Screening Stephen King: Adaptation and the Horror Genre in Film and Television

By Simon Brown

“Gathers together the unruly mess of King adaptations . . . And places it within the sociocultural and industrial context of four decades of horror.” —Philip L. Simpson, author of Psycho Paths
 
Starting from the premise that Stephen King has transcended ideas of authorship to become his own literary, cinematic, and televisual brand, Screening Stephen King explores the impact and legacy of over forty years of King film and television adaptations.
 
Simon Brown first examines the reasons for King’s literary success and then, starting with Brian De Palma’s Carrie, explores how King’s themes and style have been adapted for the big and small screens. He looks at mainstream multiplex horror adaptations from Cujo to Cell, low-budget DVD horror films such as The Mangler and Children of the Corn franchises, non-horror films, including Stand by Me and The Shawshank Redemption, and TV works from Salem’s Lot to Under the Dome. Through this discussion, Brown identifies what a Stephen King film or series is or has been, how these works have influenced film and TV horror, and what these influences reveal about the shifting preoccupations and industrial contexts of the post-1960s horror genre in film and TV.
 
“Well-written . . . It really is the most exhaustive analysis of Stephen King on the screen that has ever been written.” —Cinepunx
 
“This book is not only essential as a study of Stephen King and his works adapted to the big and small screen; it is also an exemplary study of the evolution of the horror genre in its ebb and flow from literary adaptation to gore-laden saturation and beyond since the mid-1970s.” —Sorcha Ní Fhlainn, author of Postmodern Vampires

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781477314944

Simon Brown

Simon Brown was a design engineer until he became interested in Eastern therapies and philosophies. He is a highly regarded practioner of ‘Feng Shui’ as well as a best-selling author.

Book preview

SCREENING STEPHEN KING

Adaptation and the Horror Genre in Film and Television

SIMON BROWN

University of Texas Press

AUSTIN

All box-office figures in this book are from www.boxofficemojo.com.

Copyright © 2018 by the University of Texas Press

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First edition, 2018

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Brown, Simon (Simon David), author.

Title: Screening Stephen King : adaptation and the horror genre in film and television / Simon Brown.

Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Filmography.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017037706

ISBN 978-1-4773-1491-3 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4773-1492-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4773-1493-7 (library e-book)

ISBN 9781477314937 (nonlibrary e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: King, Stephen, 1947—Criticism and interpretation. | King, Stephen, 1947—Film adaptations. | King, Stephen, 1947—Television adaptations. | American fiction—20th century—Film adaptations. | Horror films—United States—History and criticism. | Horror television programs—United States—History and criticism. | Motion pictures—United States—History and criticism.

Classification: LCC PS3561.I483 Z6223 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017037706

doi:10.7560/314913

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1. Mainstream Horror and Brand Stephen King

CHAPTER 2. Stephen King from Vietnam to Reagan: The Early Adaptations and the Establishment of Brand Stephen King on the Screen

CHAPTER 3. The Mainstream Adaptations, 1986–2007

CHAPTER 4. Stephen King as Low-Budget and Straight-to-DVD Horror

CHAPTER 5. Stephen King as TV Horror

CONCLUSION. The Future Is Also History: The Contemporary Evolution of Brand Stephen King

SELECTED TV AND FILMOGRAPHY

REFERENCES

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THIS BOOK HAS BEEN TWO YEARS IN THE WRITING, BUT thirty-four years in the making. I’ve been a Constant Reader of King since first reading Christine in 1983, and over the following years, I have acquired first editions of all his books. I’ve also seen most of the adaptations, although in preparing for this book, I realized I’d missed a few. King has been my companion for more than three decades, and I am delighted to have finally acquired the knowledge, skills, and opportunity to say something about him in print.

A lot of people have helped me in this task. First, I’d like to offer a very big thank you to Desiree Butterfield-Nagy and the staff of the Fogler Library at the University of Maine in Orono, for making the Stephen King collection available and for making me so welcome. I’d also like to thank Jim Burr at the University of Texas Press for taking a chance on this book. I am delighted my work has found a home there. I’d also like to thank all the staff at the BFI Reuben Library who, as usual, have been extremely helpful. They run a collection the quality of which is unparalleled. Special thanks also go to Hannah Priest for her extraordinary help and support.

I’ve been encouraged on this project along the way by a lot of good and smart people, and I’d particularly like to thank Regina Hansen, Erin Giannini, Sorcha ní Fhlainn, Matthew Pateman, Rebecca Williams, Catherine Spooner, and Bethan Jones for being my kind of academics: interested, supportive, fiercely smart, and ego free. It’s a perfect way to be in this life.

