Poll Macabre: Stephen King On Film and TV

can't really choose between the Shining and Carrie which are both at the top of my all-time favorite horror movies, widely different as they are

I remember the Salem's Lot miniseries being scary as hell. I wonder how well it's aged. Still, the Kubrick for me.

Although there are better movies on the list (and lots of better horror movies), there are times when I think Creepshow might be my ideal horror movie.

Since we can probably predict the top ten or so right out of the gate, it'd be cool to see people's recommendations of overlooked gems, particularly from the later years (I think Thinner might be the most recent one I've seen).

I think some of King's best writing tends to get a bit sprawling, and it's hard to edit/screenwrite that. The Stand and It adaptations, while flawed, make me wonder why, given the success of American Horror Story, Walking Dead etc., someone hasn't taken a whack at doing those as a cable series.

And I think I'm one of the very few to rep for the Shining miniseries.

Salem's Lot hasn't aged well, it's very slow. Voted for Misery.

Creepshow is my sentimental favorite movie of all time, but I have a lot of affection for:

Children of the Corn
Christine
Pet Sematary
Thinner

1. Carrie, 2. The Dead Zone, 3. The Shining. I like Cujo and Salem's Lot, too. De Palma's birthday today.

Carrie. I expect The Langoliers to get some joke-votes.

I put the Kubrick on a different level. It feels unfair to consider it here.

In its stead, I choose The Dead Zone. I'm not embarrassed to admit to liking The Green Mile, either, but it also doesn't seem as King-ish as other things.

Kind of agree - unfair to go with The Shining, so I'll go with Carrie

assuming all the stuff my brain would pick will get votes elsewhere so i gotta go with my heart

Awesomest Bro In Dreamcatcher

Carrie (1976)
Salem's Lot (TV miniseries, 1979)
The Shining (1980)
Creepshow (1982)
Cujo (1983)
The Dead Zone (1983)
Christine (1983)

Anything from this run. Everything else can gtfo.

p much

I mean, I like things about the It miniseries and Dolores Claibourne and The Mist. But this filmography is like following up having the Brandenburg Gate open up to Mortville.

Shining > Salem's Lot > Carrie > Misery > Creepshow

following up

it occurs to me that the only ones of these that I've seen in their entirety are 'Salem's Lot and The Mist

How many movies do you start and not finish?!

oh wait, Misery and The Shining, duh

why are people so hung up on finishing movies

basically I much preferred to read King's stories than watch the adaptations

i've seen a lot of these and would see all the rest assuming there are monsters, no hearts of atlantis shit

actually there don't have to be monsters if there's murder (i.e. dolores claiborne, secret window)

Salem's Lot because it terrified me as an 8 yr old and James Mason was the scariest character I had ever seen in a movie, never re-watched because I don't want to spoil the magic.
http://bizarrocentral.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/sl24.gif

I have fond memories of The Storm of the Century miniseries

Whatever it's overall value as a movie, that scene in Dolores Claiborne where Kathy Bates breaks the pitcher over David Strathairn's head is one of my favorite things ever. "You evah hit me again and one of us is goin' to the boneyaaaaahd."

nothing that isn't at least somewhat supernatural-y or thriller-y (e.g. Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption), no remakes (e.g. Trucks, The Shining miniseries)

wtf

Gotta vote The Shining, but ten-year-old me wishes to throw in an honourable mention to Cat's Eye.

Forgot to thank you, OL, for eliminating Shawshank Redemption from the conversation, no matter how shifty the reasoning.

where the hell is The Stand (miniseries)

I put the Kubrick on a different level. It feels unfair to consider it here.

In its stead, I choose The Dead Zone

Re: The Stand, it was inevitable that I'd overlook at least one. At least I made room for The Night Flier.

Heh overlook

The Stand mini was okay, until the end, where (SPOILERS!!!) the literal Hand of God blows up the nuclear bomb! I haven't read the books so I'm not sure if it happens there too, but it was ridiculous, and not in a good way.

