20. Graveyard Shift (1990)
Some films don’t receive the critical praise they deserve. But few have been done dirtier than 1990’s Graveyard Shift, an absolute banger midnight movie that boasts an abysmal and undeserved 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. Expanding on Stephen King’s (very) short story of the same name, Graveyard Shift is the only feature film from director Ralph S. Singleton and is, to coin a phrase, a good goopy time. Graveyard Shift tells of John Hall (David Andrews), a drifter who arrives in small town Maine looking for a job. He soon finds himself working the graveyard shift at the local textile mill, a decrepit, vermin-invested hellhole presided over by the square-jawed, hot-tempered Warwick (Stephen Macht).
Assigned to clean out the rat-infested basement, John and his coworkers soon find that the rot of the mill has a fetid and thoroughly horrifying source. Punching above its weight class in both production design and creature effects, Graveyard Shift also features the fantastic as ever Brad Dourif in a walk-on performance as a weepy-eyed exterminator. Also, and I cannot stress this enough: there is an end credits song that must be heard to be believed. What are you waiting for? Seek out this under-praised gem! (Meg Shields)
19. The Dark Half (1993)
Oh so you liked Malignant huh? James Wan’s wackadoodle blockbuster-meets-B-movie? If that third act reveal was right up your alley, then you’ll love the opening moments of The Dark Half. As they probe a little boy’s brain to find the cause for a rash of seizures, an eyeball opens on his frontal cortex. As a surgeon flees the room, the rest coldly muse over what it is: a twin that was absorbed by the other in the womb, and has been lying dormant in the brain. Take a wild guess what happens next. After all those years, the twin is tired of being stuck underneath hats and hair cream.
The story, about an author whose pen name comes to life, was King’s way of processing his outing as Richard Bachman, his pseudonym responsible for books like The Long Walk and The Running Man. But it also is a lens to view two sides of King’s personality that he struggled with throughout his career: the family man, and the madman consumed by drugs and alcohol. Cocksure and crazy, the swan song collaboration between George Romero and King is far more extreme than it’s plot summary alludes to though. Carried by a manic Timothy Hutton and a cast of great actors, like Michael Rooker, The Dark Half puts its foot on the gas, and never takes it off as it hurtles towards a gruesome finale of avian horror. (Jacob Trussell)
18. It (2017)
King’s “magnum opus” will always be the unexpurgated release of The Stand, but for many people the term applies instead to his mid 80s horror epic, It. At over eleven-hundred pages, the novel absolutely earns the billing, and any adaptation was always going to need an equally impressive running time. The 1990 miniseries has its moments, but fo my money the best version — and one of the absolute best adaptations of King’s work, period — is Andy Muschetti’s 2017 feature. It leaves half the novel on the table, but one of the book’s strengths was its existence as two “complete” halves. (The novel intertwines them, the film’s split them almost evenly.) This film tackles the child half, and it is a massive success.
We completely buy into these kids, their lives, and the troubles that plague them, from bullying to family to the kinds of fears that all children face. That grounded basis means that when the real horror arrives — courtesy of the legitimately terrifying Pennywise — we’re that much more frightened and worried for the kids. Terrific visual effects, a sharp script, strong performances, and a production design that creates a world right out of our memories of the 80s combine to create an epic horror film the likes of which we rarely see. Chapter Two drops the ball in numerous ways, but happily It works beautifully as a standalone horror film about the terrors we face and the realization that someday they just might return. (Rob Hunter)
17. Needful Things (1993)
The films on this list fall into three categories — movies that people generally love, movies that people generally see as bad, and movies that not nearly enough people have seen at all. Needful Things falls into that last category, and it’s a damn shame as King’s much-trumpeted “final Castle Rock story” gets a wickedly fun adaptation from director Fraser C. Heston, writer W.D. Richter, and a cast that includes Max von Sydow, Ed Harris, Bonnie Bedelia, J.T. Walsh, Amanda Plummer, and more eternally welcome faces.
The story sees a new shop open in downtown Castle Rock selling items that promise to be exactly what a shopper needs. This being a King tale, you just know there’s a catch, and happily it’s a real beaut as the store’s proprietor — a devilish Von Sydow — soon has the townspeople working against each other for his merriment. Harris plays one of the town’s last rational citizens, and his efforts to stop the chaos makes him a compelling protagonist. Violence and chaos follow, but as dark and twisted as the film gets it remains a blackly comic journey delivering hefty entertainment value along the way. It’s a delightful romp! (Rob Hunter)
16. Silver Bullet (1985)
The best part about Silver Bullet is that it immediately jumps into action. In the opening moments, a werewolf decapitates a railroad worker, and by the thirty-minute mark we’ve already experienced four brutal killings sending an angry mob on the loose looking for justice. Adapted by King from his novella “Cycle of the Werewolf” and directed by TV super director Dan Attias, Silver Bullet is an expertly paced film that gives the audience exactly what we want — bloody werewolf carnage that never lets up.
