Fans of the master of horror Stephen King are enjoying a new wave of cinematic adaptations after the record-breaking success of It: Chapter One, with many of his novels and short story collections being mined for the next big hit. This wave is not a new phenomenon, as every decade has seen its own share of adaptations, though some turned out better than others.
Carrie was King’s first published novel and first film adaptation back in 1976 and since then we’ve seen almost 50 film and TV adaptations, so there are bound to be a few bad apples among the bunch. Today we are going to explore some of the more laughable villains from Stephen King movies that weren’t scaring anybody.
CHURCH
One of King’s most frightening novels is Pet Sematary, which was first adapted into a film back in 1989 and features horrific reanimated pets and children. In both films, Church the family cat is killed and then brought back to life by the power of the local pet burial grounds, though they weren’t quite the same.
Honestly, Church in the original adaptation terrified us, but Church in the new film from 2019 had us smiling every time we saw him. Whether it was the cuteness of the cat playing Church or just the overall effect of the cat culture we live in today, we’d happily watch more videos of Church being evil next Caturday.
RANDALL FLAGG
While there were quite a few King adaptations seen in theaters during the 90s, some of the more memorable stories appeared in the form of TV movies, such as the four-part adaptation of The Stand. The TV mini-series was directed by Mick Garris, who has brought a number of King’s stories to life.
The Stand features the survivors of a worldwide plague as they are brought together in a showdown between good and evil, with the forces of darkness led by the walking man, Randall Flagg. Flagg is the personification of one of King’s darkest and most villainous characters from multiple book series, but the TV adaptation missed the mark with “Denim Dan” and his bad demonic makeup.
TRUCKS
Stephen King stepped behind the camera in 1986 to direct an adaptation of his own short story “Trucks” with the film Maximum Overdrive, and he has never been back since. The film starred Emilio Estevez and is not well-regarded by critics, fans, or Stephen King himself.
Maximum Overdrive featured machines and vehicles brought to life and gone mad, with one rig in particular standing out as it had a giant replica of Spider-Man villain Green Goblin’s grinning face on the front of the vehicle. While the whole film is more laughable than scary, the Green Goblin rig (and some gory death scenes) was the most memorable part of Maximum Overdrive.
WEREWOLF
1985’s Silver Bullet took place in a town dealing with a rash of mysterious deaths that a brother and sister soon come to realize is the work of a werewolf. Most of the film goes by without seeing the werewolf at all, but when he makes his full-blown debut in the finale of the film, it was kind of hard to watch.
The werewolf transformation of the film was well-done, but the final product still looked like a guy in a bad bear costume. The bearwolf was the most laughable part of Silver Bullet mainly because we just expected more from the monster, even back in the ’80s.
THE NIGHT FLIER
1997 saw the release of The Night Flier starring Miguel Ferrer, who appeared in The Stand TV mini-series as well. The Night Flier was based on a short story from Stephen King of the same name and focused on a reporter investigating a series of deaths at isolated airfields.
The deaths are caused by a vampire who doesn’t appear much throughout the film except to highlight the Dracula-esque cape of the mysterious pilot who is believed to be responsible for the deaths. It isn’t until Ferrer’s Richard Dees encounters the vampire in a men’s bathroom that we see the less-than-terrifying Night Flier, but we also couldn’t help but laugh at the situation.
THE MANGLER
Tobe Hooper brought horror fans classics like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist (with Steven Spielberg), and of course, 1995’s The Mangler. The film was based on King’s short story of the same name about a possessed laundry press responsible for a number of murders.
While the original story played with the comedy aspect of a murderous laundry press a bit, the film took itself a bit too seriously and we were howling with laughter when the Mangler tore itself free and began stalking the streets for more prey. Somehow this film received two more sequels, even though we’re still laughing at The Mangler.
WERECATS
Frequent King adapter Mick Garris directed Sleepwalkers, which was Stephen King’s first original screenplay. The film focused on the last two surviving members of a shape-shifting feline species known as Sleepwalkers, who were basically vampiric werecats whose main weakness was cats.
The werecats transformations weren’t awesome, the incestuous relationship between them was distracting, and their weakness to cats was hilarious and while played for dramatic effect in the film, we were hollering at the image of these terrifying monsters being taken down by Mr. Bigglesworth.
IT
It is one of the most well-known and terrifying novels from Stephen King, and we’ve also seen a couple of adaptations of the book. The first was a 1990 TV mini-series directed by Tommy Lee Wallace while the most recent was a two-part film adaptation directed by Andy Muschietti that featured the children-turned-adults of the Losers Club against an eternal evil they called “It.”
To clarify, we’re not referring to Pennywise the Dancing Cl0wn because both versions we’ve seen are terrifying in their own ways. Rather, the spider-monster creature that faced the grown-up Losers Club in the 1990 TV mini-series was a laughably bad stop motion monstrosity that had us giggling when we should have been screaming.
SH*TWEASELS
There are a lot of things wrong with Lawrence Kasdan’s 2003 adaptation of Dreamcatcher, which followed four friends (with psychic powers) on a hunting trip who get caught in the middle of the government and an alien invasion.
While the obvious choice for the most laughable villain in Dreamcatcher is without a doubt Morgan Freeman’s bushy white eyebrows, though we couldn’t help but smile at the unfortunately-named alien “sh*tweasels,” though the debut of the creatures was terrifying for other gastrointestinal reasons.
JOHN SHOOTER
2004 saw the release of Secret Window, which was based on King’s short story Secret Window, Secret Garden about an author who is accused of plagiarism by a mysterious stranger. Secret Window starred Johnny Depp as author Mort Rainey, while John Turturro portrayed John Shooter, who blamed Rainey for stealing his story.
The film was an odd adaptation that dramatically changed the ending of the story, but Turturro’s Shooter is anything but menacing, and each time he says “you stole my story” we laugh a little bit more. The unsurprising twist ending made Depp’s Rainey more terrifying than John Shooter ever was, but only by a little.
