The Kingcast

What is concealed in the mist? Tentacle monsters? Massive behemoths that will squash you without even knowing you exist? Crazy white people? All of the above, it turns out, and every single one of those things are touched on in this episode.

George A. Romero and Stephen King produced 1982's Creepshow and forever changed the landscape of anthology horror. That movie had a massive impact on a whole generation of horror nerds, including today's guest, and now it's time to dig into what still holds up today and what maybe doesn't so much.

Dreamcatcher is Stephen King's return to fiction writing after the accident that almost took his life. It's a novel about a bunch of friends who gather together in the woods as a really weird alien invasion is taking place, and while it does have its fans even King himself dismisses the book as a whiff, written mostly while the author was high on pain killers while his body was mending itself back together. As not great as the book is, the movie is even worse, despite the incredible A-list talent both in front of and behind the camera.

King's first foray into straight Fantasy was this 1984 story, The Eyes of the Dragon, which is a Dark Tower adjacent tale about two young princes in a fairy tale kingdom who are pitted against each other by the king's secretly evil magician, who regular Stephen King fans will recognize as the very same Flagg from The Stand. Part palace intrigue, part YA fantasy, The Eyes of the Dragon is an early departure from the horror realm for the author and is still a gripping read to this day.

Stephen King and merritt k discuss bizarre Stephen King video game tie-ins, including The Lawnmower Man, The Running Man, The Dark Half, and F13. They reminisce about childhood gaming, their experiences with Stephen King, and their opinions on horror video games. They critique The Dark Half's puzzles and praise its visuals. They explore Stephen King's crime novels and the importance of displaying action figures. They highlight The Lumbar Man's surprising quality and discuss Stephen King's F 13 as a CD-ROM game. They also mention a poorly connected video game based on Stephen King.

Dolores Claiborne has been dealt a crap hand from life and in her later years she's dealt another blow when she finds herself the main suspect in the suspicious death of her tyrannical boss. 

Back in 1992, Stephen King released Gerald's Game, a novel about a traumatized woman named Jessie Burlingame who finds herself alone in a cabin, handcuffed to the headboard of a bed, with only her past and current traumas to keep her company. If she's going to survive this, she's going to have to listen to her inner voice and confront a past trauma that could very well hold the key to her freedom.

What if your cell phone turned you into a zombie? Okay, that's probably already the case, but I mean a real honest to God zombie? That's the premise of Stephen King's 2006 novel and its questionable, shoddy, and rather unpleasant 2016 adaptation starring the usually dependable John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson.

One of Stephen King's early forays into fantasy was 1982's The Talisman, which he co-wrote with celebrated genre author Peter Straub. The story focuses on a young boy who embarks on a cross-country (and cross-reality) quest to save his dying mother by obtaining a magical talisman that could very well cure his mother and save a parallel world also at risk of falling apart. 

This episode is sponsored by A24 as they build up to the July 28 release of the fantastic Talk To Me, which is about a particularly grotesque party game involving a severed hand that can open the door to the afterlife. Naturally, things don't go very well when this happens and the result is one of the scariest, most fun horror movies of the year, coming soon to a theater near you. More info can be found here: https://a24films.com/films/talk-to-me