The King family and others believe that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy involving the U.S. He later made many attempts to withdraw his guilty plea and to be tried by a jury, but was unsuccessful. On March 10, 1969, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary. James Earl Ray, a fugitive from the Missouri State Penitentiary, was arrested on June 8, 1968, at London's Heathrow Airport, extradited to the United States and charged with the crime. He was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was known for his use of nonviolence and civil disobedience. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7:05 p.m. Before we rank into every theatrically-released Stephen King adaptation let's give out one honorable mention.Martin Luther King Jr., an African-American clergyman and civil rights leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m.

We promise we tried.)Įven with all those caveats we felt one particular film deserved a quasi-official, honorable mention.

(There are also some adaptations that are simply difficult to find in America, like the Indian adaptions of 'Misery' and 'Quitter's, Inc.' - 'Julie Ganapathi' and 'No Smoking' - but we tried. We also cut King some slack and removed 'The Lawnmower Man' from our watch list, since he fought to have his own name removed from the film and won. The sequels to King's work rarely have anything to do with the source material, so they're all disqualified (even though some, like Larry Cohen's prescient anti-fascist monster drama 'A Return to Salem's Lot,' are genuinely interesting). Cataloguing every adaptation might be a fool's errand, so we made some tough choices and decided to focus only on his theatrical releases.Īnd even then, there are so many King adaptations that it gets tricky. King's books and short stories quickly became hit movies, many of them celebrated in their time, and some flopped so hard that hardly anybody remembers them. The best King stories scare so many of us that we all feel connected, and even the worst are usually pretty fun. Stephen King isn't just an author by this point: He's an institution, a legacy of classic horror stories that capture our imaginations, fuel our nightmares, and speak - when he's at his best - to our shared experiences as flawed, emotional beings.

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