You already know about Stephen King's legendary work ethic. The 70+ novels, the hundreds of short stories. The fact that he was so hopped up on prescription medication and booze that he doesn't even remember writing Cujo. To be fair, a book about a great big, mad St Bernard is a bit weird, but it's still good, isn't it? It's still very good.

As with all great writers, a lot of those books have been turned into films. Some are brilliant, some... not so much (R.I.P Dark Tower).

But which are the best?

With the 2017 iteration of It creeping into cinemas this September, we've counted down the 10 best big screen adaptation's from the pages of Stephen King.

People always seem to forget he wrote Shawshank?

Anyway...

10 | Running Man (1987)

A controversial choice? Maybe. But when you've got peak Eighties Arnie trapped inside a hellish, dystopian gameshow - hosted by Richard Dawson at his best - fighting for survival and dropping the hammer and pithy one-liners with carefree, Austrian abandon, then it has to make the list.

It just has to.

9 | Cujo (1983)

It's probably nostalgia and more than a few childhood nightmares talking here, but Cujo actually does a pretty great job at delivering the scares; considering the fact that practically the whole thing takes place inside a car and the antagonist is a big angry dog.

8 | It (1990)

Ruining clowns (Pennywise is actually a demon, but who's counting?) for an entire generation, the Nineties adaptation of arguably King's most-terrifying work is suitably... terrifying.

The upcoming version will have to do a lot to top Tim Curry's chilling Pennywise performance, too.

7 | The Green Mile (1999)

Something of an endurance test (it doesn't need to be 3+ hours long, does it?) and with plenty of soppiness, The Green Mile is far from faultless, but if that ending doesn't add a little moisture to the far corner of your eyeball(s), then you should probably go outside and have a good long think about what you want out of all of this.

6 | The Dead Zone (1983)

A real underrated gem in the King canon, The Dead Zone has politics, pace, psychic powers and Christopher Walken at the absolute top of his game.

Watch it. Maybe tonight? Maybe next week? It's down to you, really.

5 | The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

A bit (very) long; a bit wordy and probably not quite as good as you remember it. But show us a person who doesn't stay up too late on a work night to finish it when it's on TV, and we'll show you a liar.

4 | Misery (1990)

Kathy Bates was so good as a deranged super fan who holds her idol, a famous author, hostage in a lonely mountain cabin that she won a Best Actress Oscar for it, which is pretty much unheard of in the horror genre.

UNHEARD OF.

3 | Stand By Me (1986)

Proving that King isn't all clowns in the sewer and big angry dogs at the car window, this touching coming-of-age adventure about hometown friendship, a dead body and a summer on the road is one of the very best of its kind and is said to be one of King's favourite-ever adaptations of his own work.

It also really, really makes you wish you grew up in Oregon in the Fifties... even if you are actually from Berkhamsted.

2 | Carrie (1976)

The very first adaptation of King's very first book, Carrie is the ultimate high school drama / supernatural horror (a winning combo); earning rave reviews on its release and Oscar nods for its leads, Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, who plays the titular character's terrifying stepmother (read: she's a massive b*tch) and Carrie herself, who has really had enough of being bullied by the time prom comes around to be quite honest with you.

Many a remake has tried to capture the old school magic of the original, but they have failed. They have failed and Carrie remains.

1 | The Shining (1980)

Despite the fact that King himself isn't actually a huge fan of Kubrick's take on what goes down at the Timberline Lodge, mainly due it deviating so far from its original source material, The Shining has everything you could possibly want out of a great horror: setting, character, a slow, psychological build up that peaks at just the right moment and one of the greatest individual scenes in movie history.

It's also aged surprisingly well. Plus, it has Jack Nicholson in it.

Case closed.

Headshot of Finlay Renwick
Finlay Renwick
Deputy Style Editor
Mother, blogger, vegan, model, liar