Focus on Stephen King

With the 50th anniversary of Carrie just around the corner, retrace five decades of cinema drawn from the twisted imagination of writer Stephen King.

There’s the story of the prom queen pushed to breaking point, the axe-wielding maniac running amok in the empty hotel, and, of course, the one about the killer clown lurking in the stormwater drain.

For five decades, the novels and short stories of Stephen King have lived a double life on our TV and cinema screens. King’s imagination has consistently attracted a cavalcade of some of the finest directors to work in horror: Stanley Kubrick, John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Tobe Hooper – some lured to horror for the first time like a child to a red balloon.

A lesser-known fact about King is his support for independent filmmaking. Early on in his writing career, King began allowing film students and emerging filmmakers to purchase non-exclusive rights to adapt his short stories for one dollar – these films are known as his “dollar-babies”. No one really knows how many dollar babies are out there, inflating even further the list of Stephen King film adaptations, already standing at over 400 works.

With Halloween looming, join us in the cinema as we experience the nightmares that have jumped off the pages of Stephen King’s books and onto our screens.

Reece Goodwin, Curator (Film & TV)