The best of Stephen King adaptations on film and television

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Stephen King has produced a killer body of work, all right. Novels, short stories, novellas, screenplays, audio books, special e-book editions, graphic novels…

The coming weeks bring the publication of “Sleeping Beauties,” a print collaboration with his son, Owen King. There’s also “Gerald’s Game” due Sept. 29 on Netflix, and other King works currently translated to screens large and small include “Mr. Mercedes” on AT&T Universe, and the feature film “The Dark Tower.”

Most anticipated has been Thursday’s feature film remake of “It,” the 1986 novel that brought back every childhood terror you’d thought was buried long ago.

A great Stephen King work doesn’t guarantee success at the theater or on television, however. Two of his greatest early epics — “The Shining” and “The Stand” — have defied satisfying translations (although fans of “Shining” director Stanley Kubrick might point with glee to moments in the 1980 Jack Nicholson version. Personally, we preferred “The Simpson’s” Treehouse of Horror episode called “The Shinning”).

Here are a fearsome five movies and three TV adaptations, that still have scareyoursocks- off staying power. They’re thrilling, yes, but the best manage to capture Mr. King’s mix of storytelling, pathos, hope and humor. In other words, amid the monsters, they celebrate the human condition.

Working up to the best, they are:

• “Salem’s Lot” (1979 miniseries). David Soul starred in this, the first of two TV adaptations. Tobe Hooper, who died Aug. 26, directed. Yes, it’s a bit dated, but if you’re going to have a great actor play the vampire’s human familiar, you could do worse than James Mason.

• “Misery” (1990 feature film). The always-excellent Kathy Bates is bulletproof (see: her crazy work on FX’s “American Horror Story”) but she really shines in a breakout role as Annie Wilkes. Annie, romance novelist James Caan’s “No. 1 fan,” decides to keep him as her own personal writer-inresidence.

“Misery” gets top marks on the strength of Ms. Bates’ performance, which earned her the 1990 best actress Academy Award.

• “It” (1990 miniseries). A group of childhood losers becomes friends to vanquish a child-killing terror. Years later, they must return to their New England hometown to fight “It” once more. Starring John Ritter, Annette O’Toole, Seth Green, Richard Thomas and, memorably, Tim Curry as Pennywise the Clown. This version has been airing on TNT recently, and it still scares.

• “Carrie” (1976 feature film). That now-cliched movie thing where hands shoot out from a grave and grab someone? Director Brian DePalma was an original when he had Sue Snell (Amy Irving) get the shock treatment.

With strong performances all around (and a young John Travolta playing a high school burnout), “Carrie” was a metaphor for everything that can go wrong when you’re in high school long before “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” made that a thing. Sissy Spacek is heartbreaking in the title role, with Piper Laurie as her fanatical mother. Both were nominated for Oscars.

• “Mr. Mercedes” (2017 AT&T series on Audience) This 10-episode series brings the thrills, and horror, of not just a madman out for revenge, but what happens to some people when they hit retirement. Brady Hartsfield (Harry Treadaway) and Bill Hodges (Brendan Gleeson) play a cat-and-mouse game that does the book proud.

• “Stand By Me” (1985 feature film). Based on “The Body,” one of four novellas in Mr. King’s “Different Seasons” collection, “Stand By Me” is a touchstone experience. Directed by Rob Reiner and starring River Phoenix and Wil Wheaton as childhood friends in the late 1950s, it’s an adventure story that perfectly captures the pleasures and pitfalls of being kids in a world run by adults.

There’s friendship and humor, to be sure (as well as the most hilariously gross depiction of a county fair pieeating contest gone wrong), but there is pain and frustration as well. It’s not a simple tale, but one done simply well.

• “The Green Mile” (1999 feature film). Despite being nominated for a best picture Oscar, “The Green Mile” has become a polarizing bit of pop culture over the years. It’s three hours long, because director/screenplay writer Frank Darabont lovingly included so many of the six-part serialized novel’s charming touches (Mr. Jingles the mouse!).

He also took his leisurely time getting to the supernatural part of the story, where an African-American giant (Michael Clarke Duncan) is brought to the death row ward of a prison in Maine during the 1930s.

The prisoner, John Coffey, will remind viewers a lot of another JC who had healing powers and wound up being unjustly put to death. If Mr. King and Mr. Darabont are a bit too on the nose with this, so be it. It’s still a great film.

Tom Hanks is an uberEveryman as the prison guard who runs the ward, with excellent backup from David Morse and Mr. Duncan. The devil’s in the details here, or maybe there’s just a higher power at work.

• “The Shawshank Redemption” (1994 feature film). “Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” We’re misting up already. Andy ( Tim Robbins) and Red (Morgan Freeman) are prisoners and friends in Mr. Darabont’s best picture nominee. Andy, a banker, doesn’t belong in Shawshank; someone else killed his wife and her lover in 1947. Red is a lifer who fears the outside world. They dream of finding a better life someday.

Thanks to repeated showings on TNT, “The Shawshank Redemption” gained a second, more vibrant life after fizzling at the box office. Fans from all over the world still visit the filming site in Mason, Ohio, where the abandoned Ohio State Reformatory is a huge tourist draw.

The film itself was critically acclaimed. “The horror here is not of the supernatural kind, but of the sort that flows from the realization that 10, 20, 30 years of a man’s life have unreeled in the same unchanging daily prison routine,” wrote Roger Ebert in his review.

“Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” like “The Body,” was one of the “Different Seasons” novellas. It’s worth noting that the film definitively shows what happens to Andy and Red at the end, the novella does not. With an Oscarnominated score by Thomas Newman, the movie is incredibly re-watchable.

Mr. Freeman is top-notch (he was nominated for an Academy Award), and his folksy narration carries us through the story:

“I could see why some of the boys took him for snobby,” he says of Andy. “He had a quiet way about him, a walk and a talk that just wasn’t normal around here. He strolled, like a man in a park without a care or a worry in the world, like he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place.

“Yeah, I think it would be fair to say … I liked Andy from the start.”

So did we.