Back in 1992, Stephen King released Gerald's Game, a novel about a traumatized woman named Jessie Burlingame who finds herself alone in a cabin, handcuffed to the headboard of a bed, with only her past and current traumas to keep her company. If she's going to survive this, she's going to have to listen to her inner voice and confront a past trauma that could very well hold the key to her freedom.
What if your cell phone turned you into a zombie? Okay, that's probably already the case, but I mean a real honest to God zombie? That's the premise of Stephen King's 2006 novel and its questionable, shoddy, and rather unpleasant 2016 adaptation starring the usually dependable John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson.
One of Stephen King's early forays into fantasy was 1982's The Talisman, which he co-wrote with celebrated genre author Peter Straub. The story focuses on a young boy who embarks on a cross-country (and cross-reality) quest to save his dying mother by obtaining a magical talisman that could very well cure his mother and save a parallel world also at risk of falling apart.
This episode is sponsored by A24 as they build up to the July 28 release of the fantastic Talk To Me, which is about a particularly grotesque party game involving a severed hand that can open the door to the afterlife. Naturally, things don't go very well when this happens and the result is one of the scariest, most fun horror movies of the year, coming soon to a theater near you. More info can be found here: https://a24films.com/films/talk-to-me...
The Stand is Stephen King's epic tale of morality and survival set against the backdrop of a global pandemic that damn near wipes out the entire human race. Good and evil fight over the scraps of humanity in one of King's earliest masterpieces.
A devilish figure arrives in the small town of Castle Rock and he offers items to the townsfolk in exchange for an escalating series of pranks that could very well rip the town apart. Stephen King's Needful Things is an epic book that is darkly funny and also unflinching in its examination of the rot that festers at the heart of small town America.
Stephen King's delicately constructed tale of an innocent man on death row was a phenomenon upon its serialized publication in 1996 and was then adapted into an Oscar-winning movie by The Shawshank Redemption's Frank Darabont in 1999.
That bad, bad OG corn boy Isaac has done returned and there's hell to pay in this inexplicable fifth sequel to 1984's Children of the Corn. Oddly enough, this 1999 film barely features either children or corn, but what we do get is a middle aged religious zealot and a bunch of late '90s teenagers making a ruckus in a small town.
Once upon a time there were two titans of horror named George A. Romero and Stephen King. These masters joined forces to make a horror movie and the results of that was an anthology movie with roots going back to the horror comics of their youth. And thus Creepshow was born.
Night Shift is Stephen King's first collection of short stories and contains some of King's meanest writing. Almost every single one of these stories were first published in nudie magazines before King became famous and he wrote to his audience. That doesn't mean they're not sophisticated in the own right, but he definitely leans into sex, gore, and brutal Twilight Zone-ish twists.
The Jaunt is quite possibly Stephen King's scariest story, all about the perils of ignoring safety protocols while using teleportation technology. While the episode only clocks in at just over an hour and fifteen minutes, it's longer than you think.
When a heroin-smuggling doctor gets stranded on a tiny rocky outcropping in the middle of the ocean he must decide just how far he's willing to go to survive. This Stephen King short story, which can be found in Skeleton Crew, is one of the maestro's goriest tales as the doctor loses his mind and body piece by piece.
Stand By Me is a formative movie for both hosts of this show and every time it comes up the episode tends to be a banger and today's episode is no exception.
Danse Macabre was Stephen King's first non-fiction publication. Released originally in 1981, this tome promised to cover the history and impact of horror fiction from 1950-1980, but with King at the wheel the scope was widened significantly as he couldn't help but fold in the works of Stoker, Shelley, Lovecraft and many others.
Stephen King was such a big fan of The X-Files that he asked to write an episode. The result is Chinga, this weird monster-of-the-week entry that aired during the show's fifth season about a little girl, her (maybe?) witch mother, and an evil doll that makes people hurt themselves.
Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is a controversial entry in the Stephen King adaptation discussion. Some, including King himself, think it strays too far from the book while others hold it up as a classic of the genre.
