With The Monkey having proven to be a critical and commercial success and the release of The Life of Chuck on the horizon, it’s a good time to be a fan of Stephen King adaptations. When it comes to living authors, there’s no one more frequently adapted, as there have been film and TV miniseries based on his works going all the way back to Brian De Palma’s Carrie in 1976. Since that point there have been quite a few stone-cold classics that remain both beloved and popular to this day. Films like Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone, John Carpenter’s Christine, Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me, and Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption.
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Then there are those that fell flat on their faces, like Graveyard Shift, The Dark Half, and Maximum Overdrive, which King himself directed. But what about the King adaptations that fall between those categories? Those that, while not perfect, seem to have been forgotten more often than remembered? Those are the King adaptations that follow, and they’re worth a rental.
Creepshow 2
With just three segments, Creepshow 2 feels like a pretty light but solid anthology film. The reason is obvious from the beginning: budgetary restraints. There were supposed to be five stories, and the two that were never shot would have come from King stories. Of the three remaining stories, only one, “The Raft,” is based on a King work (and you can read that short story by the same name in Skeleton Crew). And, as one might have guessed, that segment is the best of the three. That said, “The Hitchhiker” has a commanding lead performance by Moonraker‘s Lois Chiles and a cameo from King himself and, as for “Old Chief Wood’nhead,” there’s an unrecognizable young Holt McCallany (Mindhunters) as the main villain.
Stream Creepshow 2 on Prime Video.
Cat’s Eye
When it comes to anthology horror films featuring King stories, Cat’s Eye comes in last. But there’s still merit to it. Like Creepshow 2 there are only three stories, but here the budgetary limitations aren’t quite as obvious. Furthermore, of the three segments, two are based on King stories.
Both “Quitters, Inc.” and “The Ledge” are adaptations of stories from Night Shift while the final story, “General,” is original. And suffice it to say, the two based on King stories are far better than the original one that closes out the film. “Quitters, Inc.,” led by James Woods, is the highlight. It follows a man who is directed by his friend to the titular business, which “helps” those trying to quit smoking via rather untraditional methods. “The Ledge” is nearly as great, though, and it’s charmingly different from much of King’s other work, much like the short story that inspired it.
Silver Bullet
Based on King’s breezy illustrated novella Cycle of the Werewolf, Silver Bullet is a woefully underappreciated ’80s treasure for budding horror fans. While Sissy Spacek, Jack Nicholson, and Kathy Bates have all received much warranted praise for their work in King adaptations, one of the unsung greatest performances in movies based on the author’s work is Gary Busey’s here.
The werewolf itself may look pretty silly, but thanks to the cast (including Corey Haim in the lead, The People Under the Stairs‘ Everett McGill, and Lost‘s Terry O’Quinn) and the charming and accessible tone, it’s a winner. As far as R-rated horror movies that are pretty much fine to show to kids, there aren’t many that beat Silver Bullet.
Stream Silver Bullet for free on Pluto TV.
[RELATED: Stephen King Counts This Devastating Horror Film as a Personal Favorite (And You Can Watch It for Free)]
Thinner
Like The Running Man and The Long Walk (both of which have adaptations on the way), King wrote Thinner under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. None of the Bachman books ranks particularly high in his bibliography, and the same applies to Thinner just as it did to The Running Man with Arnold Schwarzenegger. But there are a few assets in Thinner‘s corner that make it a little better than the negative reputation that precedes it.
For starters it was the last mainstream film to come from underrated director Tom Holland, who also helmed 1985’s Fright Night and the original Child’s Play. In addition, Robert John Burke (who plays Seth in The Last of Us Season 2 and filled the big metal shoes of Peter Weller in RoboCop 3) does his best to infuse the narrative’s rather unlikable lead character with some personality. He also seems to understand that Holland isn’t going for a straightforward horror film, which is something that some critics at the time trounced him for.
Stream Thinner for free on Pluto TV.
Tales from the Darkside: The Movie
The Twilight Zone and HBO’s Tales from the Crypt are undoubtedly more highly regarded than the George A. Romero-created Tales from the Darkside, but the micro-budgeted show undoubtedly had its charms as well. The show came one year after Romero directed the original Creepshow, and in fact it really was supposed to be what amounts to Creepshow: The Series. But Warner Bros. owned certain elements of that film that prevented Darkside from being called Creepshow, but the underlying connection remained.
Two of Tales from the Darkside‘s episodes were based on short stories by King and, come time for Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, King’s works once more served as inspiration. Specifically, the middle story, The Cat from Hell, was the story that was supposed to be used in the aforementioned Creepshow 2. It’s adapted quite well here, but there’s an argument to be made that the third and final story, Lover’s Vow, is the best of the bunch.
Stream Tales from the Darkside: The Movie for free on Pluto TV.
Dolores Claiborne
Five years after her Academy Award for Best Actress-winning work in Rob Reiner’s Misery and one year after her uncredited role in the TV miniseries The Stand Kathy Bates once more returned to the world of Stephen King with Dolores Claiborne. Like the 1992 novel that inspired it, Dolores Claiborne is pretty far from the many horror works under King’s belt, but it still carries his unmistakable grim tone and love for the state of Maine.
The narrative follows Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Selena St. George, the estranged daughter of the title character. She returns to her hometown of Little Tall Island, Maine after her mother is accused of murdering the woman she’d been hired as a domestic servant for. Claiborne’s peers and neighbors all fully believe she did it (though the exact nature of her death is revealed to be far more complicated), primarily because they believe she also killed her husband 18 years earlier. And now, Detective John Mackey (Christopher Plummer) is dead set on accomplishing what he failed to do back then: put Claiborne behind bars. It’s the exact type of story that allows Bates to deliver a tour-de-force performance that is decidedly different from her work as Annie Wilkes in Misery. And, because Misery is such an iconic and note-perfect adaptation (even when it strays from the source material), Dolores Claiborne seems to have been mostly forgotten in the extensive history of King movies.
Apt Pupil
Stephen King’s 1982 anthology Different Seasons is quite different from other anthologies such as Night Shift and Skeleton Crew. Specifically, it’s loaded with dramas that at most have slight horror elements (e.g. how one story is about the search for a corpse). There are four stories in the collection, three of which have been adapted into films: The Shawshank Redemption, Stand by Me, and Apt Pupil. The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me are highly regarded and profitable films to this day. Apt Pupil, however, kind of came and went.
It makes sense that the film went under the radar compared to those two top-tier adaptations, but it really does deserve a life of its own. The late Brad Renfro gets a terrifically showy lead role as Nazi-obsessed high schooler Todd Bowden. Like in The Client and Sleepers, his work here showed a performer who was impressively dynamic as soon as he started acting, and it would have been exciting to see what he had in store for film fans had he not passed of an overdose at just 25. But Apt Pupil is also Ian McKellen’s movie. This film came out years before he reteamed with director Bryan Singer for X-Men and, without a doubt, his roles in the two movies couldn’t be any more different. In X-Men, his Magneto was a Holocaust survivor. Here, he plays a fugitive Nazi war criminal living in the heart of suburbia. It can be a tough film to sit through, as neither lead character is remotely likable, but that’s what helped make it such a standout in King’s catalogue, and to this day a surprising choice to adapt.
Stream Apt Pupil on Prime Video.
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