Finally, I have as always to thank my family: my dogs, Max and Lily, and my wife, Stacey. Stacey is my Tabitha. She reads all my stuff before anyone else and knows instinctively if it works. She’s talked through ideas on our daily walks and sat through a large number of King adaptations. (I spared her some of the really bad ones. I’ll let you decide for yourself what they are.) A far better scholar than I can ever hope to be, she inspires me every day to be the best academic and man I can be. If there’s any good in this book, it is Stacey’s passion for excellence that’s behind it. If there are any problems, I guarantee she saw them and I screwed up the revisions.

Stacey, Max, and Lily make life worthwhile every day and everything I write is for them. But in this case it’s only right that I formally dedicate this book to its subject, the man who has made me laugh, cry (Rest in Peace, Arnie. I love you, man still gets me every time), and, occasionally, frightened me a little bit, for more than thirty years. So this book is dedicated to Stephen King, my Constant Author.

Hile, wordslinger. Long days and pleasant nights.

INTRODUCTION

I write for only two reasons: to please myself and to please others.

STEPHEN KING, THE STAND

AT THE TIME OF THIS WRITING IN JANUARY 2017, STEPHEN King has published forty-nine novels (plus seven as Richard Bachman), eleven short story or novella collections, eight nonfiction books, one original screenplay, and a number of eBooks and limited editions. In addition, his work has so far spawned thirty-eight theatrical films adapted from his writing (along with a number of sequels that, besides their connection to the original feature, have nothing to do with King), and twenty small-screen adaptations, encompassing TV movies, miniseries, episodes within anthologies, and three long-running dramas. Excluding sequels, there have therefore been fifty-eight adaptations of his work since Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976). These adaptations span both the big and small screen, over a period of more than forty years. In addition, King has written four original screenplays for film or TV.

Almost all these adaptations are connected to the horror genre in some way, although not all are horror. In some cases, the connection comes through the content—for example, storylines and/or visuals that draw upon existing tropes of the genre, such as supernatural elements (the haunted house in The Shining, 1980 and 1997, or vampires in Salem’s Lot, 1979 and 2004); imagery showing the abject body or the body in disarray (The Dead Zone, 1983; Children of the Corn, 1984); or the use of a genre-specific visual style, as in Carrie. The connections to horror can also be extratextual via a director associated with the genre—such as John Carpenter (Christine, 1983), David Cronenberg (The Dead Zone), and Mick Garris (Sleepwalkers, 1992; The Stand, 1994; plus others)—or even the extent to which the adaptations are discussed in magazines specifically devoted to horror, such as Fangoria or The Dark Side. For many of the films, the categorization as horror comes not just from the film itself but also through marketing that emphasizes an association with King as a horror writer, tying the films to the genre sometimes regardless of content. Another type of film, such as Stand by Me (1986), The Running Man (1987), and The Shawshank Redemption (1994), is specifically not horror, containing few horror tropes in the content and also shunning any references to King’s name in the publicity. These films thus avoid ties to horror through that association. Nevertheless, in light of the sheer number of films and TV programs based on his work, alongside the fact that the majority of these are linked to horror and span a period of more than forty years, King offers a rich and fascinating case study of one author’s work being adapted within or around a single genre and across a variety of media with differing industrial and cultural contexts over a considerable period of time.

The aim of this book is to present such a study in order to examine the relationship that these King adaptations have had to the horror genre and to assess the impact of these works on the genre in film and on TV since the mid-1970s. For the purposes of my argument, I approach the concept of horror not from a philosophical position (for such an analysis, see, for example, Carroll 1990, Jancovich 1992, and Hills 2005), but rather in genre terms as a series of cinematic, televisual, and literary conventions that together identify an individual piece of work—be it film, book, or TV show—as belonging to the horror genre as it is defined within its respective medium. As James Naremore has pointed out, a genre not only consists of a series of textual artifacts, but is also a discourse . . . helping to shape commercial strategies and aesthetic ideologies (1995–1996, 14). In other words, the horror genre is defined not only by what is found in the films/books/TV shows attributed to it, but also by the ways in which these texts are marketed to and talked about and consumed by society at large. This is particularly relevant to Stephen King since his works are defined as horror as much by the manner in which they have been promoted as by the intention of King’s narratives. While there is no doubt that many of his novels and short stories use elements of the supernatural or contain scenes of violence, many others do not and yet still fall under the banner of works by the so-called master of the macabre. In this book, I use horror as a genre concept that encompasses either texts that evidence engagement with established generic tropes or those that are discussed and defined as horror through marketing and/or critical discourses.

