Because You’ve Seen All the Stephen King Movies So Many Times

Kim’s latest movie recommendation is a fortuitous discovery that just happens to check off a dozen ‘I love Stephen King’ boxes.

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The first Stephen King movie to surprise the mainstream. “Who wrote Stand By Me? Really? That horror guy?”

Most Stephen King stories are set in rural areas and small American towns. From Main to the Midwest, they are near corn fields and factories, quiet roads and general stores. Folks there work in diners and garages. They toil and chore, and live content but uneasy lives. It is here that King built most of his universe and filled it with preachers and predators; gifted children, killers and monsters; things that growl in the dark, alcoholic sheriffs and their nervous deputies.

King has a method of introducing a character and following them through their life until you become accustomed to them, interested in them, and compelled by their story. Suddenly he stops and begins a new chapter, only to repeat the process. You become expectant that these characters will eventually meet up, but getting there is often a very slow grind. It’s his way, this master of macabre, to explain a pencil someone is holding for a page and a half. But, it creates a mood – a particular, specific type of blanket his fans want to wrap themselves in. We sip our tea or coffee and read on, carefully monitoring the children in the book. The children. They often grow to become something else. Fates intertwine, simple folk make hard decisions and Hand-of-God justice is performed as ablutions of personal or inherited trauma. Yeah, I’m looking right at you, Danny Torrance.

The 1980 World’s Creepiest Kid Champion, Danny Torrance.

Whether you prefer to read the books or watch the movies, it’s interesting to look at which translations work, and which ones fail. After all, with nearly ninety books and almost the same amount of movies, there’s just too much to all be good. So, I started to marinate on a theory that the shorter the original book, or, the better the book with the most amount of material that can be cut while maintaining the key details, the better the movie. I then took twenty King movies with familiar titles and charted out some information to have a better look: [*scroll to bottom of post*]

A rare photo of Stephen King getting paid by being pelted with millions of diamonds that filled his garage.

Does my theory hold? Sort of. The average book length of King’s top five rated movies is 254 pages, whereas the bottom five are derived from 420 pages. Needful Things was a disaster both critically and financially, and at 690 pages boiled down to a two hour movie, it makes my point most clear. On the other hand, in 2017 the 1,138 page It was reimagined for theatrical release, absolutely crushing the box-office ($35M/$702M) and in 1994, a six hour tv series of The Stand (ABC) was crafted from 823 pages of text. 90s tv is laughable compared to today’s standards, but it was received well, did well, and had some of the most accurate and inspired casting I’ve ever seen. On December 17th, CBS will begin airing a new 9 episode series of The Stand and it should run about 50% longer than the 1994 version. Waiting for that to arrive next month is what got me back on this Stephen King hell-train.

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Not to be outdone by his little brother Pennywise, Alexander Skarsgård stars in the upcoming CBS series The Stand. (Dec. 17th)

So what makes a Stephen King movie really work? The Shining has a crucial Kubrick/Nicholson advantage, with unmatched style and intensity. The Green Mile got a serious haircut to chop 400 pages of text down to 3.5 hours of movie, considering The Shawshank Redemption used nearly 2.5 hours for a mere 120 pages. Then again, there’s a lot of narration in Shawshank and Morgan Freeman is in no particular hurry…when…he…talks. The script for Stand By Me at 90 minutes is tighter than David Lee Roth’s pants, and shows absolutely everything, just like David Lee Roth’s pants. The movies work when there is solid production value and exceptional casting of characters. Cheap, hurried versions fail.

I’ve seen every movie on the chart, and all the good ones more than once. Out of options, last week I turned to streaming services and tried Graveyard Shift (1990). I shut it in off twenty minutes. Scrapping the whole theme altogether, I returned to Netflix and chose The Devil All the Time (2020). Staring Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgård, Jason Clark, Riley Keough (Elvis Presley’s eldest grand-daughter), Mia Wasikowska, and two of my current favourites – Harry Melling and Robert Pattinson – the cast alone was worth checking out. It took but five minutes for me to feel significant Stephen King vibes. Serendipity!

