Your Top 10 Stephen King movies based on his books/stories

It was terrible. Nice giant spider.

Replace it with the original The Shining and you've got yourself a hell of a list.

No special order but Running Man is Number 1.
1. Running Man
2. Stand By Me
3. Hearts In Atlantis...does what a movie on a book should do, get you interested.
4. Misery
5. Christine
6. The Stand
7. DEAD ZONE
8.Apt Pupil
9. Pet Semetary
10. IT, it works for a kid....ain't read the book cause i'm not good at it.
Totally forgot dead zone, kinda funny it's one of my fave cronenbergs, too. and apt pupil, though the books ending is so much better.

1. The Shawshank Redemption
2. Dolores Claiborne
3. Stand By Me
4. Misery
5. Apt Pupil
6. The Shining(1980)
7. Storm of the Century
8. The Stand
9. It
10. The Dead Zone(1983)

What was terrible?

[list=1][*]The Shawshank Redemption[*]Apt Pupil[*]Stand By Me[*]The Running Man[*]The Green Mile[*]Carrie (original)[*]Kubrick's The Shining (it wasn't really King's after Stan got done with it)[*]the Stand (except the ending)[*]Cujo[/list=1][list]

And Tim Curry freaked me OUT. I wasn't afraid of clowns until I saw that damned movie - so "It" makes it to #10 - rubber crablegs and all.

The Shawshank Redemption
Maximum Overdrive
Secret Window
The Green Mile
Pet Sematary
The Shining
Stand By Me
Apt Pupil
Misery
Carrie

No, What was great. It was terrible. I mean, that was just shit.

Who is on first. What is on second.

"It" would have made a bit more sense.

Damn, I MISSED one!!

What year was 'THAT' published?...It may be shit...........: sorry, try again ...THAT may be shit, but I'm a completest!!

The Shawshank Redemption

Apt Pupil

Stand By Me

The Running Man

The Green Mile

Maximum Overdrive

The Shining

The Changeling

Dreamcatcher. The tagline was, "Evil slips through." But they forgot two crucial words, your ass. This is on my list just because you have to love how hard they tried to make this good.

What story was that based on? Great movie though...

10. DREAMCATCHER

9. THE NIGHT FLIER

8. CREEPSHOW

7. THE GREEN MILE

6. IT

5. THE STAND

4. THE RUNNING MAN

3. STAND BY ME

2. MISERY

1. THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION

Reminds me to pick up THE DARK HALF on DVD....

1 the shawshank redemption
2 stand by me
3 the stand
4 the green mile
5 dead zone
6 firestarter
7 running man
8 apt pupil
9 Christine
10 Needful Things

i have not seen Misery or Carrie

1 Creepshow

2 Carrie

3 Pet Sematary

4 Apt Pupil

5 Shawshank Redemption

6 Stand By Me

7 Misery

8 The Dead Zone

9 The Shining

10 Cat's Eye

Awful list.

Really? Apart from Cat's Eye and maybe Pet Semetary, which I haven't seen, those are all solid flick. 

Don't mind Andrew, he just got his period.

It's the order he's got 'em in. And the fact that he bumped a seven year-old thread to make a contextless list post.

The number of lists here that either don't include Kubrick's THE SHINING or have it below #3 is truly mind-boggling.

Yup. I'm a King die-hard but it amazes me how many of his fans fall into lockstep with his dismissal of the film.

1.  The Shining (Kubrick)

2.  The Dead Zone

3.  Hearts in Atlantis

4.  Christine

5.  The Shawshank Redemption

6.  Stand by Me

7.  Misery

8.  Carrie

9.  Creepshow 2

10. The Stand

 

Honorable mentions: Needful Things, The Night Flier (Miguel Ferrer never disappoints), Dolores Claiborne (Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto), The Tommyknockers, Creepshow, The Green Mile, the first half of IT, Maximum Overdrive (which he barely remembers directing), Graveyard Shift (if only for the theme song) and The Mangler.

 

I think some day King will realize how brilliantly Kubrick distilled that book down to its most primal and scary essence. 

1. The Shining ('80)

2. The Shawshank Redemption

3. Stand By Me

4. Misery

5. The Dead Zone

 

After that ... whatev. Although The Dark Half and Needful Things are fine as guilty pleasures.

 

And I still love the first half of The Stand, before everything goes to crap.

Wow, its a whole lot easier to come up with a list of the 10 worst adaptations, but here we go:

 

The Mist

The Shining (Kubrick)

Shawshank

Stand By Me

 

Those are the only ones I can honestly say I love, although I have soft spots for The Running Man (can we count that?) as well as Carpenter's take on Christine.  I also kind of dig King's re-imagining of Kingdom Hospital, just because of how fucking off the wall it is and how much it desperately wants to be Twin Peaks.  
 

