vivian (his usual production assistant). She said he had *her* read it and type up summaries for him. Effectively Kubrick used another artist’s work to masturbate his own ego.
Ugh, that Shining mini-series. As much as King complains about the Kubrick adaptation, the only two things that are really missing that matter are Hallorann’s greater role and the palpable sense of desperation that the Torrance family has in the book when Jack takes the job.
Dreamcatcher has exactly one cool scene in the whole movie: the “helicopter attack” sequence where they wipe out the parasite snake aliens while being assailed telepathically. Everything else in that movie kind of sucks, but in fairness the novel itself wasn’t great either – the best parts of it are the gross-out sequences where the alien is using the guy’s body while he basically watches and comments as an observer.
Dark Tower was a bad film, but it was cut so aggressively that it actually ended up being fun to watch. It was very fast-paced, and some of the “gunslinger” scenes were great. Very palpable sense of “Oh shit, our planned movie series got cancelled so we’d better just wind things up here”.
It should be so easy to get Pet Sematary right. It’s a book about a cemetery that resurrects whoever’s buried in it, but brings them back … different.
I think Pet Sematary is actually an extremely hard book to adapt well to film. The heart of the novel is being inside of Louis Creed’s head as he experiences both the True Cemetary, and then the way it warps his grief and pain into doing something very stupid and horrible. It’s not about the zombie kid, who only shows up in the last 50 pages of a 500+ page book – that’s a mistake the 2019 adaptation made.
Hard disagree on Lithgow being a good Jud Crandall. His Jud is creepy – why would Louis follow this guy up to the Pet Sematary? The whole point of why he does it is because he’s formed a strong bond with Jud, something the book emphasizes by talking about how Louis found his surrogate father in Jud right in the first paragraph of the book.
I think Pet Sematary is actually an extremely hard book to adapt well to film. The heart of the novel is being inside of Louis Creed’s head . . .I was going to say the same thing. I think one of the reasons adapting King is tricky is that his technique for generating drama/horror relies heavily on putting you in the heads of the characters and making you see and feel things from their perspective. Translating that into a movie requires a lot of skill and thoughtfulness.Pet Sematary is probably the best example of this. A truly great adaptation of the novel would have to be (among other things) a really devastating drama about parents trying to cope with the death of their toddler. And it would have to dramatize how Louis’ grief and guilt (maybe along with the supernatural pull of the burial ground) end up convincing him to do the things he does towards the end of the story. In the novel a huge amount of the “action” takes place entirely inside Louis’ head. So a straight-up on-screen rendition of the book’s situations and dialog would automatically miss the point.“How hard could it be, you just start with ‘zombie cat’ and work your way up the zombie food chain!” is an approach that almost guarantees you’ll end up with shlock. Which isn’t the worst thing in the world—I think both of the Pet Sematary movies have their moments. But neither touches what King was able to do in the novel. There’s a reason so many of the King adaptations people remember years later were made by directors with a very strong sense of how to use cinema to convey emotion and set a mood.
I prefer the 2019 version, to a significant degree because the zombie kid is better in that one, but Fred Gwynne was much better at his role than Lithgow.
I don’t think the 2019 Pet Sematary is completely successful, but I respect that the filmmakers seemed to understand what’s interesting/compelling about the source material. Some of the changes (including the major change) worked for me because they seemed designed to adapt the book in a way that would play better onscreen, as opposed to just being fake-outs designed to prevent people who knew the story from getting too comfortable.
Yes, King’s version may have worked on the page, but the climax really shows its seams onscreeen.
And the fact that Lithgow didn’t even attempt a Maine accent
The only thing the 2019 version got right was making the cat scarier. That grey ball of fluff in the original is boring.
It think the choices here are pretty agreeable – I would instead just argue that there need to be more slots, because there’s still quite a few stinkers that were omitted. I almost missed the bit about how this was specifically limited to movies and miniseries – otherwise I had a whole rant about why Under the Dome was missing.Personally, I kinda like Dreamcatcher despite its faults – it’s consistently nuts, and makes for a great hangover/lazy Sunday movie. Damien Lewis’ crazy-eyed smile is forever etched in my mind. Plus, you know it’s got that cool Matrix animated short film running before it – totally gets you stoked for Revolutions!On that same note: I would argue that The Mist tilts more towards the bad side of the scale, but I still love it. The dialogue and over-the-top characters really do a disservice to a movie with some great creatures and scary/violent moments, but it still comes out as enjoyable enough to me. The ending makes me laugh… which I’m pretty sure is not the intent.
