For someone just getting into reading the works of Stephen King, I can imagine that the canon looks practically infinite. The man is not just one of the most beloved authors of the last half-century, but also one of the most prolific, and he has had at least one book published every year going back to the mid-1970s. It seems like an endless font, and his continuing work maintains that perception (his next book is coming out in the fall, and he has already lined up at least one title for release in 2027).
I can tell you from personal experience, however, that a terminus does exist, and having personally read every King novel except for one, I find myself feeling torn about how to proceed.
During what has admittedly been a slow week for Stephen King news, I thought I would use this new edition of The King Beat to meditate on this predicament (one I’m sure that other dedicated Constant Readers have faced), but that’s not all, as the last few days also saw the celebration of a notable anniversary: it’s been 40 years since the theatrical release of director Fritz Kiersch ’s Children Of The Corn. Without any further ado, let’s dig in!
Sleeping Beauties Is The Only Stephen King Novel I’ve Yet To Read, And I Don’t Know What To Do
I can trace my personal fanhood of Stephen King back to my childhood when I became entranced by TV airings of director Mary Lambert’s Pet Sematary and the IT miniseries, but I would say I took my Constant Readership to an extreme level about nine years ago. The King renaissance of 2017 – a year that saw the release of six new adaptations – ignited a greater appreciation of the author, and I made the decision to start reading more of his books. And then I started reading more. And more. And more.
But now, I have found myself facing a crisis in my fanhood. Counting shorter books like Cycle Of The Werewolf, In The Tall Grass, Elevation, and last year’s Hansel & Gretel, there are a total of 70 novels in Stephen King’s bibliography, and I have read 69 of them. With only one title remaining, I’m torn about how to proceed.
The book in question is 2017’s Sleeping Beauties, which King co-wrote with his son Owen King, and as for why it specifically is the only one in the canon I haven’t read, I don’t have an answer. Beyond series like the Mr. Mercedes trilogy, the Dark Tower cycle, The Shining/Doctor Sleep etc., I never really put much thought into reading order and just picked via gut. Last year, I ended up pulling both Duma Key and Insomnia off my bookshelf before diving into Never Flinch shortly after it arrived in stores… and now I just have Sleeping Beauties waiting for me.
The reasons to dive into it are probably obvious. There isn’t a single Stephen King book I haven’t had at least some fun reading; I’m interested in forming an opinion about it, as I feel it’s one of the least-discussed King novels; and I don’t relish starving my completionist instincts. By my own standards, those are all perfect excuses to just dive in… and yet, I hesitate and keep going outside the King canon to stall.
Knowing myself, I’m going to devour Other Worlds Than These and The End Times when they are respectively released later this year and in early 2027, but do I really want to have no other King novels to read once I am done with those? Is saying that I have read every single one worth the eventual day when the experience of being transported by a new King story is no longer possible? I have wrestled with those two questions, and thus far, it’s kept my copy of Sleeping Beauties on the shelf.
There is something special and oh so ephemeral about experiencing art from your favorite artist for the first time, and in the case of Stephen King, I don’t know if I’m ready to exhaust one of my last opportunities for that feeling yet. I’ve been going back and forth internally with this conflict for months… and even after writing this piece, I can’t say I feel any closer to a conclusion.
Children Of The Corn: Looking Back On 40 Years Of One Of The Weirdest Stephen King Legacies
I can imagine any author having trepidations about Hollywood – worried about other creatives handling, manipulating and changing their work without their consent – but the history of Stephen King on screen can be viewed as a kind of best case scenario. Two years after his first novel was published, it was brought to life by one of the most respected filmmakers of the era (Brian De Palma), and the seven years that followed saw six more great adaptations, five of which were made by men now recognized legends (Tobe Hooper, Stanley Kubrick, George A. Romero, David Cronenberg, and John Carpenter).
And then, on March 9, 1984 a.k.a. 40 years ago this week, Children Of The Corn arrived in theaters to spoil the streak and go down in history as the first ever bad Stephen King movie.
The short story on which it’s based (best known for being featured in the 1978 collection Night Shift), is a classic King tale tracking a pair of normal Americans who encounter some extreme circumstances. Protagonists Burt and Vicky are a burnt-out married couple who we meet as their relationship is being severely tested by a cross-country roadtrip, and the plot’s inciting incident – they hit a young boy with their car – is only the start of what ends up being a spiraling nightmare. Not just any boy, the kid they hit was trying to escape the hell of Gatlin, Nebraska: a town where all of the children murdered the adults in order to appease a demonic entity promising bountiful harvests named He Who Walks Behind The Rows.
That basic premise wasn’t corrupted by screenwriter George Goldsmith for the 1984 film; the problem is everything else about bringing it to the big screen. The source material simply isn’t long or dense enough to adapt for feature length, and what Goldsmith invented as padding is almost exclusively awful (the one exception being the opening sequence that sees the children of Gatlin carry out their assault). The greatest sin is the introduction of Job (Robby Kiger) and Sarah (Anne Marie McEvoy), who are young siblings terrified of their peers who end up helping Burt and Vicky… and in doing so, spoil the scary, mysterious and alien atmosphere into which the main characters accidentally and tragically stumble.
It’s also really hard to excuse the wholly Hollywood-ified ending, which totally takes the punch out of the story: while neither Burt (Peter Horton) nor Vicky (Linda Hamilton) make it out of King’s version alive (he is killed by He Who Walks Behind The Rows, while she is murdered and crucified by the children), they both survive in the film and successfully set fire to the crops of Gatlin.
Of course, one can’t discuss the larger legacy of Children Of The Corn without discussing the many, many, many sequels. There exists a sizable history of filmmakers trying to expand on King’s work with follow-up features to theatrical releases (The Rage: Carrie 2, Firestarter: Rekindled and The Mangler Reborn are just a few examples), but no franchise matches the longevity of Children Of The Corn, which to date includes eight sequels to the 1984 movie (the last being released in 2018), a 2009 remake, and a 2020 prequel. As far as the broader pop culture impact of these works is concerned, I can’t top what King himself wrote in the essay that precedes the short story in the 2009 collection Stephen King Goes To The Movies:
Children of the Corn has generated more awful sequels than any other story in my oeuvre. There's Children of the Corn II, III and IV, at least. Possibly more (I eventually lost count). If my Internet connection weren't down as I write this I'd check and see if there wasn't even a Children of the Corn in Space. I almost think there was. The only one I was really rooting for was Children of the Corn Meet Leprechaun. I wanted to hear that little leprechaun guy shouting, ‘Give me back me corn!’ in his cute little Irish accent.
Should you feel compelled to celebrate the anniversary with a special rewatch of Children Of The Corn, the movie is presently available to stream with an Amazon Prime subscription. And if you’re a physical media collector looking to build the ultimate Stephen King library, your best option is the 4K UHD edition put out by Arrow Video back in 2022.
That brings this week’s edition of The King Beat to a close, but those who are ever-hungry to read more about Stephen King need not exhibit some extreme, masochistic level of patience for more: I’ll be back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday with a fresh column exploring all of the latest goings-on in the world of King. In the meantime, you can learn about the long history of the author’s works in film and television via my series Adapting Stephen King.
