Stephen King’s creative output is the stuff of legend. The number of stories that have flowed from that man’s brain, like water from a tap that can’t be shut off, is staggering. They’ve been followed by a similarly jaw-dropping number of film and television adaptations, to the point that some have argued the best of his tales have already been bled dry.
But you only have to crack open one of Stephen King’s short story collections to find many more quality pieces yet to be brought to the big or small screen. The following are four of my personal favorites. They span multiple genres (from science fiction to drama to, of course, horror) and highlight the versatility of King’s fertile imagination.
If I go to my grave having seen any or all of these given cinematic life in the wake of The Boogeyman finally coming to the screen this year, I’ll be a happy camper…
Sneakers (Nightmares & Dreamscapes)
It’s no secret that Uncle Steve likes to rock. He plays a mean rhythm guitar and has always shown a fondness for the mythos behind the popular music of his day. King has attempted to merge the worlds of music and horror many times in his work, be it in his short fiction (“You Know They’ve Got a Hell of a Band” might be the zaniest instance of this) or his novels (the most recent example being Revival), but “Sneakers” could be his most chilling effort.
It’s basically a haunted house tale, but instead of the paranormal shenanigans taking place in some dingy apartment or an aging Victorian-style relic, it’s the bathroom of a recording studio that this phantasm calls home. While visiting the commode one day, a sound engineer happens to spy a set of sneaker-clad feet peaking out from underneath another toilet stall. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, until he realizes he’s seen the same shoes in the same spot day after day for weeks now. What’s more, nobody else seems to notice the kicks or the mound of dead flies and other bugs piling up around them like a tiny elephant graveyard. This unsightly image alone makes “Sneakers” ripe for the visual medium, and its taut narrative would be a perfect segment for the Creepshow television series or some other horror anthology.
Home Delivery (Nightmares & Dreamscapes)
It feels cliché to say at this point, but the zombie sub-genre is one that refuses to stay buried (many apologies). Just when it feels we’ve seen every kind of story it could possibly tell us, films like One Cut of the Dead, The Sadness, or Train to Busan come along and zap it back to life. The best of these understand that a balance needs to be struck between the horror of the shambling (or sometimes sprinting) corpses we see wreaking havoc and the humanity of those left trying to survive their new world. “Home Delivery” (one of the surprisingly few King outings to fall under the banner of the classical zombie tale) walks that tightrope perfectly, managing to be both touching and terrifying.
Set on a small island off the coast of Maine, it follows a young pregnant woman whose lobster fisherman husband was recently killed on the job in a gruesome accident. Struggling with a mixture of grief and anxiety as single-parenthood looms in the distance, she’s soon faced with one more thing to fear as the world is suddenly struck by the onslaught of a zombie apocalypse.
As the dead begin to rise, she knows its only a matter of time before the man she once loved emerges from his watery grave and pays a visit. “Home Delivery” feels like a lost Romero film, sporting the grisly gore and biting commentary that made the legendary director’s Living Dead entries so influential, so it’s easy to imagine this story making the leap from page to screen.
Under the Weather (The Bazaar of Bad Dreams)
For a writer deemed by many to be the benchmark in horror fiction, Stephen King has proven many times over that he’s just as capable of making readers cry as he is of making them scream. “Under the Weather” (a latter year entry in his short works) is a fantastic example of this skill. It centers on a middle-aged copywriter who one morning finds that he’s unable to shake off the feeling that he’s hiding something awful from himself. As his day progresses, cracks begin to appear in the façade that’s been erected in his mind and the normality of his life crumbles around him as a result. This leads to a startling moment of clarity that might be one of the most heartbreaking endings King has ever written.
“Under the Weather” is a story about loss, memory, perspective, and the strange ways the three can play off of each other in the worst of circumstances. It’s the kind of tale whose twist you see from a mile away, but that predictability somehow doesn’t rob the moment of its impact thanks to the emotional groundwork that’s laid beforehand. While it doesn’t necessarily fit in the realm of horror (though it does sport a climax that could certainly be categorized as “horrific”), a film adaption of the story could blend together elements of psychological drama, tragic romance, and dark character study into one gut-punch of a picture.
The House on Maple Street (Nightmares & Dreamscapes)
Inspired by an illustration in Chris Van Allsburg’s The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (King and his brood actually used the volume as a jumping-off point for a family writing session, with Stephen, Tabitha and Owen each picking a picture to pen a short story around), “The House on Maple Street” takes elements of classic sci-fi, fantasy, and fairy tale fiction and blends them together to make a story capable of capturing the imagination of any reader, regardless of their age. In it, the Bradbury siblings (one of many tributes made to the legendary author of the same name) realize that something very strange is happening to the house they share with their beloved mother and evil stepfather. Not only does their home appear to be transforming into a rocket ship, but it also seems to be slowly ticking towards a launch date of its own making. Armed with this knowledge, the children set about crafting a plan to deal with their family’s ill-tempered patriarch once and for all.
“The House on Maple Street” is a wonderful gateway for young readers into the world of dark fiction, so it only makes sense that a screen adaptation could do the same for the genre film. Movies like The Witches, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and (more recently) Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark immediately spring to mind, and you could easily see “Maple Street” joining these ranks thanks to its fantastic imagery and ability to capture so accurately the perspective of its kid protagonists.
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