While I can’t deny that it’s bad, I recently really enjoyed Dreamcatcher. I listened to the How Did This Get Made? episode first, which probably helps a lot.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but it is a genuinely entertaining for how completely bananas it is. Definitely not the 2nd worst King movie.
Graveyard Shift should be #1
Two words: “Maximum Overdrive”One more word: “Cujo”.
What’s a shame is that the Langoliers story isn’t half-bad. The concept – monsters literally eat the past – is sorta interesting.
Came here to say the same thing. It’s a solid story and could potentially be a good movie. A bunch of these I didn’t even know had been adapted.
You should check out The Timekeepers of Eternity, which is a fan cut that takes all the original footage and condenses it down into a surreal art film.
Was going to mention this , I have a soft spot for the Langoliers and its weird premise (people accidently go behind the curtain of reality , and run afoul of the creatures that dispose of used time), and ‘Timekeepers’ really leans into the meta weirdness. I’m surprised it didn’t get a mention in the list
I actually love the idea…that they were trapped in time that expired (the food going stale) and the had to get in synch with the present. Not a great film, but interesting
“It’s just you and me, Clovis” is the closing line of the terrible Sleepwalkers and one I say continually knowing that I’m the only one who recognizes it.
I thought the shinning mini series was fine. It wasn’t great but it wasn’t the worst thing I ever saw. I loved Pet Semtary 89 when I saw it as a teen in the theater. So this list to me isn’t very good.
“The Shinning” was just a single segment in one Treehouse of Horror anthology episode.
Shhh! D’you want to get sued?!
Sleepwalkers might be the only film I remember seeing in the theater where almost everyone immediately agreed it was absolutely terrible. A lot of “What the hell was that we just saw?”I never saw The Tommyknockers, and I’m not surprised that it made a bad miniseries, because it wasn’t a good book, but I rate it as an example of one of King’s best protagonists who was unfortunately saddled with a bad story. I wonder if any of this came through on the screen adaptation.
But where else can you seem someone get stabbed in the back with a cob of corn?
Nebraska?
Dreamcatcher was awesome. Fight me.
I Dudditz
Any movie where ,the once all powerful, Donny Walberg, who is no is now (and was then) mostly forgotten, is the savior of the human race, is an awesome movie. PS: the transfer of fame between Donny and Marky is astounding.
It’s a total mess of a fever dream of a movie. It’s not good, but it is a hell of an entertaining watch.
I saw it in the theatre. I still like it.
Poor Popsicle Pete
I always thought they should have changed the marketing from “Dreamcatcher with bonus short film Final Flight of the Osiris” to “Final Flight of the Osiris with “bonus” long film”.
YES!! The only reason I saw it.
i like the novel, but a big no on the movie
I will never forget this dude I knew in high school whose favorite movie was Dreamcatcher. He would bring it up literally any time anyone discussed movies in general. He was OBSESSED with it.
Yeah, I’m not there with this flick, I just enjoyed it more than most. I don’t consider it an unrecognized gem, I did find it awesome though. The Mist is an unrecognized gem.
I like the book a lot , purely for shitweasels and its basic scientific premise:(basically theres an alien race that comes to inhabited planets , incubates a symbiote inside each intelligent creature that normally is benign and allows them to communicate telepathically and peacefully join the aliens as allies.But human physiology is so ‘wrong’ compared with other races that the symbiotes react badly ,become massive and aggressively destroy the host,before moving on to a new one.)Its ‘modern’ flaw is that its basically got what used to be unkindly known in fiction as a “mystical R-word”(cousin to that hoary old trope the ‘magical negro’ )basically in this case a childlike person with Downs syndrome who is pure of heart and has powers. Its double downed on in the movie by having him played by Mark Wahlberg (and is now not Downs , but is instead a man with an unnamed mental/intellectual disability.)
The Rose Red miniseries deserves consideration because it is a mess, but I kind of enjoy it partly because the fantastic Melanie Lynskey is ideally cast as the stand in for Eleanor from Haunting of Hill House (which it is a ripoff/homage to)
Agreed–and of course it’s a homage since its origins are in the planned Haunting movie with Spielberg King was to script (and we know how that ended up)
Graveyard Shift rules, what the heck
Tom Holland didn’t direct Tommyknockers?
John Power, apparently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tommyknockers_(miniseries)
It was the participation of Tom Holland, Tom Hollander, Tom Hooper, and Tom Hopper, that really made it.
I agree with everyone below noting that 15 isn’t enough slots for this inventory. One I’d add (and hasn’t been mentioned yet) is Under the Dome. CBS went ALL IN on that bad boy, and what they got in return was a pretty good pilot episode and then a whole shit load of trash. Wow did that get very bad, very quickly. It is utterly inexplicable that it ran for 3 seasons.
