It
really says a lot about a person when they are their own genre of storytelling.
Think about that: Stephen King is one of those very rare—as in, maybe four or
five authors, tops—who have such consistent draw that they are household names.
Not just any household, either, but every household. Try this: next time you’re
at your grandparents’ house and they are regaling you with the saga of the
latest bunion on their foot, wait for them to finish and then say, “Jeez,
Grams, that was more horrifying than a Stephen King story,” and see if they
don’t immediately know what you mean by that.
King’s
prodigious output also accounts for a list of movies nearly as long, and while
the quality of the aforementioned movies and books varies greatly, both
subjectively and objectively, there are a number of great Stephen King movies
that have been accidentally made out of their literary counterparts. Granted,
there are also some god-awful ones, too, but we’re not here to talk about Maximum Overdrive…or Firestarter…or The Tommyknockers…or…you get the idea. For the purposes of this
list, we’ll focus on the ones that cleaved most closely to the books and were
also scary or horrific in some way. That’s why you won’t see Stand By Me or The Shawshank Redemption on this list, as great as they are.
John
Carpenter was on a roll when he agreed to direct Christine, based on Stephen King’s terrifying novel of the same
name. All right, that last part was bullshit, since we’re talking about a
sentient car, here. Or, rather, an instrument of a deranged will, perhaps. It’s
the dark side of the old TV show, My
Mother, the Car, played straight, and playing off of the fear of the old
half-ton Detroit steel juggernauts that didn’t even have to be going fast to
run you down and pulp you. Cars used to be something, and they are an
inextricable part of the American Mythology, representing freedom,
independence, maturity, responsibility…so when the thing we love and also take
for granted starts killing people, well, that’s a recipe for horror. It’s also
the territory where King likes to play and does his best work.
The
movie itself makes a few shortcuts because it was 1983 and Hollywood didn’t
respect prose like it does now (he said, his tongue firmly in his cheek).
Carpenter uses every trick in his playbook to generate suspense, including his
minimalist soundtrack (when he’s not blasting rock and roll—a rarity for him),
great performances by Keith Gordon and John Stockwell as the bullied shy guy
and his not-an-asshole jock friend. Harry Dean Stanton plays the detective who
catches the murders that Christine is committing. It’s got all of the trappings
of a vintage Carpenter flick, minus some of his auteur’s enthusiasm perhaps,
but it’s still quite creepy in places, and remains an under-appreciated effort
from Carpenter.
4.
The
Mist (2007)
Screenwriter and director Frank
Darabont boasts an impressive list of horror credentials that goes all the way
back to scripts for the late 80’s re-make of The Blob (1987) and before that, Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors
(1987), which is certainly one of the better Freddy sequels. He also seems to
be one of the few directors and screenwriters who understands what King is
trying to get across in his fiction and has successfully translated that onto
the silver screen. However, it was his screeplays for The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and The Green Mile (1999) that established him as the Go-To guy for
King movies, maybe when Rob Reiner was unavailable. But what Darabont really
wanted to do was adapt and direct King's short story, "The Mist." When he finally had the confidence
of the studios, and King, who let him change up the ending and add Lovecraftian
monsters with his blessing, what we ended up with feels like the best parts of
King’s horror stories.
A bunch of ordinary people end up in
a grocery store, following a freak thunderstorm that knocks out the power. What
shows up while they are all struggling with their own dramas is a bizarre,
thick mist that contains…something. Lots of somethings, in fact. And the
ensemble cast, which includes Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harding, Toby Jones,
William Sadler, and many others, promptly revert to their most base selves. The
tension between what is happening indoors is as maddening as what’s happening
outdoors is frightening. This is the material that King is best at depicting;
it’s a trick he picked up from reading Don Robertson. Darabont wisely makes the
interpersonal relationships the central focus, and then reminds us when people
get out of line that the monsters are still around. A great monster movie by
any measure.
3. Carrie (1976)
As much as I hate Brian de Palma,
even a broken clock is right twice a day. Hailed as the Heir Apparent to
Hitchcock, his suspense movies that he is so famous for have a tendency to be
“nothing new” and after a while, he started believing his own press and stopped
trying. Later. There were still flashes of inspiration before his Rockstar
persona set in. Exhibit A is the cult classic Phantom of the Paradise (1975), featuring so much nutty goodness,
it’s like a Snickers bar. Exhibit B is Carrie,
which is ironically the movie that put de Palma on the map, introduced him to
his ex-wife, Nancy Allen, and garnered academy award nominations for Sissy
Spacek and Piper Laurie as Carrie White and her deranged, unhinged, religiously
fanatical mother, Margaret.
Carrie was Stephen
King’s first novel, and after the movie came out and became a smash hit, the
book’s sales got a shot in the arm that led to more books and bigger audiences
for same, and so for both de Palma and King, Carrie is an instrumental linchpin in their respective careers.
