STEPHEN KING’S FIVE WORST WORKS
A fudge-flavored listicle
In addition to being America’s most successful writer of the modern era, Stephen King is its most prolific. The master of suspense and horror for the past half of a century, King has written, or been responsible for, a hundred stone cold classics in novels, film, and television, many of them stories of common, blue-collar hard-working bestselling authors who just happen to be thrown into extraordinary situations.
However, he has also been responsible for some stinkers. Here then is a celebration of King’s five worst works:
5. “Jury Duty” (short story) (1992)
Barry Garibaldi is your average working class New Englander who just published his seventh novel in a series about a lawyer-turned-detective who wins cases by solving them. When Garibaldi ends up sequestered in a case where a sports hero is accused of murdering his wife, the evidence against the athlete seems pretty straightforward.
However, he overhears the athlete in the elevator tell his attorney that if he’s found guilty, everyone on the jury dies. Now in his spare time, Garibaldi has to fabricate and plant evidence to prove the athlete innocent.
4. Professor Know-It-All (novel) (2007)
The protagonist of this 1400-page novel is John; no last name ever given, also the other two main characters are named Joan (his twin sister), and Father John (no relation). John works at the Castle Rock Community College as an adjunct professor, teaching a course called “The Mechanics of Writing Novels.”
John’s least-favorite student writes a well-received horror novel that accidentally contains real instructions on awakening an ancient God living underneath the town’s sewage treatment plant. Now John has to deal with this disrespectful young author who ignores all his sage advice while battling a menace that literally spews shit wherever it goes.
3. Late With My Coffee (episode of Tales from the Darkside) (1985)
In this 22-minute episode, Frank McHankprank is an insurance salesman who is celebrating the publication of his bestselling instructional book, Sell Like Your Life Depends on It. Unfortunately, most of the book was stolen from a never-finished manuscript by his mentor Stan O’Flanderhan, who gained his incredible sales abilities by making a deal with the Devil.
The entire episode takes place in real time at a diner booth as O’Flanderhan tricks McHankprank into signing a contract giving over his soul in exchange for Stan’s. The entire episode was also written in a diner booth in twenty-two minutes while King waited for his waitress to come with a refill of coffee.
2. The Basement is Flooded (miniseries) (1997)
A bestselling author of horror comics named Mike Prince wakes up one morning to find an evil eldritch witch has cursed him, breaking all the pipes in his basement. The Plumber, a shapeshifting demon, is the only being that can repair these pipes, but it’s going to cost him dearly.
The only way Prince can break the spell these evil creatures have on his basement is to spend the weekend delivering a four-episode miniseries to ABC in the hopes that they hand him enough sacks of cash that he can then burn them in a ceremony that will ward off all aquatic evil.
1. Maximum Overdrive (movie written and directed by King) (1986)
When a bestselling novelist accidentally becomes a Hollywood player by allowing his books to be turned into some of the greatest films of their era, he accidentally snorts an evil demon up his nose that convinces him that he should write and direct his own work into movie form himself.
It’s terrible, and also for what it is, it’s actually a lot of fun.