Stephen King fans have never liked Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining and King agrees wholeheartedly. In the TCM documentary A Night at the Movies: The Horrors of Stephen King, the bestselling author describes the fundamental emotional and metaphysical distance between himself and the acclaimed filmmaker: King is warm and Kubrick is cold; King believes in hell, but not Kubrick.
The Horrors of Stephen King, directed by Laurent Bouzereau, is drawn from a lengthy interview in which the author roams across the horror movie genre, offering knowledgeable opinions on everything from Nosferatu to Freddie Krueger. His tastes are wide, almost catholic, but he reserves special fondness for black and white and the implied, shadowy menace of films such as Cat People. What's unseen is often scarier than what's plainly visible. Most of his opinions are entirely sensible: Terror resides in the mind while horror represents a visceral, emotional response. According to King, the visceral is what horror fans crave, yet the best of the genre also prompts the fan to think. He identifies horror's recurrent themes as the idea that death is not the end, evil is real and nightmares can cross into the waking world. At bottom, the genre is driven by fear, but offers the possibility of catharsis and triumph.
King cites many of his favorite films, including little known gems like George C. Scott's The Changeling. He found The Blair Witch Project so scary that he turned it off. His favorite? The original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, whose horror resides in waking up to a dehumanized world.
The Horrors of Stephen King airs 7 p.m., Oct. 3 on TCM
