Carrie in 1974, iconic author Stephen King’s career as a bestselling author has stretched over decades and, despite the author’s advancing age, shows no sign of slowing down any time soon.
However, ever since King himself objected to Kubrick’s IT movies reignite interest in King’s output, leading to a slew of adaptations both new and remade.
However, one of King’s collections remains critically acclaimed but has barely birthed any major adaptations from its pages. The author’s Night Shift gave inspiration to everything from Children of the Corn to The Lawnmower Man, to The Mangler, to Graveyard Shift, to Maximum Overdrive, to Cat’s Eye, to TV’s Trucks and "Grey Matter" and Sometimes They Come Back. In contrast, though, the later collection Skeleton Crew has only spawned a comparatively paltry six adaptations all-in-all, despite the book's critical acclaim equalling that of its predecessor. However, despite this lack of adaptations, the '80s collection Skeleton Crew remains one of King’s best-loved works and arrived on bookshelves at the peak of the author's career. So, of the few Skeleton Crew short stories that have been adapted, which are King classics, and which of the titles that made it to the screen would have been best left on paper?
The Mist
While Skeleton Crew may not boast as many adaptations as Night Shift, it did result in one of the best Stephen King adaptations in the many movies of the writer’s work. The only Skeleton Crew story to be adapted twice, The Mist is a novella about a small town besieged by both religious zealotry and Lovecraftian beasts as the eponymous weather descends on the burg and leaves its inhabitants trapped in a supermarket. The original novella manages a tricky balancing act of making the monsters outside viscerally real (and really scary), while also making the religious mania that mounts inside as tangible and terrifying a threat, without one ever managing to eclipse the other. However, while it is a well-loved novella, the definitive version of The Mist is not the one included in Skeleton Crew.
The Shawshank Redemption director Frank Darabont’s movie adaptation of death scene rivals Dr. Sleep for pure bleak brutality. The Mist's movie coda changes the novella’s ambiguous ending into a viciously cruel twist that King himself itted he wished he came up with and thoroughly approved of, saying he preferred it to his ending for the story. While the movie was a hit with critics, The Mist flopped at the box office, while Netflix’s later, lesser TV adaptation of the same name reversed this fate, as it struggled with critics but found an audience for its two seasons.
The Raft
The tale of a killer sentient oil slick, "The Raft" is a surprisingly effective survival horror story that leaves a group of ill-fated college students stuck on the titular wooden structure when the lake surrounding them contains the aforementioned man-eating blob of goo. The tale was adapted into a segment from Creepshow 2 where it was directed by Michael Gornick, who replaced the director of the first film in the franchise (and King’s real-life friend) George A. Romero. The movie’s adaptation takes some liberties with King’s story, turning a consensual sexual encounter between the last two survivors into an uncomfortable assault scene and changing the story’s ambiguous, dark ending into a goofier, blackly comedic punchline, but of the adaptations made from Skeleton Crew, this is still one of the stronger, gorier, and more memorably scary page-to-screen stories.
Gramma
Adapted to TV by the '80s Relic.
Word Processor Of The Gods
The tale of a magical typewriter that writes a beleaguered hero’s unloving family out of existence, this fantasy story was adapted for TV by Tales From the Darkside. It’s a solid but unspectacular King outing, and the TV episode is a faithful adaptation that nonetheless picked one of the weaker stories to adapt from the stellar collection. While Tales From the Darkside makes the most of this simple tale, the premise of a typewriter that can change reality to suit the person wielding its power deserved better than King's surprisingly predictable story.
Survivor Type
For years, the gruesome tale of a plane crash survivor struggling to eke out an existence on a desert island before eventually turning to self-cannibalism was the lone King short story that most readers thought could never be adapted to film thanks to its gory content. However, Creepshow’s Halloween special.
The Jaunt
A sci-fi horror story, "The Jaunt" is currently being adapted by IT director/Pennywise redefiner Andy Muschietti. Not a lot is known about the adaptation, but the original story is a cautionary tale about the dangers of messing with technology. "The Jaunt" bounces between the invention of an experimental type of teleportation travel that can seriously screw up some s, and a young family taking the titular trip to another planet, only for one of them to keep their eyes open during the trip. This decision proves to be a fatal mistake with typically Stephen King consequences in a creepy but sparse story that will be difficult for the filmmakers to expand into feature-length.
