Movies based on Stephen King books are terrifying all on their own, but even they have pulled their punches, cutting out a few nightmarish scenes from the original books across the years. Adapting Stephen King books is always a risk, as so much of the small details and on-the-page character work that makes King’s books pop don’t translate well to the screen. The result is that some Stephen King movie adaptations have been fantastic, while others, like The Dark Tower 2017 and its mangled ending, show what happens when a movie adaptation doesn’t fully grasp what King is selling with a particular story.
Still, he is the King of Horror for a reason, and some of the best scenes in his movie adaptations have been ripped straight from the books. What works in a book is sometimes too dark for the parental advisory rating of a movie, though, and, as a result, plenty of gruesome Stephen King book scenes have never made it into the movies. Some are cut completely, while others are drastically changed. That means some of the most terrifying and horrific scenes in Stephen King’s books have never gotten a screen adaptation, and may never.
10 Hedge Animals Come To Life
The Shining
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In Stanley Kubrick’s film interpretation of The Shining, the hedge maze of the Overlook Hotel is a focal point of the movie, serving as the setting for the climactic chase sequence through the frozen maze and the final resting place of Jack Torrance as he freezes to death in the middle of the maze. Otherwise, it’s more or less part of the background, as the main action of the movie unfolds entirely within the hotel’s walls until The Shining’s ending.
It doesn’t sound that scary on paper, but from his child’s perspective, The Shining scene turns into a living nightmare for a child with psychic powers he doesn’t understand.
In the book, however, a genuinely scary moment happens outside the Overlook. Rather than a hedge maze, the Overlook Hotel of the novel is, instead, a topiary maze, with bushes artfully trimmed into the shape of animals. Young Danny Torrance is always creeped out by the bushes, feeling they have a way of looking at him. In one particularly horrifying scene, the bushes actually do come to life and chase Danny, trying to kill him. It doesn’t sound that scary on paper, but from his child’s perspective, The Shining scene turns into a living nightmare for a child with psychic powers he doesn’t understand.
9 Jack Beats Himself With A Roque Mallet
The Shining
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The Shining actually gets two entries on this list, but that’s perhaps to be expected considering the movie adaptation is so wildly different from Stephen King’s original book. That’s not to say Kubrick’s version of The Shining isn’t a masterpiece, but in reality, it’s more inspired by King’s novel than an adaptation, especially the ending. In the movie, Jack is completely possessed by the hotel and chases Danny and Wendy with an axe into the hedge maze before succumbing to the elements and freezing to death. It’s a relatively gentle way to die.
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In the book, however, Jack fights back against the hotel’s possession, and when he comes to and tells Danny to run, the spirits of the hotel fight back by forcing Jack to pick up a roque mallet and hit himself with it, mangling his own face and smashing his bones. He eventually dies in a subsequent fire when the hotel burns down, but the scene of him bashing his own face in with the mallet is more gruesome and haunting than any other scene in the book.
8 Tad Dies Of Heatstroke
Cujo
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Cujo is a Stephen King classic for a reason, one of the few in which the antagonist of the story isn’t a bona fide monster, or a maniacal human being, nor does it have a supernatural catalyst. Instead, it’s just the story of a formerly loving Saint Bernard who contracts rabies and becomes a feral, violent beast, trapping mother Donna Trenton and her young son, Tad, in their car. For so many reasons, it’s one of Stephen King’s most tragic stories, but the movie ends on a relatively happy note, at least for the humans, with Donna and Tad making it out alive after Donna manages to shoot Cujo.
King later explored the lasting effects of Tad’s death from Vic’s perspective in the short story and Cujo sequel “Rattlesnakes” in the collection You Like It Darker.
The book’s ending is far bleaker, though: not only does Cujo die, but so does the little boy, Tad. Unlike the movie, where Tad is revived after suffering heatstroke, the Tad in the book succumbs to it and dies as Donna is battling Cujo. After finally defeating and killing the dog with a broken baseball bat, Donna overpowers the dog and races back to her son as her husband, Vic, arrives, only to discover it’s all for naught and their son had died sometime during the final fight with Cujo. It’s a haunting ending, with Tad so close to being saved only to die in the very end.