Highlights include a werewolf angrily playing a church organ and Lawrence Tierney wielding a bat dubbed “the peacemaker.” Gary Busey stars as a cool drunk uncle that builds his nephew Marty (Corey Haim) an ass-kicking gas-powered wheelchair named Silver Bullet — that’s the name of the movie! Despite the werewolf ripping his best friend to shreds and killing the father of the girl he likes, Marty is most upset that the werewolf has caused the big fireworks show to be canceled. Which is understandable. Silver Bullet is a howling good time, sure to scratch that werewolf itch. (Chris Coffel)
15. Dolores Claiborne (1995)
Leaning more into psychological thriller territory than straight up horror, Dolores Claiborne is still a thoroughly horrifying film. The film chronicles the fraught relationship of the eponymous Dolores (Kathy Bates) and her daughter Selena (Jennifer Jason Leigh). When the elderly woman Dolores was caring for dies under suspicious circumstances, Selena is lured back to her hometown in Maine. Once there, old secrets from the past rise to the surface as the town’s long-held belief that Dolores also killed her own husband returns in full force. With a keen focus on trauma, repression, and a distinctly King-esque level of intrigue, Dolores Claiborne is guaranteed to be the scariest melodrama you’re likely to find. (Anna Swanson)
14. Maximum Overdrive (1986)
If you want a Stephen King movie done right, you need Stephen King to direct it. Preferably while he’s coked up and has no idea what he’s doing. Based on his short story “Trucks,” Maximum Overdrive follows a group of people holed up in the Dixie Boy Truck Stop attempting to work together to survive after machines come alive and develop a thirst for human blood. I get that people don’t like Maximum Overdrive. King himself called it a “moron movie” and vowed to never direct again. And I’ll be the first to admit it’s a very silly, campy movie. With that being said, I cannot stress how much this movie rules.
It has a young strapping Emilio Estevez, the voice of Lisa Simpson running around and yelling nonstop, and the main villain is a semi-truck wearing a Green Goblin mask. It also features scenes in which an ATM calls King an asshole and a vending machine kills a Little League coach by firing cans of soda at him. As for the Little Leaguers themselves, they’re flattened by a road roller, much to the delight of our own Rob Hunter. Maximum Overdrive? More like Maximum Awesome! (Chris Coffel)
13. Storm of the Century (1999)
Like Rose Red, Storm of the Century is a miniseries written directly for the screen by King and not based on an existing work. Unlike Rose Red, though, Storm of the Century is fucking fantastic. A small island community — the same one from King’s Dolores Claiborne — is visited by twin threats. One is a fierce winter storm that prevents the residents from reaching the mainland, and the other is a mean piece of work named Andre Linoge (Colm Feore). He kills an old woman simply to get the town’s attention and tells them only that if they give him what he wants, he’ll go away. The town’s nightmare has begun.
Blending elements and themes from Needful Things to The Mist, Storm of the Century sets up a wonderfully dark face-off between morality and the selfish needs of mob mentality. Tim Daly plays the small town’s sheriff who finds himself the voice of reason against a growing fear and panic. The town’s children are under threat, and the dynamic between the people — and between them and Linoge — leads to a devastating choice. It lands beautifully, and King allows the pain to keep digging in even as the end credits roll. (Rob Hunter)
12. Doctor Sleep (2019)
Some books lend themselves to easy adaptation, but others present a challenge in the shift to the screen. King’s novel Gerald’s Game is an example of the latter, but Mike Flanagan proved himself more than merely adept with his fascinating feature film. Doctor Sleep is another one of those novels, and perhaps not coincidentally, Flanagan also tackled the adaptation resulting in an absolute banger of a movie. Rather than be an issue of a constrained locale, though, the difficult aspect of Doctor Sleep is the fine line it walks in being a sequel to both King’s novel The Shining *and* Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining. King is famously no fan of Kubrick’s film for some legitimate reasons — the 1997 miniseries was an attempt to rectify that — and his own sequel novel chooses mostly to ignore the film.
An adaptation of Doctor Sleep needs to acknowledge both, though, and Flanagan does so beautifully with the story of a grown-up Danny Torrence (Ewan McGregor) still feeling the effects of his fucked up childhood and now living as an alcoholic like his father. A young girl with “the shine” makes her presence known, but Danny isn’t the only one who senses her as a group of psychic vampires is hot on her trail. It’s a thrilling, exciting, and affecting film that successfully ties in elements of The Shining to great effect. The film’s third-act succeeds at returning viewers to the original’s iconic setting — the Overlook Hotel — to offer more thrills and some well-crafted closure. McGregor is fantastic, Rebecca Ferguson is evil at its most enticing, and the film excavates all of the emotion that Kubrick left out of Danny’s childhood adventure with the undead. (Rob Hunter)
11. Pet Sematary (1989)
The Creed family moves from Chicago to rural Maine. Shortly after the move, the family’s beloved cat, Church, is tragically killed on the highway. The family’s new neighbor Jud (Fred Gwynne) suggests burying the cat in the nearby pet cemetery to reanimate the cat and save the family’s young children the grief of losing a pet. It works and the next day Church comes back, but he’s not the same cat. Tragedy strikes again when the Creed family’s youngest child, Gage (Miko Hughes), falls victim to the same fate as Church. Pet Sematary is one of King’s most famous stories and Mary Lambert‘s adaptation has a devoted cult following. A nightmarish tale about the grief of loss, Pet Sematary is as gruesome as it is entertaining. The theme song performed by The Ramones is the best horror theme song ever performed by a New York punk band. (Chris Coffel)
Related Topics: 31 Days of Horror Lists