 

King just put too much of himself on the page in regards to Jack's character (a writer struggling with alcoholism), and got all defensive and took it personally when Kubrick turned Jack into a raging asshole. 

 

My New And Improved Top 10 Stephen King List:

 

1.  The Shining - The greatest Horror movie of all time. And it's hilarious!

2.  Carrie - The performances DePalma got out of the actors make it something special, and the prom set piece out Hitchcocks Hitchcock. (pig's blood sequence a masterclass in suspense)

3.  Stand By Me - The kids talked and acted real (a first). River just had a special presence

4.  Creepshow - Scary, gross, and funny , and almost perfect

5.  The Dead Zone - Cronenberg got the tone right, and Walken is brilliant (so much so, he was damned to play weird for the rest of his life!)

6.  Misery - unnervingly claustrophobic with brilliant lead performances.

7,  The Mist - A fun B movie that shocks you with a suckerpunch

8.  The Shawshank Redemption - hard to argue against the craft and emotion

9.  Apt Pupil - maybe most underrated; Ian McKellen is understatingly sinister

10 Cujo- A well-crafted 'B' movie

 

 

In no particular order:

 

MISERY

THE MIST

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION

THE DEAD ZONE

THE SHINING (honestly not a fan as an adaptation but its direction is unimpeachable and contains several iconic moments)

CHRISTINE

CREEPSHOW

CUJO

SALEM'S LOT (1979 version)

CARRIE

 

Honorable mention:  the kid segments from IT, the Quitters episode from CAT'S EYE, the 80's Twilight Zone adaptation of GRAMMA.

The Mist

Shawshank

The Shining

Misery

Green Mile

Stand By Me

Carrie

Running Man

Needful Things

IT

 

Still haven't seen Apt Pupil and Dead Zone. This saddens me.

I just finished watching The Dead Zone. Haven't seen it for a long while and it's such a rich movie. Just really well crafted. This is the first movie of Cronenberg's that established him as an actor's Director. It feels like a really great Twilight Zone feature length movie. A man is afflicted with what he believes to be a curse before his realization that it is a gift to save mankind. But it comes at the cost of the woman he loves and his own life. It's soo beautifully tragic.

King promised that he wouldn't ever bad mouth Kubrick's version as soon as his mini-series with Mick Garris would be broadcast. So far, it seems like he's kept to his word on that.

 

Personally, I think he has acknowledged that it's more than a case of "The Emperor With No Clothes"(King's words) than he had previously stated by slyly writing Jake going to see Kubrick's Shining in the theatre in one of the later Dark Tower books(I want to say later, but I could be wrong. It's been years since I read them).

 

Apt Pupil is interesting because it has Ian McKellen playing a Nazi in a Bryan Singer movie. Sadly, I find the rest of the it lacking, and my best bet as to why is due to the mush-mouthed miscasting of Brad Renfro as Todd. He conveyed morbidity right off the bat, but not having the skills to have a facade cover it. Shame, because I think Apt Pupil is one of the most terrifying things King has ever written, and I believe it's the first where he's written horror without any supernatural elements(I'm not counting the Bachman work).

 

The Dead Zone is awesome, and I might actually put it #1 on my list because it's one of the rare Stephen King movies that just absolutely sticks the landing. Seriously the best comeuppance ever for a King villian. One of the reasons why I'm really hesitant to watch The West Wing is because of how much I remember thinking Martin Sheen was such a bastard as Greg Stillson. Stupid, I know, but that's how great Sheen is as the character.

 

Apt Pupil is fatally undone by its cop-out ending.  

It's a strange ending, but I wouldn't call it a cop out because there doesn't seem to leave any repercussion for Renfro's Todd. The book has him  gunning down the guidence counseler; exposing him as the monster that he is.

 

I think Apt Pupil's ending is superior to the story, where Todd just goes nuts and starts shooting people. To me, King's ending was a cop-out and it didn't have anything bigger on its mind. The whole point of Singer's movie was that despite their different backgrounds and upbringing, Todd and Dussander shared a fascination with power over people and were exactly alike. This is exemplified by Todd's blackmailing of the school Councilor into silence. The movie was a study of fascism, how it's not confined to Nazi Germany and can be found even in suburban America, in the heart of a teenage boy.

come on, no Graveyard Shift love.  Big Giant Flying Rat, and Brad Dourif.

Watching 127 Hours makes me think that Gerald's Game, which is considered lesser King, would make a great film adaptation. Just cast an actress that likes to be challenged(I'm thinking Maggie Gyllenhaal right now), rip off(or pay homage, however you want to term it) Polanski's Repulsion, and use Joy Division's "She's Lost Control" as the main theme with the percussion being utlizied as scene transitions. It almost could practically film itself with all that.

What, No "Night Flier" love...? Miguel Ferrer, a 1 million dollar budget and streams of blood-drenched urine?

 

...maybe it's just me...