14 Stephen King Movies That Are So Bad They're Good

One has to give King a lot of credit for being willing to take risks, and this includes being willing to both write and direct his own film. The result of his efforts is Maximum Overdrive, which is the very definition of so bad it’s good. After all, this is a film featuring machines coming to life and terrorizing people as a result of a comet passing over the Earth.

The campy tone might have worked on its own, but the film shows all the signs of someone not knowing exactly how to shift from being a writer of fiction into being a director. Its ham-handedness and general amateurish quality as a production are fun in their own right, however, and it’s also a genuine pleasure to see King learning about what it takes to make a movie (even if he never did so again). 

Based on a king novel published under the pen name Richard Bachman, The Running Man stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards, a policeman who is falsely convicted and ultimately appears on a reality TV show on which convicts are hunted down for the amusement of audiences. The film has a certain pulpy quality which is of a piece with much of Schwarzenegger’s films of the period, and it’s precisely its excess and its cheesiness that make it such a pleasure to watch. It’s almost as if The Hunger Games was made with a uniquely 1980s aesthetic.

Needful Things is one of the lesser-known King novels, and its film adaptation is even more largely forgotten. This is a shame, because while it’s definitely a bad film, it’s also an ambitious one. Max von Sydow, who was always willing to appear in even subpar horror films, is chilling as Leland Gaunt, the owner of an antique store who is far more than he appears.

Needful Things never quite outruns its subpar elements, particularly the fact that it essentially sounds the same notes over and over again. It's also an almost painfully cynical and pessimistic movie,  which makes it rather an outlier when it comes to most of King’s work, which tends to have at least some ray of light at the ending.

Children of the Corn is a King film that manages to be somehow both truly disturbing and utterly ridiculous. The plot follows a couple who stumble into a town inhabited by children who sacrifice adults to a being known as He Who Walks Behind the Rows. It might have a happier ending than King’s original novel, but it still has its fair share of scares. At the same time, it’s a very silly film, but this is all part of the fun. When it comes to King adaptations, particularly the bad ones, it’s always the absurdity which gives it the extra bit of pleasure. 

Throughout his career King has had a recurring interest in young people who have marvelous but highly dangerous powers, and Firestarter belongs in this group of stories. The 1984 adaptation of his novel of the same name is undeniably bad, with a flat quality which it never quite manages to overcome. Even so, there are things which are quite enjoyable about this movie, including the fact it stars a young Drew Barrymore as Charlie McGee.

The real standout in the cast, however, is George C. Scott, who plays the assassin John Rainbird. Scott never met a piece of scenery he could not devour, and this film is no exception. Even when the rest of the film flags, he more than makes up for it.

Not every author would be brave enough to write a book about a killer St. Bernard, but if anyone could do it, it would be King. The movie version definitely leans into the suspense and horror of it all, though it does end far more happily than the book. Even though Cujo tends to take itself seriously, it can never quite get away from its inherently silly premise. This is precisely what makes it such an enduringly pleasurable movie to watch. It demonstrates the extent to which the comic and the tragic are often inextricably intertwined.