stephen king c/d?

That and his other recent pamphlet-sized attempt at (I guess) Bradbury-esque lyrical whimsy, gwendy’s button box. Just completely flat, irritatingly cutesy first drafts of nothing much. Elevation is worse cause it has the added bonus of the straight male saviour character helping the upright man-hating lesbian to get the chip off her shoulder

Hah, OK, it's not just me. "If you're a cishet white dude and are nice enough to lesbians, you can ascend straight into Heaven!"

Best short: The Mist or The Long Walk
Best novel: It or Salem's Lot

is that the one where the guy ... eats himself?

That's Survivor, innit?

I can't believe I remembered that from when I was in middle school.

it’s hard to forget

Hint: 'Survivor Type' is the one where when you first read it you end up like the kid in 'The Jaunt'.

I wonder if this series is going for the campy tone of the original creepshow film. That would probably be a good fit for this story, it could be very early Peter Jackson “ha ha gross”

"The Jaunt" was actually the one that fucked up my mind the most as a kid.

Yeah, “The Jaunt” ftw. Love that it’s tone is so Tom Swift *isnt technology grand* until the very end.

God help me I’m about 12 hours into 11:22:63. Please remind me again how not racist you are, Stephen King.

I'll toss Pet Semetery in the discussion for his best novel.

First teaser for IT: Part Two. Beverly has visible bruises on her arms here, so I guess the abusive husband plotline is in there.

Witness the end of IT. Watch the new trailer now. #ITMovie pic.twitter.com/EEqX6jVT8r

— IT Movie🎈 (@ITMovieOfficial) May 9, 2019

Nice eye for detail Eliza!

it looks really good - i am v excited for this

that Bev/old lady scene always freaked me out on the book

the first one was an abject failure from a horror perspective

this one looks no different on the basis of that scene

How hard is it to make a legit horror movie derived from this source material, seriously. Get it together, Hollywood.

idk the big scares did nothing for me but the old lady sitting perfectly still actually did genuinely creep me out which almost never happens

We should have a 'best/scariest horror movie scenes of all time' thread, that would be wicked. Lots of good ones in not-so-good movies.

I nominate the stabbed-hand-stab from the Crazies remake.

We should have a 'best/scariest horror movie scenes of all time' thread, that would be wicked. Lots of good ones in not-so-good movies.

― Artisanal Personality Disorder (Old Lunch), Thursday, May 9, 2019 12:05 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

vulture did a ranking of this recently? it was a little too loose of an idea to work as a ranking tbh it would be a much better message board thread

i recall the very not-good Darkness Falls having a good scary opening scene.

there's a pretty scary scene in the downright awful the houses october built but it's not worth the suffering

Someone make this thread plz, it is a good idea

do we want to restrict it to bad/mediocre movies? I like that idea.

Here, we can stop shitting up this thread now: Best and/or Scariest and/or Creepiest Scenes Ever (from horror films or TV shows or whatever, I don't care)

i think a lot of king's creepiest and most unsettling scenes are basically unfilmable, because they either stem from some ineffable, nearly-symptomless ~~wrongness~~ about the mise-en-scene.... or really freaky elaborate distortions of reality (like idk the house caving in on the kid in the second or third dark tower book) which are just going to be realized as photorealistic-but-fakey CGI, missing the gauze of nightmare that our imaginations give to them.

yes v well put

a v strange quality, possibly stemming specifically from manys the shonky tv/movie adaptation, where even *in my head* now, kings scare scenes look like crummy cheap and corny efforts. i really have to not visualize in order for it to be in any way scary, essentially

def agreed on cgi literalism but of course movies can do ineffable wrongness just fine if you have the talent for it (which is why you even said mise-en-scene). suspect the people who edited that old lady scene have seen inland empire.

lynch is a good example, his reputation as an arthouse director often overshadows the fact that he's exceptional at creating unsettling or often deeply frightening moments and scenes, and has the ability to maintain an atmosphere of dread over long stretches. the most frightening thing i'd seen in my early years was maybe Twin Peaks, which captures in a very different way a small town full of unexplained terrors, and it's always made me think he could pull off an outstanding SK adaptation.

all true and obv the shining gets this in its own way, and probably others if i thought about it. just i feel like the powers that be with greenlighting a big horror film in the 2010s aren't going to grok a pitch that really leans into that stuff. so maybe it's not so much "unfilmable" as "not what decision-makers picture a 'stephen king movie' as being like."

omar, you've just made me lament the Lynch/King collaboration we'll never see...

yeah twin peaks is great at the "there's something especially creepy and cold and evil about THIS stretch of 2-lane road through the woods on a pitch-black night" vibe

Lynch & king have a shared interest in certain archetypes & Americana and both independently arrived at the idea that the ultimate embodiment of evil is a goofball in a denim jacket, although only Lynch managed to make that actually terrifying. King attempting Lynch gives you daffy shit like his riget remake; I would love for Lynch to attempt king, if only to give ol Steve something to hate even more than kubrick’s shining

Lynch would do the house on nybolt street soooo well

GIVE IT UP, STEPHEN

How about Netflix bringing back UNDER THE DOME, only starting from scratch and actually doing the book?

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) June 13, 2019

lol yeah i read that and rolled my eyes all the way back.

It's like you folks have completely forgotten how he and Steven Weber labored to bring us the PROPER adaptation of The Shining we'd been clamoring for since that abomination dropped back in 1980. Never discount the King!

I didn’t watch it but I don’t think the improper adaptation of under the dome is as well regarded as kubrick’s shining tbf

I kid, but I get it. He'd like to see others adapt his work with the degree of reverence he demonstrated when he brought 'Trucks' to the silver screen.

Ha that one I have seen, it’s an outstanding piece of shit and all fun and games until the dp loses an eye

I still remember how incredibly excited I was for that Shining miniseries as a kid and huge fan of the book, the original film, all things King, etc. I think I ended up not even watching the last episode.

King films are notoriously mostly dogshit, it’s interesting now we’re in this moment of ~respectable~ king films and the decent to dogshit ratio is exactly the same as before except that funless competence is now the peak

The new it and pet sematary are the most egregious, you can feel the cumulative hedging of 500 script iterations by committee creating a product that’s less compelling than the trashy 90s versions

The early King adaptations are still the best, obv. I mean when your work is being adapted by De Palma, Kubrick, and Cronenberg the results are gonna be okay! Gotta give a shout out to The Running Man and Stand By Me too but they are obv different from the usual when it comes to King.

His horror works much better on the page and anyone trying to directly translate it has to devote a lot of time to dialogue about shit weasels and so on.

Pet Sematary remake was the most pointless thing. The original was fine, nothing mindblowing but better than most King adaptations. I haven't heard anyone say anything complimentary about the new one. What's even the point. Remake the freakin' Lawnmower Man if you absolutely have to go down that road.

Original ps is mainly bad but entertainingly so and features the single funniest scene in the history of cinema

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5So0SX24u0

that shd be on the sight and sound thread

tbh, as corny as that scene may be, it still fucks me up.