MOVIES: Let's pick on Stephen King

Inspired by this recent post and the comments on it, I thought I'd run down what I consider to be the best and worst of Stephen King. (Monty recently did something similar, comparing King movies to Saturday Night Live sketch-based movies.) I'll do his movies today, and maybe if I don't get bored with it, I'll do his books tomorrow.

I'm going to restrict myself only to his theatrically-released films. I mean, it's not too tough to figure out that the direct-to-video Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return most likely stinks to high heaven. No direct-to-video, no TV movies, no mini-series, no shorts (and man, there are a lot of them, for some reason). No Kingdom Hospital. (God, no.) Just his actually-saw-the-inside-of-a-movie-theater feature films.

The Great Ones

The Shining: "Wendy, darling, light of my life... I'm not gonna hurt ya... I'm just gonna bash your brains in."
Carrie
The Shawshank Redemption
Stand by Me

The Pretty Darn Good Ones -- On Any Scale

Secret Window
Hearts in Atlantis
The Green Mile
Misery
The Dead Zone: Walken and Cronenberg!

The Pretty Darn Good Ones -- For A Stephen King Movie

Creepshow
Christine
Pet Sematary

The Watchable Ones

Cat's Eye
Firestarter
Creepshow 2
The Rage: Carrie 2
Children of the Corn
Cujo

The Unwatchable Ones

The Running Man
Maximum Overdrive: Kickass AC/DC soundtrack -- you can listen to the movie, as long as you don't open your eyes.
Tales from the Darkside: The Movie: It hardly counts; I think only one segment is based on a King story. But aside from the novelty of seeing Christian Slater, Steve Buscemi, and Julianne Moore all in the same segment, it's pretty much 100% awful, so on the list it goes!

The Ones I Haven't Seen, But Which Might Not Be Half Bad, Because Of The Actors In Them

Apt Pupil: Ian McKellen.
Dolores Claiborne: Kathy Bates.
Needful Things: Ed Harris.
Thinner: Joe Mantegna.

The Ones I Haven't Seen, And Had Always Assumed Were Direct-To-Video, But Apparently Not, And Which It Is Probably Safe To Guess Are Horrible

Riding the Bullet
Night Flier
The Mangler
Graveyard Shift
Sleepwalkers
Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice

The One That King Sued To Have His Name Taken Off Of, Because It Had Nothing Whatsoever To Do With His Story Of The Same Name, And Which By The Way Sucked Pretty Hard

The Lawnmower Man

The Worst Stephen King Movie I've Ever Seen, Which Probably Makes It The Worst Movie Ever Made

The Dark Half

The One That Might Actually Be Even Worse, But Which I Will Never See, Because It's Based On A Book That Might Very Well Be The Worst THING Ever In The History Of The World (Yes, Even Worse Than Zombie Hitler)

Dreamcatcher