20. “Pet Sematary” (1989)
With a title like this, it’s unlikely that “Pet Sematary” would have ever attracted the attention of a Stanley Kubrick, or even a Brian De Palma — it’s pretty unashamed horror schlock. But fortunately, it attracted Mary Lambert, who made a film that, if it’s not anywhere near what you’d call ‘good,’ is fully aware of what it is, and works pretty well on those terms. Following a family who move to rural Maine and discover an animal burial ground capable of reviving the deceased, which proves tempting when their infant child is killed, it’s nasty and often kind of stupid, but is so unapologetic in revelling in that, that it’s hard to begrudge it its instincts.
19. “Dreamcatcher” (2003)
Such an clusterfuck of terribleness that it’s actually completely amazing, the usually reliable Lawrence Kasdan‘s “Dreamcatcher,” from a screenplay by William Goldman (ffs!), is exactly the sort of film that a ranked list fails. In terms of quality this incomprehensibly overstuffed story of aliens, shit weasels, psychically linked friends, Tom Sizemore, missing children, Blue Bayou, leukemia, Jason Lee, shady military intervention, Tom Jane, prophecy, memory warehouses, Damian Lewis, Damian Lewis possessed by an extra-terrestrial with a dodgy British accent (doubly impressive because Damian Lewis is actually British), Timothy Olyphant and let’s say it again because why not — shit weasels — should languish at the very bottom. But in terms of careening WTF-ness, like a multi-car pileup that is also a trainwreck and a garbage fire, it’s among the greatest films ever made. Hence a mid-table position that does its insanity scant justice, to be honest.
18. “Cat’s Eye” (1985)
Two of the three stories in Lewis Teague‘s portmanteau “Cat’s Eye” pre-existed as Stephen King short stories: “Quitters Inc” (on which “No Smoking” is also based– see above) and “The Ledge.” And they’re better than the third segment, a silly trifle about a troll menacing little Drew Barrymore and the titular cat coming to her rescue, and the nods to other King works (“Christine” and “Cujo” especially) are fun, so it counts as a win overall. James Woods is on standard paranoiac form in part one, as the smoker signing up to a sadistic quitting program, but “The Ledge,” starring “Airplane“‘s Robert Hayes and “Dune“‘s Kenneth McMillan as a tennis pro and the magnate he has cuckolded, respectively, is a neat little thriller too. As Meatloaf tells us, two out of three ain’t bad.
17. “The Running Man” (1987)
Something of a change of pace in terms of King adaptations in the 1980s, in that it abandons horror for sci-fi action, “The Running Man” is, objectively, not very good, but it’s also kind of a blast, arguably more so now that it’s got some retro-futuristic charm to it. Set in a hellish dystopian version of 2017 that’s’s somehow more appealing than our current actual 2017, it stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a framed-up ex-helicopter pilot who is forced into competing in a hugely popular live-TV future sport. It’s evidently done on the cheap, and director Paul Michael Glaser (yes, Starsky — he was brought on after Andrew Davis was fired a week into production) is no great shakes as a helmer, but Arnie’s at his one-liner dropping best, and there’s some fun sociopolitical satire going on that makes it a little more than a dumb actioner, even if it doesn’t compare that well to, say, the original “Rollerball.”
16. “The Dark Half” (1993)
One of King’s most intriguingly revealing works doesn’t quite get the adaptation it deserves, even in the hands of the late, great George A. Romero, but “The Dark Half” is still rather better than the underwhelming reception it received on its (long-delayed — the film got caught in legal limbo when Orion Pictures collapsed) opening. A slightly miscast Timothy Hutton plays novelist Thad Beaumont, who kills off his Bachman-esque thriller-writer pseudonym George Stark, only to find Stark becoming real and dropping corpses left and right. The script doesn’t quite pull off the stranger turns of King’s novel, but Romero’s strong handle on the tonal shifts, and some good supporting work by Michael Rooker and Amy Madigan, makes this more engaging than some of the other early 90s King adaptations.
15. “The Green Mile” (1999)
Five years after his directorial debut with “The Shawshank Redemption,” Frank Darabont decided not to fix what wasn’t broke for his follow-up, adapting another tearjerking Stephen King-penned period prison tale, in this case the serialized novel “The Green Mile.” Weighing in at over three hours, it stars Tom Hanks as a prison guard who recalls his friendship with an enormous, mentally disabled African-American man who was convicted of killing two little girls, and who may have magical powers. It’s handsome, and very well acted by everyone, not least the Oscar nominated Michael Clarke Duncan, and rarely less than engaging, but it’s also pretty hokey, old-fashioned, sentimental and often troubling in its deployment of Magical Negro tropes. So no “Shawshank,” then.
14. “Christine” (1983)
A journey through King films catalogue can be an arduous one, trust us, so coming across John Carpenter‘s “Christine” is a bit of a relief. While the story, of a malevolent Plymouth Fury is a little light on actual scares, the filmmaking is as smooth and polished as a chrome fender. And the performances, particularly from Keith Gordon as the nebbish dweeb-turned-ladykiller high-school student whose love affair with the psychotic sedan turns violently possessive, are above par. Best of all, though, is that Carpenter’s skill as an allegorist comes through, giving “Christine” added texture as a gentle critique of consumerism, the profoundly American obsession with cars, and the kind of 1950s nostalgia that was having a zeitgeist moment at the time.
13. “Cujo” (1983)
Journeyman and two-time King adaptor Lewis Teague (see also: “Cat’s Eye“) made the stronger of entries into the canon with “Cujo,” which, despite lackluster reviews at the time, has aged surprisingly well. Tense and claustrophobic, this tale of a rabid St Bernard menacing a mother and son in their stalled, baking car boasts two of the best performances in the repertoire of 80s King movies, from Dee Wallace and Danny Pintauro, who invest us in the human stakes inside the car (including a lightly feminist message as the husband/father is all but out of the picture). Which is kind of needed because no matter how much gore and slobber you slather on Beethoven, he is never wholly terrifying by himself
12. “A Good Marriage” (2014)
It’s surprising how many of the better King adaptations have no supernatural bells and whistles at all, and this little-seen movie from director Peter Askin, starring Anthony LaPaglia and a terrifically steely-yet-brittle Joan Allen, is a case in point. Loosely inspired by the real-life serial killer known as BTK (for bind-torture-kill, which was his gruesome modus operandi), its real strength is in its off-center perspective. Instead of reconstructing the killings, or even attempting a “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer“-style psychological profile of the murderer, it is told from the point of view of his wife, whose idyllic family and ‘good marriage’ is shattered by her discovery of incontrovertible evidence of her husband’s true nature.
11. “Creepshow” (1982)
Any pairing of one of the great horror writers with one of the genre’s very finest directors, in George A. Romero, was bound to come with high expectations, and while “Creepshow” is as uneven as most anthologies, it mostly lives up to them. Spanning five stories (two based on existing King stories, three originals), plus a framing device, some of the threads are better than others (casting King himself as the lead in plant-horror “The Lonesome Death Of Jordy Verrill” was an error, but the gory “Father’s Day” and the Leslie Nielsen-starring “Something To Tide You Over” are brill), but the verve and EC Comics-come-to-life style with which Romero executes everything makes it consistently entertaining throughout, and its cult-classic status is well deserved.
