The Films of Stephen King: From Carrie to Secret Window

by Tony Magistrale

Over seventy-five films have been made based either on Stephen King narratives or screen/teleplay scripts that King himself authored, yet this body of work has received very little scholarly attention. An original collection of essays assembled on the cinematic adaptations of Stephen King and written by experts in cinema, television, and cultural studies, this work examines the most important films from the King canon, from Carrie to The Shining to The Shawshank Redemption . Focusing on the most intriguing aspects of these movies--race, gender, technology--this rich collection draws conclusions on their socio-political relevance in contemporary society. ***With updated material on 1408 , The Mist , and more!

260 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2011

About the author

Tony Magistrale is the author of three books of poetry: What She Says About Love, winner of the 2007 Bordighera Poetry Prize, which was published as a bilingual edition in 2008; The Last Soldiers of Love (Literary Laundry Press, 2012); and Entanglements (Fomite Press, 2013). His poems have appeared in Green Mountains Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He is professor of English at the University of Vermont.

Over the past two decades, Magistrale's twenty-plus books and many articles have covered a broad area of interests. He has published on the writing process, international study abroad, and his own poetry. But the majority of his books and articles have centered on defining and tracing Anglo-American Gothicism, from its origins in eighteenth-century romanticism to its contemporary manifestations in popular culture, particularly in the work of Stephen King. He has published three separate interviews with Stephen King, and from 2005-09 Magistrale served as a research assistant to Mr. King. Accordingly, a dozen of his scholarly books and many published journal articles have illuminated the genre's narrative themes, psychological and social contexts, and historical development.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most intriguing piece of this collection of critical essays on Stephen King films was Michael A. Arnzen's "Tonka Terrors" on Maximum Overdrive. One for giving some good perspective on the faults of that slogger of a movie, but also begging the question of how King translates so well to film by looking at one of the failures...and a failure by the author himself, which of course presents the notion that King's success lies in part in the hands of others, but not wholly, as it isn't just any writer who has collected such a grand collection of directors, actors and the efforts of others to make such at times magnificent films. While this collection doesn't explore that top in in depth, tending to note differences between story and film rather than why and why it is necessary to do so, Tony Magistrale's choices, including his own contribution, bring us perspective as to how feminization is the saving grace of Shawshank, sneakers prove central to Stand by Me and the social hierarchy of Carrie.