Stephen King’s Two Worst Books Both Received Adaptations

Stephen King has become somewhat famous for his contribution to horror literature. Thanks to a long series of terrifying (and often, terrifyingly long) novels, King has become a genre unto himself, authoring tales like “Carrie,” “Christine,” “It,” “Pet Sematary,” “The Stand,” “The Dead Zone,” “Firestarter,” “Cujo,” “Misery,” and dozens of others. He often tells tales of alcoholic authors (something he admits he can relate to) or other not-entirely-redeemable protagonists dealing with supernatural evil in one for or another. King is widely beloved for his storytelling acumen, and his dogged pursuit of his own unusual interests. For the most part, horror is where his heart has lived, and he still writes ghost stories and tales of regret to this day. 

But perhaps King should stay far away from science fiction. When the antagonist of a Stephen King story is a malevolent spirit, a killer dog, a demonic living corpse, or a child-eating clown, he is in his wheelhouse. When the antagonist is a being from beyond the stars, he starts to flounder. Indeed, when one thinks of Pennywise from “It” as a supernatural creature, it’s an interesting story. When one considers the character’s oblique origin as a minor, Lovecraftian space deity, the story instantly becomes stupid. 

And no two novels in King’s bibliography are stupider than 1987’s “The Tommyknockers” and 2001’s “Dreamcatcher.” Both are about invading aliens, and both are possessed of nonsensical premises. Indeed, the latter feels like a whacked-out drug trip, and it because King was hopped up on painkillers when he wrote it (he was recovering from a terrible van accident).

Long ago, filmmakers agreed that every single Stephen King story should be adapted to film or television — there are about 60 films and TV adaptations based on King’s work — so even stinkers like “The Tommyknockers” and “Dreamcatcher” were granted screen treatment. 

Perhaps predictably, the adaptations aren’t very good either. 

In 1993, “The Tommyknockers” aired on ABC as a three-hour miniseries. It starred Jimmy Smits as a recovering alcoholic writer (natch), and Marg Helgenberger as a non-drinking writer. It also starred Robert Carradine, E.G. Marshall, Cliff DeYoung, and Traci Lords. The plot followed the two leads as they discover an unusual plinth out in the woods. As they begin to dig around it, it emits a strange gas that wafts into the nearby town and immediately begins altering the townsfolk. They become psychic and intelligent and start building advances machines out of household items. Naturally, the plinth extends down into the ground and connects to a long-buried alien spacecraft. The craft is powered by psychic energy, and requires a very specific kind of brain to reactivate. 

It will later be revealed that the townsfolk are physically transforming into the aliens that once inhabited the craft. Humans are becoming smarter, but also sickly and less ethical; they have no qualms about experimenting on their dogs or, in the case of the Traci Lords character, constructing vaporizing devices out of their lipstick tubes. 

The premise of “The Tommyknockers” is fine for a 70-minute feature film, perhaps, but can definitely not maintain tension for a 180-minute miniseries. It’s slow, hokey, and bland. It seems that the screenwriters wanted to include every last detail of King’s 558-page novel, but didn’t ask themselves why that was necessary. It also doesn’t help that the special effects are undeniably cheap, with a lot of fake-looking green animated glow. Smits and Helgenberger hold their own, but even old pros like Marshall seem out of their element. In the book, most everyone dies at the end, but the miniseries lets almost everyone live. It’s a dumb happy ending for a clunky, rushed TV project. 

“The Tommyknockers,” however, isn’t nearly as bad as Lawrence Kasdan’s high-end failure “Dreamcatcher.” According to the special features on the “Dreamcatcher” DVD, King — recovering from his accident — wanted to write a story about breaking taboos. His thought was that every bedroom taboo had been explored, and that the bathroom should be next. It was a place, he figured, where one might be examining their bodies and/or health closely, and not liking what they find. As such, there’s a scene in “Dreamcatcher” where a character has trapped a carnivorous alien eel in a toilet, and has to sit on the lid to keep it trapped. With that image in his mind — a man trapped on the toilet — King began writing his story. 

The story is odd and all-over-the-place. “Dreamcatcher” begins with four adult friends (Thomas Jane, Damian Lewis, Jason Lee, Timothy Olyphant) who annually meet at a cabin in the woods to honor their friend Duddits (Donnie Wahlberg). The four friends have psychic powers and can read other people’s minds. Flashback reveal that Duddits, a mentally disadvantaged boy, gave them those powers when they were all young. Oh yes, and an alien spacecraft has recently crashed nearby, and it has unleashed vicious eels into the wild. 

Also, a humanoid alien takes possession of the Damien Lewis character, mysteriously giving him a British accent. He fights the alien in a psychic dreamspace known as his “Memory Warehouse” throughout the movie. To top it all off, the aliens reproduced by feeding their eggs to other lifeforms, and they are born when they’re pooped out their host’s butts. I did not make that up.

Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore play the “X-Files”-like military tasked with finding the alien craft and blowing it up, adding a weirdly aggressive subplot to an already-muddled movie. They nickname the aliens s***weasels. 

“Dreamcatcher” was made by very talented people, so it’s a wonder why it’s so assertively awful. It received terrible reviews, and barely broke even at the box office. Perhaps we need to rethink our habits of adapting every single Stephen King story to the big screen. Sometimes, he doesn’t rule.