Not the 2004 or 2024 Salem’s Lot?
Back again to comment on The Dead Zone.
The two main issues/complaints I have about Cronenberg’s film are (1) the conversion of a teenaged character who is warned away from a roadhouse fire to a much younger boy who is endangered by thin ice, and (2) the omission of the FBI agent who is killed by a car bomb. These grate on me a bit.
But I think that Cronenberg and Boam did an otherwise masterful job of condensing the novel down to a truly creepy film of manageable length. Walken and King go together like peas and carrots.
You have a much better memory of both the book and movie than I do. I have a general memory of the overall plot of the book, the main key plot developments, and a general sense at the time that the book read like classic King at the top of his form. The movie I remember very little, other than some visual memories of scenes with Walken in them.
But then, it’s been 40+ years since I’ve read / seen either. I should do a reread / rewatch sometime.
Not THAT great, I’m afraid. I just remember the parts that impressed me in both.
The movie also omits Stillson’s backstory, which is a shame, but it’s understandable that they couldn’t squeeze absolutely everything in. In the novel, King really went out of his way to make sure you understand that Stillson is not a nice person.
It’s been so long since I read the book (and it’s been a while since I last saw the movie, too) that I actually couldn’t say where the movie deviates from the book, only that I thoroughly enjoyed both, and both are indeed works of art in their own right.
Although some of King’s works have been made into fine movies, many have been mangled in the process. Pet Sematary was a great novel but the 1989 movie was only mediocre, and the 2019 remake which I didn’t even bother watching was supposedly even worse.
The 2004 version was ok. I didn’t see the 2024 version; I don’t think I even knew it existed. I’ll give it a watch.
I forgot to mention Pet Sematary. The 1989 version. I don’t know if I watched the 2019 version and I only made it partway through the one from 2023.
I think the Ramones song and Fred Gwynne’s performance (the best Stephen King impersonation ever) push it past mediocre.
Maximum Overdrive and it’s AC/DC soundtrack were awesome!
It’s actually not bad. Starts off pretty good with the typical Stephen King small town slowly pulling back it’s veil of normalcy to reveal an ancient evil bit but then gets a bit bonkers at the end. I think you can find it on HBOMax.
A couple of prominent gaps in the OP’s list:
- Creepshow (1982)
- Cujo (1983)
- Children of the Corn (1984)
- Firestarter (1984)
- The Running Man (1987) or more faithful 2025 remake
I thought about Creepshow - “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verill” is probably my favorite King appearance in one of his films - but I can’t remember any of the other segments.
Firestarter is great for Drew Barrymore’s performance, but I don’t think it lived up to the book.
And the 1987 The Running Man is a classic in its own right for the sheer kitsch of it, but any resemblance to the story is incidental. I haven’t seen the new one yet.
This is a weird one. That film had six sequels. The original was remade twice, for some reason, in 2009 and 2020. There were also two TV series based on the material. I’m guessing it’s all a bunch of junk, and why this story spawned so many others is a mystery.
Carrie has 2 remakes, a sequel and a miniseries all based on it. The mini-series is expected October 7, 2026, on Amazon Prime Video.
Yeah how was Langoliers not even in the list?
I get that it was a bit cheesy, and some of the acting was ropey, but it had something; you get invested in the story. And honestly, I remember it better than I remember the Green Mile (despite the latter being executed (so to speak) better).
I’d love a remake to just soften out some of the flaws.
So anyway, that would make my list:
The Running Man
It (1990 version)
Langoliers
The Green Mile
The Mist
I loved The Mist… until that ending.
I know SK says he likes the movie ending better than the one he wrote, but it was still too dark for me.
Well, like I said upthread, there are so many adaptations of King works, most mediocre to downright bad, I had to draw the line somewhere. So I chose the top 10 most highly rated movies, a few well-rated miniseries, and a ‘write-in’ vote to deal with the rest. The write-in vote is what generally middle-rated (48% Rotten Tomatoes) adaptations like ‘The Langoliers’ is made for. I never would have included ‘Maximum Overdrive’ in the main list, but it’s doing surprisingly well in the write-ins.
That said, I do have a soft spot for ‘The Langoliers’, both the short story (novelette?) and the miniseries. Though I’m sure it’s laughable to physicists, the general concept that the physical world is something that exists outside of the linear flow of time, and has to be destroyed after time has passed on (like roadies breaking down a stage after the concert is finished) has stuck with me. I sometimes think of the Fall season as the ‘after-time’, where things are winding down, and the Winter as the coming Langoliers.
Let’s face it - we’re dealing with a very large body of work. I like the way the poll was structured, simply because it’s open-ended, and that opens the topic up for discussion. When I sit and think about it, I can’t come up with any SK adaptations that I have actively disliked. Some were kind of ‘meh’ (and IMO Langoliers fits that description if only because of Bronson Pinchot), but I still enjoyed watching them.
Strong disagree. The later version of It has its flaws, especially part 2, but it is genuinely scary in a way the miniseries never was. Tim Curry never looks like anything other than some guy hamming it up in a clown suit.
ETA: and now I see in the suggest topics that Tim Curry just died, so I feel a little bad bagging on his performance. He was great, just not what a scary movie needed.
Different squids for different kids, that’s fine. But I thought Curry was scary as Pennywise. Yes, he hammed it up, but he was acting like a clown. Maybe you didn’t jump when he came running up to the front of that black-and-white photo, but I did!
The thing that bugged me about the new Pennywise was that he wasn’t the kind of clown he was supposed to be. He’s supposed to be a classic American kiddie clown (like Bozo), not a Pierrot-style clown. I think if you allow for the state of special effects in 1990 (especially in TV miniseries) vs. a full, big-budget 2010s movie, the old miniseries (including most of the actors) holds up pretty well.
The scene in the Chinese restaurant still creeps me out.
Dreamcatcher was pretty bad. Like so bad an all-star cast of Thomas Jane, Morgan Freeman,
Donnie Wahlberg, Jason Lee, Timothy Olyphant, Damian Lewis, and Tom Sizemore couldn’t save it.
The worst part had to be Damian Lewis’s British accent in the final act…and Lewis IS British!
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, but I remember liking it 