Without a word of hyperbole, there are roughly two dozen adaptations of the Stephen King back catalogue in various stages of development and production, with movies and TV shows based on the legendary author’s work every bit as prolific as the man himself.
While the consistency has always been questionable – with the constant mining of his bibliography throwing up just as many all-time classics as it has irredeemable duds – it had to start somewhere. To give you an indication of just how long Hollywood has been suckling on the King teat, it’s been 47 whole years since one of his books became the first to make the jump to live-action.
Setting the bar incredibly high – so high in fact that very few have been able to match it ever since – Brian De Palma’s stone-cold classic Carrie became a critical, commercial, and cultural phenomenon that immediately made its mark on the zeitgeist. Looking back fondly, King was happy to take a trip down memory lane to the very first time he saw it in motion.
Of course, Carrie was ultimately given a substandard remake as any recognizable horror property and/or King adaptation is wont to do, but it goes without saying that it wasn’t a patch on the original. These days, audiences take tales of terror derived from his mountainous list of previous tomes for granted, which is fair enough when there’s so damn many of them, but only a scant few have ever proven themselves capable of matching Carrie in terms of nothing but quality.