The 1980s were in many ways peak Stephen King when it came to screen adaptations. For one thing, the man himself was at the height of his popularity. He has of course remained one of the world’s best-selling authors for decades, but his initial string of books that started in the mid-1970s and extended well into the ‘80s—which included classics like Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, The Stand, and Different Seasons, just to name a handful—made him into a genuine publishing phenomenon like no other.

At the same time, the success of Brian De Palma’s 1976 big screen adaptation of Carrie, followed by the 1979 CBS-TV miniseries based on ‘Salem’s Lot, helped open the floodgates for a massive influx of screen adaptations of his work. That wave was launched with Stanley Kubrick’s prestigious and controversial take on The Shining, although the films that followed in...