Presented by Neon’s The Monkey, Bloody Disgusting is celebrating this weekend’s release of Osgood Perkins’ highly anticipated horror with Stephen King Week. Yesterday, Jenn Addams looked at the most bizarre deaths in Stephen King’s work, and today, Luiz H.C. provides us with a ranking of King’s made-for-TV originals.
You can’t be crowned the King of Horror by telling the same story over and over again. That’s why it makes sense that Stephen King has always been open to experimenting with new mediums throughout his six-decade-long career. From being one of the first major authors to publish an online-only e-book to infamously deciding to direct one of his big-screen adaptations himself, there’s a reason we still line up to read his constantly evolving work.
Of course, one of the author’s most prolific side-projects has been the art of writing engaging teleplays – and I’m not just talking about adaptations. You see, King has also tried his hand at some original storytelling meant exclusively for television screens – often with memorable results. With that in mind, we’ve decided to rank all of Stephen King’s Made-For-TV Originals, as not all of these horrific yarns are created equal.
For the purposes of this ranking, we’ll only be including stories that weren’t based on any of the author’s previous work, though additional material written for existing stories is permitted.
With that out of the way, don’t forget to comment below with your own personal ranking if you have a different one!
Now, onto the list…
7. The Circle Closes – The Stand (2020)
I don’t actually dislike CBS’s The Stand remake as much as some other critics. In fact, I subscribe to the conspiracy theory that the show was butchered in post-production due to the real-world pandemic that sabotaged its original release. Regardless, one of the adaptation’s selling points was the addition of a bonus episode written by Stephen King himself, which would serve as something of a canonical coda to his apocalyptic opus.
Unfortunately, this standalone tale about Frannie being tempted by Randall Flagg after becoming trapped at the bottom of a well simply doesn’t work as a satisfying epilogue for such an epic narrative. Not only that, but it also feels like way too little story to fill out an hour-long episode. While this isn’t necessarily bad television (especially when you consider that the series’ updated casting is mostly great), I don’t think The Circle Closes ranks among King’s best work.
6. Chinga – The X-Files (1998)
There’s no overstating the massive impact that Chris Carter’s The X-Files had on popular culture, so it was only a matter of time before the King of horror himself would express interest in providing the show with an added dose of supernatural terror. And while the possessed doll story Chinga was entertaining enough, behind-the-scenes friction resulted in King’s original script being revised to the point that it barely resembled what the writer had originally intended for Mulder and Scully.
As the episode’s director Kim Manners so earnestly put it: “The nuts and bolts were [King’s], but that was really one of Chris’ scripts.” So while Chinga remains a genuine highlight of the show, it wouldn’t be fair to rank it any higher among King’s made-for-TV output.
5. Kingdom Hospital (2004)
While this criminally underseen King project is technically based on an existing property, it still counts as a made-for-TV original because its teleplay is basically the author riffing on concepts teased by Lars Von Trier’s original The Kingdom. Telling the story of a seemingly cursed hospital and the people who work there, the show suffers from some overly vague threats and a disappointing lack of resolution, but there’s still plenty of fun to be had here if you’re into atmospheric mysteries.
From talking anteaters to secret societies, Kingdom Hospital is a strange watch, but it’s certainly never boring! I also appreciate the fact that it feels a lot like a non-comedic version of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace.
4. Sorry, Right Number – Tales from the Darkside (1983)
Tales From the Darkside may not get the same amount of attention as the other big anthology series of the ’80s, but it still boasts quite a few unique yarns. A great example of this is Stephen King’s fourth-season contribution to the show, a mind-bending thriller about death and telephones called Sorry, Right Number.
It’s not quite as horrific as some other memorable episodes, but it’s certainly a captivating tale of tragically looping timelines, with a script made even more impactful due to a memorable performance by Deborah Harmon. King actually liked this one so much that he later included the teleplay in Nightmares & Dreamscapes, even adding a foreword that serves as a guide for aspiring screenwriters.
3. Golden Years (1991)
Marketed as a “novel for television,” Golden Years is often cited by Stephen King as one of his personal favorite projects. Following a Janitor who survives a laboratory explosion only to realize that he now has a severe case of Benjamin Button syndrome, the show was a Twin-Peaks-inspired romp that also happened to tie into some of the author’s most popular books.
And while the original broadcast ended on a cliffhanger (as the showrunners fully expected there to be a second season), at least the home video release allowed us some amount of closure with its revised epilogue.
2. Storm of the Century (1999)
I have a huge soft spot for ABC’s Storm of the Century. Not only did it inspire huge portions of Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass (objectively his best work), but it also introduced me to King’s stories at a young age when I ran into its bulky two-VHS set at the local video store.
Following the chaos that ensues in a close-knit island community when a mysterious stranger comes to town ahead of a record-breaking blizzard, Storm of the Century is a must-watch for fans of atmospheric terror with a psychological twist. It’s also proof that “televised novels” are an incredibly versatile format that’s long overdue for a comeback in the streaming era.
1. Rose Red (2002)
Rose Red may wear its Shirley Jackson inspirations on its sleeve – and I’ll concede that it would have been much more effective with a proper cinematic budget – but I can’t help but love this spooky tale of parapsychology gone wrong.
From existential scares that would only really be rivalled with the release of The Haunting of Hill House decades later to a backstory rooted in alleged real-world phenomena (not to mention a lovable ensemble featuring the likes of Emily Deschanel, Melanie Lynskey and even Julian Sands), I can’t think of a single other original King project that deserves the number one spot in this ranking.
And here’s a fun fact: the miniseries was one of the first TV productions to make use of viral marketing and ARGs. The production team actually set up a realistic website for the fictional Beaumont University where fans could encounter eerily convincing supplemental material about the Rimbauer estate – with the whole thing being supervised by King himself.
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