A Night at the Movies: The Horrors of Stephen King

In honor of Halloween, I hope to look back on some older horror movies in the next few days. But before I get to that, I checked out a TCM documentary last night all about Stephen King, and it was definitely worth my time. As a long-time aficianado of King's books (I've read every single one), I can say I enjoy his writing immensely and occasionally I enjoy the movies that are based on his writing. Overall King is an interesting guy with his own remarkable story of success, addiction and recovery, near-death experience, and long, happy marriage. One of my favorite books of his is "On Writing," which is a biography of his life and work, and though short, it's filled with fascinating insight into his process.

While much of this documentary is about non-King works, we do get a taste of his opinions of the adaptations of his books into film, which is what I wanted. The first half of the hour is about his feelings and memories about particular genres of horror, from vampires (he prefers Christopher Lee to Bela Lugosi) to werewolves ("I was a Teenage Werewolf" as old-school version of "Twilight") to slasher films to torture porn. I'm on the same page with King on that last genre--torture porn leaves us both queasy, especially when it asks us to root for the bad guy instead of everyone else. He also mentions "Dementia 13," a Francis Ford Coppola film about an ax murderer, from 1963. I've never heard of this movie, and from the scene we see in the doc, will likely never watch it. His thoughts on "Night of the Living Dead," "Psycho," "The Exorcist" and more classics are also explored in some depth. One tidbit for viewers who laugh today about "The Blair Witch Project," (this includes me): King had a screener when it first came out. He watched half of it, then turned it off and went to bed because he was too scared to see more. I have to agree with him there--the last scene of the film (which is shown in the doc) remains extremely creepy. Okay, it's terrifying, because of what you don't see, rather than what you do.

Onto King's own works: he notes no real favorite movies, but does mention Dee Wallace in "Cujo" as his favorite performance from any of his adaptations. He also notes "Carrie" as great, as well as Kathy Bates in "Misery," but my curiousity was most satisfied in his memories of Stanley Kubrick and "The Shining." Kubrick took King's book and made it into something entirely new, in which the "evil" transferred from ghosts trapped within the house (in the book) to the man (Jack, who in the book is human and flawed, but not inherently evil). Most notably he mentions that "The Shining" is a cold, cold film, which is very much the opposite of the novel. In the book, the house meets its end in fire, while in the movie, it freezes. I won't argue that "The Shining" is a terrific film, but for King, it is very much about the surface rather than the interiors of its characters' lives.

If you're a fan of horror or Stephen King or both, catch this doc on TCM in reruns for the next couple of weeks leading up to Halloween. And definitely sit through the credits, in which King tries to decide which horror films (his own and others) would be his "desert island" viewing. Assuming his desert island had a power source.