Dear Hollywood,

Stop making movies out of Stephen King’s work. Just stop. You are simply no good at it.
Carrie was 15 kinds of awesome. Creepshow was perfect. Cujo made me fear any dog bigger
than a Pomeranian (and Superman Returns cemented my complete distrust of Pomeranians).
Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining was brilliant. But that’s it. Four good movies. No,
I mean really good. The Stand. What can I say about The Stand. For a made-for-tv
miniseries, it was decent. But…it was made for tv.

So, why the sudden, out of the blue rant against Hollywood? I caught an episode of The
Twilight Zone (late 80’s early 90’s?). The episode was “Gramma”. Ahhhh. “Gramma” is one
of my favorite shorts from The Skeleton Crew anthology. I eagerly watched as the kid
who played Bastian from Neverending Story played the hapless George stuck at home with
his sick grandmother. I watched with increasing giddyness as the climax of the story
came….only to be let down. I screamed “Goddammit! That’s not how it ends!” BLARGH! I
find myself screaming that a lot when I watch adapted Stephen King works.

I dug around, after this incidient, to see what other little shorts got adapted and ran across a rumor of a J. J. Abrams Dark Tower series of movies. Why you gotta fuck with things I like? The track record for King->Hollywood creations is not good. Not good at all. It seems to all fall apart around 1984, with few bright spots since.

I know! Let’s make a list of how many adaptations I’ve seen and why they are so horrible/awesome:

Feature Films:

Apt Pupil: I really can’t comment. It’s a kinda freaky story. I don’t recall liking or disliking it. The movie was so-so. Grade: C-.

Carrie: “They’re all gunna laugh at you!” A must-see for prom season. Grade: A+

Cat’s Eye: I’m not sure if this qualifies. I read the two shorts Quitters, Inc. and The Ledge. Both were good. But the third (well, the whole thing tying it together) was The General. It’s a cat. A cat that looks like ny first cat. That cat and The General kick ass. I would watch this every chance I could when I was younger. Grade: B-. It only had 3 stories.

Children of the Corn (1984): I now fear the midwest. Thanks! Grade: B.

Creepshow: Not Applicable. He wrote it as a screenplay. But it was good, Hollywood
could have still fucked it up, so Grade: A. would have been an A+, but points got
deducted because I hate roaches. Fuck roaches.

Creepshow 2: Creepshow had 5 stories. C2 had 3. The Raft was sufficiently creepy. This
might be the reason why I do not like to swim in natural bodies of water. The
Hitchhiker was all about bad thing jumping out at you. Old Chief Wood’nhead…no idea.
I’m sure it’s about a wooden indian statue that comes to life and fucks up some punks.
That’s not that scary. Grade: C.

The Dark Half: At the time, I thought it was a pretty good adaptation. They mucked with
the ending a bit, but not horrible. Grade: C.

Dolores Claiborne: I dunno. I just didn’t get the same feeling of desperation from
watching it as I did reading it. I guess, as adaptations go, it was okay. Grade: B-.

Dreamcatcher: As my friends called it “Adventures of Superturd.” Grade: F. Even with
Morgan Freeman.

Graveyard Shift: ehhh. Slow moving. Kinda sucked. Book was way creepier. Grade: C.

Green Mile: Awww. There was no scary in this. None. but it was a nice Tom Hanks movie
with a little King weirdness thrown in. Grade: B.

Hearts In Atlantis: How…What..I…I felt so betrayed. Grade: Fuck you very much, F.

Lawnmower Man: There is no Lawnmower Man movie.

Maximum Overdrive: Great! Possessed trucks, Emilio Estevez, shit blew up? Sure! Grade: B.

Misery: I got the same “she’s one crazy bitch!” feeling from the movie as I did the
book. Grade: A.

Needful Things: OH. DEAR. GOD. 2 hours from 731 pages. So much plot was left out, I
don’t even klnow why they made it. “Hey, I got shit you need and it’ll make you go
crazy!” “Thanks, Max von Sydow. Sorry you had to be in this abomination!” I rented this
long ago and far away when video tapes were the norm. It was late, I wanted a good
horror movie. I almost cried it was so bad. Grade: F. Such an “F” you’ve never seen. No
amount of extra credit can bring this up to a D-.

Pet Sematary: Killer toddler was sufficiently creepy. Grade: B-.

‘Salem’s Lot 1979 and 2004: Hated it. But I was not terribly fond of the book either. I much preferred the short story as opposed to the novel. Maybe I’m just not afraid of vampires anymore. Don’t invite them in, don’t go out at night, wear/eat garlic. Like keeping a mogwai; don’t be stupid. Grade: “Stayed close to the book” C.

Shawshank Redemption: YAY! I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Over and over and over (USA and TNT might was well have been called The Shawshank Channel). I think my only  complaint was “Red was supposed to be white.” Big deal. Grade: A.

Kubrick’s The Shining: Beautiful. I was more afraid of this than of the book. I still have a slight distrust of Jack Nicholson and an urge to smack Shelley Duval in the mouth because of this movie. Grade: “We don’t need no stinkin’ topiaries coming to life” A+.

Thinner: I saw this in the theater. I remember thinking it stayed pretty true. The makeup and effects to make the guy look like he was wasting away was creppy in it’s own right. Grade: C.

Made For TV:

Okay, all of these movies suffer from the same problem. They look and feel stale. I don’t know what it is about these productions, but they just don’t feel right. And that is really distracting.

Desperation: No. Not horrible, but..it’s just so much more intense in my head. Grade: D.

IT: Okay. After finally reading it long after the movie came out, I can see why it’s so different. Much turtle and beam talk, and a very disturbing ending. Clowns get added to my fear/hate list. Grade: C+, because of a) Tim Curry and b) you just can’t film the book ending and not end up like Roman Polanski.

The Langoliers: Suffers from “made for tv” syndrome and “Look, we have a budget for CGI! In the 90’s!”. Grade: C-

The Shining: Ehhhh. Faithful to the book. Steven Weber does a good crazy. Just…nothing can compare to Kubrick. Sorry. Grade: “I tried for a happy ending again” B.

The Stand: Already covered. Grade: B-. The casting bumps up the grade “My life for yooooouuuuuu…”

The Tommyknockers: Night and fucking day. Again, Suffers from “made for tv” syndrome. Grade: D. And it gets as high as a D because I like Jimmy Smits.

Watched but didn’t read:

Silver Bullet (Werewolves: again, not scary)

Read but did not watch:

1408
Secret Window
The Body (Stand By Me)
The Night Flier
Riding The Bullet
Trucks
Sometimes They Come Back

Must watch/read again because I really don’t remember:

Christine
Firestarter