Stephen King movies have been a hit or miss, with mostly misses. While Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is a masterpiece for all time and David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone is the clear cut second best adaptation of a King novel, for every one of those there are three Needful Things. The most recent big screen King novel, The Mist, was fantastic right up to its incredibly awful and misguided and incoherent ending. What, exactly, was Frank Darabont mainlining when he came up with that crap? On the small screen Stephen King has not fared much better. While there has not yet been anything analogous to The Shining, especially not the interminable miniseries version of The Shining, there has been at least one bona fide Dead Zone-level masterpiece.
Storm of the Century: This fascinating original story from Stephen King is all about asking what price you would be willing to pay to save your children. Without giving too much away think of Storm of the Century in this way: if the choice was between the death of everyone in your town or giving your child away to a sexual offender, what would you do? What is worse? To submit everyone to death or to submit your child over to the hands of evil. Tim Daly turns in as fine a performance as you have ever seen in any movie based on a Stephen King novel.
IT: Nearly 20 year later and Tim Curry’s Pennywise the Clown still has the power to scare the crap out of me. I don’t know exactly what it is about Pennywise that is so terrifically frightening, but only Killer BOB from Twin Peaks has remained locked into my consciousness as a more frightening entity created for a TV show. The miniseries certainly has it problems, most of them stemming from the fact that it is pretty difficult to boil down 1,0000 pages into a four hour long (with commercials) miniseries. The first half of this miniseries is the best; oddly, it is only when the recognizable adult stars take over that it kind of deflates. Recently there was talk of a remake of IT for the Sci-Fi Channel, but I haven’t heard much about it recently and there’s nothing related to it on IMDB. Here’s my advice: cast it however you want, but you’d be fools not to bring back Tim Curry as Pennywise.
The Shining: You can overexplain horror. That is a gimme that too few understand. Horror is intended to be apprehended on a subconscious level that may take repeated viewings to understand and appreciate. If everything is laid out before you, the horror means nothing. Stanley Kubrick understood this; the guys who made this miniseries did not. That is why Kubrick’s version is leagues better than this miniseries which might as well be telegraphing This Movie Is A Big Symbol of Alcohol Addiction all over it.
Rose Red: Stephen King writes a haunted house movie. Sounds like something that could not miss, right? There are elements to Rose Red that are good. It’s got a nice creepy house and a nice creepy atmosphere. But I think this was the point at which King’s miniseries died because it was just one too many trips to the well about a group of diverse people forced together. It misses, unfortunately, but is still worth taking a look at the next time it pops up on the Sci-Fi channel.
Salem’s Lot (1979): The best of Stephen King miniseries after Storm of the Century and IT, although it has not aged well. Despite this failing, it retains the power to creep you the hell out, and it is leagues better than the TNT remake.
Salem’s Lot (2004): Too many changes and not enough chills and creeps. Should have been so much better and this is one of the more disappointing of King’s miniseries.
Desperation: Very stylish and for the first 90 minutes it gives the impression that it just may wind up being something really memorable. And then it falls completely apart in the last 90 minutes. Desperation was another big novel, only it did not even warrant four hours. Too bad, because in the right hands this could have been a genuine whopper.
The Langoliers: I loved the Langoliers in novella form, mostly because Stephen King is at the top of his game as far as holding back information and building up the tension. You just do not know what in the heck is doing on here for most of the story and the revelations comes deliberately and shockingly. The miniseries based on The Langoliers is a joke; clearly the worst Stephen King miniseries made to date.
