Stephen King names his most overlooked movie adaptation: “It went straight down the toilet”
Stephen King has had more of his books and stories adapted into movies than any other living author. Part of the reason for this is that he has written a staggering amount over the past five decades – nearly 70 novels and 200 short stories, and counting. But another reason is that his work practically leaps from the page, for better or worse. Most of his readers have been plagued with nightmares at some point, whether about the family pet turning into a rampaging killer, the neighbours turning into vampires, or killer clowns lurking in the sewers.
There have been nearly a hundred adaptations of King’s work over the years, from the ones he sanctioned and helped bring to fruition to the ones he had no involvement with to the ones he agreed to but ended up hating. Some have won Oscars. Some have won cult followings. And some have been so widely panned that they threatened to tarnish the author’s reputation regardless of how little input he had into them.
How you feel about these various adaptations will depend on how much of an avid fan you are of the source material. Cinephiles will almost certainly list Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining in their top three, even though King and his readers point to the glaring deviations from the book. People who love the author and cinema might point to Carrie as the greatest of them all. And for those who agree with King on all fronts, it’ll be the non-horror movies – Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption – that stand the test of time.
Given how many adaptations there are, plenty of decent ones have fallen through the cracks. The 2007 supernatural thriller 1408 is a chilling, agreeably hokey supernatural thriller with star power behind it. 2017’s Gerald’s Game is a remarkably tight thriller featuring a stunning central performance by Carla Gugino, which King identified as some of the best acting in any of his movies. However, when it comes to the ones that have truly slid under the radar, the author has some thoughts.
In the book Stephen King at the Movies, King is quoted as saying, “Cat’s Eye is another movie that I like a lot; I think it’s a good movie, witty and stylish.” For whatever reason, however, the audience didn’t turn out. “You talk to people about it and they say, ‘Oh, was that any good? I never saw it,'” King said. “Well, nobody in America saw it, it went straight down the toilet.”
Released in 1985, Cat’s Eye was an early adaptation of King’s work and one of the few with which he had direct involvement. It’s based on three short stories – Quitters, Inc; The Ledge; and General – all connected and told through the eyes of a stray cat.
Considering it came out after the dual craze of Carrie and The Shining, there was no reason why there wasn’t more hype around it. The reviews were almost uniformly excellent, but it only made $13million at the box office. Perhaps audiences weren’t interested in an anthology movie. Maybe they didn’t like the idea of mixing comedy and horror. Whatever the reason, it never broke through and is now in the perfect position to become a King-approved cult classic.
