Stephen King On Screen (2023)

A new feature-length documentary about the screen adaptations of the works of Stephen King is getting a digital and Blu-ray release from Signature Entertainment. 

The film kicks off with a sequence whose intention is solely to incorporate as many references to King's work as possible (the end credits state 300!). King obsessives will doubtless have a lot of fun trying to spot them all while the casual viewer will wonder if they've rented the wrong film. Eventually, however, things settle down into what essentially consists of a series of interviews with directors and other technicians who have been involved with adapting King to the screen.

And that's the main criticism to be levelled at STEPHEN KING ON SCREEN, which is that there's zero in the way of analysis or criticism in here. A lot of movies made from Stephen King stories are pretty terrible and there would have been quite a bit to be made from an examination of exactly why. There's also pretty much zero about the challenge of adapting his work for a visual medium. 

Seasoned aficionados will find a fair bit to shout at the screen about - "Horror as a genre didn't really start until 1960 and PSYCHO" - well done Tom Holland. Controversial (and just plain wrong) comments such as these could (and should) have been trimmed as it wouldn't have affected the overall documentary.

Mainly, however, STEPHEN KING ON SCREEN feels like a lot of glued together 'making of' featurettes you might get on the DVD of a film, or for publicity purposes. It's great to have Frank Darabont talking at length about THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION or THE MIST, or Mike Flanagan talking about DOCTOR SLEEP and these segments are definitely worth watching. But the lack of a chronological walk through of King's movie adaptations, and especially an examination of the 'King explosion' of the early 1980s, would have been welcome. King's own contributions to the screen such as MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE and SLEEPWALKERS don't even warrant a mention. The overall result is a patchy affair that lacks a firm editorial hand and relies way too much on who was available for interview rather than trying to be something more in depth and comprehensive. 

STEPHEN KING ON SCREEN is out on from Signature Entertainment on Digital on Monday 26th June 2023 and Blu-ray on Monday 18th September 2023