East Carolinian

Issue date: 3/19/09 Section: Features

Media Credit: staff Photo

Stephen King fans and horror story lovers alike are sure to enjoy King's newest book, "Stephen King Goes to the Movies." The stories in this compilation have all been made into feature films. Spanning the timeline of King's earliest works of fiction to the most recent, the book includes "Children of the Corn (1972)," "The Mangler (1972)," "The Shawshank Redemption (1982)," "Hearts in Atlantis (1999)" and "1408 (2002)."

"Children of the Corn" is about unsupervised children who have developed a cult around a harvest god in a Nebraskan cornfield. The story was made into a movie starring Linda Hamilton ("The Terminator") as an unfortunate traveling adult who crosses paths with the children. Readers of this story might compare it to William Golding's "Lord of the Flies," a novel about children lost on an abandoned island who form separate mischievous cliques. The film version of "Children of the Corn" has since been followed by five sequels.

"The Mangler" is a little-known King thriller. Written about a real machine from his mother's laundry worker days, "The Mangler" was the name of a machine at a laundry washing facility. In the story, "The Mangler" machine is possessed by bad magic and kills unsuspecting victims. The film stars Robert Englund ("Strangeland," "Urban Legend") as one of the men who tries to exorcise the evil from the machine.

"The Shawshank Redemption" is a novella that chronicles the prison sentence of a man who is falsely accused of murdering his wife. The story details the hardships of prison life and contains prisoner relationships that are both admirable and sordid. The film version stars Tim Robbins ("Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny," "Anchorman") as the wrongfully accused and Morgan Freeman ("Seven," "Along Came a Spider") as his inmate friend and narrator.

"Hearts in Atlantis" is from King's novel of the same title about an 11-year-old boy named Bobby who is paid by his elderly neighbor to watch out for the mysterious threat of "low men in yellow coats." At first, the boy thinks that his neighbor is just crazy, but to his horror he discovers clues and sightings of the "low men" who want to harm his neighbor. "Hearts in Atlantis" is also a coming of age story. Bobby discovers that he has to act more like an adult every day while his struggling single mother detaches herself from him in pursuit of her career advancement. Anthony Hopkins ("Silence of the Lambs") stars as the neighbor in the film version.

"1408" is a short story about a skeptical paranormal book author who stays in the supposedly haunted room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel in New York. Even as the writer stands in front of the door of 1408, strange things begin to happen, but he thinks his eyes are playing tricks on him. When he actually goes inside the room, the haunting begins and the skeptic turns into a believer of supernatural activity. John Cusack ("Identity") plays the role of the writer who stays in room 1408 in the movie. The hotel owner is Samuel L. Jackson ("Pulp Fiction").

Before each story is an introduction by King, where he explains why he wrote the stories and also what he thought of their film adaptations.

The end of the book also includes a list of King's 10 favorite films from his own work. Two of the stories featured in "Stephen King Goes to the Movies" made the cut: "1408" and "The Shawshank Redemption."



This writer can be contacted at features@theeastcarolinian.com.

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