“You can’t do much better”: the British horror movies Stephen King loves the most
Despite being born, raised, and continuing to reside in Maine, Stephen King is an aficionado of horror from all over the world, even if his home state has served as the backdrop to the vast majority of his work.
He has broadened his horizons on occasion, though, even if The Shining and Misery unfolding in Colorado is hardly an exotic location vastly different from his typical setting. Of course, that doesn’t mean his worldview is restricted solely to American tales of terror, with a couple of British classics being among his all-time favourites.
While it’s never been as splashy or visceral as the fare to have emerged from the United States during the genre’s ongoing evolution, what spooky stories unfurling in the United Kingdom have always done very well is creating an eerie, unsettling, and unnerving sense of atmosphere. This is something that’s intrinsic to the pair King singled out for special praise.
“Although it’s old school, I love Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon, a pretty wonderful adaptation of M.R. James’s story, Casting the Runes,” he explained to the British Film Institute. “Tourneur was a disciple of Val Lewton, which means the horror here is pretty understated until the very end.”
It may not have been a runaway hit at the time of its original release in 1957, but these days, Night of the Demon is well-established as one of the greatest and most influential horrors ever made. Director Tourneur became a master of the genre in his own right, with the screws gradually tightening on Dana Andrews’ John Holden as his jaunt to London puts him in the midst of a demonic conspiracy.
King’s second pick clearly influenced his own writings, whether intentionally or not. His 1977 short story Children of the Corn revolves around dead-eyed children with unexplainable powers, and its nomenclature is very similar to a British-backed classic.
“You can’t do much better than Village of the Damned, directed by Wolf Rilla and – like Night of the Demon – shot in beautiful black and white,” he said. “It’s an adaptation of The Midwich Cuckoos, by John Wyndham, and George Sanders does a stellar job as the schoolmaster tasked with teaching some very strange pupils.”
It’s probably not a coincidence that the titles King picked out also happen to be literary adaptations because he’s an author who knows a thing or two about having their bibliography picked clean by the vultures of the studio system. There have admittedly been some excellent movies derived from his back catalogue, but there have also been more than a few stinkers.
Night of the Demon and Village of the Damned are undoubtedly among the very best horrors to emerge from the UK during a long and storied association with the genre, with King hardly in the minority by naming them as two of the nation’s finest.
