The Films of Stephen King: From Carrie to Secret Window

by Tony Magistrale

The Films of Stephen King is the first collection of essays assembled on the cinematic adaptations of Stephen King. The individual chapters, written by cinema, television, and cultural studies scholars, examine the most important films from the King canon, from Carrie to The Shining to The Shawshank Redemption.

260 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 2008

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

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just received my contributor's copy for this ACADEMIC anthology of film criticism on films based on King's works (my article is on the humor-horror of Maximum Overdrive) and I've been voraciously reading it like crazy. I like the coverage in this book, and it really touches on all sorts of King's films that haven't gotten much treatment before. Indeed, as the book makes clear, King has had more adaptations of his work done than virtually anyone (over 75 King films have been made!) and yet little attention has been paid to them.

The takes on these movies are pretty original -- like Findlay's essay that discusses Misery as a "prison film" rather than a suspense feature, or Blouin's piece on the Communist Myth in The Shining. Magistrale's article on Shawshank Redemption is the most insightful piece here, I think, and I learned a great deal from Kelly's article on Carrie and Dolan's article on Dolores Claiborne. Indeed, the feminist essays in here might be the best; there are also two very strong articles on the role of the "magical negro" in King's films (like The Green Mile, obviously).

I would have liked more discussion of The Shining and the short-story films, like Creepshow. Otherwise, this is a great book, and a good companion to Magistrale's "Stephen King's Hollywood" which is similar in nature. I suspect this will be an anthology that ends up getting cited a lot in the future.