I made it to the second to last episode of the first season and I just couldn’t anymore. And I never quit on shows before I give them a full season.
No comment on the movie, but I remember enjoying much of the book Dreamcatcher. I have ulcerative colitis, though, so was already halfway there on the horror.
There are some truly terrible cinematic King stinkbombs that didn’t make this list, so I consider it woefully incomplete. I’d offer some humble submissions of my own:1. The Cat from Hell – Segment from Tales from the Darkside the Movie (1990)
2. The Running Man (1987)
3. Cat’s Eye (1985)
4. Dolan’s Cadillac (2009)
5. Hearts in Atlantis (2001)
6. A Good Marriage (2014)
7. Apt Pupil (1998)
8. Riding the Bullet (2004)
9. Everything from Creepshow 2 (1987)
The Raft segment of Creepshow 2 might be the best adaptation of any of his works.
As usual, the short story is straight nightmare stuff. The mental image of his friend being gradually pulled through the spaces between the boards is still with me decades later. The movie blob looked like a bunch of black plastic bags being dragged across the lake.
The movie also strangely takes a consensual sex scene from the short story and turns it into our protagonist fondling a sleeping woman. Maybe so we’d enjoy seeing him getting eaten at the end?
I guess. A man-eating oil slick isn’t villainous enough??
Apt Pupil is creepy
I humbly disagree with #2. The Running Man is a legit classic action film.
There are some truly terrible cinematic King stinkbombs2. The Running Man (1987)You just made my enemies list, Em0Abstracts.
I wouldn’t put It Part 2 on this list at all. [I’d put the Drew Barrymore Firestarter in to replace it if need be.]Maybe it’s that the last time I watched It I just popped in the second DVD right after, so it seemed like a long movie, not two parts. [Kind of a Casino Royale/Quantum of Solace situation.] But I liked the movie, both sections, and actually think that plot-wise it beats the book [you know the part I’m talking about].
Chapter 2 is bad, but Chapter 1 isn’t that good either. 80s nostalgia is not sufficient to make a movie good.
Seemed to work for “Stranger Things”. I know…not a movie…but still…
I agree. I quite liked it as a 2-part movie.
I won’t stand for any Mangler or Graveyard shift slander. GTFO with this shit. Those (along with Sometime they come back, Lawnmower Man, and Children of the Cord) are what Stephen King movies are supposed to be.
Lawnmower Man? My understanding is that it has nothing to do with King’s work.
so? don’t you want something new in a movie adaptation? if it’s just a visual copy of the book, what’s the point?
I do like Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin”, but that has SOME in common with the book.
Children of the Cord
About the scary feral kids living in the tangle of cables behind a TV?
How is Under The Dome not on this list?!
Fuck right off with the criticism of the 1989 Pet Sematary.
I lived in the town where Dreamcatcher was filmed while it was being made. I really wanted to meet Jason Lee since I love Almost Famous and his Kevin Smith movie characters. But it never happened, which was annoying since Reindeer Games was filmed in the same town a few years before that, and it seemed like everyone I met had a Ben Affleck story.
Mike Flanagan is probably the best thing to happen to horror that either literally is or simply feels like a Stephen King story. He turned Doctor Sleep into a good movie, Gerald’s Game into a good movie. The former even nails the themes King wanted but that Kubrick ignored in The Shining.Midnight Mass does something similar, is incredibly King-like, about a haunted alcoholic who returns to his isolated coastal hometown and confronts a corrupt Christian cult. Haunting of Hill House is obviously a Shirley Jackson story, but is also the best parts of The Shining and Rose Red.He’s just real good at making these character-driven horror stories where the real ghosts are trauma or addiction or whatever. Any future King adaptation he does, I will trust implicitly.
He really brought out the whole pattern of trauma and abuse that was in The Shining novel. Plus that movie really stood up as it’s own film. It was really horrific when they kill that kid partway through the movie.
Yeah- I was a bit bummed that they changed the ending as I did enjoy King’s relatively rare happy ending but it also worked in the way the movie reflected on the Kubrick movie- it showcases some of its strengths but also highlights its weaknesses in the same way Doctor Sleep reflects on the strengths and weaknesses of Jack and how parents impact you when you grow up. Book Danny grew up with Book Jack – he got to grow up knowing that his father ultimately loved him and with a loving father figure in Dick. Movie Danny got Movie Jack who just wasn’t up to the task of loving him and had to make do with ghosts so he didn’t do quite as well. Both Dans work to break the cycle of their fathers, Movie Dan is just a generation behind Book Dan. Also weird coincidence now that I think of it of Dan having a ghost Dick (lol his name does not do well with just the first name) and being played by Ewan McGregor, well known of the franchise of “welp, guess my father figure is a ghost now”
*Catholic Cult. Which is worse, lol. Flanagan channeling his old Altar Boy years. I agree, he’s the best out there with King adaptions.