King’s novel is really good, written in the epistolary style of past tense
reportage, that gives the story and kind of grounded authenticity. Coming out
of the Manson Family murders, the Ted Bundy trial, and prior to that, Truman
Capote’s In Cold Blood, there was a
real verisimilitude of authenticity to the novel that makes it all the more
effective. It’s worth noting that while the trend toward “realism” in film
(whatever that meant) was still in effect—and we weren’t quite ready for
post-modernism, because film tends to lag behind art and literature—de Palma
goes the other way with Carrie and lifts liberally from the Hitchcock playbook,
as he has been wont to do his entire career. The best student in the class
isn’t always the smartest; they just know how to parrot back the lesson to the
teacher.
The movie is well-served by de
Palma’s thievery, however—and let’s not call it “an homage,” okay? If we’re
going to label it more gently and less accusatory, let’s call it a “crutch”
instead. Carrie’s world is one of horrible mean girl tormentors and clearly
psychotic mothers, and even when we see her psychic abilities coming out, we
feel sorry for her. The movie deftly manipulates the point-of-view to rest on
Carrie’s shoulders and keeps us there until the prom. Suddenly, we’re in the
crowd, and Carrie doesn’t look like a victim—she looks like a monster. I contend
there’s a real Frankenstein-style relationship between Carrie and her mother,
literally and figuratively, and it’s both sad and necessary that they perish in
flames together. Skip the sequels and the remakes. They may look slicker, but
they miss the point.
2. Misery (1990)
There
comes a time in every rock and roll band’s growth and development when they
stop writing songs about getting their heart broken and working for a living
and basically being normal people to writing songs about what it’s like being
in a rock and roll band. That’s usually when the quality of the music takes a
dip, too. So too it is with Stephen King, except for one thing: all of his
stories about writers and their crazy fans and what it’s like to have dark
thoughts and maybe those weird stories are coming from someplace else tend to
be among his better works. Misery is a great example of that; an author
with an urge to write something new finds himself injured and in the care of
one of his fans, a disturbed woman played by Cathy Bates, who won the Oscar for
her role in this movie. James Caan is the author who struggles with his
captivity and finds himself writing to save his own life, even as he’s working
on an escape plan.
William
Goldman (The Princess Bride) wrote the screenplay, and director Rob
Reiner worked closely with him to write a faithful treatment. King was
initially reluctant to sell the movie rights because, well, he had a string of
shitty movies based on his work, but Reiner was coming off of Stand By Me
(1986), which was universally regarded at that time as the Best King Adaptation
to Date.
Misery is a great movie for so many
reasons, chief among them is the great cast and smart directing. It’s more
suspenseful than scary, but there are some truly terrifying and horrific
moments (“This is called ‘hobbling,’”) that make you wonder why Meathead
doesn’t direct more serious movies. There’s an inevitable Hitchcockian vibe to
the movie, a la Rear Window, of course, but that is not a bad thing at
all. Even with the toned down and slightly altered screenplay, the emotional
core of the book was maintained, and I think it makes for a better movie. If
you haven’t seen this one in a while, it’s worth re-watching.
1. IT (2017)
I
hate this book. I am on the record as saying it’s my least favorite Stephen King novel of all time, and I’ve read The Tommyknockers,
okay? Every stupid-ass word of that contractual obligation novel. And I still
think IT is the apex of Stephen King
as 800-lb gorilla; the guy no one wants to edit because he’s All-Caps Stephen
King Full-Stop and you are not. There are a number of really good storytellers
that this happens to (looks sideways at Neil Gaiman), but there was a period
for King when his books were in the dumper. IT
lead that charge to mediocrity and what-the-fuckness. And before you say, “What about the
Made-for-TV mini-series starring our favorite actor Tim Curry?” I want you to
read that sentence and see if you can find the five words I most stridently object to.
I’ll give you a hint: it’s not “Our Favorite Actor Tim Curry.” If you were
actually scared by the TV movie, it’s because you were little kid. I was
seventeen when the book came out and I gave my copy away because I didn’t want
it on my shelf.
As a
result of a bad book and a mediocre TV mini-series, I had zero expectations for
this movie. Zero. But a funny thing happened: my movie theater was filled to
capacity in September, during high school football season in Texas, and they
were here to see this movie. More than that, they were coming out of the film
visibly shaken. Some parents brought their middle school age kids (“they’ve
seen it all before already,” was the most commonly-uttered reason I was given)
and more than one of those same kids came out of the theater after a
particularly scary scene, either in tears or in a full-blown panic attack. Well,
that alone was worth checking the movie out. And I’m glad I did.
The movie is outstanding. I think this has handily supplanted the other movies on this list for managing to do the impossible: it actually fulfills the promise that the book makes (and to my mind, fails) by fixing the egregious problems with the novel (for they are legion) and keeping the out-there-where-the-buses-don’t-run whack-job jump scares, visuals, and most especially, making clowns scary again.
Director
Andy Muschietti and screenwriters Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, and Gary
Dauberman shepherded this project for several years, at times being insistent
and other times pushing firmly against studio requests, and it paid off
handsomely. Ordinarily I would hate such sweeping arbitrary changes, but in
this case, they made the wise decision to sew up all of the plot holes and also
fix the egregious problems inherent to the book. Also, they make great use of
the recent technical advances to render the clown as terrifying, and for the
first time ever, translate the things I see in my head when I read the books
and stories onto the silver screen. Even if the sequel (the second half of the book) tanks,
this first film will stand alone as an exceptional horror romp.