Donald Ray Pollock having a dart on his porch like a good ol’ boy.

Set in the Midwest between southern Ohio and West Virginia, the movie is a gothic tale of crime and violence narrated by Donald Ray Pollock, the very author who penned the novel in 2011. His narration is reminiscent of The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me. Pollock, just 10 year younger than King, worked in a pulp mill as a driver and labourer in Mead (Ohio) until he was fifty, which makes him sound like a character in Castle Rock. The Devil All the Time is his first novel.

Although Netflix rarely releases budget or profit statements, it’s obvious that they spared no expense. We get effectively transported back in time and follow the lovers and killers, the corrupt sheriff and children of inherited trauma, the preachers and townsfolk as they do what they gots to do to make things right. God fearing people will perform all manner of fucked up, horrific acts in their insane, righteous, misguided hallucinations of pleasing the lord. It’s grim, violent, relentlessly dark and still manages to present moments that make you think, Good! I’m glad he’s dead! This is very much a Stephen King trait, even if there’s nothing supernatural in the story.

The Devil All the Time is going to put you through the ringer. It’s a tough watch, but a rewarding departure from all the gutless wonders out there. Plus, free of charge, you get a master clinic in chekhov’s gun. If you have the nerve to press play, in order to get your reward, know this: Yer gone pray, an not goddamn cry ‘bout it, neither. There’s a lot of no-good sons of bitches out there.

Title	Year of Publication	In Theatres	Page Count	Audiobook (hrs)	Movie Length (hrs)	Movie Budget	Gross Profit	IMDB Rating	Tomatometer	Metacritic	Average
Shawshank Redemption	1982	1994	120	4.5	2.4	$25.0M	$28.1M	93	91	80	88
Carrie	1974	1976	199	7.5	1.6	$1.8M	$33.8M	74	93	83	83.3
Stand By Me	1982	1986	192	5.9	1.5	$8.0M	$52.3M	81	91	75	82.3
Misery	1987	1990	310	12.3	1.7	$20.0M	$61.3M	78	90	75	81
The Shining	1977	1980	447	15.8	2.5	$19.0M	$46.9M	84	84	66	78
Salem’s Lot	1975	1979 (TV)	439	17.51	3.0	$4.0M	?	68	88	?	78
The Dead Zone	1979	1983	428	16.2	1.7	$10.0M	$20.8M	72	89	69	76.7
The Stand	1978	1994 (TV)	823	47.8	6.0 (TV))	$28.0M	?	72	71	83	75.3
The Green Mile	1996	1999	400	14.0	3.2	$60.0M	$286.1M	86	78	61	75
1922	2010	2017	144	5.5	1.7	?	?	63	91	70	74.7
Dolores Claiborne	1992	1995	305	9.25	2.2	$13.0M	$24.4M	74	84	62	73.3
Doctor Sleep	2013	2019	531	18.5	2.5	$45.0M	$72.4M	73	77	59	69.7
Christine	1983	1983	526	19.51	1.8	$9.7M	$21.0M	67	69	57	64.3
The Devil All the Time	2011	2020 (Netflix)	272	9.2	2.3	?	?	71	64	55	63.3
Cujo	1981	1983	319	14.1	1.5	$5.0M	$21.1M	61	63	57	60.3
The Running Man	1982	1987	219	7.75	1.7	$27.0M	$38.1M	67	64	45	58.7
Apt Pupil	1982	1998	179	7.25	1.8	$14.0M	$8.8M	67	53	51	57
Pet Sematary	1983	1989	374	15.7	1.7	$11.5M	$57.5M	66	51	38	51.6
The Dark Half	1989	1993	431	15.25	2.0	$15.0M	$10.6M	60	37	53	50
Firestarter	1980	1984	426	15.0	2.0	$15.0M	$17.0M	61	37	50	49.3
Needful Things	1991	1993	690	25.2	2.0	$20.0M	$15.2M	61	31	43	45

About the Author

Kim Kurtenbach is a Beatlemaniac who is constantly bemoaning the state of rock music. He is rueful of low ceilings, and helpful to strangers in supermarkets where the shelves are too high.