Under The Dome

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This terrifying adaptation of Stephen King’s bestselling horror novel was directed by shock maestro Brian De Palma for maximum, no-holds-barred effect. Sissy Spacek stars as Carrie White, the beleaguered daughter of a religious kook (Piper Laurie) and a social outcast tormented by her cruel, insensitive classmates. When her rage turns into telekinetic powers, however, school’s out in every sense of the word. De Palma’s horrific climax in a school gym lingers forever in the memory, though the film is also built upon Spacek’s remarkable performance and Piper Laurie’s outlandishly creepy one. John Travolta has a small part as a thug, De Palma’s future wife, Nancy Allen, is his girlfriend, and Amy Irving makes her screen debut as one of the girls giving Carrie a hard time. –Tom Keogh

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Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 08/16/2005

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This 1983 adaptation of the Stephen King horror novel is the anti-Beethoven, the story of a rabid St. Bernard that terrorizes a community, tears up a few folks, and goes after a woman and her son. Once the point has been made that big, lovable Cujo has been bitten by a rabid bat, there isn’t much more to say. The film is essentially a linear progression of doggy violence, though director Lewis Teague (The Jewel of the Nile)–building on King’s implication that we all know what it’s like to be afraid of a big, scary pooch–succeeds at making the fear almost primitive for an audience. –Tom Keogh

Amazon.com Review
In the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers, Gary Westfahl predicts that “King has already earned himself a place in the history of literature…. At the very least, he will enjoy the status of a latter-day Anthony Trollope, an author respected for his popularity and social commentary…. More likely, he will be enshrined as the Charles Dickens of the late 20th century, the writer who perfectly reflected, encapsulated, and expressed the characteristic concerns of his era.”

If any of King’s novels exemplifies his skill at portraying the concerns of his generation, it’s The Dead Zone (1979). Although it contains a horrific subplot about a serial killer, it isn’t strictly a horror novel. It’s the story of an unassuming high school teacher, an Everyman, who suffers a gap in time–like a Rip Van Winkle who blacks out during the years 1970-75–and thus becomes acutely conscious of the way that American society is rapidly changing. He wakes up as well with a gap in his brain, the “dead zone” of the title. The zone gives him crippling headaches, but also grants him second sight, a talent he doesn’t want and is reluctant to use. The crux of the novel concerns whether he will use that talent to alter the course of history.

The Dead Zone is a tight, well-crafted book. When asked in 1983 which of his novels so far was “the best,” Stephen King answered, “The one that I think works the best is Dead Zone. It’s the one that [has] the most story.” –Fiona Webster

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John Smith awakens from an interminable coma with an accursed power-the power to see the future and the terrible fate awaiting mankind in…the dead zone.

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Movie DVD

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This terrifying adaptation of Stephen King’s bestselling horror novel was directed by shock maestro Brian De Palma for maximum, no-holds-barred effect. Sissy Spacek stars as Carrie White, the beleaguered daughter of a religious kook (Piper Laurie) and a social outcast tormented by her cruel, insensitive classmates. When her rage turns into telekinetic powers, however, school’s out in every sense of the word. De Palma’s horrific climax in a school gym lingers forever in the memory, though the film is also built upon Spacek’s remarkable performance and Piper Laurie’s outlandishly creepy one. John Travolta has a small part as a thug, De Palma’s future wife, Nancy Allen, is his girlfriend, and Amy Irving makes her screen debut as one of the girls giving Carrie a hard time. –Tom Keogh

Amazon.com essential video
This terrifying adaptation of Stephen King’s bestselling horror novel was directed by shock maestro Brian De Palma for maximum, no-holds-barred effect. Sissy Spacek stars as Carrie White, the beleaguered daughter of a religious kook (Piper Laurie) and a social outcast tormented by her cruel, insensitive classmates. When her rage turns into telekinetic powers, however, school’s out in every sense of the word. De Palma’s horrific climax in a school gym lingers forever in the memory, though the film is also built upon Spacek’s remarkable performance and Piper Laurie’s outlandishly creepy one. John Travolta has a small part as a thug, De Palma’s future wife, Nancy Allen, is his girlfriend, and Amy Irving makes her screen debut as one of the girls giving Carrie a hard time. –Tom Keogh

Amazon.com essential video
This terrifying adaptation of Stephen King’s bestselling horror novel was directed by shock maestro Brian De Palma for maximum, no-holds-barred effect. Sissy Spacek stars as Carrie White, the beleaguered daughter of a religious kook (Piper Laurie) and a social outcast tormented by her cruel, insensitive classmates. When her rage turns into telekinetic powers, however, school’s out in every sense of the word. De Palma’s horrific climax in a school gym lingers forever in the memory, though the film is also built upon Spacek’s remarkable performance and Piper Laurie’s outlandishly creepy one. John Travolta has a small part as a thug, De Palma’s future wife, Nancy Allen, is his girlfriend, and Amy Irving makes her screen debut as one of the girls giving Carrie a hard time. –Tom Keogh

