Stephen King's 8-Part Anthology Series Deserves Credit For Adapting The Impossible
Stephen King's eight-episode anthology series deserves more credit for adapting some of King's more difficult stories to take from the page to the screen. King isn't impossible to put on the screen, but it's probably harder than you may guess, considering just how many shows and movies there are based on his works.
For all the vampires, ravenous dogs, and blood-soaked teens that haunt the pages of his stories, the most frightening things in his books and shorts are what goes on inside the minds of his characters. The way King writes about fear and insanity are some of the most haunting things he does.
Eight of his short stories appear in the little-seen horror anthology series that premiered on TNT in 2006, Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King. Nightmares & Dreamscapes primarily pulls from the same-titled short story collection but also adapts stories from other collections.
Tom Berenger, William H. Macy, Kim Delaney, Ron Livingston, William Hurt, and more star in episodes based on shorts like "Umney's Last Case", "The End of the Whole Mess", "Crouch End", and more. It's definitely a product of its time in terms of some visuals, but it still holds up as an exciting horror anthology.
It should be clear how difficult it can be to adapt King's stories by the sheer number of movies and shows that have been done poorly. For every Stand by Me there's a Maximum Overdrive or a The Mangler. For every The Mist, there's a Dolan's Cadillac or a The Lawnmower Man. Nightmares & Dreamscapes deserves more love with that in mind.
Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From The Stories Of Stephen King Adapts Some Of King's Trickiest Short Stories
The stories in Nightmares & Dreamscapes are particularly difficult to adapt. "Crouch End" is a Lovecraftian horror about an American couple who get lost in a London neighborhood where our world and the world of unknowable monsters are squished together. It captures the loneliness and confusion of the story, and even has some solid creature effects.
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Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King Episodes |
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|---|---|---|
|
Number |
Title |
Short Story Collection |
|
1 |
"Battleground" |
Night Shift (1978) |
|
2 |
"Crouch End" |
Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993) |
|
3 |
"Umney's Last Case" |
Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993) |
|
4 |
"The End of the Whole Mess" |
Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993) |
|
5 |
"The Road Virus Heads North" |
Everything's Eventual (2002) |
|
6 |
"The Fifth Quarter" |
Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993) |
|
7 |
"Autopsy Room Four" |
Six Stories (1997) |
|
8 |
"You Know They Got a Hell of a Band" |
Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993) |
"The End of the Whole Mess" is basically a story about the end of the world, told by someone in a room alone, rapidly losing his intelligence. The episode keeps the story compelling. "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band" is ridiculous on its face, about a strange town inhabited by people who look an awful lot like deceased rock legends.
Even with that strange conceit, Nightmares & Dreamscapes puts out something captivating, frightening, and well-tuned to King's story. People struggle to adapt just one Stephen King story, and Nightmares & Dreamscapes manages to adapt eight of his most challenging.
Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From The Stories Of Stephen King Deserves A Second Season
Nightmares & Dreamscapes only lasted one season, which is a shame because the format was perfect for King's more unique stories. Not all of his shorts can power a movie script, let alone a multi-episode story, but a 45-minute to 1-hour episode of television is perfectly suited to convert the shorts.
Whether it's a wedding ceremony gone wrong in "The Wedding Gig" or a Ford truck with a vengeful streak in "Uncle Otto's Truck", nearly every one of Stephen King's short stories is worth reading. If Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King could do its 8 stories so well, it could probably handle another season.