Salem's Lot (1979)

Writer Ben Mears (David Soul) returns to Salem’s Lot, the small Maine community where he grew up, in order to pen a book about the Marsten House, a supposedly haunted hilltop property. Ben soon finds the townspeople have been threatened by a sinister, undead presence: a vampire (Reggie Nalder) who has claimed the town as his own. Tobe Hooper directs this two-part miniseries based on Stephen King’s novel, co-starring Bonnie Bedelia, Lance Kerwin, Lew Ayres, and James Mason. 183 min. C/Rtg: PG

The Shining (1980)

From writer Stephen King and director Stanley Kubrick comes a classic tale of madness and terror that has climbed the list of greatest horror films since its initial release. Struggling writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and their psychic son Danny (Danny Lloyd) spend the winter overseeing the deserted and isolated Overlook hotel, where the ghosts of the site’s shocking and bloody past plague Jack’s sanity. With Scatman Crothers, Barry Nelson. 142 min. C/Rtg: R

Creepshow (1982)

George A. Romero and Stephen King pay tribute to the old E.C. comics with this frightening, funny anthology. A family patriarch comes back from the dead to exact revenge, in "Father’s Day"; "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" finds a farmer transformed into a giant plant; two lovers return from a watery grave, in "Something to Tide You Over"; a monster is released from "The Crate"; and a recluse is terrorized by bugs, in "They’re Creeping Up on You." Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Leslie Nielsen star. 120 min. C/Rtg: R

Cat's Eye (1985)

This trio of horror tales laced with laughs from monster maven Stephen King is based on his short stories "Quitters, Inc." and "The Ledge," and a story written expressly for this film, "General." An unusual "aversion therapy" for smokers, a nighttime stroll atop a 30-story building and a child’s toy troll that becomes real are the ingredients for scares. James Woods, Alan King, Robert Hays, and Drew Barrymore star. 94 min. C/Rtg: PG-13

Stephen King's It (1990)

Seven childhood friends return to the New England town where they grew up in order to stop an evil force that threatened them years earlier and has returned to renew its murderous ways. Terrifying adaptation of Stephen King’s best-selling shocker stars Harry Anderson, John Ritter, Richard Thomas, Annette O’Toole, and Tim Curry as Pennywise the clown. 187 min. C/Rtg: NR

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Director Frank Darabont’s powerful adaptation of a novella by Stephen King stars Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne, a Portland, Maine, banker wrongly convicted of killing his wife and her lover in 1947. Sentenced to two life sentences in New England’s brutal Shawshank Prison, Dufresne learns to maintain hope in the most hopeless of circumstances with the help of fellow lifer "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman)...and a little rock hammer. Co-stars James Whitmore, William Sadler, Bob Gunton. 142 min. C/Rtg: R

The Green Mile (1999)

This superlative adaptation of Stephen King’s magical realism novel by "The Shawshank Redemption" scripter/director Frank Darabont boasts Tom Hanks as Paul Edgecomb, the head guard in a Louisiana prison’s death row in the 1930s who discovers that kindly--and giant--convicted murderer John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan) possesses supernatural healing and empathetic powers. David Morse, James Cromwell, Bonnie Hunt, Doug Hutchison, and Michael Jeter co-star. 188 min. C/Rtg: R

Dreamcatcher (2003)

In Lawrence Kasdan’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, four childhood friends (Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Damian Lewis, and Timothy Olyphant) meet every year at a cabin in Maine to hunt and to reminisce. Bound together by psychic powers after rescuing a mentally challenged boy when they were young, the group encounters worm-like alien invaders and a secret military unit bent on locating the aliens--even if it means killing innocent people in the process. With Morgan Freeman. 134 min. C/Rtg: R