· HOLLYWOOD'SSTEPHEN

TONY MAGISTRALE

* HOLLYWOOD'S STEPHEN KING

Copyright © Tony Magistrale, 2003.All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used orreproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permissionexcept in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articlesor reviews.

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Dedicated with great affection to the students atthe University of Vermont who have helped toshape my own appreciation of the films addressedin this book.

CONTENTS

List ofIllustrationsAcknowledgmentsPreface

1. Steve's Take: An Interview with Stephen King

2. The Lost Children:Carrie, Firestarter, Stand by Me,Silver Bullet, Hearts in Atlantis

3. Maternal Archetypes:Cujo, Misery, Dolores Claiborne

4. Paternal Archetypes:The Shining, Pet Sematary, Apt Pupil

5. Defining Heroic Codes of Survival:The Dead Zone, The Shawshank Redemption,The Green Mile

6. Technologies of Fright:Christine, Maximum Overdrive, The Running Man,The Mangler, The Night Flier

7. King of the Miniseries:'Salem's Lot, IT, The Stand, The Shining,Storm ofthe Century, Rose Red

Films CitedWorks CitedIndexAbout the Author

viiix

xi

1

21

51

85

117

147

173

219225230

235

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Christine. The (Plymouth) Fury from hell . xx

2. Dolores Claiborne. Dolores (Kathy Bates)gazes down into the abandoned well where shehas just helped to murder her husband. The eclipse,occurring directly behind her, mirrors the circularimagery of the well's opening. 1

3. Carrie. Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) is isolatedand backed into the corner of a volleyball courtin the film's opening scene. Note the "boxed"shadow of a basketball backboard loomingdirectly behind Carrie. 21

4. Cujo. Donna Trenton (Dee Wallace),brandishing a baseball bat, does battleagainst the rabid dog. 52

5. Misery. Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) has just readthat Misery is dead. The camera views her shadowedform framed in the bedroom doorway from an upwardangle, helping to increase her threatening pose. 52

6. Kubrick's The Shining. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson)takes a white towel from Delbert Grady (Phillip Stone)in the red bathroom scene. 85

7. Pet Sematary. The haunted burial ground.Note the concentric pattern of circlesand burial mounds that spiral outward. 116

8. The Green Mile. John Coffey (Michael ClarkeDuncan) wears the St. Christopher medal given

to him by the warden's wife, Melinda Moores(Patricia Clarkson).

9. The Mangler. A shot of a workman lubricatingthe internal workings of the demonicspeed iron machine.

10. Stephen King's The Shining. Wendy Torrance(Rebecca De Mornay) attempts to summonthe amorous attention of her distracted husbandin the made-for-television ABC miniseries.

117

147

173

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would never have reached your hands without the invaluableassistance of many people and institutions. Dawn Pelkey, Mary Findley,Eric Rickstad, Liz Paley, Sid Poger, Brian Kent, Bobby Haas, CoreyMalanga, Mary Pharr, Allison Kelly, Keith Silva, Michael Stanton, andespecially Hilary Neroni each read multiple drafts of successive chaptersand supplied me with counsel that was both illuminating and encourag­ing. My editors at Palgrave, Kristi Long, Roee Raz, Debra Manette,Donna Cherry, and Erin Chan, were simultaneously nurturing andtough-minded with my writing-an important combination for any edi­tor to possess. Early conceptual thinking about the horrors inherent inbathrooms in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining found its initial audience atCecil Community College in Maryland, where I viewed the film for thefirst time on a theatrical-size screen and then presented a lecture to thecollege community; my thanks to Paul Haspel and Polly Binns for ar­ranging this opportunity to explore such private places in public. Thefirst half of chapter 5 is an expanded version of "Cronenberg's 'Only Re­ally Human Movie': The Dead Zone," an article first published in a spe­cial edition dedicated to the films of director David Cronenberg in thejournal Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities 15 (1996): 40-45 .The Arts and Sciences dean's office of the University of Vermont pro­vided me the opportunity to present "The Many Redemptions of TheShawshank Redemption," a lecture based on another section of chapter5, when I accepted the Dean's Lecture award for 2003.Associate Dean S.Abu Thrab Rizvi also supplied me with funds to travel to Bangor, Maine ,to interview Stephen King. My appreciation to Steve King for takingtime from his recuperation and busy schedule to indulge my request forthis insightful interview, published for the first time in chapter 1. My re­spect for Stephen King as an artist and human being has been steadilyenriched over the years because of similar examples of his immense gen­erosity. Dear friends and family members-Larry Bennett, Ken Wagner,Annalee Curtis, Lynn Bessette, Kay and Norman Tederous, and Jennifer,

