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

If You Like...

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…)

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

www.youtube.com

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

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.