7 Annie Wilkes Kills A Cop With A Lawnmower
Misery
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With Misery, the most famous (or infamous, depending on how you look at it) scene changed from the book is the hobbling scene. In the movie adaptation, Annie Wilkes puts a wooden block between Paul Sheldon’s ankles and then smashes them with a sledgehammer, and it is horrific. In the book, though, it’s worse, with Annie actually severing one of Paul’s feet with an axe and then making him look at it.
Related Why Misery Changed Stephen King’s Most Brutal Scene From The Book The film Misery is often remembered for its most brutal scene, but Stephen King’s novel held a far darker moment that changed Paul’s victorious end.
Arguably, a worse scene that’s changed from the book for the movie is the scene in which Annie kills a cop. In the movie, it’s Buster, the local sheriff, who stops by Annie’s place to check on her as he has a hunch she has Paul. She shoots Buster, which is tragic enough. In the book, though, it’s a state trooper who stops by to check things out and he dies in a much more horrific way. Instead of a quick death by shotgun, Annie runs him over with a riding lawnmower, a far more horrific and gruesome way to leave this world.
6 Patrick Hockstetter’s Entire Story
IT
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Of course, it’s not just specific scenes that have been cut out, changed, or largely glossed over in movie adaptations of Stephen King’s books. Occasionally, entire storylines have been cut out of the adaptation, whether due to narrative necessity or time constraints. Every so often, it’s because it’s a storyline simply too dark and twisted to make it into the movie and that is the case with Patrick Hockstetter’s story in IT. While he’s been in both the 1990 miniseries adaptation of IT and the more recent movies, Patrick Hockstetter’s story backstory and character arc are severely truncated and, in some places, cut completely.
In truth, that’s for the best. Patrick may be one of the worst of King’s human monsters, and in a movie that’s already concerned with a killer, interdimensional clown, weaving in his story would be too much. In frank terms, Patrick is a psychopath, who, from childhood, considered himself the only “real” person in the world. At age 5, he smothered his baby brother to death, which is cut from the movie entirely, as is his penchant for torturing and killing animals. The movie also drastically eases up on his death, too. In the books, he’s slowly drained of blood by grotesque, flesh-colored leeches, and then Pennywise eats his corpse.
5 Brian’s Death By Suicide & Raider’s Death
Needful Things
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Give Stephen King credit: he has never pulled punches when it comes to children and animals being in just as much danger as adults. While most horror movies still treat the on-screen death of a child as taboo, King has never seen them as off-limits. Some readers find this to be a turn-off, but most appreciate it for his willingness to go there; in the real world, children aren’t spared, so neither are they in his horror novels. That includes the kid Brian Rusk in Needful Things, who is overcome with remorse after being manipulated by the greater evil and ends up taking his own life after realizing he’d unwittingly been a pawn that got others killed.
Needful Things didn’t stop there, including the double taboo punch of a child and animal dying
But Needful Things didn’t stop there, including the double taboo punch of a child and animal dying. Just as tragic as Brian’s suicide is the death of Raider, the happy, friendly pet dog of the housekeeper Nettie Cobb. In the novel, a crazed Hugh Priest murders Raider for a “prank,” and the scene is heartbreaking as Raider never knows it’s coming. Friendly to the end, Raider doesn’t recognize the danger Priest poses and even rolls over for his killer to rub his belly just before he dies. There’s a reason why Needful Things often gets labeled as one of King’s most unrelentingly bleak novels.
4 Vicky Is Sacrificed
Children of the Corn
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Surprisingly, the one Stephen King work that has spawned the most adaptations and spinoff sequels isn’t one of his lengthy epics or even one of his novels at all, but the short story “Children of the Corn” from his 1978 collection Night Shift. On its own, the original short story is terrifying, a tale of religious zealot children praying to a monstrous entity in the corn, their fanaticism turning them into killers. The movie does a good job of capturing the creepiness of rural religious fanaticism when it curdles and turns dark, but co-protagonist Vicky escapes unscathed after her husband, Burt, saves her from being sacrificed.
