Where Horror Lives
Happy Father’s Day! It’s time to wrap that tie or finish painting the clever “Dad Rocks” on a rock. Today, we celebrate all those hardworking fathers who threaten to ‘turn this car around right now’ and play catch with you in the backyard. For this edition of The Chopping Block, I take a look at […]
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Five years after Creepshow’s moderate success, George A. Romero and Stephen King reunited to bring us Creepshow 2. For this go-around of the horror anthology, Michael Gornick replaced Romero behind the camera. Fortunately, Romero still penned the screenplay, and King’s work served as the source material. But the end result still looked like a bit […]
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And so the Stephen King renaissance continues. Though there’s been the odd misstep, Gerald’s Game and the It remake reminded us how much we missed Stephen King horror movies. Aside from the next chapter of It, Pet Sematary has been one of the more hotly anticipated King adaptations. Yet questionable marketing decisions and lukewarm critical […]
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Stephen King week continues here with another blast from the past. Though it wouldn’t be accurate to characterize The Dead Zone as underrated, this 1983 film adaptation has maybe been forgotten in the shuffle of all the Hollywood treatments of King’s work. But it’s David Cronenberg and Stephen King and Christopher Walken. That’s a lot […]
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Vampires are a horror staple. They have been since Bela Lugosi brought Dracula to life in the Universal Monsters classic. So of course horror’s undisputed master would have to pen a vampire story, right? In fact, Salem’s Lot was Stephen King’s second major novel. Four years after King published it, horror maverick Tobe Hooper adapted […]
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Just days away from Pet Sematary’s opening, I continue my ‘Stephen King’ week with another ‘smaller’ film adaptation. Though it was only a modest box office and critical success, Cujo has built a cult following. Mention the word ‘Cujo’ and even non-horror fans know what you mean. But how well does this low-budget ‘Killer St […]
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We’re one week away from the Pet Sematary remake hitting theatres. The remake arrives in the midst of a much appreciated Stephen King revival. With It, Gerald’s Game, and last summer’s Castle Rock series, we’re once again embracing the ‘King of Horror’. A minor, forgotten adaptation of King’s work, Silver Bullet was one of several […]
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Vampires, werewolves, zombies, clowns …. and middle-school kids. Almost an entire subgenre of horror itself, ‘creepy kid’ movies have been kicking around since The Bad Seed in 1956. Not surprisingly, ‘Master of Horror’ Stephen King has penned his fair share of terrible tykes. In 1984, King adapted short story, Children of the Corn from his […]
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Carrie is a horror classic and a standout from the 1970’s, one of the genre’s best decades. No one was asking for a sequel, especially over 20 years later. With no Stephen King, no Brian De Palma, The Rage: Carrie 2 flopped. Critics hated it, audiences ignored it. But after 20 years since its release, […]
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This will likely be an unpopular opinion. I’m not a fan of the 1990 It mini-series. Aside from Tim Curry’s performance as Pennywise, I thought It was a miscast and watered down version of Stephen King’s novel. Last fall, I wrote a piece about Stephen King film adaptations that would benefit from a remake. Without […]
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