With Spooky Season about to hit its climax, television networks and premium channels around the digital world are stockpiling their schedules with scary movie marathons and specials. Coupled with some of the classics though are, for lack of a better term, the duds of the genre. And horror icon Stephen King had no problem pointing them out.
The best-selling author and vocal source for projects such as It and The Shining took to Twitter yesterday to poke fun at Starz for listing Seed of Chuck and Freddy vs. Jason as “Halloween classics” in their lineup. You can check out the tweet for yourself down below.
Among its “Halloween Classics,” STARZ lists SEED OF CHUCKY and FREDDY VS. JASON. Uh, no.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) October 24, 2019
While both films have their fans – as all of the worst installments of any film franchise do – I’m sure there aren’t a lot of people who would argue that Seed of Chucky and Freddy vs. Jason are the highlights of the Child’s Play, Friday the 13th, or Nightmare on Elm Street series. Though I don’t really know if I’m one to talk – as an avid fan of the Friday the 13th saga, I have a particularly fond opinion of both Jason X and Jason Takes Manhattan. But those are, for the most part, guilty pleasures.
A lot of the best adaptations of King’s work, however, are bonafide “Halloween classics.” Among The Shining and the Pennywise trio of onscreen appearances are Carrie (referring specifically to the 1976 version starring Sissy Spacek), Children of the Corn, as well as the two iterations of Pet Sematary – the most recent of which I was a big fan of.
But whatever the case may be, Stephen King‘s scary movies have a tendency to draw out a great lead performance. Among the best include Jack Nicholson, Bill Skarsgard and Tim Curry, and, for my money, Kathy Bates, who, in 1990’s Misery, personified and won an Oscar for her sledgehammer (haha) performance as the creepiest, most obsessed fanatic ever put to film.