Over the years, the film and TV projects taken from King’s stories have inspired a forest of printed commentary, mainly in film magazines and fanzines, but also in some scholarly works, notably those by Michael R. Collings (2006), Tony Magistrale (2003, 2012), and Mark Browning (2009, 2011). However, these adaptations have rarely been considered in the broader context of the horror genre and, more often than not, are principally related either to other King adaptations or to the original literary works. In addition, the majority of these discussions of the film and TV works have originated not in film and TV studies, but in literature. Collings and Magistrale are primarily literature scholars, making Browning one of the few film academics to date who have addressed King’s work on the big and small screen.

The reasons for this seem obvious. King’s ability to transcend the apparent perception of literary horror as a niche market to achieve significant mainstream popularity has prompted a handful of literature specialists—like Magistrale, Collings, and also Gary Hoppenstand and Ray B. Browne (1987)—to take his work seriously, associating King with the recognized tradition of American Gothic writing alongside the likes of Edgar Allen Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Some of these scholars have explored both his body of work and the films taken from it. Both Magistrale and Collings, for example, have written books about King and his literature in addition to the films.

In contrast, the adaptations have failed to rouse similar interest among film and TV academics. This may be due to the variable quality of the works. As we shall see, some have been hailed by critics and audiences as classics of American cinema (The Shining, The Shawshank Redemption), others as poor examples not just of the horror genre, but also of film or TV in general (Maximum Overdrive, 1986; Kingdom Hospital, 2004). As Don Herron suggests, King is hot stuff in B. Dalton, Crown and Waldenbooks, but his name doesn’t mean much to that larger audience of horror-moviegoers, who would rather see Freddy Krueger than Stephen King (1988, 224). While a negative critical and audience reaction does not preclude any film from serious study, the perceived lack of quality across this oeuvre does mean that it has not stood as a useful starting point for discussions of the horror genre, which has itself been deemed, at times, barely worthy of critical acknowledgment. Robin Wood refers to the horror film as one of the most popular and, at the same time, the most disreputable of Hollywood genres (1986, 77), while Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton say that horror cinema in general remains reviled by moral majorities, eschewed by policymakers, and dismissed by critics (2011, 202). Philip Simpson agrees, stating that the horror genre is regarded with deep suspicion by many social commentators and critics who proclaim themselves to be guardians of the public morality (2011, 42).

Furthermore, the films and TV projects adapted from King’s work are often atypical of the horror genre. This is mainly due to the fact that as a horror writer and, more importantly, as a horror brand, King is, above all, a popular author whose books regularly make, and for the most part top, lists of best-selling books in both hardcover and paperback. His work is primarily of mass-market appeal, and his best-seller status is seemingly at odds with a perception of the horror genre as niche, especially in cinematic and television terms. Mathijs and Sexton, for example, explore the horror genre through the concepts of cult and fandom, ideas that lean toward specific subcategories of the cinematic horror market, and King’s very popularity precludes the adaptations of his work from such discussions. He may work in a niche genre, but in trying to tap into the market represented by his huge number of Constant Readers, the adapted works are arguably too popularist to be beloved by horror audiences or taken seriously by horror critics. Tony Magistrale suggests that perhaps King’s extraordinary popular reputation has spilled over to defray efforts to treat these films as serious works of cinematic art (2012, 5), and I would argue that this same popularity has also affected their being considered as serious works of cinematic and televisual horror.

As a result, few of the vast number of books exploring the cinematic and televisual horror genres make more than passing mention of King adaptations. Mark Jancovich offers a rare case study, and even he does not specifically discuss the relationship of King adaptations to the film/TV horror genres. Rather, he more generally considers King’s significance as a proliferator of horror conventions to a wide audience before delving into King’s thematic preoccupations (1992, 98–104). Barry Keith Grant’s two volumes on horror, The Dread of Difference and Planks of Reason (1996a and b) barely mention King adaptations, except for an analysis of The Shining (1996b, 93–94). Gregory Waller in his introduction to American Horrors refers only generally to what he calls the spate of King adaptations as being indicative of a movement among Hollywood studios in the 1970s and 1980s to turn to horror literature for inspiration (1987a, 10). In his cultural history of horror, David J. Skal devotes several pages to King’s novels and also to the Broadway version of Carrie, but only one page to the films, which he merely describes as having a jinx-like aura, highlighting the general sense that these films have a poor reputation (1993, 366).