Daniel, and Christopher Magistrale-reminded me consistently thatthere is life beyond the computer screen , and these inimitable excur­sions, in turn, allowed me to return reinvigorated to the task of writingthis book. One of the great joys of attaining tenure in academe is thefreedom to teach courses that reflect a scholar's area of interest and ca­pacity for imaginative design. In twenty years of teaching untraditionalcourses offered through the English department such as "The Films ofStephen King," "Poe's Children," "The Horror Film," and "The LiteraryVampire," undergraduate and graduate students at the University ofVermont provided critical insights that have indelibly shaped, confirmed,challenged, and altered my understanding of Stephen King's films. Myonly regret is that I cannot thank all these students personally-thereare just too many-but their sensitive and intelligent voices from class­room discussions and writing assignments most definitely resonatethroughout these pages.

x I HOLLYWOOD'S STEPHEN KING

PREFACE

Several years ago, when I first began seriously thinking about authoringa book on the films made from Stephen King's fiction, I mentioned myintentions to a colleague in the English department. His initial responsewas an unenthusiastic "Why would you want to write about StephenKing's films? Especially when there have been so many unremarkablemovies made from his fiction." Any volume entitled Hollywood'sStephen King must at least acknowledge the partial truth inherent in thisnegative opinion . After all, Children of the Corn in all its unnecessarypermutations is a persuasive case in point. However, what is truly re­markable about the extensive body of celluloid work interpreted fromKing's novels, novellas, short stories, and teleplays-at this writing, anoeuvre that contains over seventy titles and is still growing-is just howmany of these productions have turned out to be excellent films. For thesake of my skeptical colleague, even if we adopt a cruelly conservativeestimate that only 25 percent of these movies are worthy of the special­ized attention that a book such as this one seeks to provide, how manynovelists, screenwriters, directors, or production companies would not beecstatic with seventeen films that have proven to be both financially andartistically successful?

There is little doubt about Stephen King's marketability in Holly­wood. When his name is connected with a film-either a theatrical releaseor a television miniseries-the production is virtually guaranteed to makemoney. New Line Cinema sought to capitalize on this nexus while adver­tising The Lawnmower Man (1992), a film that contained so little of King'soriginal short story from which it was adapted that the author filed a law­suit demanding that his name be removed from the credits. Bob Shayne,New Line Cinema's CEO, defended his company's position by insisting"that's what we paid for. . . . King's name was the most important thing wewere buying [in purchasing the rights to the short story]" (Jones 75).

In spite of the obvious marketability associated with King's name,and ironically,sometimes because of it, the vast majority of films adapted

from his fiction have failed to gamer much formal critical attention overthe years. In 1986 Michael R. Collings published The Films of StephenKing, the only book-length scholarly analysis ever published on King'smovies. Collings's work, now out of print, is, of course, restricted to filmsreleased prior to 1986.Four other magazine-books, oversized and lavishlyillustrated with movie stills, have been published since the Collings vol­ume appeared: Jessie Horsting 's Stephen King at the Movies (1986), JeffConner's Stephen King Goes to Hollywood (1987),Ann Lloyd's The Filmsof Stephen King (1993), and Stephen Jones's Creepshows: The IllustratedStephen King Movie Guide (2002). Each of these texts is primarily con­cerned with satisfying the average fan's curiosity about the making ofKing's movies---cataloging technical data , plot line evolution, credits,budgets, on-location gossip, King's own evaluation of the finished prod­uct-essentially, the data behind the production history of each film.Whilecertainly valuable and interesting on their own terms, none of these recentpublications offers much by way of serious film interpretation.