In the original short story, however, Vicky doesn’t escape being sacrificed; her fate is much darker and more final. While her death is not actually depicted in the short story, the aftermath is, and it’s arguably more horrific. Burt staggers through the corn trying to escape the wrath of the children when he stumbles across his missing wife – or rather, her body. It’s strung up to a cross with barbed wire and her eyes have been ripped out and stuffed full of corn silk, her gaping mouth stuffed with corn husks. The gruesome scene is one that certainly lingers, a far cry from the relatively happy ending of the movie.
3 The Kid Sexually Assaults Trashcan Man
The Stand
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Similar to Patrick Hockstetter in IT, another of the most terrifying scenes in a Stephen King book doesn’t involve a supernatural monster, but pure human evil. It unfolds in another of his epic tales, The Stand, and it happens to the tragic figure of Trashcan Man. In both miniseries adaptations, Trashcan Man is a schizophrenic pyromaniac and arguably a sympathetic character – though he falls prey to Stephen King villain Randall Flagg and does horrible things, his tragic backstory and childlike mentality leave him wide open to be an unwitting pawn in Flagg’s game.
Related 7 Ways Stephen King’s The Stand Is Connected To The Dark Tower Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series connects to many of his other stories, with The Stand having some of the most prominent connections.
In a particularly stomach-churning scene, King graphically illustrates how the mentally ill and unhoused are usually the greatest victims of violence rather than the perpetrators of it. When Trashcan Man encounters another survivor known as The Kid, The Kid forces the mentally ill Trashcan Man to sexually pleasure him at gunpoint. Even worse, The Kid jams the gun into his victim’s rectum, raping him with the barrel of the loaded gun and injuring him even as he forces Trashcan Man to finish pleasuring him. It’s a graphic scene of sexual assault, and all the more tragic because of Trashcan Man’s mental state.
2 Child Abuse Scene
‘Salem’s Lot
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A scene that has understandably never made it into any adaptation of ‘Salem’s Lot involves the McDougalls’ baby, Randy. The first involves a tragic but mundane kind of terror: undiagnosed post-partum depression leading to a scene of child abuse, in which young Sandy McDougall, who is desperately unhappy and feeling trapped after giving birth, hits Randy in a moment of rage. Stephen King describes the baby as smiling up at her even as Sandy cleans the blood off his face in a chilling moment of domestic violence.
Related Salem’s Lot’s Missing Characters Confirms A Harsh Truth About The 2024 Movie Salem’s Lot 2024 removes many book characters from its narrative, and their absence confirms the biggest problem with the new adaptation.
What happens next to Randy is even more horrifying, though. Young Danny Glick, turned into a vampire while just a child himself, turns the baby into a vampire. Of course, in order to become a vampire, one first has to die, and die, Randy does. It culminates in a scene in which a broken Sandy tries to force-feed her baby’s corpse chocolate pudding. Her mind completely snapped at this point, Sandy uses her fingers to force her dead baby to smile. All the while, the chocolate pudding merely plops from his mouth. The moment is visceral, shocking, and impossible to forget.
1 Roland Lets Jake Fall To His Death
The Gunslinger
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Longtime Constant Readers know that The Dark Tower ties Stephen King’s universe together as not only his magnum opus, but the focal point around which so many of his short stories and books revolve. While the story expands into a full-fledged, sprawling epic over the course of subsequent novels, one short story, and tangential tie-in stories, the relationship at the core of the entire Dark Tower story is arguably that between gunslinger Roland Deschain and the young boy, Jake Chambers, which begins in The Gunslinger. In the disastrous 2017 adaptation of The Dark Tower, the movie – eventually – captures some of his surrogate father-son dynamic at the end.
Though it haunts him for the rest of his life, it can never be unwritten that Roland chose to sacrifice a child rather than be deterred
Their relationship in the book version of The Gunslinger is not there yet – far from it. In a moment that shows Roland is not to be trusted, as he will sacrifice anything and anyone in his obsessive quest to reach the Dark Tower. That’s exactly what he does, choosing to pursue his quarry, the Man in Black, rather than pull Jake up from a crumbling rock bridge. The decision to let the boy die rather than lose his chance to catch the Man in Black says a lot about Roland as a character. Though it haunts him for the rest of his life, it can never be unwritten that Roland chose to sacrifice a child rather than be deterred. Still, it gave us one of the most famous Stephen King lines: “Go, then. There are other worlds than these.”