This dearth of serious critical analysis of adapted King works also extends to adaptation studies, where his name barely appears, despite the fact that the majority of films and shows are adaptations, some relatively faithful (The Dead Zone; Firestarter, 1984; The Green Mile, 1999), others so altered as to be barely recognizable (The Running Man, The Lawnmower Man, 1992). Forrest Wickman used writer credits in IMDb to produce a list of the most adapted authors of all time; King tied with Georges Simenon at eighteenth (2011). King is the only living author in the top twenty-four, yet important works on adaptation by the likes of Brian McFarlane (1996), James Naremore (2000), Robert Stam (2005), Linda Hutcheon (2006), and Simone Murray (2012) rarely mention King, and when they do, it is, as in the case with Barry Keith Grant, almost exclusively in relation to Stanley Kubrick’s film of The Shining.

Arguably, this is because that film is famous for the way in which it digressed from King’s original text. However, I would also suggest that the involvement of Kubrick, an acknowledged film auteur and subject of many serious scholarly works (see, for example, Falsetto 2001 and Pezzotta 2013) means that The Shining is one of the few King films that has a mark of highbrow cinematic quality about it. The absence of King in adaptation studies therefore can be linked to the poor reputation of the film and TV versions of his work, but also to King’s popularity as a best-selling author. Robert Stam suggests that scholarship around adaptation has, for many years, evidenced a form of class prejudice by focusing on what he calls a profoundly moralistic discourse (2005, 3) in which the perception of cinema is tarnished by its association with its lower class origins in ‘vulgar’ spectacles like side-shows and carnivals (7). Stam argues that this leads to a view of film versions of literary texts as being inevitably ‘dumbed down’ versions of their source novels designed to gratify an audience lacking in what Bourdieu calls ‘cultural capital,’ an audience which prefers the cotton candy of entertainment to the gourmet delights of literature (7). Yet, for all that Stam challenges such prejudice, the absence of King in his work and that of others suggests that a certain class consciousness remains in that so few academics writing about adaptation have, to date, given serious attention either to King films or, indeed, to genre-based adaptations generally. Compared to the gourmet delights of Shakespeare and Dickens, King’s popularity and his connection to horror mark him as being part of the cotton candy of entertainment.

This is particularly clear when one considers that the adaptations discussed in the works mentioned above include Don Quixote, Great Expectations, and Lolita (Stam); Death in Venice, A Passage to India, Ulysses, and The Luck of Barry Lyndon (Hutcheon); The Scarlet Letter, Daisy Miller, Great Expectations (again), and Cape Fear (McFarlane); and finally, David Copperfield and Emma (Naremore). Clearly, these texts stem from canonical or celebrated works by the likes of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Thomas Mann, E. M. Forster, James Joyce, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Miguel de Cervantes, and Vladimir Nabokov, tying into this notion of gourmet delights, but the implicit prejudices within these studies go deeper. Not only are these works by celebrated authors, but also they were largely filmed by celebrated directors, including Kubrick (in more than one case), Luchino Visconti, and David Lean. Therefore, both the original sources and the adaptations bear a mark of quality—one that, with the exception of The Shining, is generally considered absent in relation to both King’s books and the works taken from them.

The result is a situation in which King adaptations have fallen between disciplines, too popularist for the majority of scholars within literature, film, TV, and adaptation studies. Hence, when serious critical attention is given to King adaptations, it appears in books specifically about the adaptations. These books discuss the films or TV works primarily as texts, removing them from wider contextual discussions around the horror genre and the industry. Only Lorna Jowett and Stacey Abbott (2013) place King’s works within a broader context, that of TV horror. Beyond that, when the film and TV versions are written about in any substantial way, they tend to be almost exclusively decontextualized in favor of a text-based comparison of the preoccupations of specific films. For example, Magistrale (2003) and Browning (2009) group their case studies of King adaptations together thematically. In the chapter Maternal Archetypes, Magistrale discusses Cujo (1983), Misery (1990), and Dolores Claiborne (1995), and in Technologies of Fright, he explores, among others, Christine, Maximum Overdrive, and The Mangler (1995). Browning similarly includes a chapter on Misery, The Dark Half (1993), and Secret Window (2004), all films in which the key character is a writer, and another on Carrie, Firestarter, The Dead Zone, and The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999), all films that feature telekinesis.