The majority of the King films that are released through conventionalHollywood theatrical premieres attain critical notice in the popular press­e.g., newspaper and periodical reviews of current cinema-but these five­to ten-paragraph reviews differ substantially from the type of focused andcomprehensive analyses found in academic film journals and books. Thenotable exceptions, Carrie and The Shining, have received considerableand consistent attention in various scholarly publications. The reason forthis, I suspect, has little to do with these films as adaptations of StephenKing novels and everything to do with the fact that Brian De Palma andStanley Kubrick respectively directed them. Carrie (1976) and The Shining(1980) have obtained their critical due because they are part of larger di­rectorial oeuvres that have nothing to do with Stephen King. On occasion,an insightful reading of an individual picture has appeared in popularfanzines devoted to the genre of the horror film,such as Cinfantastique orFangoria, and sometimes one of King's movie adaptations is the subject ofa critical article published in an obscure academic journal , an independentessay in a collected volume dealing with a larger topic to which the film

somehow relates, or a chapter in a book committed to analyzing King's lit­erary fiction. Generally speaking, however, the academic world has tendedto view cinematic versions of Stephen King with the same level of dubiousdisaffection with which it treats his published prose. It is notable, for exam­ple, that no filmjournal has ever produced a special issue devoted to criticalreadings of various Stephen King movies (or, for that matter, any filmadaptation of one of his books), even as the corpus of distinguished work

xii I HOLLYWOOD'S STEPHEN KING

that now exists would appear to make such a publication highly attractiveto both the film specialist and a broad general audience.

There are a myriad of explanations for why most of King's cinematiccanon has been so conspicuously ignored critically, but here are several ofthe most important:

• The films, like the books that have inspired them, are linked to anenormously popular writer, arguably the most successful author inthe history of publishing. Despite the diverse thematic range andnuanced skills of this writer, his popularity has called his artistic se­riousness into question, at least in the minds of academic snobs.Moreover, King's popularity likewise affiliates him with childrenand young adults, who have always constituted a large portion ofhis audience and the major demographic for the horror genre ingeneral. For certain teachers and critics, the same issues that makehim attractive to adolescents serve to weaken the gravity of his fic­tional and cinematic art. Indeed, regarding this issue, the writer hasoften been his own worst enemy. At a 1999 party at Tavern on theGreen to celebrate King's twenty-fifth anniversary as a publishedauthor, an event that was attended by many important members ofthe New York literati and publishing worlds, the host ended theevening by screening a highlight tape of the bloodiest scenes fromhis film canon. Sometimes Stephen King, the serious artist, comesinto direct conflict with Stephen King, the mischievous kid.

• The seventy-plus films that have been released since 1976make theKing adaptations a true cultural phenomenon worthy of deeper in­terpretation and understanding as independent works and as a col­lection. Unfortunately, some of these films are, as my Englishdepartment colleague reminds us, similar in quality to Children ofthe Corn and Maximum Overdrive: difficult for an adult to watch­much less appreciate-and nearly impossible to write about. Manycritics have unfairly repudiated the entire King canon after viewingone or two of these celluloid disasters.

• Several of the best examples that have successfully made the tran­sition from printed page to screen include The Dead Zone (1983),Stand by Me (1986), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), DoloresClaiborne (1995),Apt Pupil (1997), and The Green Mile (1999). Itis remarkable how many people, both in and outside of universities,still fail to associate these films with Stephen King.Because his rep­utation was established around predominant subject themes in the

PREFACE I xiii

fields of fantasy, horror, the supernatural, the bizarre, and the oc­cult, pictures such as The Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil, andDolores Claiborne, which are devoid of the requisite supernaturalmonsters and concerned instead with the monsters of everyday re­ality, are not readily linked to him. Despite the tremendous com­mercial potential of King's name, Hollywood producers will oftendownplay his connection to a "mainstream film" in order to avoidtypecasting a movie that does not belong to the "horror genre."

• As a corollary to this preceding point, academics tend to associateKing with the gothic genre exclusively, and many scholars-ironi­cally in spite of the wealth of superb critical attention applied tothe genre (horror films in particular) over the past thirty years­still continue to view horror art as too unsettling to their aestheticsor, worse, dismiss it categorically. Robin Wood's generalizations onhorror film can be accurately applied to our discussion of King:"The horror film has consistently been one of the most popularand, at the same time, the most disreputable of Hollywood gen­res. . .. They are dismissed with contempt by the majority of re­viewer-critics, or simply ignored" (29-30).