I don't think the Shining should be on here, as it's such a complete difference in scale and aim and execution. It's like comparing 2001 and 2010

Carrie, because the characters' emotional churn is central and becomes even more so; doesn't get overshadowed by other elements, incl. studied shit like "Heeere's Johnny" (it's Halloween, he's got his Jack Nicholson mask on). Not that I don't really those other elements in The Shining; love riding the steadicams down the hall, wheee!
Also liked several others, but Carrie.

xp
You could say the same about comparing Maximum Overdrive to Under The Dome! Tbh as brilliant as an artistic accomplishment as The Shining is, I always preferred Barry Lyndon, Dr Strangelove, Paths of Glory and The Killing which are my top 4 Kubrick movies. The Shining is a brilliant adaptation but for some reason that I can't put my finger on I rarely re-watch it and am not too bothered about it.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

The Stand will become a 4-film franchise starring McConaughey.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/24/matthew-mcconaughey-the-stand-stephen-king-adaptation

Oh he'll be perfect as Trashcan Man!

I can totally hear him saying "Come down here and each chicken with me beautiful, it's so dark."

He better start growing that mullet out now.

http://sharetv.com/images/the_stand/cast/large/randall_flagg.jpg

I'd like to think this means we'll see a "Michael Keaton in Jackie Brown/Out Of Sight"-style crossover for McConaughey in the Dark Tower films.

are the dark tower films still happening?

fuck everything, we're doing four movies

The Langoliers (TV miniseries, 1995)	2
Dreamcatcher (2003)	1

Heh, good one Beth.

All 58 Stephen King Movie and TV Series Adaptations, Ranked

Stand By Me too low (it's way better than Cujo let alone Shawshank). Running Man and Christine also way too low....

I haven't seen that many of these, but Lawnmower Man as high as 37 is crazy! It has almost nothing to do with King (as they acknowledge) and it's terrible. All the ones I've seen that are below that - Silver Bullet, Maximum Overdrive, Graveyard Shift - are at least watchable little stories even if they all feel kinda 'made for TV' and not actually scary or anything.

most of the blurbs just rehash the plot?, not much reasoning here

Salem's Lot way too low, me and the older brother watched that on a b/w tv some time in the late 70's while we were babysitting ourselves and fully shit it.

lol yeah it was p scary!

I just saw it last year for the first time and it was great. Can't even imagine that it was on broadcast TV. An entire generation of children, emotionally scarred.

gah, was hoping it was vulture. of course dumb new io9 is gonna fuck that list up. night flier predictably too low on that list. kinda went 'wait, what?' at the dreamcatcher ranking. salem's lot really the only tv king adaptation i didn't feel was just fatally compromised by being on broadcast tv. just remembered fukunaga isn't directing it anymore, which sucks.

Can't remember if there's already a Dark Tower adaptation thread but it's been confirmed that the movies aren't actually going to be a straight adaptation but rather a direct continuation from the ending of the books. Which isn't especially distressing if you've read the books (or had the ending spoiled for you, like me).

I must not have voted in my own poll because I never would have allowed the travesty of Creepshow receiving zero votes.

the IT adaptation is one of my personal faves ... like, it's very corny made-for-tv and & parts are not great, but Curry is awesome it's about as close to reading a King book that an adaptation has felt like for me
they usually fall pretty short

I said so upthread but it bears repeating: Cat's Eye rocks. If The Shining didn't exist, it'd be my fave King flick. Yes, even over Carrie.

The Dead Zone and Silver Bullet need rewatches. It's been ages, but I remember the former being legit unnerving and the latter being a lot of fun.

I saw The Dead Zone the other week; it holds up really well. I was thinking about picking it up on Blu-Ray but I think it's only available as part of a three-pack with two early Cronenberg movies.

A surprising number of King adaptations through at least the mid-80s are very solid. Working with a lot of name directors certainly helped.

Can't remember if there's already a Dark Tower adaptation thread

this would be the place - Dark Tower - Stephen King - but your news has not come up there, no! huh. weird. no idea how i feel about that.

they missed 'golden years', which i saw and thought was pretty decent, considering everything.

