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(Left to right) Sissy Spacek stars as Carrie White in "Carrie" and Bill Skarsgard stars as Pennywise in "It."
Courtesy Everett Collection; Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the first film adaptation of one of Stephen King’s works, the 1982 anthology film Creepshow, which included sections based on his short stories “Weeds” and “The Crate.” More than 50 film, TV and miniseries adaptations later, this month will see the release of a new version of Firestarter, starring Zac Efron as the father of a young girl who develops pyrokinesis and is hunted down by a secret government agency. The horror flick, which will be released in theaters and stream on Peacock on May 13, is the second adaptation of King’s 1980 novel of the same name, following a 1984 film starring a young Drew Barrymore. Over the years, the 74-year-old King of Horror has amassed a filmography that is, to put it mildly, a bit uneven: For every classic like Carrie or The Shining, there are outrageous duds like Maximum Overdrive and The Lawnmower Man. Here, 10 King adaptations we love — and five horrifyingly bad films that send shivers up our spines for all the wrong reasons.
10. 1408 (2007)
Based on: The short story “1408” from the audiobook collection Blood and Smoke (1999)
The premise: Author Mike Enslin (John Cusack, 55) has made a career debunking supposedly paranormal phenomena. For his next book, he decides to check into a New York City hotel where the titular room is reported to be haunted. In fact, when he tries to check in, hotel manager Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson, 73) tells him that, for the last 95 years, no guest has lasted more than an hour inside room 1408. The current death toll: 56. Once inside, Mike becomes trapped in a nightmarish space that includes the ghosts of past victims, rising flood waters, freezing temperatures and a creepy doppelgänger of himself. Instead of gore and jump scares, this is a movie built on psychological terror that gets under your skin.
The scariest part: You’ll feel genuine unease as Mike starts to regret his decision, especially when The Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun” starts playing creepily on the clock radio.
Watch it: 1408 on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, YouTube
9. The Green Mile (1999)
Based on: The Green Mile (1996)
The premise: Five years after his success with The Shawshank Redemption, director Frank Darabont, 63, tackled another prison-set drama inspired by a Stephen King novel. Tom Hanks, 65, stars as Paul Edgecomb, a Louisiana death row guard who befriends an inmate named John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan). Though he has been charged with the murder of two young girls, Coffey appears to be a gentle giant who’s afraid of the dark and possesses special healing powers — which he puts to use curing Paul’s bladder infection and resurrecting a fellow inmate’s dead pet mouse. It’s a sentimental film that stretches to three hours long and borders on Oscar bait, but the baiting paid off: The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including best picture and best supporting actor for Duncan.
The scariest part: The graphic electric chair scenes may leave you slightly traumatized.
Watch it: The Green Mile on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, HBO Max
8. It (2017)
Based on: It (1986)
The premise: The small town of Derry, Maine has a little problem that keeps cropping up every 27 years: Like clockwork, an ancient, shapeshifting clown named Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) shows up to terrorize the local kids, preying on their individual worst fears. Fighting back against him this time around is a ragtag group of misfits known as the Losers Club, led by Bill (Jaeden Martell), whose little brother may have been killed by the evil presence. The source novel — which was already adapted into a 1990 miniseries starring Tim Curry, 76, as Pennywise — is a hefty 1,138 pages, so there was more than enough material for a 2019 sequel, which covers the second half of the book and sees the Losers Club all grown up, 27 years later, with a cast that includes Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader and James McAvoy.
The scariest part: Little Georgie’s attack in a rainy sewer is appropriately bone-chilling.
Watch it: It on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, HBO Max
7. Dolores Claiborne (1995)
Based on: Dolores Claiborne (1992)
The premise: Kathy Bates, 73, may have won an Oscar for Misery, but she considers the title role in this grim thriller to be the greatest performance of her career. Bates stars as a New England housekeeper, whose wealthy boss turns up murdered. With Dolores as the only suspect, her estranged daughter, New York City journalist Selena (Jennifer Jason Leigh, 60) returns home to their tiny Maine village, where decades of long-buried trauma and pain begin to resurface. “Bates’s performance is terrific,” wrote Desson Howe in The Washington Post. “The star of Misery seems to thrive in King Country. Full of offbeat charm, eccentric charisma and colorful profanity (none of which can be repeated here), she exudes a believability you don’t normally expect in movies like this.”
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