Just as quickly, I fell out of love, as he quickly began to repeat all those literary tics and nuances which had made him so apparently unique; I’d seen the whole box o’tricks and I was bored to tears. Haven’t read a King novel since, oh, probably, ‘Dolores Claiborne’.

I absolutely agree with ‘The Shining’; King heaps horror on horror on horror, each seeming crescendo topped by the next - had Kubrick stayed faithful it would have been an utterly exhausting experience. But by the time we got to Jack mashing his face with mallet and running around the Overlook, his face like 3lbs of good ground chuck, I suspect it simply would have all been too much.

Despite a couple of mis-steps, Kubrick’s film does have an air of unspoken horror (and unspoken horror, I accept, is none too fashionable in the ’show and tell’ 21st century).

I have little time otherwise for King on film (when he trashes Kubrick, someone should force his eyelids open and make the bugger watch ‘Maximum Overdrive’), and certainly not Darabont, I’m afraid - ‘Carrie’ and ‘Misery’ are fine, but IMHO, one of the best and most faithful adaptations is Cronenberg’s ‘The Dead Zone’.

Interesting piece; enjoyed that.