Stephen King on screen

(Christine)

Even great storytellers can come out with transparent nonsense sometimes. Stephen King, for example, when he called himself the literary equivalent of a Big Mac with chips. You won’t get film-makers to swallow that one: they are crazy about his books. Cinematek is screening both the best adaptations and Cujo.

Film directors and producers had already embraced Stephen King at a time when the literary world was still condescending to the US writer, whose science fiction, fantasy, and horror tales plug into all our fears. King’s breakthrough came in 1974 with his debut novel, Carrie. Just two years later Brian De Palma made a classic film based on the tale of the bullied daughter of a religious fanatic, who develops telekinetic powers after her first period.
Six months from now we will be able to see a new film adaptation of Carrie with Chloë Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore in the roles we have so far identified with Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie. A veritable avalanche of King films is coming our way. Cary Fukunaga (Jane Eyre) has chosen It, a story that brought on a clown phobia in every child who didn’t yet have one. Ben Affleck (Argo) has tackled The Stand, a 1,000-page horror story about an epidemic of a deadly virus. Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon) has been trying to raise a small fortune in order to make a film version of The Dark Tower. Theses could be written about why King has been and still is such a great source of inspiration. But you don’t really need to look any further than the solid, original plots, the clear storylines, and the skilful interweaving of the supernatural or extraordinary and the everyday. Monsters may play a part, but people remain at the heart of King’s work.

Danse macabre
In De Palma’s wake, a number of great directors engaged in a danse macabre with King. Stanley Kubrick hired Jack Nicholson to wield an axe in The Shining. John Carpenter filmed the deadly relationship between Arnie and Christine, a demonic 1958 Plymouth Fury. In David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone, Christopher Walken plays a teacher who, following five years in a coma, can see the past, the present, and the future, a gift that brings him no joy.

(Stand By Me & The Shawshank Redemption)

Even lesser directors have done well with King. He provided both Frank Darabont and Rob Reiner with the material for their best films: respectively, The Shawshank Redemption – with Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman as prisoners who want to escape from a ghastly jail – and Stand By Me, with the late River Phoenix as one of four rascals who go looking for a corpse and gradually lose their innocence forever. The supernatural plays no role in either of those classics.
Following those successes, both directors returned to King’s books. In Misery, Reiner cast Kathy Bates as a nurse who uses drastic methods to persuade her favourite writer not to kill off her favourite character. Darabont made excellent film versions of The Green Mile (about a man condemned to death, who turns out to have a special gift) and The Mist (in which people’s reactions to adversity are much scarier than the monsters in 
the mist).

It would be an injustice to the King of Horror to restrict the cycle to well-known films. Cinematek also offers enjoyable shivers that don’t provoke much in the way of thought: in Pet Sematary a family that lives alongside a creepy animal graveyard longs for the return of a dead child, while Cujo is Jaws with a rabid Saint Bernard. Nightmares guaranteed.

STEPHEN KING ON SCREEN • > 21/2, Cinematek, rue Baron Hortastraat 9, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-551.19.00, info@cinematek.be, www.cinematek.be