Both authors use these chapters to explore some of the differences between the films and the source material but mainly to identify and examine the ideas in King’s work. These are, first and foremost, themes from the original stories, not necessarily the films, and so much of what is discussed could just as viably have been drawn from analyzing the books alone. What links Christine, Maximum Overdrive, and The Mangler is indeed an emphasis on technology run wild, but while Maximum Overdrive is relatively faithful to King’s story, having been both written and directed by King, Christine departs considerably from his approach to technological critique by presenting the eponymous car as being inherently evil, rather than possessed by its former owner. In this respect, the film connects much more closely to the thematic concerns of director John Carpenter than to King’s original concept. The same can be said for The Mangler, which also features significant changes to the short story and with which King had more involvement than with Christine, but less than with Maximum Overdrive. To examine the three films together therefore prioritizes King’s preoccupations over those of the films themselves, telling us more about his original work than about the cinematic versions. As Carl Sederholm has noted in reference to the pop-up book adaptation of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (2004), King had to remove himself from the process of producing this version and allow multiple figures to take on the role of Stephen King (2015, 156). The same is true for film and TV, but in this case, it could be writers, directors, producers, and even the approach of the studio itself.

Therefore, organizing a discussion based on King’s own preoccupations precludes the broader contextual analysis required by these multiple Stephen Kings and offers few opportunities for discussing wider issues raised by the concept of The Films of Stephen King. Maximum Overdrive was produced outside Hollywood in Wilmington, North Carolina, by Italian impresario Dino De Laurentiis, while The Mangler was a low-budget US/Australia/South African co-production. Christine meanwhile was a big-budget movie from Columbia Pictures. Not only were all three films financed and shot under different circumstances, they were also conceived as different types of product aimed at different audiences. The Mangler as directed by Tobe Hooper emphasized strong violence and gore and was aimed more at horror fans and the home-viewing market. Christine was a more expensive studio project designed to appeal to general cinema audiences. Maximum Overdrive occupied a middle ground, being given a wide cinematic release yet also made with one eye on home video revenues. In addition, these films also emerged at different moments within the ebb and flow of the cinematic horror genre and of King’s reputation within it. Christine was released in December 1983, at the peak of the first wave of King adaptations on the big screen. Maximum Overdrive came at the end of this first wave and its lack of critical and financial success effectively ended the cycle, while The Mangler was part of an emerging movement in the 1990s toward low-budget, direct-to-video horror films. By comparing these very disparate projects to each other, we learn a little about Stephen King. By looking at them within the broader context of the horror genre however, we can learn more about the genre itself—about its audiences, its themes, and its industrial imperatives—and also about how King was perceived within the film and TV horror genre at any given time.

Another clue to the lack of serious analysis of King adaptations can be found in the fact that these books can be very different in character. For example, in 1986, Michael R. Collings authored a book titled The Films of Stephen King, analyzing the film versions of King’s work to that date. Organized chronologically, the book includes chapters on Carrie, Salem’s Lot (1979), The Shining, Creepshow (1982), Cujo, The Dead Zone, Christine, Children of the Corn, Firestarter, Cat’s Eye (1985), and Silver Bullet (1985). In 1993, Ann Lloyd published an identically titled, also chronological book. Eschewing Collings’s scholarly analysis, Lloyd’s coffee-table book takes the reader through the canon, film by film, offering glossy stills, production background, basic commentary, and sourced quotes from King about each title.

Neither publication, one devoted to analysis and the other to often-gory stills and making of stories, makes any real reference to broader considerations of the horror genre. They straddle a divide between the scholarly and the mainstream, between academia and fandom. Their very different approaches reflect the fact that while King has attracted a certain level of serious scholarship, he is also a popular, mainstream author whose stated aim is primarily to entertain the everyday reading public, linking back to Magistrale’s idea that King is too popular to be taken seriously in literary terms and especially in relation to cinema. King himself has not helped in this regard. He has been openly skeptical of what he describes as academic bullshit (King 1981b, 268), a clear example of which comes from one of his few engagements with critical analysis, his endorsement on the front cover of Landscape of Fear: Stephen King’s American Gothic by Tony Magistrale:

Tony has helped me improve my reputation from ink-stained wretch popular novelist to ink-stained wretch popular novelist with occasional flashes of muddy insight. (1988)

King is not denigrating Magistrale’s book; indeed, Magistrale remains one of the few academic writers on King with whom King will engage, even offering an interview for Magistrale’s book Hollywood’s Stephen King (2003).