• Scholarship does not occur in a vacuum; it relies on a history of dia­logue among different minds to stimulate opinion and debate. Theresimply has not been sufficient scholarly attention paid to StephenKing's films to foster such an environment. It is my hope that thisbook will establish at least an initial context for viewing many ofthese films, and that this will spark further critical discussion.Whileit is difficult to locate the highly varied King films neatly under thecomprehensive umbrella of any single poststructuralist paradigm,individual pictures inspire a range of theoretical readings.For exam­ple, Carrie has long attracted psychoanalytical feminist criticism(see the work by Barbara Creed and Shelley Stamp Lindsey) be­cause it at once addresses the abjection of the female body and itseventual empowerment. Additionally, as Fredric Jameson posits,The Shining lends itself to a Marxist critique of class warfare be­tween the ruling hegemony ensconced at the hotel and Torrance 'sworking-class positioning (serving as the Overlook 's "caretaker" ).The present volume frequently relies on the influence of both Marx­ist and feminist theory in interpreting other cinematic texts.

In the last analysis, this writer must admit to being as baffled as Kinghimself (see the chapter 1 interview) in explaining to complete satisfaction

xiv I HOLLYWOOO'S STEPHEN KING

how a diverse body of work that has garnered such enormous popular at­tention and generated so many millions of dollars continues to be so criti­cally unexamined. Hollywood itself has clearly recognized the outstandingmerit of several of these films, nominating Stand by Me for an AcademyAward for Best Screenplay Adaptation, The Shawshank Redemption forseven Academy Awards, and The Green Mile for another four; acknowl­edging the acting contributions of Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie (Carrie)in nominating both for the same Best Actress Award; as well as KathyBates (Misery and Dolores Claiborne) , who was also twice nominated forBest Actress, winning the Oscar for Misery.

Notwithstanding the dearth of critical attention paid to films fromStephen King's fiction, Hollywood has fortunately not required the impri­matur of the academic world to appreciate the value of translating his writ­ing into visual images.What Michael Collings maintained in 1986still holdstrue today:"The simple fact is that King's stories and novels have provideda wealth of material for filmmakers. Almost every novel published underKing's name has been produced as a film,is in production, or has been op­tioned" (1). King's novels, short stories, screenplays, and teleplays havebeen adapted for both the theatrical screen and television.Yet because hisname is so recognizable in the popular imagination and has generated suchenormous revenue, his novels and filmsalso have inspired disappointing se­quential films that typically have little or nothing to do with anything Kinghimself has actually written or authorized, as in The Lawnmower Man andChildren ofthe Corn sequels,A Return to 'Salem 's Lot (1987),Pet SemataryTwo (1992), Sometimes They Come Back . . .Again (1995),The Rage: Carrie2 (1999) and Firestarter 2: Rekindled (2002).

But why have Stephen King's titles proliferated on celluloid whileother famous horror authors , who have composed their own share of out­standing work-Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Dean Koontz, Joyce CarolOates, and Anne Rice spring to mind immediate ly-have not? Comparedto King, only a very small percentage of their published titles have beenoptioned into movies, and except for Barker's Hellraiser (1987) and Rice'sInterview with the Vampire (1994), none of these has been particularlynoteworthy. Most assuredly, Hollywood is a business, and its business ismaking money. Between box office receipts and film rental distributionaround the world, the Stephen King movie business is now worth well inexcess of a billion dollars. This is a staggering bottom line, and it makesadapting the novels of other authors-even from the list of best-selling au­thors just mentioned-a high-risk proposition when compared to King'sname recognition, cinematic reputation, and proven track record.