I think it's just a list of adapted works. No Rose Red, Storm of the Century, Sleepwalkers, etc.

read the dead zone a couple of months back due to lol topicality and the movie really is a perfect adaptation, streamlines and tweaks plots so they're more effective and walken really is perfect casting - you get that combination of romantic charm and yet something off center and strange. it was alright but i think w/o curry would be pretty useless and i don't think the kids performances or the handling of that plot in general were very good (cf stand by me).

true, stand by me is def much better wrt the kids.

I never took to dead zone the movie but i havent watched it in a long long time. i loved the book.

watching stranger things makes me want to reread some old sk now

Dead Zone I like, especially how it seems like it's the last time Walken was acting, instead of just being a Walken character.

I watched the TV It a few years ago, and remember that it had some creepily poetic shots. Pennywise at the side of the road with the balloon, when one of them was coming back to town years later, that stayed in my mind. Once the jump-scares start revving up in the new one, it's CGI overkill the rest of the way. Not surprising, still disappointing. It's (or It's) not terrible, but I'll take the TV version.

(I searched for a thread, couldn't find one.)

Yeah whatever the new one has going for it (not hellish much imo ymmv) it's useless as a scarf movie

I know I'm in the minority here but both tv adaptations of salems lot bore the arse off me in equal measure, never got why the hooper is held in such high regard

*scary movie, lol. I can't remember if there were any scarves in it

I completely get where clemenza is coming from re: "CGI overkill" but I liked the movie anyway. Perhaps because of that very thing--if the action is busy and hard to follow, it is kind of hard to be truly afraid while you're watching it play out--I liked it much better as a film about childhood than as a horror film. The cast of kid actors was fantastic (maybe one of the best I've ever seen on film), I responded to both the comedy ("They're gazebos!") and the tearjerker stuff in the exact ways that I was supposed to, and I generally dug the whole 80s nostalgia vibe of it, which struck me as hovering somewhere between Donnie Darko and my beloved Eerie, Indiana.

I barely remember the TV version, aside from that I saw it at the time and didn't think much of it even as a kid. Like, I was legit surprised/baffled when it began to emerge as a kind of general touchstone over the years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqUopiAYdRg

Even though I gave up on it once (think I got maybe an hour into it), going to give The Stand another go this week for obvious reasons--one of them being I'm running out of pandemic-related viewing, having already watched Contagion, both Andromeda Strands, and Safe.

It's truly terrible.

It's rare that I devote that much time to a movie, even a long one, without finishing. But I feel like I have to do this.

A new miniseries for CBS All Access was actually in production but I guess it remains to be seen how the real-life plague will interfere with the fictionalized version.

Thought The Outsider was fun, even though they left a bunch of loose ends iirc. Casting was A+

Yes, as I noted elsewhere, it was about as close as any King adaptation has come to replicating the feel of a King novel. It seems like some people felt that it meandered too much, but King novels kind of meander. He takes his time fleshing out characters and their world and gives them room to just interact like normal people for a while before he fully brings the hammer down on them. I think that's a strength of his written work that rarely carries over in the translation to a two-hour film adaptation.

Watching only intermittently, but finished the first part of The Stand. Not exactly good, but the contours of what we're going through right now are there, which makes it interesting enough to keep watching. Performances range from passable to poor to Ed-Harris-level poor. Still waiting for Laura San Giacomo to show up.

(I should say that Ed Harris is sometimes a fine actor. When he's in George Kennedy mode, as he is here, he's terrible.)

Doctor Sleep did nothing for me beyond reminding me how few movies ever need sequels. The plot could easily exist, as a kind of horror X men, without The Shining to draw upon, but then who would care? There's a scene midway through with Jacob Tremblay that is one of the most unpleasant things I've ever seen in a movie, and which it has in no way earned the gravitas to include.

A Creepshow Halloween special is being released next month, featuring an animated adaptation of 'Survivor Type'!!!!!!