Stephen King once described himself as "the Big Mac of literature". And time has proved him right. His reputation as the world's biggest-selling horror author has turned the 56-year-old scribe into a one-man multinational corporation.
His books have been translated into 33 languages and he has unofficial fan clubs all around the world, which means that while his face may not be as recognizable as Ronald McDonald's, his name is every bit as famous as the golden arches.
But when it comes to horror movies, there are no two ways about it: Stephen King is more Wimpy than Maccy D's.
It started so well. Director Brian De Palma was the first to turn the Big Mac into popcorn with "Carrie" in 1976. Lots of blood, Sissy Spacek looking as freaky as ever, and John Travolta strutting his stuff before "Grease" made him a superstar. Scary? The final scene was enough to turn grown men into the gibbering equivalent of drunken jellyfish.
"Carrie" opened the floodgates for Kingmania. Next up was TV vampire tale "Salem's Lot" (1979), followed by Stanley Kubrick's masterful "The Shining" (1980). For a while, it looked like Stephen was going to be King of Hollywood.
Then disaster struck. In George Romero's horror anthology "Creepshow" (1982), King started believing his own PR and decided to play a retarded farmer named Jordy Verrill who gets covered in extra-terrestrial fungus when a meteor crashes in his backyard. Fans avoided the movie like it was a cinematic STD.
After "Creepshow", the rot set in, with "Cujo" (1983), "Christine" (1983), and "Children of the Corn" (1984) suggesting that King's name might be cursed.
There were some exceptions - "The Dead Zone" (1983), "Pet Semetary" (1989), and "Misery" (1990) - but for every good King horror flick, there's been at least 30 bad ones. And since his work has spawned over 70 films and TV shows, we've had to sit through a lot of dross over the years.
Top prize for King-sized pants goes to the writer's own directorial debut, "Maximum Overdrive" (1986), in which the world's machines turn homicidal after a comet whizzes past the Earth.
Trucks go on the rampage, cash points start calling customers assholes, and Emilio "Don鈥檛 call me Sheen" Estevez plays a hero. "Who Made Who?" asked the poster taglines. Sadly, the answer was obvious - King made it, and there was no one else to blame but himself.
Let's face it. As long as King keeps on churning out bestsellers like "Dreamcatcher", he probably isn't going to lose much sleep over the fact that he's produced more plopbusters than blockbusters.
Yet there's something scary about the fact that America's bestselling author could go down in history as being responsible for spawning more turkeys than Bernard Matthews.