The Dead Zone is the tale of a mild-mannered school teacher who wakes up from a long coma and comes to find out he has psychic powers. These gifts turn out to be anything but welcome to Johnny Smith, who can't help but try to use them for good no matter the personal cost to himself.
A mild-mannered handyman becomes obsessed with collecting pieces of the Mangler and rebuilds it in his attic. One night... well, it kinda eats him and then replaces him with a doppleganger whose only goal is find more victims, feed them to the Mangler and drink the blood slurry that comes out.
Christmas Mangler melds together a ton of King references into a movie that can only be described as the pinnacle of elevated horror. Perhaps this is why it seemingly disappeared upon release, but The Kingcast boys have uncovered it and beat all other Stephen King podcasts to this incredible discovery in yet another Kingcast Exclusive.
The day has finally come for The Kingcast to take a look at the infamous Simpsons parody of The Shining from 1994's Treehouse of Horror episode. The Shinning packs so many jokes and spot on references into around 7 minutes that we were able to fill nearly 2 hours talking about it!
The Lawnmower Man is the timeless classic about murder chimps, gratuitous VR sex scenes and Pierce Brosnan's earring that was so faithful to the original Stephen King short story that the author sued the film to get his name taken off of it.
Set in the futuristic world of 2017 where man is hunted for entertainment while the world crumbles into a dystopia, The Running Man stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as the everyman Ben Richards who is forced to compete for his very life against the most insane group of killers you could imagine.
Stephen King's On Writing is part memoir, part grammar lesson, and part inspiration. Who better to learn the ins and outs of basic writing from than the master of horror? And he does so in such a folksy, down to earth way that it never feels like homework. Follow the hosts on Twitter: @ScottWamplerRIP and @EricVespe Follow our guests on Twitter: @BeckandWoods
There are so many more Children of the Corn movies than you think there are. The Kingcast is already up to Part 5 and the movies are still in the late '90s. Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror follows a bunch of twentysomethings playing college kids on a road trip to scatter the ashes of their dead friend when they stumble upon a small town concealing, you guessed it, a weird youthful corn cult. This installment inexplicably stars Eva Mendes, David Carradine, Fred Williamson and at least tw...
The topic once again turns to 11.22.63, Stephen King's epic time travel story in which an average every day teacher is recruited to travel back in time to stop JFK's assassination. It's a tricky thing, messing with time. Turns out the timestream doesn't want to be tinkered with and all sort of weird things happen to our hapless protagonist as he investigates Oswald and a good many of the conspiracy theories before time runs out.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is a somewhat overlooked King book about a young girl who gets lost in the Maine wilderness and must survive the elements and maybe even a cruel minor deity in the form of a savage bear as she either stumbles upon rescue or dies trying. A dyed-in-the-wool Red Sox fan, our young protagonist starts imaging her idol, Red Sox's closer, Tom Gordon, is there with her giving her advice along her journey.
The Mist is one of the best Stephen King stories and Frank Darabont made a hell of an adaptation. Both are up for discussion in this week's episode. Also, make sure you head over to Fangoria to cast your ballot for the 2023 Chainsaw Awards (aka the Oscars but with way cooler movies up for awards) by going to https://www.fangoria.com/voting/
Stephen King's The End of the Whole Mess is a slightly different take on the apocalypse from his previous massive entry, The Stand. Here, we're wiped out by the good intentions of a scientist seeking world peace and that he does, but at a pretty dire cost.
Today's episode is brought to you by Blumhouse Productions' There's Something Wrong With The Children ( https://www.blumhouse.com/tv ) currently available on digital and digital on demand. The topic of this week's show is Cujo. This story of a lovable family dog that turns rabid and tortures a poor mother and her young son in a tiny Ford Pinto holds up very well and today we dive into why we think that is.
Back in 1992, Mary Lambert followed up her popular adaptation of Stephen King's Pet Sematary with a sequel that is flat out bonkers. Tonal shifts that are so abrupt you'll get whiplash, an already checked out tweenage Eddie Furlong in the lead, a totally confused Anthony Edwards in the kindly dad role, bizarre sex dreams involving naked women with dog heads and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
