TheRetroCritic

I review Stephen King's Thinner , a requested vlog on Patreon .

I review Dreamcatcher , one of my favourites. No, really.

A look at Netflix's In The Tall Grass , based on a Stephen King novella.

Today I talk about the Pet Sematary remake... and sing a little bit.

We review IT on episode 77 of The Big Rewind .

A convenient 27 years after the memorable miniseries, we are finally treated to a movie adaptation of Stephen King's horror novel IT with Bill Skarsgård taking on the role of creepy killer clown Pennywise made iconic by Tim Curry back in the day. The film focuses on the child characters, a group of seven friends who are each terrorised by random sightings of Pennywise years after the latter abducted a child called Georgie by luring him into the sewers. Georgie's older brother Bill (Jaeden Lieberher) has been trying to find him ever since and this becomes his and his friends' main goal. Unfortunately, particularly dangerous bullies, crappy lives at home and specific fears brought up by Pennywise get in the way of their mission. Like an ingenuous mix of Stand By Me and The Goonies with some  Stranger Things thrown in, IT is both an effective coming-of-age story with a group of very different but equally likeable kids at its heart and a supernatural horror film every

I talk about... IT . The movie, that is.

I talk a bit about new Stephen King movie adaptation The Dark Tower .

Based on Stephen King's series of novels, The Dark Tower is the first attempt at bringing the writer's inter-dimensional adventure to life after a long line of start-and-stop attempts. With the reviews so far being mediocre at best, it's not looking promising for this franchise starter. The fact that there are 8 books to work from should have guaranteed a packed first instalment setting up King's universe and its main players. The cool trailers promised lots of action, creative visuals, a massive scale and even a bit of humour so this really seemed like a safe bet despite fans of the novels already having their reservations. The reviews have been cruel and, although this movie isn't the complete train-wreck it's been painted as, it's hard to deny it deserves a bit of a spanking. Setting aside the fact that Stephen King fans have expressed how much it butchers the source novels, as a film it fails on several accounts. We're introduced to this big co

I check out the new Thor: Ragnarok and IT trailers.

There are plenty of Stephen King movie adaptations out there, enough to fill a small country, and this is one of them.  Children Of The Corn was released in 1984 and was based on one of the legendary horror writer's short stories. Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton play a couple who struggle to make their way back to civilisation after driving into an already dying child on a road near a cornfield. As it turns out, they have entered a town completely populated by kids who not only killed off every adult around brutally but who are part of some bizarre corn-themed religious cult. When poor old Vicky (Hamilton) is kidnapped, it's up to Burt (Horton) and a couple of younger kids to save her from being another human sacrifice. The film starts off on a gory note as we see the creepy children turn a diner into a bloodbath in what is the start of their grown-up eradication. After that, the film slows down quite a bit and we spend some time following Vicky and Burt wandering around

Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in The Running Man , a loose 1987 movie adaptation of Stephen King's novel in which a man is wrongfully arrested and thrown into a sadistic game show taking place in the dystopian future society of 2017. Here's yet another film which'll make The Hunger Games seem even less original than it already is as poor old Arnie is forced to battle enemies to the death in a modern arena. He plays Ben Richards, a helicopter pilot who, upon refusing to kill innocent civilians, is ruthlessly thrown in jail: the US has become a totalitarian police state and the media single-handedly controls what people think. Richards escapes and attempts to flee to Hawaii using a random woman's ID but the misinformed Maria Conchita Alonso turns on Richards and blows the whistle on him to the police who soon catch him again. He is soon blackmailed into taking part in the biggest game show on TV "The Running Man" hosted by a cruel (and brilliant) Richard Daw

It's well known that Stephen King wasn't too keen on Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of his classic novel The Shining back in the day. So much so that, in 1997, a "mere" 17 years after Kubrick's film was released, he even wrote and produced his own mini-series retelling the story but delivering much more backstory and character development. Well, that was the intention, anyway. The result was basically an entertaining enough yet completely inferior 3-part TV movie which did bring back some key elements from the book but failed to match the intensity, creepiness and stylistic class of Kubrick's film. The first part of this Shining mini-series sees the Torrance family move in to The Overlook Hotel after a long exposition-heavy tour and several flashbacks showing us Jack Torrance's (a sadly miscast Steven Weber) struggles with alcohol and son Danny's run-ins with imaginary pal Tony, who isn't Danny's finger in this movie, but instead a te