Instead, this endorsement reflects King’s self-deprecating discomfort with his work being subjected to such examination. The origins of this attitude appear to lie in his well-documented, poverty-stricken background and blue-collar roots, which are inextricably linked to his desire to simply tell entertaining tales. As Don Herron notes, King wears the working-man’s cap of a guy who says he’s just trying to write a good story for his readers to enjoy (1985, 28). King’s biographer, Lisa Rogak, recounts a story told by Magistrale, an English professor at the University of Vermont, about a paper he presented at a conference in 1984 on King’s Children of the Corn from Night Shift (1978). Magistrale described the short story as an allegory for Vietnam. He recounts that King told me there was no way in hell he intended that story to be an allegory for Vietnam. . . . To me, there were so many things that stood out in that story: the guy was a medic from Vietnam, kids were getting killed at eighteen, the land had become tainted and polluted. . . . Steve didn’t concede my point, but we just chalked it up and laughed (Rogak 2009, 136).

King’s denial of an allegorical element to his work is illustrative of his general attitude toward scholarship. This stance is evident in some of the examples he brings to his exploration of the horror genre, Danse Macabre (1981). Discussing Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers (1955), King acknowledges the accepted view that the story is a metaphor for communism, but then quotes Finney who says, I have read explanations of the ‘meaning’ of this story, which amuse me, because there’s no meaning at all (King 1981b, 290). King agrees, saying that Finney "comes away sounding the most right. The Body Snatchers is just a good story (291). Throughout his book, King reiterates this idea that a story is just a story and is scathing of critical analysis, noting that I really believe that [there are] critics who would feel vastly more comfortable if Moby Dick [1851] were a doctoral thesis on cetology rather than an account of what happened on the Pequod’s final voyage. A doctoral thesis is what a million student papers have reduced this tale to, but the story still remains—’This is what happened to Ishmael’ (292). King dismisses the idea of reading deep meanings into simple doings (290), suggesting that a great number of the people who are sitting at the long and groaning table of graduate studies in English are cutting a lot of invisible steaks and roasts" (292).

This attitude is further illustrated in a short essay, "How It Happened," written in 1986 and published in Secret Windows (2000c). King writes that the idea for his novel IT (1986) came to him while he was walking across a small wooden bridge and thinking about The Three Billy Goats Gruff:

I decided that the bridge was some sort of symbol—a point of passing. The idea of any sort of symbol scared me: made me feel that I was getting above my station. . . . In [a] second idea I sensed something worse than a symbol; I sensed a THEME, and this made me nervous. I’m not a bright novelist. . . . If I wrote a book with a conscious theme I would end with a bunch of sound and fury. I’m a storyteller; my virtues are honesty, good intent, and the ability to entertain people of my own level of intellect. (2000c, 322)

King portrays himself as a determined popularist who would much rather his books be devoured by his Constant Readers than be dissected in postgraduate seminars and would himself rather scour the supermarket paperback racks than the philosophy section of Barnes & Noble.

Cinematically speaking, King’s love of the straightforward extends to his taste in horror films. While he can see the value of a well-made film, he is keen to point out the dubious merits of the low-budget monster movie, The Boogens (1981). In a review quoted by Collings, King says, "It isn’t a message movie disguised as a horror movie (Wolfen), not some intellectual director’s attempt to ‘rise above the genre’ (Ghost Story, The Shining). . . . It’s—gasp—an ‘old-fashioned pretty good low budget’ horror movie (2006, 18). He then goes on to describe it as fun, dammit, fun (26). King likes what he describes as the horror film as junk food, noting that once you’ve seen enough horror films, you begin to get a taste for really shitty movies" (1981b, 195).

Yet, for all he may bluster against pretension in Danse Macabre, he does so in a book that is primarily an analysis of horror and in which his chapter on the horror film as junk food follows one in which he analyzes horror films as, among other things, social and political allegory. In the same book where he supports Finney’s assertion that The Body Snatchers is just a good yarn, he also says that Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man (1956) can be read simply enough as a great adventure story . . . [but] on a more thoughtful level, it is a short novel which deals in a thought-provoking way with concepts of power—power lost and power found (323). He then goes on to analyze this theme for the next seven pages.

It is important to note that King was an English major (stating that he slung enough bullshit to fertilize most of East Texas) who, while still