PREFACE I XV

Filmmakers are also drawn to Stephen King's world because of hisinimitable ability to tell an interesting story.King himself has often acknowl­edged that the best fiction is plot driven, comprised of characters the audi­ence identifies with and cares about. It is certainly no surprise that these arelikewise the same fundamental traits that all good movies share in common.Many of King's commentators have already noted that the author's pub­lished work is readily suited for presentation on the screen because hewrites extremely visual, action-centered narratives. And certainly moviesthemselves have impacted King's authorial vision and narrative style; hisnovels frequently allude to specifictitles from horror cinema, and the partic­ular brand of terror he usually unleashes has a filmicquality to its unfolding.King's nonfiction book Danse Macabre (1981) chronicles the history of hor­ror films as well as the classics of horror literature. It is evident throughouthis analysis that movies such as Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Alien(1979) have proven to be at least as influential on King's own work in thegenre as has the literature of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe:"The realmovie freak is as much an appreciator as the regular visitor to art galleriesor museums,"King insists."For the horror fan, filmssuch as Exorcist II formthe setting for the occasional bright gemstone that is discovered in the dark­ness" (210).Born in an era of visual media-television as well as theatricalfilms-King is a novelist who often writes like a screenwriter, although, asBillWarren cautions, "Stephen King is not the best possible person to adaptStephen King to the screen" (139). Warren's point underscores the curiousfact that the most successful cinematic interpretations of King's work haveemerged from screenplays written by other people.

What I have undertaken in this volume is not so much an analysis ofthe films of Stephen King but an analysis of the films of a variety of pro­ducers, directors, and screenwriters who have adapted Stephen King's fic­tion. Some of these cinematic artists have been extremely faithful toKing's primary source material (Cronenberg's The Dead Zone and Gar­ris's The Stand), while others have imposed their own creative vision onKing's original text to create an inimitably different work of art (Kubrick'sThe Shining and Hackford's Dolores Claiborne). Another way to put thisis that this is a book more interested in what other people have done withtheir skills in making movies that use King's stories and themes as a basisfor filmmaking than it is an exegesis of King's fiction per se. On the otherhand, since the films treated in this volume all share at least a genesis inKing's authorial creation, they must necessarily possess important ele­ments of similarity, and I try to explicate these elements in relationship toone another by assigning them to relevant chapters. Thus, while this book

xvi I HOLLYWOOD'S STEPHEN KING

endeavors to view the individual films as distinctive works of art-bearingthe artistic markings of auteur directors and original screenwriters-thesefilms also embody something of King's perspective on the world. StephenKing's literary vision intersects with the possibilities for film in allowingfor a kind of cross-pollination with talented screenwriters or directors. Itcannot be over emphasized that King's fiction uniquely lends itself to suchcross-pollination. His contribution, even to those movies with which he isonly nominally affiliated , transcends his popularity and reputation as a"bankable writer" in Hollywood; it confirms his status as a great story­teller and versatile artist capable of producing narratives so compellingthat that they translate well into a variety of mediums.

Brian Kent posits that King has always written for those who pur­sue leisure entertainment for "pleasure without an iota of concern forwhat critical theory is currently carrying the day in the halls of academe,or what social significance is inherent in the particular manifestations ofKing's monsters" (40). Most certainly Kent 's portrait of the "typical"King reader, whom he playfully labels the "literary slob," spills over intothe same audience likely to go to a Stephen King film adaptation. Peo­ple tend to appreciate horror art obsessively or not at all. AlthoughKent further believes that King's heart is with these "literary slobs"­spending their money in pursuit of the entertainment factor above allelse-King's "remarkable accomplishment is that he has [also] carvedout a sizable audience of scholarly-academic readers, while maintainingand expanding his massive popular appeal" (40). I believe that to appre­ciate fully both the fictions and films of Stephen King, it is necessary toabandon the threadbare and specious distinctions used to separate highand low definitions of art. The reason is that in King's literary and visualtexts, art does not always appear as art-at least not what contemporaryeducators and critics have taught us to value as art: a composition that iscomplex, subtle, fiercely unsentimental. Rather, King's brand of art isclassically American-aggressive and violent, vital and unrefined. Thebest movies based on his fiction embody the essence of King's own aes­thetic sensibility: emotional and messy, at the edge of being out of con­trol. But these are also the very qualities that make these films sotremendously engaging. Like the rock music that he both listens to andenjoys playing, Stephen King has always preferred raw to refined, the ir­repressible and compulsive to the balanced and ordered, the juvenileand subversive to the rarefied austerity of the sophisticated and cultur­ally sanctioned. When Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), arguably themost urbane and highly educated of all King's protagonists, decides to

PREFACE I xvii

"get busy living" and tunnel out of Shawshank prison, he is traveling inthe footsteps of generations of American cinematic rebels, from JamesDean and Steve McQueen to Jack Nicholson and Mickey Rourke. Twomainstream American institutions-the judicial and penal systems­have failed Andy miserably on two separate occasions. His prison breakand appropriation of the warden's illicit monies is thus as much a repu­diation of these corrupt and oppressive institutions as it is a bid for free­dom and a personal claim to the rest of his life. As Andy acknowledges,fully aware of its implicit irony, to his friend Red (Morgan Freeman),"On the outside I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had tocome to prison to be a crook." What other national cinema could makea hero out of a man whose criminality appears not only justified butalso is duly rewarded?