Product Description
Movie DVD

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Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is less an adaptation of Stephen King’s bestselling horror novel than a complete reimagining of it from the inside out. In King’s book, the Overlook Hotel is a haunted place that takes possession of its off-season caretaker and provokes him to murderous rage against his wife and young son. Kubrick’s movie is an existential Road Runner cartoon (his steadicam scurrying through the hotel’s labyrinthine hallways), in which the cavernously empty spaces inside the Overlook mirror the emptiness in the soul of the blocked writer, who’s settled in for a long winter’s hibernation. As many have pointed out, King’s protagonist goes mad, but Kubrick’s Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is Looney Tunes from the moment we meet him–all arching eyebrows and mischievous grin. (Both Nicholson and Shelley Duvall reach new levels of hysteria in their performances, driven to extremes by the director’s fanatical demands for take after take after take.) The Shining is terrifying–but not in the way fans of the novel might expect. When it was redone as a TV miniseries (reportedly because of King’s dissatisfaction with the Kubrick film), the famous topiary-animal attack (which was deemed impossible to film in 1980) was there–but the deeper horror was lost. Kubrick’s The Shining gets under your skin and chills your bones; it stays with you, inhabits you, haunts you. And there’s no place to hide… –Jim Emerson

Amazon.com
Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is less an adaptation of Stephen King’s bestselling horror novel than a complete reimagining of it from the inside out. In King’s book, the Overlook Hotel is a haunted place that takes possession of its off-season caretaker and provokes him to murderous rage against his wife and young son. Kubrick’s movie is an existential Road Runner cartoon (his steadicam scurrying through the hotel’s labyrinthine hallways), in which the cavernously empty spaces inside the Overlook mirror the emptiness in the soul of the blocked writer, who’s settled in for a long winter’s hibernation. As many have pointed out, King’s protagonist goes mad, but Kubrick’s Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is Looney Tunes from the moment we meet him–all arching eyebrows and mischievous grin. (Both Nicholson and Shelley Duvall reach new levels of hysteria in their performances, driven to extremes by the director’s fanatical demands for take after take after take.) The Shining is terrifying–but not in the way fans of the novel might expect. When it was redone as a TV miniseries (reportedly because of King’s dissatisfaction with the Kubrick film), the famous topiary-animal attack (which was deemed impossible to film in 1980) was there–but the deeper horror was lost. Kubrick’s The Shining gets under your skin and chills your bones; it stays with you, inhabits you, haunts you. And there’s no place to hide… –Jim Emerson

Amazon.com Review
More of a mystery than a horror novel, Dolores Claiborne contains only the briefest glances at the supernatural. The novel presents Stephen King as a writer experimenting with style and narrative, time and perspective. Fans looking for a skin-crawling, page-turning fright or an undead bloodbath will be disappointed, but a patient reader willing to savor King’s leisurely study of character and island life will find many rewards. And all of this is not to say that the book is without suspense.

The story unfolds in one continuous chapter, told in the first person by the cranky, 65-year-old housekeeper, Dolores, who is explaining to police officers and a stenographer how and why she killed her husband, Joe, 30 years ago. At the same time, in her rambling monologue, she insists that she did not kill her longtime employer, Vera Donovan–notwithstanding what the residents of Little Tall Island may be whispering. Joe was a drinker, and, as Dolores gradually argues, he deserved to die for the horrifying crimes he committed against his family. But Vera, despite her cantankerous disposition as a lady governing her decaying estate with her precise rules about even the most mundane household chore (“Six pins! Remember to use six pins! Don’t you let the wind blow my good sheets down to the corner of the yard!”), was a good woman–or at least not an evil one. She was the woman who hired the young Dolores and kept her on even after Dolores got pregnant again. Dolores cleaned and cared for her even as the old matron faded into senility.

Dolores Claiborne is a rich novel that recalls the regionalist writing of the turn of the century. It is a fine place for a skeptical newcomer–put off by King’s reputation for outright terror–to start. And for fans, it is a book that offers new insights into an author who’s an old favorite. –Patrick O’Kelley

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The inspiration for the film starring Kathy Bates and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Amazon.com essential video
This terrifying adaptation of Stephen King’s bestselling horror novel was directed by shock maestro Brian De Palma for maximum, no-holds-barred effect. Sissy Spacek stars as Carrie White, the beleaguered daughter of a religious kook (Piper Laurie) and a social outcast tormented by her cruel, insensitive classmates. When her rage turns into telekinetic powers, however, school’s out in every sense of the word. De Palma’s horrific climax in a school gym lingers forever in the memory, though the film is also built upon Spacek’s remarkable performance and Piper Laurie’s outlandishly creepy one. John Travolta has a small part as a thug, De Palma’s future wife, Nancy Allen, is his girlfriend, and Amy Irving makes her screen debut as one of the girls giving Carrie a hard time. –Tom Keogh

Amazon.com
This 1983 adaptation of the Stephen King horror novel is the anti-Beethoven, the story of a rabid St. Bernard that terrorizes a community, tears up a few folks, and goes after a woman and her son. Once the point has been made that big, lovable Cujo has been bitten by a rabid bat, there isn’t much more to say. The film is essentially a linear progression of doggy violence, though director Lewis Teague (The Jewel of the Nile)–building on King’s implication that we all know what it’s like to be afraid of a big, scary pooch–succeeds at making the fear almost primitive for an audience. –Tom Keogh