Do you think Catholics are not Christian?
I don’t think Christians consider Catholicism Christian, but that’s been my experience, fyi.
Any Christian with a brain in their head knows that Catholicism is the biggest branch of Christianity.
Depends on the Christians.
Most just think some of the stuff Catholics do is weird.
But when you talk to evangelicals, you’ll get evangelical opinions.
I think this is really only a thing with Southern Baptists and evangelicals. I grew up Catholic in the Midwest and only ever heard about anti-Catholic rhetoric in the abstract. I did have one friend whose girlfriend’s mom, a Baptist, had some misgivings about her daughter dating a Catholic but I don’t think it was ever anything really serious.
I’m a Methodist. Without the Catholic Church, there wouldn’t be any Baptists or evangelicals around to make the point. Whatever the faults of the Catholic Church over the centuries—and they are manifold—they did keep Christianity going in Western Europe for 15 centuries. Most Baptists and evangelicals think Christianity started about 1975.
Catholicism is definitely Christian
I don’t think Christians consider Catholicism ChristianThose Christians who are Catholic definitely do.
I like Flanagan’s King adaptations, because they were all done as feature films. His Netflix miniseries are bloated, and in the case of the ones titled “Haunting of [X]”, inferior to the first film adaptations of that source material.
First time I watched Midnight Mass, I don’t think I got more than an episode in before I turned to my wife and said, “This is the most Stephen King thing that Stephen King has never written.” (From me, owner of 50+ SK hardcovers, it’s praise). Needless to say, I love the shit out of MM.
Midnight mass seemed to be a love letter to salem’s lot.
Pet Sematary is a classic, what’s wrong with you
It and Pet Sematary ‘89 don’t deserve to be on here. They weren’t great, but not this bad
Did this ‘writer’ say King’s opinion of movies suck and then use him liking Event Horizon as an example? What a complete moron.
I gotta say, I get a huge kick out of The Mangler and Graveyard Shift. They aren’t objectively good, but they’re nasty and feel very much like the short stories they were based on.
I’m trying to get through ‘Storm of the Century’ right now and I was disappointed it didn’t make this list.
Also, The Timekeepers of Eternity is a great experimental take on The Langoliers, cutting out all excess, and treating what’s left with Hertzfeldtian levels of texturally-disturbing effect.
I managed to see virtually none of these yet I am in agreement with #1 based on my irrational hatred of Courtland Mead. I wanted him to get the mallet so badly.
Stephen King’s opinions on movies normally suck. After all, he openly loves Deep Blue Sea, Event Horizon, and the Last House On The Left remake.Ah dude fuck you, Event Horizon is a goddamn gem.
It Ch. 2 is especially egregious considering it’s not some low-budget 90s tv schlock-fest. I didn’t even enjoy the first movie all that much – and admittedly had a grudge on the whole shebang when Fukunaga walked. How perfect would he have been in capturing the dread of the book?Anyway! Muschietti made a funhouse movie with pt. 1, then came back with tone deaf comedy in the sequel. Also, adult Eddie is the most irritating horror character since poor Franklin in TCM. How does he have all the same personality traits as he did as a kid?Sophia Lillis, Bill Hader and Skarsgard are the highlights, otherwise.
To your question about Eddie, that’s basically how King wrote him in the book.
If only for Michael Constantine and Joe Mantegna, Thinner doesn’t belong on this list.
“Acid, bitch!”
Let’s see… John Carpenter’s “The Thing” bombed at the box office so let’s get a different director for Firestarter… hmmm… oh hey, this guy Lester directed “Roller Boogie” and “Class of 1984″ so I’m sure he’ll be better than the guy who directed “Halloween,” “The Fog,” and “Escape from New York.” What?
The final moment of Thinner is really great. Almost makes the rest of the movie worth it.
I was apparently an incredibly sensitive (wussy) child, because I was terrified by The Langoliers.
I ended up liking both Pet Sematarys. Well “like” might be the wrong word, but I don’t hate em, they’re ok.
The problem with It Chapter 2 (aside from the stated problem that having Pennywise chase kids is inherently scarier than seeing him chase adults) is the inexplicable decision to send all the characters off on individual side quests/jump scare scenes. Granted, it’s been probably 20 years since I read It, but I don’t remember them each having to go find separate McGuffins.
