Vote for worst Stephen King movie or tv adaptation!

Allow me to cast the first vote…

The Night Flier
I have never laughed as hard as when I understood the premise of this movie when I was watching it. A traveling vampire that flies around US at night, bringing terror to each airport he visits. Hot on his trail is a journalist piecing together the clues dear vampire leaves behind.

I have never understood the popularity of this hack. you would think one would have something interesting to say simply by typing enough words eventually.

mind you, he wasn't all that bad before he did Carrie. I have seen some adaptations of a few of his stories when he was still trying to write the great American novel. He wasn't doing horror yet (no idea if those were the stories he published in the men's magazines).

Why am I the only one I know that didn't understand The Shining? Shawshank Redemption is the most retold, generic prison story I have ever seen. I think this, more than anything, shows what great talents Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins are (incidentally - found out recently they feuded during the film).

Christine? I swear I saw movie like it from before called "Devil's Car". Pet Cemetary? C'mon - an Ancient Indian Burial Ground that raises the dead? I could run a computer to generate that story.

And to answer your question - I think Maximum Overdrive is supposed to be the official worst. Tried to watch all of it twice - still can't.

While I do agree he's a bit overrated, I wouldn't call him a hack. Some of his stuff is really good imo (ever read The Stand?), and the film/tv adaptions obviously don't do him justice. I do think The Shining was great for it's time, although I admit Jack Nicholson had a lot to do with that.

Also, call me crazy, but I didn't think Maximum Overdrive was that bad.

JDR13 said:

Also, call me crazy, but I didn't think Maximum Overdrive was that bad.

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All I can picture is that ridiculous scene where the waitress stands there as the electric knife goes at her arm. Really, its a dumb ass film LOL

Maximum Overdrive is at once the worst and most enjoyable films ive ever watched. Shining rules, Pet Semetary is cool, Carrie is a great movie. Salem's Lot is legend in both book and film, and has the ability to still scare me to this day. Silver Bullet is one of my all time favorite werewolf films.

Why do you have to diss the King? They cant all be winners, but he has a lot of enjoyable stuff.

Nostalgia plays a huge role with Maximum Overdrive because I saw that when I was a kid and scared the hell out of me, but also loved it. It's up there with HOUSE. It's a little silly now, but I can't hold anything against either of those two movies.

I really can't recall any Stephen King movie or tv show that I didn't like. Sure some are not as good as others, but I enjoyed them. I loved The Stand TV adaptation.

I even liked his Eyes of the Dragon novel when I was a kid. It was full on fantasy and wasn't what I expected at all. I got to get around to reading The Dark Tower series one of these days.

I think King is a good storyteller, but not that scary. I really enjoyed the first 4 Dark Tower books, and the 2 novels he did with Peter Straub (Talisman, Black House). I've also read a couple of his other books to get all those cross-novel references.

So far I have yet to see a King movie I really liked. Most of them are teen age horror light in my eyes.

Least favourite: Golden years.

EDIT: I didn't know King was behind 1408. I like that one.

I'm not sure which Stephen King was the worst (probably Maximum Overdrive) but my most favorite on is The Langoliers. It has a much more interesting story then other Stephen King movies/TV series.

PS. I guess there is going to be a series of movies based on "The Dark Tower" series so what is my most favorite will probably change.

Judging from what I see in this thread it seems I have not watched the worst of those films… (Which I am glad about )

The worst I can think of of the ones I did watch is 'It' which was also the first of his books I read. I actually think the film makes enough justice to the book and it shows everything that is wrong with King: he comes up with the most brilliant ideas, often disarmingly ingenious, and buries them under mountains of words, distracting subplots, irrelevant narrations, the same characters in every story in the same places doing the same things over and over and over. And to top it all up, just to make certain that nobody would do the mistake of blaming him that his stories have depth, he makes absolutely certain that there will be no doubt that there was an evil monster or ghost that did it all.

Christine (the book not the film) is my favorite example of that: the idea of an extremely repressed teenager growing into a messed up malevolent adult is as scary and dramatic as it is real. Adding the broken evil car that repairs itself as its owner changes is a brilliant way to illustrate that transition. Yet he allows himself to be so lured by the idea that the car has a ghost who acts completely independently that he reduces a potential masterpiece into an entertaining but ultimately insignificant ghost story.

