10 Stephen King Movies To Watch Before It
There's something in the mist....
Stephen King fans rejoice: 2017 looks like being a good year, what with forthcoming TV adaptations of Mr Mercedes and The Mist. Coming to a multiplex near you, meanwhile, are the film versions of The Dark Tower and It.
It is the second adaptation of King’s novel following the 1990 mini-series that starred Tim Curry as Pennywise the clown, who taunts a group of children including a young Seth Green. The plot is typical King: 27 years after their last encounter with Pennywise (now played by Bill Skarsgard), a group of friends reunite to stop the monster when kids start disappearing from their Maine hometown. Expect echoes of Stand By Me and Dreamcatcher when the movie reaches screens in September.
The early signs are encouraging: following a screening of the completed film, King’s assistant took to the author’s message board to inform fans that “they should stop worrying about it as the producers have done a wonderful job with the production.”
Directed by Andres Muschietti, who also wrote and directed Mama with Jessica Chastain, the remake opens on 8 September but if you can’t wait that long then here are 10 other King adaptations to tide you over.
10. The Lawnmower Man
Yes, this is the big-budget adaptation of the Stephen King story from Night Shift and no, the story didn’t feature chimps, bad science or Virtual Reality. That’s why King took the producers to court and won.
The Lawnmower Man was a big hit in 1992, when it seemed that VR would be an integral part of our lives, but a quarter of a century later the effects and ideas are outrageous enough to make this a must see for fans of “so bad it’s good” cinema. Used as a guinea pig by scientist Pierce Brosnan, Jeff Fahey develops psychic and telekinetic powers that, in a plot turn pilfered from King’s novel Firestarter, bring a shadowy organization known as The Shop after him and Brosnan.
This only angers Fahey, who takes on all-comers (including with a flying lawnmower) before entering cyberspace, where he manifests himself as a cross between Max Headroom and Freddy Krueger. Throw in Geoffrey Lewis with a hysterically unconvincing Oirish accent, a sinister cabal of bald men who plot World Domination from inside a windowless bunker plus enough cheesy effects for at least three SyFy movies and you have a movie that’s unlike any other.