This book seeks to provide a coherent overview of Hollywood's major cin­ematic interpretations of Stephen King. His film canon has expanded tothe point where it is impossible to address comprehensively all his movieadaptations in a single volume. Consequently, I have tried to select a sam­ple that is both representative and indicative of the artistic vision that Hol­lywood has applied in translating King to celluloid. In doing so, my choicesreflect a personal bias-these are also the King pictures that I admire themost and feel to be the most successful as works of cinematic art. This vol­ume does not pretend to analyze this cinema with sufficient attention tothe technical aspects of filmmaking. I am still very much a novice in the artof understanding film's nuanced language of technique, and I leave thetask of interpreting these films from such a perspective to a scholar moreadept at this specialized undertaking. As someone who has not receivedformal training in cinema studies, what I bring to this exegesis, besides aliterary critic's close attention to the details of a narrative text, is a desireto view these films according to shared similarities of themes, characters,motifs, and narrative designs. This book consequently divides King cine­matic corpus into individual chapters designed to highlight these features.

Despite King's frequent snip that he feels as if he needs a passporteach time he travels to Los Angeles, his deepening and specialized in­volvement with Hollywood over the years has made him a savvy commen­tator on the movie industry. This fact is never more evident than in thechapter 1 interview that explores King'S thirty-year relationship with themovie business and his attitude toward, and obvious appreciation of, awide variety of Hollywood productions. Chapter 2 includes a wide sam-

xviii I HOLLYWOOD'S STEPHEN KING

piing of films where children and issues relevant to their physical survival,psychological development, and memory of childhood figure prominently.In addition to exploring the supernatural capacities inherent in many ofKing's children, this chapter also includes discussion of the "normal" ado­lescent protagonists in his films who must remain continually vigilant inthe face of innumerable "adult" assaults against their innocence, identities,and friendships. Chapter 3 focuses on King's cinematic females and theevolving roles they have come to assume as Hollywood has followed Kinginto an examination of the horror tale from within a domestic context. Aswith the children in his canon, King possesses an idealized attitude towardmothers, and the establishment of a feminist consciousness in his canon issometimes compromised and sometimes enriched in his portrayal of theselfless bonds mothers share with their children. Chapter 4 scrutinizes theroles of fathers and father figures in those films where secret malecovenants create unhealthy barriers between men and their families. Un­like King's maternal archetypes, the fathers in these cautionary tales in­dulge in experimental and self-indulgent behavior that is insidiouslyisolating and self-destructive. Manipulated by intangible malevolentforces they once sought to control, these protagonists are victimized bytheir own highly masculinized desire for power and manipulation. Chapter5 counterpoints the failings enumerated in the preceding chapter andposits a definition for heroism and moral progress in King's universe.Theunassuming central characters highlighted in the three films examined inthis chapter emerge as prototypical King heroes who rise above their per­sonal sorrows to emphasize what is good and enduring in the human spirit.Chapter 6 is less about human beings than it is about the machinery hu­mans have created-and the relationship forged between this technologyand those who seek to exploit it. King's fascination with portraying the in­human forces of technology is translated into tactile extensions of humanand supernatural evil. The monstrous machinery featured in this chapterunderscores the sentiment that as man becomes more reliant on his tech­nological creations, he comes to resemble them at the expense of his hu­manity. The last chapter of this book, the longest , examines the mostimportant made-for-television films that have either been adapted fromKing's novels or produced and written explicitly for television by Kinghimself. Uneven in quality but embracing a chronology nearly as long asHollywood's involvement in major theatrical releases of King movies,these miniseries range from the incoherent final editing work performedon the video butchering of 'Salem's Lot:The Movie (1979) to the brilliantlydisturbing resolution of Storm ofthe Century (1999).

PREFACE I XIX