Maximum Overdrive… I vaguely remember watching that movie (thought it was cool at the time). In that trailer Stephen King says: "If you want something done right, you want to do it yourself… It was my first picture as a director…". It was also the last one. Haha.

skavenhorde said:

I loved The Stand TV adaptation.

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Part 1/4 I really liked. After that it turns a bit into Northern Exposure character-wize.

Favorites: The Shining, Misery, Carrie, Stand By Me.

I have mixed feelings about The Stand television mini-series. There were some excellent performances (particularly Gary Sinise, Rob Lowe) and King's narrative is compelling enough to generate a high level of interest in the characters. However, the production design failed to evoke any sort of post-apocalyptic atmosphere. There was no sense of the passage of time following the death of most of the Earth's population. Everyone was dressed like they just went shopping at Macy's, in contrast to some of the novel's horrifying depictions of New York, for example. Some of the casting choices were not the greatest IMO, particularly Harold Lauder.

If you have not seen it, however, I would still recommend checking this out on Netflix Streaming.

A far better PA mini-series I recently discovered on Netflix is the British program, Survivors. After the first episode, I was completely hooked!

It was truly the worse, and this is why: The book was awesome!! He took a great book, and totally trashed it on the screen, which happens often but for King, unforgivable. It went from being a scary book to a campy, crappy movie.



-Carn

Some of his book are very good, but the movies just come out plain awful. The Dark Tower Series, IT, The Green Mile, Insomnia, just to name a few, were great books. The Green Mile was probably the best movie out of the bunch in my mind. Actually I think Stand By Me was the best movie. Great story. Oh, and I really enjoyed Creepshow as a kid.

While King's horror has a bit more "fantasy" in it, for horror/thriller I prefer the older Dean Koontz books. Intensity was probably the best horror/thriller type book Ive read

I forgot all about Misery, great book/movie! I thought the Langoliers was pretty weak sauce tho

Stephen King is hardly a hack. Some is good, some is bad. I have on occasion tried to branch out to other horror writers and honestly, of the modern ones (e.g Peter Straub, Dean Koontz), he is the better. I'm not a complete fanboi, but he gets a lot of undeserved crap despite his success. It's not as though he's trying to write the great American novel. For what it is, it's great imo. I wonder many years after he is dead and gone, will he be mentioned among the great horror writers like Poe when studying this genre in school?

As far as favorite King movies:

By far, the original 'Salems Lot. The sequences with Danny Glick scared the shit out of me when I was younger. I think I was around 10 when it came out.

Dead Zone holds a special place in my heart though I did not care for the book.

I think The Shining, It and The Stand aren't as bad as all that. They were good in that they stuck close to the books, or closer than they would were they limited to a 90 minute movie. But with the Shinig ABC version I could not get over Danny and his adenoid problem. It really wrecked it. Plus the guy who played Jack Torrence just didn't do it for me. But then again I think anyone in that role will be overshadowed by Jack Nicholson's portrayal.

Silver Bullet: This one was fun and I liked it. Corey Haim in the wheelchair was unbelievable, but still fun.

Worst King movies:

Pet Sematary: This is probably the one book of his that scared me the most. Now that I have a son, it would probably be even moreso given the subject matter of losing one's child.

Fleshwalkers: The best thing about this one was the reuniting of Mr. and Mrs. Bueller. Though death by corncob seems unbelievable. This one was a stinker and I'm not even sure it was based on a story of his.

CountChocula said:

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A far better PA mini-series I recently discovered on Netflix is the British program, Survivors. After the first episode, I was completely hooked!

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I couldn't get into this one after the first couple of episodes unfortunately.

He's not my cup of tea, but I think he's got a great talent for writing people. I'm not exactly much of a reader anymore, so I can't speak about his modern stuff. I remember liking The Shining, and as a kid I liked that werewolf book. Silver Bullet?

As for worst adaption, there are so many to choose from.

I remember hating IT quite a lot, but I haven't read the book

DArtagnan said:

I remember hating IT quite a lot, but I haven't read the book

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I read IT when I was younger and thought it was good. The film version was one of those "made for TV" movies though, and was mediocre to say the least.

Oddly enough, Stand By Me is probably my favorite King-based film.

Shawshank Redemption and The Mist are my favorite King-based movies, and among my favorite movies of all time

Totally forgot about The Mist. Another very good movie, and the ending had me thinking about it for a long time.