10 Stephen King adaptations that are well worth… | Little White Lies

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10 Stephen King adap­ta­tions that are well worth your time

07 Sep 2017

Words by James Morton

A man lying in bed being tended to by another person, possibly a caregiver or partner. The room has wooden walls and appears to be a rustic, homely setting.
A man lying in bed being tended to by another person, possibly a caregiver or partner. The room has wooden walls and appears to be a rustic, homely setting.
From Mis­ery to The Shin­ing, here are our favourite takes on the pro­lif­ic hor­ror writer’s work.

With 54 nov­els and almost 200 short sto­ries to his name, King per­haps rivals only Shake­speare and Dick­ens as the most adapt­ed author in his­to­ry. This year alone, we have Andy Muschietti’s IT, Niko­laj Arcel’s The Dark Tow­er, AT&T’s seri­alised ver­sion of Mr Mer­cedes, a Net­flix movie ver­sion of Gerald’s Game (per­haps the most chal­leng­ing nov­el to adapt giv­en its sta­t­ic set­ting) and you can prob­a­bly count Stranger Things in that list too, as Eleven and co sim­ply wouldn’t exist with­out the hor­ror maestro’s pre­ced­ing work. Here are 10 of our favourite Stephen King adap­ta­tions from TV and film.

You know the 1990 minis­eries and now the 2017 movie, but you’ll prob­a­bly be unfa­mil­iar with Woh, a Hin­di-lan­guage adap­ta­tion of IT’ from 1998. Woh com­bat­ed the time issue by telling the sto­ry across 52 (!) episodes, leav­ing ample room to cov­er the text suf­fi­cient­ly, and it’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see how things have been altered for an Indi­an audi­ence. Notable changes include swap­ping the storm drain for a swim­ming pool in George’s death scene, and chang­ing Pennywise’s name to The Jok­er (Bat­man copy­right issues are anoth­er story…)

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The infa­mous hob­bling scene was some­thing of a red line for poten­tial stars and direc­tors, with George Roy Hill, War­ren Beat­ty and Bette Midler turn­ing the movie down because of it. Inter­est­ing­ly, the book is far gori­er: once writer Paul Shel­don (James Caan) winds up at the mer­cy of deranged nurse Annie (Kathy Bates) fol­low­ing a car crash, she not only breaks his leg but cuts it clean off. There’s also a par­tic­u­lar­ly grue­some scene with a police­man get­ting caught up in a lawn­mow­er, which direc­tor Rob Rein­er filmed but thought it too com­i­cal for audiences.

Even screen­writer Bill Phillips thought this premise was a joke when it was pitched to him. An absurd idea fash­ioned into a bril­liant movie, Chris­tine tells the tale of bul­lied nerd Arnie Cun­ning­ham (Kei­th Gor­don) who pur­chas­es a wrecked Ply­mouth Fury with a mind of its own. The taglines were as ridicu­lous as the plot – Body by Ply­mouth. Soul by Satan’ – but by 1983 King had become a box office brand, and his pop­u­lar­i­ty was such that the film went into pro­duc­tion before the book had even been published.

Rarely has an adap­ta­tion of a nov­el been so despised by its orig­i­nal author. King and Kubrick noto­ri­ous­ly loathed each oth­er, with King accus­ing the direc­tor of strip­ping his source mate­r­i­al of its charm and his char­ac­ters of depth. In King’s eyes, Shel­ley Duvall’s Wendy was, one of the most misog­y­nis­tic char­ac­ters ever put on film. She’s basi­cal­ly just there to scream and be stu­pid.” Nonethe­less, it remains an icon­ic and much-loved hor­ror movie, and is a per­fect exam­ple of how a book and its cin­e­mat­ic coun­ter­part can be equal­ly bril­liant for dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent reasons.

Much of King’s work relies on mak­ing the famil­iar absolute­ly ter­ri­fy­ing, and after wag­ing war on the nuclear fam­i­ly and the sub­urbs, King threw the fam­i­ly dog into the mix. Cujo the film opts for a dif­fer­ent end­ing to the book, with (spoil­er alert) the son sur­viv­ing, where­as in the nov­el he doesn’t. King was appar­ent­ly hap­py with the change, aware that what works for an audi­ence on the page might not per­form sim­i­lar­ly onscreen. Despite mixed reviews, King cites this as one of his favourite adap­ta­tions to date.

You’d be for­giv­en for not real­is­ing that this is a King flick: his brand is so syn­ony­mous with hor­ror that it’s easy to for­get he has a string of heart­felt sto­ries under his belt. Despite receiv­ing a luke­warm response upon its the­atri­cal release, this tale of friend­ship in the US prison sys­tem found its audi­ence on home video, and has grad­u­al­ly been ele­vat­ed to the sta­tus of mod­ern clas­sic. In 2015, the US Library of Con­gress select­ed the film for preser­va­tion, find­ing it cul­tur­al­ly, his­tor­i­cal­ly or aes­thet­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant.” Not bad going for a for­mer novella.

With Darabont again direct­ing, the sim­i­lar­i­ties between this and Shaw­shank are appar­ent from the get-go: anoth­er grim prison, anoth­er inmate banged up for a crime he didn’t com­mit. Set on death row in 1935 and star­ring Tom Han­ks along­side Michael Clarke Dun­can, The Green Mile was nom­i­nat­ed for four Oscars, rein­forc­ing the killer King-Darabont com­bi­na­tion and fur­ther toy­ing with King’s rep­u­ta­tion for being noth­ing but a hor­ror writer. That’s not to say there’s noth­ing to fear here – the elec­tric chair scene still haunts us to this day.

Not a straight­for­ward adap­ta­tion, Creepshow is an anthol­o­gy film com­posed of five vignettes, two of which were ini­tial­ly short sto­ries. The results are patchy in places but lots of fun, pay­ing fond homage to the 1950s EC Comics with its humour and peri­od­ic descents into melo­dra­ma. High­lights include The Lone­some Death of Jordy Ver­ill’, star­ring King him­self, and Ted Dan­son and Leslie Nielsen’s per­for­mances in the high­ly dis­turb­ing Some­thing To Tide You Over’, made all the more sin­is­ter by the cast­ing of com­ic actors. As with Stranger Things, it’s the sense of nos­tal­gia and a clear affec­tion for the source mate­r­i­al that make it work.

King’s book about a time trav­eller attempt­ing to pre­vent the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion required con­sid­er­able research: King claimed the process was like break­ing in a new pair of shoes.” The 2016 Hulu adap­ta­tion is sur­pris­ing­ly faith­ful, and James Fran­co makes a great Jake. The series deserves kudos for its metic­u­lous atten­tion to detail, and quirky spin on the time trav­el sub­genre – here, the past doesn’t like to be changed, and obsta­cles crop up to sab­o­tage Jake’s mis­sion, from falling chan­de­liers to a cock­roach horde. It is a King work, after all.

The adap­ta­tion that start­ed it all… King’s tale of tor­ment­ed teenag­er Car­rie (Sis­sy Spacek) enact­ing tele­ki­net­ic revenge on her bul­lies cement­ed him firm­ly on the map as a writer Hol­ly­wood should watch. Dis­ap­point­ing­ly, the 2015 remake depict­ed a Car­rie much more in con­trol of her pow­ers, where­as in the 1976 orig­i­nal she is sim­ply chaot­ic. The dif­fer­ence is stark, with Car­rie 2.0 effec­tive­ly becom­ing the vil­lain of the piece.

What’s your favourite Stephen King adap­ta­tion? Let us know @LWLies

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