Choosing to eliminate the interconnectedness of the ending confrontations (where the book jumps back and forth in time periods- again, IIRC after 20 years) make sense from a standpoint of trying to do it as two films they couldn’t film concurrently a la LOTR… but it’s going to inevitably make that second film’s ending feel less impactful.
Pet Semetary, despite a couple of hokey scenes, is largely effective as a horror movie. The scenes with Zelda are absolutely terrifying and there are legitimate scenes of horror/grief where you can empathize with what the main character is doing. I found the movie terrifying as a child and watched it recently and was surprised at how mostly scary the film still is. It does laps around the awful remake.
Sorry, but I’ll always have a soft spot for the 1989 Pet Sematary. I think it’s really well shot, super creepy, and Fred Gwynne is fantastic.
This place has absolutely gone to shit.
I have grown up on the Horror genre, and the majority of these adaptations you are calling bad, are classics in my book. The Carrie remake is corny, I will admit to that fact. They’re basically copying the original films. The Pet Cemetery remake, another disappointment which could never compare to the original. I don’t care what you have to say about it, I am unable watch the movie til this day. Which makes it a Cult Classic in my book. Thinner and The Langoliers is a favorite of my mother’s, who introduced me to horror films.Pet Semetary being one of my very first movies to view.What I’m getting at is for me, you have horrible taste in Horror films if can consider the majority of selection to be corny.
Sleepwalkers RULES. It’s the biggest piece of shit and yet it’s such an entertaining piece of shit that I gladly call it one of my favorite King films. I’m surprised more scenes haven’t reached meme status like The Room.
Hell, King’s cameo is probably the funniest part of the film.
“Hey buddy! I ain’t takin’ the wrap for this…”
Like the movie was so bad he had to pop in and go “This wasn’t my fault!”
The Dark Tower is a fantastic concept that went well over about 3 or 4 books, then crashed into a cop-out ending. I was so pissed about the ending of the series that I didn’t read Stephen King’s books for several years. The guy doesn’t stick the landing as much as you might expect.
I find a lot of Stephen King adaptations start off really well, then descend into disappointing schlock. Which is probably unavoidable because that’s exactly how a lot of King’s novels go in the first place. He’s got some amazing novels amongst the mountain of literature he’s contributed, but god damn does he write some crap too.
I don’t see how you can blame King for any awful screen adaptations, except for the ones he penned himself. There are plenty of duds, but he only had so much control.
How is the latest remake of The Stand not on this list. That steaming turd was so bad I can still smell it.
This is a ridiculous article. You clearly don’t appreciate Stephen King’s work. Who are you? I understand it’s your opinion but come on.
I’d have thrown The Stand on here, both the ‘94 and the 2020 versions. The ‘94 version because it’s so obviously hamstrung by its time, by airing on ABC, and by some fantastically weak performances by almost all, with only a couple exceptions. The 2020 version, not because of anything to do with casting, but because it not only woefully mistranslated the book, but also decided to focus on the most boring, obnoxious character in the entire story, the whole flashback structure, the nearly wholesale elimination of most of Larry’s character and most of Nick’s story, and some unfulfilled promises to give Mother Abigail more to do.
My wife and I have never seen Thinner, but we reference the trailer to this day by saying something like “Make sure you cut those chicken breasts… ThiN Ner…”
Needful Things tops my personal list. I loved the book so much, and remember the movie being just so, so bad. That Under the Dome series was also pretty bad.
Children of the Corn was batshit terrifying when I was a little kid in 1984. Traumatizing. I still hiss “Malachi…” now and then and I remain somewhat unnerved by corn fields. I’m still waiting for the day someone does “The Long Walk” the right way. That could be so brilliant in the right hands.
The Shining mini-series is #1? This list is hot garbage.Yes, it’s network TV, and doesn’t have big name movie stars (sorry, Rebecca deMornay) or great CGI. But if you want an adaptation of the novel, the mini-series is oh so much better than Kubrick’s film.I actually believed that Weber and deMornay were a couple and loved each other, unlike Nicholson and Duvall. deMornay’s Wendy was a strong character who could stood up for herself unlike Duvall’s Wendy who was a complete doormat. The mini-series actually dealt with Jack’s alcoholism when it was almost an afterthought in the movie. I believed that Weber’s Jack loved Danny, which was never the case in the movie. And it remembered the key reason Jack was hired in the first place – to turn over the boiler every night.Give me the mini-series version over the film any day.
I haven’t seen the miniseries, but I agree with the shortcomings of the movie. Personally, I enjoy Doctor Sleep more than the film version of The Shining.